Chapter 5

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Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the large cla.s.s of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One cla.s.s of politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul, but also brings a ma.s.s of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate on their innocent families; that the drunkard"s craving for drink often reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration, ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and crime.

Another cla.s.s of politicians approach the question from a wholly different point of view. They emphatically object to imposing upon grown-up men a system of moral restriction which is very properly imposed upon children. They contend that adult men who have a.s.sumed all the duties and responsibilities of life, and have even a voice in the government of the country, should regulate their own conduct, as far as they do not directly interfere with their neighbours, without legal restraint, bearing themselves the consequences of their mistakes or excesses. This, they say, is the first principle of freedom, the first condition in the formation of strong and manly characters. A poor man, who desires on his Sunday excursion to obtain moderate refreshment such as he likes for himself or his family, and who goes to the public-house--probably in most cases to meet his friends and discuss the village gossip over a gla.s.s of beer--is in no degree interfering with the liberty of his neighbours. He is doing nothing that is wrong; nothing that he has not a perfect right to do. No one denies the rich man access to his club on Sunday, and it should be remembered that the poor man has neither the private cellars nor the comfortable and roomy homes of the rich, and has infinitely fewer opportunities of recreation.

Because some men abuse this right and are unable to drink alcohol in moderation, are all men to be prevented from drinking it at all, or at least from drinking it on Sunday? Because two men agree not to drink it, have they a right to impose the same obligation on an unwilling third?

Have those who never enter a public-house, and by their position in life never need to enter it, a right, if they are in a majority, to close its doors against those who use it? On such grounds these politicians look with extreme disfavour on all this restrictive legislation as unjust, partial and inconsistent with freedom.

Very few, however, would carry either set of arguments to their full logical consequences. Not many men who have had any practical experience in the management of men would advocate a complete suppression of the drink trade, and still fewer would put it on the basis of complete free trade, altogether exempt from special legislative restriction. To responsible politicians the course to be pursued will depend mainly on fluctuating conditions of public opinion. Restrictions will be imposed, but only when and as far as they are supported by a genuine public opinion. It must not be a mere majority, but a large majority; a steady majority; a genuine majority representing a real and earnest desire, and especially in the cla.s.ses who are most directly affected; not a mere fact.i.tious majority such as is often created by skilful organisation and agitation; by the enthusiasm of the few confronting the indifference of the many. In free and democratic States one of the most necessary but also one of the most difficult arts of statesmanship is that of testing public opinion, discriminating between what is real, growing and permanent and what is transient, artificial and declining. As a French writer has said, "The great art in politics consists not in hearing those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent." On such questions as those I have mentioned we may find the same statesman without any real inconsistency supporting the same measures in one part of the kingdom and opposing them in another; supporting them at one time because public opinion runs strongly in their favour; opposing them at another because that public opinion has grown weak.

One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the excessive tendency to time-serving and popularity hunting, and the danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends mainly on their motive. The question to be asked is whether a politician is acting from personal or merely party objects or from honourable public ones. Every statesman must form in his own mind a conception whether a prevailing tendency is favourable or opposed to the real interests of the country. It will depend upon this judgment whether he will endeavour to accelerate or r.e.t.a.r.d it; whether he will yield slowly or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed measure a statesman must continually ask himself whether the country is ripe for it--whether its introduction, however desirable it might be, would not be premature, as public opinion is not yet prepared for it?--whether, even though it be a bad measure, it is not on the whole better to vote for it, as the nation manifestly desires it?

The same kind of reasoning applies to the difficult question of education, and especially of religious education. Every one who is interested in the subject has his own conviction about the kind of education which is in itself the best for the people, and also the best for the Government to undertake. He may prefer that the State should confine itself to purely secular education, leaving all religious teaching to voluntary agencies; or he may approve of the kind of undenominational religious teaching of the English School Board; or he may be a strong partisan of one of the many forms of distinctly accentuated denominational education. But when he comes to act as a responsible legislator, he should feel that the question is not merely what _he_ considers the best, but also what the parents of the children most desire. It is true that the authority of parents is not absolutely recognised. The conviction that certain things are essential to the children, and to the well-being and vigour of the State, and the conviction that parents are often by no means the best judges of this, make legislators, on some important subjects, override the wishes of the parents. The severe restrictions imposed on child labour; the measure--unhappily now greatly relaxed--providing for children"s vaccination; and the legislation protecting children from ill treatment by their parents, are ill.u.s.trations, and the most extensive and far-reaching of all exceptions is education. After much misgiving, both parties in the State have arrived at the conclusion that it is essential to the future of the children, and essential also to the maintenance of the relative position of England in the great compet.i.tion of nations, that at least the rudiments of education should be made universal, and they are also convinced that this is one of the truths which perfectly ignorant parents are least competent to understand. Hence the system which of late years has so rapidly extended of compulsory education.

Many nations have gone further, and have claimed for the State the right of prescribing absolutely the kind of education that should be permitted, or at least the kind of education which shall be exclusively supported by State funds. In England this is not the case. A great variety of forms of education corresponding to the wishes and opinions of different cla.s.ses of parents receive a.s.sistance from the State, subject to the conditions of submitting to certain tests of educational efficiency, and to a conscience clause protecting minorities from interference with their faith.

A case which once caused much moral heart-burning among good men was the endowment, by the State, of Maynooth College, which is absolutely under the control of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and intended to educate their Divinity students in the Roman Catholic faith. The endowment dated from the period of the old Irish Protestant Parliament; and when, on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it came to an end, it was replaced by a large capital grant from the Irish Church Fund, and it is upon the interest of that grant that the College is still supported. This grant was denounced by many excellent men on the ground that the State was Protestant; that it had a definite religious belief upon which it was bound in conscience to act; and that it was a sinful apostasy to endow out of the public purse the teaching of what all Protestants believe to be superst.i.tion, and what many Protestants believe to be idolatrous and soul-destroying error. The strength of this kind of feeling in England is shown by the extreme difficulty there has been in persuading public opinion to acquiesce in any form of that concurrent endowment of religions which exists so widely and works so well upon the Continent.

Many, again, who have no objection to the policy of a.s.sisting by State subsidies the theological education of the priests are of opinion that it is extremely injurious both to the State and to the young that the secular education--and especially the higher secular education--of the Irish Catholic population should be placed under their complete control, and that, through their influence, the Irish Catholics should be strictly separated during the period of their education from their fellow-countrymen of other religions. No belief, in my own opinion, is better founded than this. If, however, those who hold it find that there is a great body of Catholic parents who persistently desire this control and separation; who will not be satisfied with any removal of disabilities and sectarian influence in systems of common education; who object to all mixed and undenominational education on the ground that their priests have condemned it, and that they are bound in conscience to follow the orders of their priests, and who are in consequence withholding from their children the education they would otherwise have given them, such men will in my opinion be quite justified in modifying their policy. As a matter of expediency they will argue that it is better that these Catholics should receive an indifferent university education than none at all; and that it is exceedingly desirable that what is felt to be a grievance by many honest, upright and loyal men should be removed. As a matter of principle, they contend that in a country where higher education is largely and variously endowed from public sources, it is a real grievance that there should be one large body of the people who can derive little or no benefit from those endowments. It is no sufficient answer to say that the objection of the Catholic parents is in most cases not spontaneous, but is due to the orders of their priests, since we are dealing with men who believe it to be a matter of conscience on such questions to obey their priests. Nor is it, I think, sufficient to argue--as very many enlightened men will do--that everything that could be in the smallest degree repugnant to the faith of a Catholic has been eliminated from the education which is imposed on them in existing universities; that every post of honour, emolument and power has been thrown open to them; that for generations they gladly followed the courses of Dublin University, and are even now permitted by their ecclesiastics to follow those of Oxford and Cambridge; that, the nation having adopted the broad principle of unsectarian education open to all, no single sect has a right to exceptional treatment, though every sect has an undoubted right to set up at its own expense such education as it pleases. The answer is that the objection of a certain cla.s.s of Roman Catholics in Ireland is not to any abuses that may take place under the system of mixed and undenominational education, but to the system itself, and that the particular type of education of which alone one considerable cla.s.s of taxpayers can conscientiously avail themselves has only been set up by voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and, directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively Catholic inst.i.tutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it the undenominational inst.i.tutions which they believe to be incomparably better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.

Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the establishment and endowment of a thing which he believes to be intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert Inglis--an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most conscientious Toryism--that "he would never vote one penny of public money for any purpose which he did not think right and good." The impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all cla.s.ses in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects of their vote on their own const.i.tuencies, where there are generally large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special circ.u.mstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all matters relating to education act blindly at the dictation of their priests.

Inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it. It would lead me too far in a book in which the moral difficulties of politics form only one subdivision, to enter into the history of English parties; but those who will do so will easily convince themselves that there is hardly a principle of political action that has not in party history been abandoned, and that not unfrequently parties have come to advocate at one period of their history the very measures which at another period they most strenuously resisted. Changed circ.u.mstances, the growth or decline of intellectual tendencies, party strategy, individual influence, have all contributed to these mutations, and most of them have been due to very blended motives of patriotism and self-interest.

In judging the moral quality of the changes of party leaders, the element of time will usually be of capital importance. Violent and sudden reversals of policy are never effected by a party without a great loss of moral weight; though there are circ.u.mstances under which they have been imperatively required. No one will now dispute the integrity of the motives that induced the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel to carry Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation in 1829, when the Clare election had brought Ireland to the verge of revolution; and the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws was certainly not due to any motive either of personal or party ambition, though it may be urged with force that at a time when he was still the leader of the Protectionist party his mind had been manifestly moving in the direction of Free trade, and that the Irish famine, though not a mere pretext, was not wholly the cause of the surrender. In each of these cases a ministry pledged to resist a particular measure introduced and carried it, and did so without any appeal to the electors. The justification was that the measure in their eyes had become absolutely necessary to the public welfare, and that the condition of politics made it impossible for them either to carry it by a dissolution or to resign the task into other hands. Had Sir Robert Peel either resigned office or dissolved Parliament after the Clare election in 1828, it is highly probable that the measure of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation could not have been carried, and its postponement, in his belief, would have thrown Ireland into a dangerous rebellion. Few greater misfortunes have befallen party government than the failure of the Whigs to form a ministry in 1845. Had they done so the abolition of the Corn Laws would have been carried by statesmen who were in some measure supported by the Free-trade party, and not by statesmen who had obtained their power as the special representatives of the agricultural interests.

Another case which in a party point of view was more successful, but which should in my opinion be much more severely judged, was the Reform Bill of 1867. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Mr.

Disraeli, defeated Mr. Gladstone"s Reform Bill mainly on the ground that it was an excessive step in the direction of Democracy. The victory placed them in office, and they then declared that, as the question had been raised, they must deal with it themselves. They introduced a bill carrying the suffrage to a much lower point than that which the late Government had proposed, but they surrounded it with a number of provisions securing additional representation for particular cla.s.ses and interests which would have materially modified its democratic character.

But for these safeguarding provisions the party would certainly not have tolerated the introduction of such a measure, yet in the face of opposition their leader dropped them one by one as of no capital importance, and, by a leadership which was a masterpiece of unscrupulous adroitness, succeeded in inducing his party to carry a measure far more democratic than that which they had a few months before denounced and defeated. It was argued that the question must be settled; that it must be placed on a permanent and lasting basis; that it must no longer be suffered to be a weapon in the hands of the Whigs, and that the Tory Reform Bill, though it was acknowledged to be a "leap in the dark," had at least the result of "dishing the Whigs." There is little doubt that it was in accordance with the genuine convictions of Disraeli. He belonged to a school of politics of which Bolingbroke, Carteret and Shelburne, and, in some periods of his career, Chatham, were earlier representatives who had no real sympathy with the preponderance of the aristocratic element in the old Tory party, who had a decided disposition to appeal frankly to democratic support, and who believed that a strong executive resting on a broad democratic basis was the true future of Toryism. He antic.i.p.ated to a remarkable degree the school of political thought which has triumphed in our own day, though he did not live to witness its triumph. At the same time it cannot be denied that the Reform Bill of 1867 in the form in which it was ultimately carried was as far as possible from the wishes and policy of his party in the beginning of the session, and as inconsistent as any policy could be with their language and conduct in the session that preceded it.

A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special representative of particular cla.s.ses, the special guardian of their interests, aims, wishes, and principles. The two points of view are not the same, and grave difficulties, both ethical and political, have often to be encountered in endeavouring to harmonise them. It is, of course, not true that a party object is merely a matter of place or power, and naturally a different thing from a patriotic object. The very meaning of party is that public men consider certain principles of government, certain lines of policy, the protection and development of particular interests, of capital importance to the nation, and they are therefore on purely public grounds fully justified in making it a main object to place the government of the country in the hands of their party. The importance, however, of maintaining a particular party in power varies greatly. In many, probably in most, periods of English history a change of government means no violent or far-reaching alteration in policy. It means only that one set of tendencies in legislation will for a time be somewhat relaxed, and another set somewhat intensified; that the interests of one cla.s.s will be somewhat more and those of another cla.s.s somewhat less attended to; that the rate of progress or change will be slightly accelerated or r.e.t.a.r.ded. Sometimes it means even less than this. Opinions on the two front benches are so nearly a.s.similated that a change of government princ.i.p.ally means the removal for a time from office of ministers who have made some isolated administrative blunders or incurred some individual unpopularity quite apart from their party politics. It means that ministers who are jaded and somewhat worn out by several years" continuous work, and of whom the country had grown tired, are replaced by men who can bring fresher minds and energies to the task; that patronage in all its branches having for some years gone mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and unentangled by their past. The country wants a change of government but not a change of policy, and under such circ.u.mstances the task of a victorious opposition is much less to march in new directions than to mark time, to carry on the affairs of the nation on the same lines, but with greater administrative skill. In such periods the importance of party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely to keep a party in power should be severely condemned.

Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a matter of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circ.u.mstances statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed which under less pressing circ.u.mstances would have been impossible, and which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters, an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.

The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds and vary greatly with different stages of political development. The worst is the temptation to war. War undertaken without necessity, or at least without serious justification, is, according to all sound ethics, the gravest of crimes, and among its causes motives of the kind I have indicated may be often detected. Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert the minds of men from internal questions which had become dangerous or embarra.s.sing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or crimes.[43] Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how easily the combative pa.s.sions of nations can be aroused and how much popularity may be gained by a successful war. Even in this case, it is true, war usually impoverishes the country that wages it, but there are large cla.s.ses to whom it is by no means a calamity. The high level of agricultural prices; the brilliant careers opened to the military and naval professions; the many special industries which are immediately stimulated; the rise in the rate of interest; the opportunities of wealth that spring from violent fluctuations on the Stock Exchange; even the increased attractiveness of the newspapers,--all tend to give particular cla.s.ses an interest in its continuance. Sometimes it is closely connected with party sympathies. During the French wars of Anne, the facts that Marlborough was a Whig, and that the Elector of Hanover, who was the hope of the Whig party, was in favour of the war, contributed very materially to r.e.t.a.r.d the peace. A state of great internal disquietude is often a temptation to war, not because it leads to it directly, but because rulers find a foreign war the best means of turning dangerous and disturbing energies into new channels, and at the same time of strengthening the military and authoritative elements in the community. The successful transformation of the anarchy of the great French Revolution into a career of conquest is a typical example.

In aristocratic governments such as existed in England during the eighteenth century, temptations to corruption were especially strong. To build up a vast system of parliamentary influence by rotten boroughs, and, by systematically bestowing honours on those who could control them, to win the support of great corporations and professions by furthering their interests and abstaining from all efforts to reform them, was a chief part of the statecraft of the time. Cla.s.s privileges in many forms were created, extended and maintained, and in some countries--though much less in England than on the Continent--the burden of taxation was most inequitably distributed, falling mainly on the poor.

In democratic governments the temptations are of a different kind.

Popularity is there the chief source of power, and the supreme tribunal consists of numbers counted by the head. The well-being of the great ma.s.s of the people is the true end of politics, but it does not necessarily follow that the opinion of the least instructed majority is the best guide to obtaining it. In dwelling upon the temptations of politicians under such a system I do not now refer merely to the unscrupulous agitator or demagogue who seeks power, notoriety or popularity by exciting cla.s.s envies and animosities, by setting the poor against the rich and preaching the gospel of public plunder; nor would I dilate upon the methods so largely employed in the United States of acc.u.mulating, by skilfully devised electoral machinery, great ma.s.ses of voting power drawn from the most ignorant voters, and making use of them for purposes of corruption. I would dwell rather on the bias which almost inevitably obliges the party leader to measure legislation mainly by its immediate popularity, and its consequent success in adding to his voting strength. In some countries this tendency shows itself in lavish expenditure on public works which provide employment for great ma.s.ses of workmen and give a great immediate popularity in a const.i.tuency, leaving to posterity a heavy burden of acc.u.mulated debt. Much of the financial embarra.s.sment of Europe is due to this source, and in most countries extravagance in government expenditure is more popular than economy.

Sometimes it shows itself in a legislation which regards only proximate or immediate effects, and wholly neglects those which are distant and obscure. A far-sighted policy sacrificing the present to a distant future becomes more difficult; measures involving new principles, but meeting present embarra.s.sments or securing immediate popularity, are started with little consideration for the precedents they are establishing and for the more extensive changes that may follow in their train. The conditions of labour are altered for the benefit of the existing workmen, perhaps at the cost of diverting capital from some great form of industry, making it impossible to resist foreign compet.i.tion, and thus in the long run restricting employment and seriously injuring the very cla.s.s who were to have been benefited.

When one party has introduced a measure of this kind the other is under the strongest temptation to outbid it, and under the stress of compet.i.tion and through the fear of being distanced in the race of popularity both parties often end by going much further than either had originally intended. When the rights of the few are opposed to the interests of the many there is a constant tendency to prefer the latter.

It may be that the few are those who have built up an industry; who have borne all the risk and cost, who have by far the largest interest in its success. The mere fact that they are the few determines the bias of the legislators. There is a constant disposition to tamper with even clearly defined and guaranteed rights if by doing so some large cla.s.s of voters can be conciliated.

Parliamentary life has many merits, but it has a manifest tendency to encourage short views. The immediate party interest becomes so absorbing that men find it difficult to look greatly beyond it. The desire of a skilful debater to use the topics that will most influence the audience before him, or the desire of a party leader to pursue the course most likely to be successful in an immediately impending contest, will often override all other considerations, and the whole tendency of parliamentary life is to concentrate attention on landmarks which are not very distant, thinking little of what is beyond.

One great cause of the inconsistency of parties lies in the absolute necessity of a.s.similating legislation. Many, for example, are of opinion that the existing tendency to introduce government regulations and interferences into all departments is at least greatly exaggerated, and that it would be far better if a larger sphere were left to individual action and free contract. But if large departments of industry have been brought under the system of regulation, it is practically impossible to leave a.n.a.logous industries under a different system, and the men who most dislike the tendency are often themselves obliged to extend it.

They cannot resist the contention that certain legislative protections or other special favours have been granted to one cla.s.s of workmen, and that there is no real ground for distinguishing their case from that of others. The dominant tendency will thus naturally extend itself, and every considerable legislative movement carries others irresistibly in its train.

The pressure of this consideration is most painfully felt in the case of legislation which appears not simply inexpedient and unwise, but distinctly dishonest. In legislation relating to contracts there is a clear ethical distinction to be drawn. It is fully within the moral right of legislators to regulate the conditions of future contracts. It is a very different thing to break existing contracts, or to take the still more extreme step of altering their conditions to the benefit of one party without the a.s.sent of the other, leaving that other party bound by their restrictions.

In the American Const.i.tution there is a special clause making it impossible for any State to pa.s.s any law violating contracts. In England, unfortunately, no such provision exists. The most glaring and undoubted instance of this kind is to be found in the Irish land legislation which was begun by the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, but which has been largely extended by the party that originally most strenuously opposed it. Much may no doubt be said to palliate it: agricultural depression; the excessive demand for land; the fact that improvements were in Ireland usually made by the tenants (who, however, were perfectly aware of the conditions under which they made them, and whose rents were proportionately lower); the prevalence in some parts of Ireland of land customs unsanctioned by law; the existence of a great revolutionary movement which had brought the country into a condition of disgraceful anarchy. But when all this has been admitted, it remains indisputable to every clear and honest mind that English law has taken away without compensation unquestionably legal property and broken unquestionably legal contracts. A landlord placed a tenant on his farm on a yearly tenancy, but if he desired to exercise his plain legal right of resuming it at the termination of the year, he was compelled to pay a compensation "for disturbance," which might amount to seven times the yearly rent. A landlord let his land to a farmer for a longer period under a clear written contract bearing the government stamp, and this contract defined the rent to be paid, the conditions under which the farm was to be held, and the number of years during which it was to be alienated from its owner. The fundamental clause of the lease distinctly stipulated that at the end of the a.s.signed term the tenant must hand back that farm to the owner from whom he received it. The law has interposed, and determined that the rent which this farmer had undertaken to pay shall be reduced by a government tribunal without the a.s.sent of the owner, and without giving the owner the option of dissolving the contract and seeking a new tenant. It has gone further, and provided that at the termination of the lease the tenant shall not hand back the land to the owner according to the terms of his contract, but shall remain for all future time the occupier, subject only to a rent fixed and periodically revised, irrespective of the wishes of the landlord, by an independent tribunal. Vast ma.s.ses of property in Ireland had been sold under the Inc.u.mbered Estates Act by a government tribunal acting as the representative of the Imperial Parliament, and each purchaser obtained from this tribunal a parliamentary t.i.tle making him absolute owner of the soil and of every building upon it, subject only to the existing tenancies in the schedule. No accounts of the earlier history of the property were handed to him, for except under the terms of the leases which had not yet expired he had no liability for anything in the past. The t.i.tle he received was deemed so indefeasible that in one memorable case, where by mistake a portion of the property of one man had been included in the sale of the property of another man, the Court of Appeal decided that the injustice could not be remedied, as it was impossible, except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind parliamentary t.i.tles.[44] In cases in which the land was let at low rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by the authority of the Court as an inducement to purchasers.

What has become of this parliamentary t.i.tle? Improvements, if they had been made, or were presumed to have been made by tenants anterior to the sale, have ceased to be the property of the purchaser, and he has at the same time been deprived of some of the plainest and most inseparable rights of property. He has lost the power of disposing of his farms in the open market, of regulating the terms and conditions on which he lets them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circ.u.mstance, may have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was pa.s.sed can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more than equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or pa.s.sion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is true, reserve to the landlord the right of pre-emption, or in other words the right of purchasing the tenant right when it was for sale, at a price to be determined by the Court, and thus becoming once more the absolute owner of his farm. The sum specified by the Court was usually about sixteen years" purchase of the judicial rent. By the payment of this large sum he may regain the property which a few years ago was incontestably his own, which was held by him under the most secure t.i.tle known to English law, and which was taken from him, not by any process of honest purchase, but by an act of simple legislative confiscation.

Whatever palliations of expediency may be alleged, the true nature of this legislation cannot reasonably be questioned, and it has established a precedent which is certain to grow. The point, however, on which I would especially dwell is that the very party which most strongly opposed it, and which most clearly exposed its gross and essential dishonesty, have found themselves, or believed themselves to be, bound not only to accept it but to extend it. They have contended that, as a matter of practical politics, it is impossible to grant such privileges to one cla.s.s of agricultural tenants and to withhold it from others. The chief pretext for this legislation in its first stages was that it was for the benefit of very poor tenants who were incapable of making their own bargains, and that the fixity of tenure which the law gave to yearly tenants as long as they paid their rents had been very generally voluntarily given them by good landlords. But the measure was soon extended by a Unionist government to the leaseholders, who are the largest and most independent cla.s.s of farmers, and who held their land for a definite time and under a distinct written contract. It is in truth much more the shrewder and wealthier farmers than the poor and helpless ones that this legislation has chiefly benefited.

Instances of this kind, in which strong expediency or an absolute political necessity is in apparent conflict with elementary principles of right and wrong, are among the most difficult with which a politician has to deal. He must govern the country and preserve it in a condition of tolerable order, and he sometimes persuades himself that without a capitulation to anarchy, without attacks on property and violations of contract, this is impossible. Whether the necessity is as absolute or the expediency as rightly calculated as he supposed, may indeed be open to much question, but there can be no doubt that most of the English statesmen who carried the Irish agrarian legislation sincerely believed it, and some of them imagined that they were giving a security and finality to the property which was left, that would indemnify the plundered landlords. Perhaps, under such circ.u.mstances, the most that can be said is that wise legislators will endeavour, by encouraging purchase on a large scale, gradually to restore the absolute ownership and the validity of contract which have been destroyed, and at the same time to compensate indirectly--if they cannot do it directly--the former owners for that portion of their losses which is not due to merely economical causes, but to acts of the legislature that were plainly fraudulent.

There are other temptations of a different kind with which party leaders have to deal. One of the most serious is the tendency to force questions for which there is no genuine desire, in order to restore the unity or the zeal of a divided or dispirited party. As all politicians know, the desire for an attractive programme and a popular election cry is one of the strongest in politics, and, as they also know well, there is such a thing as manufactured public opinion and artificially stimulated agitation. Questions are raised and pushed, not because they are for the advantage of the country, but simply for the purposes of party. The leaders have often little or no power of resistance. The pressure of their followers, or of a section of their followers, becomes irresistible; ill-considered hopes are held out; rash pledges are extorted, and the party as a whole is committed. Much premature and mischievous legislation may be traced to such causes.

Another very difficult question is the manner in which governments should deal with the acts of public servants which are intended for the public service, but which in some of their parts are morally indefensible. Very few of the great acquisitions of nations have been made by means that were absolutely blameless, and in a great empire which has to deal with uncivilised or semi-civilised populations acts of violence are certain to be not infrequent. Neither in our judgments of history nor in our judgments of contemporaries is it possible to apply the full stringency of private morals to the cases of men acting in posts of great responsibility and danger amid the storms of revolution, or panic, or civil war. With the vast interests confided to their care, and the terrible dangers that surround them, measures must often be taken which cannot be wholly or at least legally justified. On the other hand, men in such circ.u.mstances are only too ready to accept the principle of Macchiavelli and of Napoleon, and to treat politics as if they had absolutely no connection with morals.

Cases of this kind must be considered separately and with a careful examination of the motives of the actor and of the magnitude of the dangers he had to encounter. Allowances must be made for the moral atmosphere in which he moved, and his career must be considered as a whole, and not only in its peccant parts. In the trial of Warren Hastings, and in the judgments which historians have pa.s.sed on the lives of the other great adventurers who have built up the Empire, questions of this kind continually arise.

In our own day also they have been very frequent. The _Coup d"etat_ of the 2nd of December, 1851, is an extreme example. Louis Napoleon had sworn to observe and to defend the Const.i.tution of the French Republic, which had been established in 1848, and that Const.i.tution, among other articles, p.r.o.nounced the persons of the representatives of the people to be inviolable; declared every act of the President which dissolved the a.s.sembly or prorogued it, or in any way trammelled it in the exercise of its functions, to be high treason, and guaranteed the fullest liberty of writing and discussion. "The oath which I have just taken," said the President, addressing the a.s.sembly, "commands my future conduct. My duty is clear; I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard as enemies of the country all those who endeavour to change by illegal means what all France has established." In more than one subsequent speech he reiterated the same sentiments and endeavoured to persuade the country that under no possible circ.u.mstances would he break his oath or violate his conscience, or overstep the limits of his const.i.tutional powers.

What he did is well known. Before daybreak on December 2, some of the most eminent statesmen in France, including eighteen members of the Chamber, were, by his orders, arrested in their beds and sent to prison, and many of them afterwards to exile. The Chamber was occupied by soldiers, and its members, who a.s.sembled in another place, were marched to prison. The High Court of Justice was dissolved by force. Martial law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.

All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion, were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a "Consultative Commission" was announced and the names were placarded in Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was done.[45] Orders were issued immediately after the _Coup d"etat_ that every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Prefets were given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By an _ex post facto_ decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a "secret society," and this order placed all the numerous members of political clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered to rea.s.semble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free discussion for many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost Asiatic severity was established in France.

It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed mult.i.tudes, not only of men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an English eye-witness, were "at some points a perfect shambles," and the blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed in Paris that large batches of prisoners, who had been arrested, were brought out of prison in the dead hours of the night and deliberately shot by bodies of soldiers, may have been exaggerated or untrue. Maupas, who was Prefet of Police, and who must have known the truth, positively denied it; but the question what credence should be attached to a man of his antecedents who boasted that he had been from the first a leading agent in the whole conspiracy may be reasonably asked.[46] Evidence of these things, as has been truly said, could scarcely be obtained, for the press was absolutely gagged and all possibility of investigation was prevented. For the number of those who were transported or forcibly expelled within the few weeks after December 2, we may perhaps rely upon the historian and panegyrist of the Empire. He computes them at the enormous number of 26,500.[47] After the Plebiscite new measures of proscription were taken, and, according to emile Ollivier, one of the most enthusiastic and skilful eulogists of the _Coup d"etat_, in the first months of 1852 there were from 15,000 to 20,000 political prisoners in the French prisons.[48] It was by such means that Louis Napoleon attained the empire which had been the dream of his life.

Like many, however, of the great crimes of history, this was not without its palliations, and a more detailed investigation will show that those palliations were not inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not command it in person, and from the very beginning he a.s.sumed an independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took place after his election he was greeted by the soldiers with cries of "Vive Napoleon! Vive l"Empereur!" It was soon proved that the Const.i.tution of 1848 was exceedingly unworkable. In the words of Lord Palmerston: "There were two great powers, each deriving its existence from the same source, almost sure to disagree, but with no umpire to decide between them, and neither able by any legal means to get rid of the other." The President could not dissolve the Chamber, but he could impose upon it any ministry he chose. He was himself elected for only four years, and he could not be re-elected, while by a most fatuous provision the powers of the President and the Chamber were to expire in 1852 at the same time, leaving France without a government and exposed to the gravest danger of anarchy.

The Legislative a.s.sembly, which was elected in May, 1849, was, it is true, far from being a revolutionary one. It contained a minority of desperate Socialists, it was broken into many factions, and like most democratic French Chambers it showed much weakness and inconsistency; but the vast majority of its members were Conservatives who had no kind of sympathy with revolution, and its conduct towards the President, if fairly judged, was on the whole very moderate. He soon treated it with contempt, and it was quite evident that there was no national enthusiasm behind it. The Socialist party was growing rapidly in the great towns; in June, 1849, there was an abortive Socialist insurrection in Paris, and a somewhat more formidable one at Lyons. They were easily put down, but the Socialists captured a great part of the representation of Paris, and they succeeded in producing a wild panic throughout the country. It led to several reactionary measures, the most important being a law which by imposing new conditions of residence very considerably limited the suffrage. This law was presented to the Chamber by the Ministers of the President and with his a.s.sent, though he subsequently demanded the reestablishment of universal suffrage, and made a decree effecting this one of the chief justifications of his _Coup d"etat_. The restrictive law was carried through the Chamber on May 31, 1850, by an immense majority, but it was denounced with great eloquence by some of its leading members, and it added seriously to the unpopularity of the a.s.sembly, and greatly lowered its authority in contending with a President whose authority rested on direct universal suffrage. More than once he exercised his power of dismissing and appointing ministries absolutely irrespective of its votes and wishes, and in each case in order to fill all posts of power with creatures of his own. The newspapers supporting him continually inveighed against the Chamber, and dwelt upon the danger of anarchy to which France would be exposed in 1852 and upon the absolute necessity of "a Saviour of Society." In repeated journeys through France, and in more than one military review, the President gave the occasion of demonstrations in which the cries of "Vive l"Empereur!" were often heard, and which were manifestly intended to strengthen him in his conflict with the Chamber.

The man from whom he had most to fear was Changarnier, who since the close of 1848 had been commander of the troops in Paris, and whose name, though far less popular than that of Napoleon, had much weight with the army. He was a man with strong leanings to authority, and was much courted by the monarchical parties, but was for some time in decided sympathy with Napoleon, from whom, however, in spite of large offers that had been made him, he gradually diverged. He issued peremptory orders to the troops under his command, forbidding all party cries at reviews. He declared in the Chamber that these cries had been "not only encouraged but provoked," and when the intention of the President to prolong his presidency became apparent, he a.s.sured Odilon Barrot that he was prepared, if ordered by the minister and authorised by the President of the Chamber, to antic.i.p.ate the _Coup d"etat_ by seizing and imprisoning Louis Napoleon.[49] The President succeeded in removing him from his command, and in placing a creature of his own at the head of the Paris troops; but though Changarnier acquiesced without resistance in his dismissal, he remained an important member of the a.s.sembly; he openly declared that his sword was at its service, and if an armed conflict broke out it was tolerably certain that he would be its representative. The President had an official salary of 48,000 _l_.--nearly five times as much as the President of the United States.

The Chamber refused to increase it, though they consented by a very small majority, and at the request of Changarnier, to pay his debts.

The demand for a revision of the Const.i.tution, making it possible for the President to be re-elected, was rising rapidly through the country, and there can be but little doubt that this was generally looked forward to as the only peaceful solution, and that it represented the real wish of the great majority of the people. Pet.i.tions in favour of it, bearing an enormous number of signatures, were presented to the Chamber, and the overwhelming majority of the Conseils Generaux of which the Deputies generally formed part voted for revision. The President did not so much pet.i.tion for it as demand it. In a message he sent to the Chamber, he declared that if they did not vote Revision the people would, in 1852, solemnly manifest their wishes. In a speech at Dijon, June 1, 1851, he declared that France from end to end demanded it; that he would follow the wishes of the nation, and that France would not perish in his hands.

In the same speech he accused the Chamber of never seconding his wishes to ameliorate the lot of the people. He at the same time lost no opportunity of showing that his special sympathy and trust lay with the army, and he singled out with marked favour the colonels of the regiments which had shown themselves at the reviews most prominent in demonstrations in his favour.[50] The meaning of all this was hardly doubtful. Changarnier took up the gauntlet, and at a time when the question of Revision was before the Chamber he declared that no soldier would ever be induced to move against the law and the a.s.sembly, and he called upon the Deputies to deliberate in peace.

The Revision was voted in the Chamber by 446 votes to 278, but a majority of three-fourths was required for a const.i.tutional change, and this majority was not obtained, and in the disintegrated condition of French parties it seemed scarcely likely to be obtained. The Chamber was soon after prorogued for about two months, leaving the situation unchanged, and the tension and panic were extreme. Out of eighty-five Conseils Generaux in France, eighty pa.s.sed votes in favour of Revision, three abstained, two only opposed.

The President had now fully resolved upon a _Coup d"etat_, and before the Chamber rea.s.sembled a new ministry was const.i.tuted, St.-Arnaud being at the head of the army, and Maupas at the head of the police. His first step was to summon the Chamber to repeal the law of May 31 which abolished universal suffrage. The Chamber, after much hesitation, refused, but only by two votes. The belief that the question could only be solved by force was becoming universal, and the bolder spirits in the Chamber clearly saw that if no new measure was taken they were likely to be helpless before the military party. By a decree of 1848 the President of the Chamber had a right, if necessary, to call for troops for its protection independently of the Minister of War, and a motion was now made that he should be able to select a general to whom he might delegate this power. Such a measure, dividing the military command and enabling the Chamber to have its own general and its own army, might have proved very efficacious, but it would probably have involved France in civil war, and the President was resolved that, if the Chamber voted it, the _Coup d"etat_ should immediately take place. The vote was taken on November 17, 1851. St.-Arnaud, as Minister of War, opposed the measure on const.i.tutional grounds, dilating on the danger of a divided military command, but during the discussion Maupas and Magnan were in the gallery of the Chamber, waiting to give orders to St.-Arnaud to call out the troops and to surround and dissolve the Chamber if the proposition was carried.

It was, however, rejected by a majority of 108, and a few troubled days of conspiracy and panic still remained before the blow was struck. The state of the public securities and the testimony of the best judges of all parties showed the genuineness of the alarm. It was not true, as the President stated in the proclamation issued when the _Coup d"etat_ was accomplished, that the Chamber had become a mere nest of conspiracies, and there was a strange audacity in his a.s.sertion that he made the _Coup d"etat_ for the purpose of maintaining the Republic against monarchical plots; but it was quite true that the conviction was general that force had become inevitable; that the chief doubt was whether the first blow would be struck by Napoleon or Changarnier, and that while the evident desire of the majority of the people was to re-elect Napoleon, there was a design among some members of the Chamber to seize him by force and to elect in his place some member of the House of Orleans.[51] On December 2 the curtain fell, and Napoleon accompanied his _Coup d"etat_ by a decree dissolving the Chamber, restoring by his own authority universal suffrage, abolishing the law of May 31, establishing a state of siege, and calling on the French people to judge his action by their vote.

It was certainly not an appeal upon which great confidence could be placed. Immediately after the _Coup d"etat_, the army, which was wholly on his side, voted separately and openly in order that France might clearly know that the armed forces were with the President and might be able to predict the consequences of a verdict unfavourable to his pretensions. When, nearly three weeks later, the civilian Plebiscite took place, martial law was in force. Public meetings of every kind were forbidden. No newspaper hostile to the new authority was permitted. No electioneering paper or placard could be circulated which had not been sanctioned by Government officials. The terrible decree that all who had ever belonged to a secret society might be sent to die in the fevers of Africa was interpreted in the widest sense, and every political society or organisation was included in it. All the functionaries of a highly centralised country were turned into ardent electioneering agents, and the question was so put that the voters had no alternative except for or against the President, a negative vote leaving the country with no government and an almost certain prospect of anarchy and civil war.

Under these circ.u.mstances 7,500,000 votes were given for the President and 500,000 against him.

But after all deductions have been made there can be no real doubt that the majority of Frenchmen acquiesced in the new _regime_. The terror of Socialism was abroad, and it brought with it an ardent desire for strong government. The probabilities of a period of sanguinary anarchy were so great that mult.i.tudes were glad to be secured from it at almost any cost. Parliamentarism was profoundly discredited. The peasant proprietary had never cared for it, and the bourgeois cla.s.s, among whom it had once been popular, were now thoroughly scared. Nothing in the contemporary accounts of the period is more striking than the indifference, the almost amused cynicism, or the sense of relief with which the great ma.s.s of Frenchmen seem to have witnessed the destruction of their Const.i.tution and the gross insults inflicted upon a Chamber which included so many of the most ill.u.s.trious of their countrymen.

We can hardly have a better authority on this point than Tocqueville. No one felt more profoundly or more bitterly the iniquity of what had been done; but he was under no illusion about the sentiments of the people.

The Const.i.tution, he says, was thoroughly unpopular. "Louis Napoleon had the merit or the luck to discover what few s

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