Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day Part 13

While the social problem, however, is developing, we have the political problem to face; and, therefore, the immediate programme of the Liberal party now demands consideration. In some detail have been presented the arguments from a Liberal point upon all the great public questions which are either ripe or ripening for settlement. It has not been possible to go minutely into every point involved; a broad outline of each subject has had to suffice; but it may be trusted that each has been sufficiently explained for us now to consider which should occupy the forefront in the Liberal platform.

Mr. Bright observed, in days not long since, when he was honoured by every man in the party as one of its most trusted leaders, that he disliked programmes. What he preferred, it was evident, was that when some great question--such as the repeal of the Corn Laws or the extension of the suffrage, with both of which his name will be ever identified--should thrust itself to the front by force of circ.u.mstances, it should be faced by the Liberal party and dealt with on its merits; and what he opposed, it was equally evident, was the formulation of any cut-and-dried programme, containing a number of points to be accepted as a s.h.i.+bboleth by every man calling himself Liberal or Radical, and by its hide-bound propensity tending to r.e.t.a.r.d real progress.

The Irish question is one of those great matters which has thrust itself to the front by force of circ.u.mstances, which should be faced by the Liberal party and dealt with on its merits, and which, until it is so faced and dealt with, will stand in the path of any real reforms. The evil effects of the discontent of four millions of people at our very doors are not to be got rid of by shutting our eyes to them; and the intensification of those evil effects which is to-day going on is a matter which must engage the attention of every Liberal.

But, out of dislike for any cut-and-dried programme of several measures to be accepted wholesale and without question, the party must not be allowed to drift into aimlessness. As long as it exists it must exist for work, and its fruit must not be phrases but facts. Liberalism can never return to the days when it munched the dry remainder biscuit of worn-out Whiggery. A hide-bound programme may be a bad thing, but nothing worse can be imagined than the string of airy nothings which used to do duty for a policy among the latter-day Whigs. Take the addresses issued by them at the general election of 1852 as an instance, and which have been effectively summarized thus:--"They promised (in the words of Sir James Graham) 'cautious but progressive reform,' and (in those of Sir Charles Wood) 'well-advised but certain progress.' Lord Palmerston said he trusted the new Liberal Government would answer 'the just expectation of the country,' and Lord John Russell pledged it to 'rational and enlightened progress.'"

Now, in these days, we want something decidedly more definite than that, and, if our leaders could offer us nothing better, we should have either to find other leaders or abandon our aims. Happily we need do neither, for the Liberal chiefs, with Mr. Gladstone at their head, are prepared to advance with the needs of the times, and to advocate those measures which the circ.u.mstances demand and their principles justify.

In the forefront of our efforts at this moment stands, and must continue to stand until it is settled, the question of self-government for Ireland. Stripped of all quarrel upon point of detail, the Liberal party is pledged, while upholding the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, to give the sister country a representative body sitting in Dublin to deal with exclusively Irish affairs. The day cannot be long delayed when an attempt must be made to place the local government of Ireland upon a sounder and broader basis than at present.

When it arrives, the Liberal party has its idea ready. Details can be compromised; the principle cannot be touched. For Liberals are convinced that, by whatever name it may be called, and by whatever party it may be introduced, Home Rule must come, and that, for the sake of all the interests involved, Imperial and Irish, it will be in the highest degree desirable to grant it frankly and fully, with due regard to the interests concerned.

Linked with this point is another regarding Ireland upon which the Liberal party will entertain not the smallest doubt. The Coercion Act has been used for partisan purposes by dependent and often incompetent magistrates, and it must be repealed. Upon this point there can be no compromise. Every man hoping to be returned by Liberal votes at the next election must pledge himself to the immediate, total, and unconditional repeal of the Crimes Act of 1887.

The next item in the accepted Liberal programme is the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, as well as of the Scottish Kirk. Each is a purely domestic matter which ought to be settled according to the wishes of the majority of the people affected. As to the wishes of Wales, no one can have a doubt; and though the declaration of Scotland, through its representatives, is not so emphatic, it is sufficiently clear for Liberals to support the demand.

But, after all, these points touch only Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.

England is the largest portion of this kingdom, and its claims must not be ignored. A great Parisian editor used to say that the description of a woman run over on the Boulevards was of more interest to his readers than that of a battle on the Nile. It would be well if politicians would take this idea to heart. Little use is it to talk of the despotism practised in Ireland, of the hards.h.i.+ps endured by the crofters in Scotland, and of the injustice done to the t.i.thepayers in Wales, if we are not prepared to apply the same principles to London as to Limerick, to Chester as to Cardigan, and to Liverpool as to the Lews. The average man will not be satisfied of the sincerity of those who keep their eyes fixed upon distant places, and are full of sympathy for the oppressed who are afar off, but can spare no time for the grievances existing at their doors.

And as, therefore, if Liberalism is to be again in the ascendant in the councils of the Empire, England must be won, it is well to emphasize the contention that England will never be won by a party which ignores her wants. Home Rule for Ireland, disestablishment for Scotland and Wales, are good things, and they will have to be granted when our majority comes; but what will that majority do for England?

Without attempting to lay down a programme, it may be said that there is one English problem to which Liberalism will have at once to apply itself, and that is the problem of the land. The time is past for talking comfortable plat.i.tudes upon this matter, for we find that Tories can do that as glibly as Liberals, and with the same lack of good result. The very least that can be demanded--in addition to the abolition of the custom of primogeniture and an extensive simplification of the process of transfer--is a thorough reform of the laws affecting settlement, the taxing of land at death in the same proportion as other descriptions of property, the placing of the land tax upon a basis more remunerative to the Exchequer, and a large measure of leasehold enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. And when candidates talk in future of being in favour of "land reform," they must be definitely pinned down as to their views upon such points as these.

That Free Trade will remain a plank in the Liberal platform, not to be dropped or tampered with, goes without saying. It is a point as much beyond question as the existence of Parliament itself, and concerning it as much cannot be observed as regarding the latter. For, while our trade system must remain free, both Houses stand in need of reform. The Lords, in Mr. John Morley's phrase, must be mended or ended, and the path of legislative progress in the Commons made more smooth. The laws in every way affecting the return of members to the latter likewise stand sorely in need of reform, and that reform cannot be ignored by the Liberal party.

Further, Liberals are agreed that localities shall have greater power in various directions, and upon the liquor traffic in especial, of deciding upon their own affairs. The tendency of recent days has been to take these out of the hands of those most intimately concerned, and to vest supreme power in a body of Government clerks at Whitehall. That is a tendency which must be reversed. We are advocating decentralization in regard to Ireland; we are being led to advocate it in regard to Wales and Scotland; England must similarly be benefited, and the red-tape of Whitehall unwound from our purely local concerns.

Peace and Retrenchment must continue to be inscribed on the Liberal banner as well as Reform. Preference for international arbitration over war must distinguish our party; a determination to be as free as possible from all entangling engagements with foreign powers must always be with us. And there must ever be displayed a resolve to place the Government service upon the same business-like and efficient basis as private concerns, to get rid of the notion that it is work to be lightly undertaken and highly paid, and to emphasize the contention that the taxbearer shall have full value from every one of his servants for the wages he pays.

Above all, the greatest care must be taken by every Liberal to preserve--aye, and to extend--individual liberty. Men cannot dance in fetters, and all enactments which unnecessarily hinder the development of private enterprise, and all traditions which interfere with the fullest enjoyment of the rights of speech and action, must be swept away.

While thus giving our attention to the more purely political questions as they arise, Liberals must never forget that the poor we always have with us. Ours is a gospel of hope for the oppressed; it must equally be a gospel of hope for the hard-working. We want our working men to be civil, not servile; our working women to use courtesy, and not a curtsey. We wish to see the end of a system by which a bow is rewarded with a blanket and a curtsey with coal. The man who too frequently bends his back is likely to become permanently affected with a stoop, and the old order of hat-touching, bowing, and sc.r.a.ping must disappear. We do not deny that it is right that men should respect others, but it is often forgotten that it is equally right that they should respect themselves.

In dealing with things social, as well as things political, we must always remember that it is flesh and blood with which in the result we have to deal. Some thinkers ignore sentiment, do not believe in kindness, and treat men like machines, forgetting that even machines require oil. It is not for philosophers with homes and armchairs and a settled income to ask whether life is worth living; that question is for the poor and the lowly and the down-trodden, to whom the struggle for existence is not a matter for theorizing or moral-drawing, but is a never-ending, heart-breaking, soul-destroying reality.

So, if Liberalism is to live, it must be liberal in fact as well as in name. A Liberal who talks of equal rights on the platform and swears at his servants at home, who waxes wroth against a national oppressor and treats those poorer than himself like serfs, is as little deserving of respect as a Liberal policy which solely considers the externals of either liberty or life. A programme based upon such a policy must fail, and deserves to fail; and if we are to have a platform at all, it must be one upon which the rich man and the son of toil can stand side by side.

x.x.xVIII.--HOW IS THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME TO BE ATTAINED?

It is natural to ask how, when the Liberal programme has been framed, it is to be attained. Measures no more come with wis.h.i.+ng than winds with whistling; and if our principles are to be put into practice, it will only be by our joining those of similar mind.

Not every politician, even if his ideas be sound, is a practical man.

The disposition to insist that no bread is better than half a loaf is one that commends itself to me neither in business nor in daily life, but it is one upon which many a man of Liberal leanings acts, to the detriment of the principles he professes to hold dear. Insistence upon the one point to the exclusion of the ninety-nine, and readiness to join enemies who disagree on the whole hundred rather than friends who disagree on only the one, are qualities unpleasantly prominent in many otherwise worthy men. It cannot too often be urged that politics, like business or married life, can only be carried on by occasional give-and-take. The partner who persists in always having his own way; the husband who is ever a.s.serting authority over his wife; and the politician who will never yield an iota to his friends--all are alike objectionable, and deserve no particle of consideration from those around them.

A spurious independence is another hindrance in the path of progress.

Faith without works is occasionally worth commendation in public life; but one must be certain that the faith is genuine, and for most political "independence," that cannot be claimed. Diseased vanity, disappointed ambition, and deliberate place-hunting have more to do with that kind of thing than devotion to principle. "The fact is that individualism is very often a mere cloak for selfishness; it is the name with which pedants justify the pragmatic intolerance which will not yield one jot of personal claim or unsatisfied vanity to secure the triumph of the n.o.blest cause and the highest principles." When Mr.

Chamberlain wrote those words he was undoubtedly right.

Whenever, therefore, one is called upon to admire some outburst of independence which splits a political party or hinders the progress of a cause, he should look very closely at the history of those concerned. He should not forget that, just as there are people who are much too independent to touch their hats for civility, though they would for a sixpence, there are politicians who are far too spirited to stick to their party but not to bid for place. Happily these latter seem never able to avoid using certain stock phrases, which should put others on their guard. When a man says he prefers country to party, or vaunts that his motto is "measures not men," he lays himself open to just suspicion, because he talks as political impostors have long been accustomed to talk; when he proclaims his readiness to recognize the virtues of his enemies, you may be certain that he will speedily show himself keenly alive to the failings of his friends; and a politician never begins to boast that he is a representative and not a delegate until he has ceased to represent the opinions of those who sent him to Parliament.

More estimable than these, but still people who must not be allowed to hamper the operations of the Liberal party, are the const.i.tutional pedant and the rigid doctrinaire. Nothing is more lamentable than the endeavours of the former to prove by precedent that nothing ought to be done in the nineteenth century differently to how it was done in the seventeenth; and nothing more filled with the promise of disappointment than the theorizings of the latter as to what measures would secure us a perfect State.

It is with persons as well as with principles that we have to deal, and in politics we must not despise the humblest instruments. History, like the coral reef, is made grain by grain and day by day, and often by agents as comparatively insignificant. The old idea that the people's leaders must come from "the governing cla.s.ses," or, better still, "the governing families," does not harmonize with democratic inst.i.tutions. As to "the governing families" part of it, that may be brushed aside at once as being as absurd in theory as it is untrue to all recent English history; for who have been our most brilliant and successful statesmen since the present fas.h.i.+on of const.i.tutional government was established?

Who were Walpole, Pitt, Burke, Fox, Canning, Peel, Cobden, Gladstone, and Disraeli? Even as this book is written the Tories in the House of Commons are nominally led by Mr. Smith, and practically by Mr. Goschen.

The instinct of the people has taught them the best leaders, as it has taught them the best principles.

A clear-headed working man is a better political counsellor than a muddle-minded peer. There are plenty of working men who are not clear-headed, as there are plenty of peers who are not muddled of mind; but the instinct of the ma.s.s is far more likely to be sound than that of the cla.s.s. In the course of English history the ma.s.ses have usually been right and the cla.s.ses wrong. The former have been less selfish, more ready to redress injuries, and keener to oppose tyranny. And even where the ma.s.ses have been in the wrong, it has often been because their instinctive sense of right has led them to sympathize with a man or a cause, undeserving of regard, but apparently exposed to the persecutions of the great.

Thus, in order to make the Liberal cause succeed, zeal must be combined with unity and toleration with courage, and our energies must be so concentrated by organization as to make them most effective when battle is joined. For the private soldiers in the great army of progress, there is no advice so sedulously to be rejected as that of Talleyrand, "Above all, no zeal." If there is not within Liberals a burning desire to forward their principles, they have no right to complain if those principles stand still. A Liberal who is lukewarm is like a joint half-cooked--of no practical service until possessed of more heat; and it is the duty of every earnest man among us to keep the political oven at baking point.

But with zeal there must be unity. Differences on details must not be allowed to separate friends. There is not always a sufficiency of tolerance displayed towards those who do not see eye to eye with the others. Agreement in principle is the pa.s.s-key which should open to all Liberals the door to unity with their brethren; divergence on detail should be settled inside. "Take heed," said Cromwell, "of being sharp, or too easily sharpened by others, against those to whom you can object little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion." To no modern Liberal can his principles be dearer than was his religion to Cromwell, and the great champion of liberty's words ought to be laid to heart by each one of us.

With all toleration, there must be no lack of courage. It is not asked of most to make sacrifices in the Liberal cause, far less to become martyrs in its behalf; but unless the martyr-spirit remains to the party, ready for action should occasion arise, Liberalism will wither into wastedness. But even courage will fail of its result without concentration, for the undisciplined ma.s.s is no match for the disciplined army. To succeed, there must be organization; and if Liberals will not a.s.sociate for common purposes they will deserve to be beaten. All holders of progressive principles ought to attach themselves to the Liberal a.s.sociation of their own const.i.tuency; if there is a Radical Club as well, they cannot do better than join it; for the more links that exist between all sections of the party, the stronger will be the bond uniting them. Personal likes or dislikes ought not to affect men in the matter. A Liberal is not worthy the name who, because he is not asked to the house of the president of the local a.s.sociation, declines to join; and equally unworthy of it is he who, because he does not ask the president of the Radical Club to his own house, objects to put up for members.h.i.+p. Personal and social considerations of this kind are out of place in politics, and a man's freedom from them may almost be taken as a test of the reality of his Liberalism.

There are many ready to criticize those who do a party's work, but who never lift a finger to a.s.sist their efforts. These are the beings who, at election times, hinder the helpers by carpings, who are never slow to a.s.sume a share of credit in case of victory, and are ever eager to throw the blame upon others in event of defeat. Battles are not won by such as these. Every Liberal to whom his principles are dear should show it by joining with his fellows, striving his hardest in his own const.i.tuency, and never ceasing to display in his life and by his works that Liberalism to him is not a name but a principle, increasingly dear as it is hampered by desertion, threatened with danger, or in peril of defeat.

If he did that, there would be needed no further answer to the question, "How is the Liberal Programme to be attained?" for what was required would have been accomplished.

x.x.xIX.--IS PERFECTION IN POLITICS POSSIBLE?

It is sometimes asked whether, after all the struggling of public life, perfection in politics is possible. But in what department of human affairs _is_ perfection possible? Is it in medicine? Mark the proportion of those born who die before they are five years old. Is it in science?

The scientist is still engaged, as Newton was, in picking up sh.e.l.ls on the sh.o.r.e of a vast ocean of knowledge which he is unable yet to navigate. Is it in religion? Ask the Christian and the Confucian, the Mahommedan and the Buddhist to define the word, before giving an answer.

When medicine, and science, and religion have reached universally acknowledged perfection, politics may be hoped to follow in their wake; but until that period it is needless to expect it.

The very idea that it is possible has been the cause of many delusions, and delusions are dangerous. Read Plato's "Republic," More's "Utopia,"

and Harington's "Oceana," and you will perceive how far the ideal is removed from any conceivable real. It may be that from these works good has flowed, since the evident impossibility of making the whole plan of use has not prevented political thinkers taking from them such ideas as were practicable, and grafting these upon existing inst.i.tutions, with benefit to the State. But the dreamy schemes of the eighteenth century, the influence of which has not yet died away, were of a different order.

For, in the endeavour to change society at a stroke, blunders were made which have caused lasting injury; and these should teach us that the true ideal in politics is that which does not attempt to bend men, or break them if necessary, to suit the machine, but makes the machine to fit the men. The philosopher is a useful personage, but the attempt to rule men from a library customarily results in disaster. The problem of life cannot be solved like a proposition in Euclid; there, squares always are squares and circles never anything else; but in every-day existence the square is often forced to be circular by the rubbing off of the angles. And too often it will be found that the philosopher, because of his lack of practical acquaintance with his fellow men, exaggerates both what he knows and what he does: he blows a bubble and calls it the globe; lighting a candle, he thinks it the sun.

All history teaches that the road to heaven does not lie through Acts of Parliament, and that under the best laws the saints would not be many and the sinners would be far from few. No more pernicious nonsense is talked than that all our social misery, crime, and degradation is due to bad laws. The political student cannot doubt that much misery may be mitigated, crime prevented, and degradation made impossible by good laws, and it is that knowledge which should stimulate every Liberal to lose no opportunity of improving the conditions under which we live. But it is to display an ignorance of human nature that is really lamentable, or a desire to flatter human weakness that is beneath contempt, to tell the people that, if only certain changes were made in the const.i.tution of the State or of society, all would be well, none would suffer, and crime and poverty would be known only as traditions of the past.

It is not necessary to a.s.sert the old theological dogma that, left to himself, man is irredeemably bad, in order to believe that a great many bearing the name are very far from good. There is, unhappily, hardly a family in the country that has not one black sheep--or, at the best, one speckled specimen--to deplore. Do we not all know the idle worthless son of good and hard-working parents, a curse to his own and to all with whom he comes in contact? The laws affecting him are the same as those which affect his brothers: they prosper, he fails. Why? Because they are worthy, he is worthless; and there is no conceivable state of society in which he could be, or ought to be, served as well as they.

Certainly there are bad men who flourish, and good who wither away; but the political system which should prevent the possibility of this has not yet been invented--and never will be.

Therefore it is one of the most dangerous of political delusions to believe that any possible reform can make all men prosperous and contented. It is just as likely as that this would be brought about by the universal practice of the old distich--

Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,

as if chimney sweeps, milkmen, and market gardeners had a monopoly of those excellent qualities. The possession of an ideal is a good thing, as long as it is not allowed to overshadow the real; and those whose ideal causes them to ignore the indolence and vice of their fellows are blind guides who would lead us into a ditch.