Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day Part 3

None should think lightly of the power of a popular cry. It was with the shout of the leading tenet of their new creed that the Arabs fought their way from Mecca to Madrid; it was with the exclamation "Jerusalem is lost!" that the Crusaders marched across Europe to battle with the Saracen; it was with the device "For G.o.d and the Protestant Religion"

that William of Orange swept the Stuarts out of Britain; and it was with the burning words of the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" that the raw levies of France defied and defeated the trained armies of Europe. For the popular cry voices the popular emotion, and when the popular emotion is at its height its force is irresistible.

To touch the heart of the people must, therefore, be one aim of any democratic party; and that is why the politician who makes no allowance for human pa.s.sion, prejudice, or prepossession is a mere dreamer, who deserves and is bound to fail. The fas.h.i.+on of the German philosopher who, on being asked to describe a camel, evolved the animal from his inner consciousness, is that in which some of our political guides create their ideas of the world around them. They sit in the same armchair as of old, and do not perceive how the conditions have changed.

They continue to imagine that the clique of some club-house controls public events, and that the whisper of the party whip is all-powerful with the const.i.tuencies. They do not recognize that voters are not now an appanage of the Reform or the Carlton, because the groove they have hollowed out for themselves is too deep to allow them to look over the edge. But in nothing more than in politics is it true that the proper study of mankind is man.

And, if one moves among the ma.s.ses of his fellows, he will find a growing desire to put to practical use the tools the State has given them. Household suffrage and the ballot were not an end but a means, and the question which politicians should ask themselves in this day of comparative quiet is to what end these means shall be put. Those who talk with working men know that there is a vague discontent with things as they are, which, if not directed into proper channels, may become dangerous, for in many quarters the old ignorant impatience of taxation is giving place to an ignorant impatience of the rich. No good will come of shutting our eyes to the existence of this feeling; the question is how in the fairest and fittest manner it can be eradicated.

It must not be forgotten that the working cla.s.ses have only recently obtained direct political power, and that there is still much uncertainty among them as to the best uses to which it can be put. There would be nothing immoral in their using that power to better their own interests. Men, after all, are but mortal; and, just as the upper cla.s.ses before 1832 used the power of Parliament to further their own ends, and just as later the middle cla.s.ses, when they were uppermost, attended carefully to themselves, so the working cla.s.ses will do when they recognize their strength. And this is only saying that men being as they are, "Number One" will be the most prominent figure in their political calculations, whether that number represents a peer of the realm or a labourer on the roads.

This is not the place to enter into the question of how far the State ought to interfere with social problems. The fact to be emphasized is that there is an increasing body of opinion, especially among the working cla.s.ses, that certain social problems will have to be attended to. Any politician who attempts to forecast the future--more especially any Liberal who wishes to draw up a party programme--must recognize this, and act according to his convictions after fully considering it.

The politics of the future will, therefore, have a distinctly social tinge, but they must include also many questions which are regarded to-day, and will continue to be regarded, as of a partisan character. It is requisite, then, to the right understanding of Liberal policy that a broad view should be taken of the matters which are likely within no distant date to become planks of the party platform. Calm discussion now may save misapprehension then, and if we can see exactly whither we are going, we shall be able with the more certainty to pursue our journey.

And if, in the course of the discussion, what at the first blush appears an extreme view is taken, remember always the old truth that half a loaf is better than no bread--that is, if the half-loaf be good bread and honestly earned, and not to be accepted as an equivalent for the whole, if that be wished for and attainable.

Subject to this condition, the Liberal party can do no better than consider what is likely to come within the scope of its future exertions; and although it is right to take up one thing at a time in order that that one thing may be done well, good will be effected by at once endeavouring to answer the main questions now before us. Upon the spirit in which these are discussed, and the manner in which they are replied to, much of the future of popular government in England will depend. The scientific naturalist of to-day tells us that it is an idle fable which states that the ostrich hides its head in the sand with the idea of escaping observation; but really so many of our leading politicians execute a variation of this manoeuvre in regard to the questions of the future, that the ostrich need not be ashamed to be stupid in such eminent company.

A preliminary to the discussion in detail of questions which go to the root of many of the most important matters in politics is a resolution not to be led aside from any course one may think right by the fear of being called hard names, or by the use of certain venerable but weather-worn phrases. It is so easy to endeavour to damage political opponents by applying to them such names as Separatists or Socialists, Atheists or Revolutionaries, that one cannot wonder that the practice is frequently adopted by the Tory party. But hard words break no bones, and the politician who is frightened by a nickname may be a very estimable person, but he is no good in a fight.

Similarly we can afford to despise certain of the phrases which with some politicians do duty for argument. No one should be turned back from doing what he thought to be right in the circ.u.mstances of to-day by being reminded of that mysterious ent.i.ty "the wisdom of our ancestors."

What sane man would conduct a shop as it was conducted 500 years since?

And where would science be if we still swore by the skill of the alchemists? Acc.u.mulated experience in the varied transactions of life is held to improve man's judgment and capacity; why should it not be similarly held to improve the judgment and capacity of States? Let any one who sighs after the wisdom of our ancestors apply in imagination the political maxims in vogue even a hundred years ago to the affairs of this present, and then let him say honestly whether he would wish by them to be governed.

Another fine-crusted example of a worn-out phrase is that in praise of "the good old times." We are invited to believe that in some unnamed age, England was better and brighter, and her people happier and richer, than to-day, and mainly because rulers were obeyed in all things and no questions asked. But particulars are lacking; and these sketches of the glories of "the good old times" are like nothing so much as Chinese pictures, displaying an abundance of colour but no perspective, an amazing imagination but an absence of exact likeness to anything ever seen by mortal man.

"Dangerous innovations" also is a phrase at which no one should be alarmed. No great good has ever been accomplished without many excellent persons considering it a "dangerous innovation." The Scribes and the Pharisees, and, after them, the Roman Empire, denounced and persecuted the Christian religion upon this ground; the most powerful Church in Christendom, with similar belief and similar lack of success, used every engine at its command to suppress the Reformation. As in religious so in political affairs. King John would doubtless have described Magna Charta in just such terms; the partisans of Charles the First certainly held that opinion concerning the demand of Parliament to control the Church, the army, and the monarchy itself; the opponents of every measure of reform--political, social, or religious--have used the phrase. From the greatest to the smallest reform it has been the same. In the early years of this century a Parochial Schools Bill, because it did not give all power to the clergy, was opposed by the then Archbishop of Canterbury with the words, "Their lords.h.i.+ps' prudence would, and must, guard against innovations that might shake the foundations of religion." When, in later times, gas was introduced, the aristocratic dwellers in western London protested with equal force against such an innovation as the new illuminant; and Lord Beaconsfield, in the opening chapters of the last of his novels, sketched with ironic pen the attempts of high-born ladies to prevent the spread of light. Thus, in things sublime and in things ridiculous, the cry of "dangerous innovation" has been raised until it has been rendered contemptible.

Equally futile is the fear that the Liberals are about to propose "the impossible." There is nothing in politics to which that word can be applied, as even the most cursory study of our history will show. When men say that certain measures can "never" be carried, they are more likely to be wrong than right. In 1687 it would have been deemed impossible to place the Crown upon a strictly parliamentary basis; in 1689 this was accomplished. In 1830 the most sanguine reformer scarcely dared hope that borough-mongering would in his lifetime be destroyed, and the first popularly elected Parliament was chosen in 1832. In 1865, none could have dreamed that household suffrage in the boroughs was near; in 1867 it was adopted by a Tory Government. In 1867 he would have been a hardy prophet who would have foretold the speedy downfall of the Irish Episcopal Establishment; and the Act of Disestablishment was placed upon the statute book in 1869. Such instances should of a surety teach men to be modest in their forecasts of what is possible in politics.

In, therefore, pursuing our search into the why and the wherefore of the politics of the future, we must put aside phrases and come to facts. The phrases will die, but the facts will remain; and the more closely we grasp these latter the more certain will those Liberal principles which have done so much for the past, do even more for the future.

And, when we come to the facts, we must not forget that a political question is not necessarily unpractical because it cannot be immediately dealt with; for good is accomplished by the calm discussion of points which are bound some time to be raised, and which, if undebated now, may be settled in a gust of popular pa.s.sion. As Mr. John Morley has well observed--"The fact that leading statesmen are of necessity so absorbed in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the better reason why as many other people as possible should busy themselves in helping to prepare opinion for the practical application of unfamiliar but weighty and promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussion of them upon their merits."

X.--SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?

The question of Irish self-government is for the present the greatest that concerns the Liberal party, and in current politics, as Mr.

Gladstone has truly and tersely put it, Ireland blocks the way. This, of course, is not so simply because Mr. Gladstone said it, and even less is it so because he wished it. The question stands in the path of all other great measures of legislative reform, for the sufficient reason that, at the first opportunity after the franchise was enjoyed by every householder, Ireland declared emphatically, and by a majority unparalleled in modern political history, in favour of freedom to manage her own domestic affairs.

It must be obvious that, when all the popularly-elected members for three out of four provinces into which one of the countries which form this kingdom is divided, p.r.o.nounce against the existing system of government, and when a majority of those for the other province side with them, that that system cannot continue to exist with the good will of those whom it most intimately affects, and can only be maintained by force. Such as have followed Mr. Gladstone in this matter do not believe in the maintenance of a government against the const.i.tutionally declared will of the governed, and are agreed that the Irish demand for the management of purely domestic affairs ought to be granted on the grounds of justice, expediency, and sound Liberal principles.

They hold that to grant the demand would be just, because under the present system the vast majority of Irishmen have no practical control over those by whom they are governed; that it would be expedient, because the kingdom is weakened by the continual disaffection of one of its component parts; and that it would accord with sound Liberal principles, in that the overwhelming majority of the Irish electorate have asked for Home Rule through the const.i.tutional medium of the ballot-box.

"The liberty of a people," says Cowley, "consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatever form it be of government." This definition, which applies strictly to England, applies not at all to Ireland. The English system of government has broken down there so completely that all parties profess to be agreed that something must be devised in its place. Liberals have always held that a people or a cla.s.s knows better what is good for it than any other people or any other cla.s.s, however enlightened or well-meaning. That has been one of the main reasons for giving the suffrage to the poor, the ignorant, and the helpless, because the experience of ages has taught that the rich, the educated, and the powerful, while well able to take care of themselves, are either too careless or have too little knowledge to take the same care of others. And as with the suffrage, so with self-government. Any extension must be granted upon broad principles: small concessions grudgingly given are always accepted without grat.i.tude, and used to extort greater.

"Well," it may be said, "I am willing to give Ireland a large measure of self-government, but I won't yield to agitators." This is one of the oldest of all replies to demands for reform. How could anything be gained in politics without agitation? The Tories swear they will yield nothing until agitation has ceased; and if it ceases, if only for a moment, they declare it is evident there is no popular wish for reform.

"Proceed, my lords," said Lord Mansfield, when the American colonies revolted--"proceed, my lords, with spirit and firmness; and when you shall have established your authority, it will then be time to show lenity." And their lords.h.i.+ps proceeded; but the "time to show lenity"

never came, for it was such counsels which lost the American colonies to the British Crown.

"But," it will be added, "this is not an ordinary agitation; it is a revolutionary one." In some of its phases that is true, and it is all the more reason why its cause should be closely examined. It is the English themselves who have taught the Irish that ordinary const.i.tutional agitation gains them nothing. If it had not been for the organization of the Volunteers, Grattan's Parliament of 1782 would never have been granted; the Duke of Wellington in 1829 admitted that he yielded Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation to the threat of civil war; it needed the terrible crimes of the early "thirties" to arouse England to the necessity for abolis.h.i.+ng an iniquitous system of levying t.i.the; the Fenian outbreaks, the attack on a prison van at Manchester, and the blowing up of a gaol in London, opened the eyes of the English to the need for disestablis.h.i.+ng the Irish Church and clipping the claws of the Irish landlords; the fearful winter of 1880 led to the granting of still further protection to the tenants; and to the "plan of campaign" of the winter of 1886 was it owing that a Tory Government felt compelled to still further encroach upon the property and privileges of the landlords of Ireland. As long as Ireland has held to const.i.tutional agitation--as witness that for Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation from 1801 to 1825, and that for tenant right from 1850 to 1868--so long has England refused to grant a single just demand; and this is exactly what the Tories are doing now.

Is it any wonder that Irish agitation should have become revolutionary when that is the only kind we have rewarded? In the relations between the governing cla.s.ses and popular movements there has all through been this difference--in England, revolution has been staved off by reform; in Ireland, reform has been staved off till there was revolution.

"But," it may be continued, "it is not so much that the agitation is revolutionary as that it is criminal which makes me object." But a movement ought not to be called criminal because of the excesses of a few of its extreme partisans. No great popular agitation has ever been free from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who have given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. But did English Liberals hesitate to support Mazzini because he was accused of favouring a.s.sa.s.sination; to sympathize with the French Republicans because Orsini prepared bombs for the destruction of Napoleon III.; or to-day to wish well to those Russians who conspire for liberty because the wilder spirits among them have a.s.sa.s.sinated one Czar and attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate another? In our own history, are the Covenanters to be condemned because some of them murdered Archbishop Sharpe; the early Radicals because Thistlewood and his fellows plotted to kill King and Cabinet; the Reformers of 1831 because of the Bristol riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle; or those of 1866 because the Hyde Park railings were thrown down? When it is remembered that even such a man as Peel could, in the midst of a heated controversy, accuse such another as Cobden of conniving at a.s.sa.s.sination, we should be careful how we accept the testimony of any partisan concerning the criminality of an agitation to which he is opposed.

These objections touch, after all, only the fringe of the matter, and another which is frequently urged--that the Irish agitation is a "foreign conspiracy" because it receives aid from the United States--does not go much closer to the root. But this, like the others, may be disposed of by English examples. Did not Englishmen aid, both by men and money, in liberating Greece and uniting Italy? Did they not help by subscriptions the insurrections in Hungary and Poland, and, when the former failed, did not many of them take the refugees into their homes?

Did they not even raise a fund to a.s.sist the slave-holding States when in rebellion? And in all these cases, except in a remote degree the last, they had no tie in blood, but only one in sympathy, with those concerned. That the Nationalist movement has been largely aided from the United States is undoubted; but that aid has mainly come from those of Irish birth or parentage who have been driven across the Atlantic to seek a home. And when it is said that, because of this help, a self-governed Ireland would rely upon the United States to the detriment of England, may we not ask why it is that Italy does not rely upon France, though it was France that struck the first effective blow for Italian unity; or Bulgaria upon Russia, though without the blood-sacrifice of Russia that princ.i.p.ality would never have occupied a place on the European map? However much it may be to be regretted, grat.i.tude does not play any large part in international affairs.

When the more serious objections to the granting Home Rule are urged they are no more difficult to meet. "Ireland is not a nation," it is said; "its people are of different races." The argument has been used before by the Tories, and the value of it may be judged by an example.

The late Lord Derby, as leader of the Tory party, addressed the House of Lords in 1860 in savage denunciation of the efforts then being made to secure the unity of Italy; and to the contention that all the inhabitants of that peninsula were Italians, he answered, in the words of _Macbeth_ to his hired murderers,

Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are cleped All by the name of dogs.

And those who remember the unbridgeable differences which then appeared to exist between the Sardinian and the Sicilian, the Florentine and the Neapolitan, the dweller in Venice and the resident in Rome, will know that the perfect unity between them which now makes Italy one of the Great Powers would have been considered as unlikely as any between a Belfast man and an inhabitant of Cork to-day.

"The Irish are not fit for self-government," is the next contention. If this be so, the shame is ours in not having given them the opportunity for being trained. We did not refuse to liberate the slaves until they were proved to be fit for freedom; we did not decline to give the labourers the suffrage until they were proved to be capable of rightly using it; for we knew in each case that no such proof could be afforded until the opportunity was offered. No proof that the Irish are not able to manage a Parliament is given by the corruption of the semi-independent body which they enjoyed from 1782 to 1799; for that consisted entirely of Protestants, mainly chosen by a band of borough-mongers, whom Pitt had to buy out at a high price. The same thing exactly was said by the Tories--sneers about the pigs and all--of the Bulgarians in 1876; and they have had good reason since to change their minds. What reason is there to believe that the Irish would be less able to manage their own affairs than the people of Bulgaria?

"But they are naturally lawless." Where is the proof? It is true that in certain mountainous districts of Kerry and Clare there have been outbursts of moonlighting, but these have been as nothing compared with the prevalence of brigandage in Greece before the Greeks were allowed to rule themselves, or in Italy before the Italians founded their united kingdom. Where there is little popular respect for the law, there lawlessness flourishes; where the people make their own laws, there lawlessness is put down with a strong hand.

"If they had the power they would persecute the Protestants." This is a prophecy, and a prophet has the advantage of being able to soar above proofs. But the fact that every prominent defender of national rights in Ireland for the last century and a half, except O'Connell, from Dean Swift down to Mr. Parnell, has been a Protestant, should count for something. The fact that Protestants have again and again been returned to the Corporations of the most Catholic cities should count for much.

And the fact that, when for years not a single one of the 450 English members was a Roman Catholic, several of the 103 Irish members, even from the most Catholic districts, were Protestants, should count for more. Such religious persecution as exists in Ireland is certainly more at Belfast than at Cork.

"Giving them a Parliament would break up the empire." Why should the empire be broken up because there was extended to Ireland the principle we have granted to Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape? How is it that the German Empire continues united, though the Reichstag, its Imperial Parliament, is one body, and the Prussian Parliament, the Saxon Parliament, the Wurtemberg Parliament, and the Bavarian Parliament are quite others? Is there no union between Austria and Hungary, or between Sweden and Norway, though each has its Parliament, and are the United States disintegrated because every one of the States has its own Senate and House of Representatives? If one were asked to name two of the strongest nations outside our own, Germany and the United States would be the reply; and in each there is a system of Home Rule for the separate portions.

"But did not the United States crush the Confederates when secession was demanded?" Of course they did; the United States fought against the South separating from the North, as we should against Ireland separating from England. But every State which joined the Confederacy possessed as ample a measure of Home Rule as the Liberals now propose for Ireland; and, to the lasting honour of the Northern States, that measure was restored soon after the war. Home Rule the South had, and has still; separation the South asked for, and did not receive.

"The Irish are ungrateful people; whatever you give them they ask for more." Would it not be well to first ask what the Irish have had to be grateful for? Granting that we yielded Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, reformed the t.i.the system, disestablished the Church, and legalized tenant right; why, after all these things, should we expect grat.i.tude? The old phrase that "grat.i.tude is a lively sense of favours to come" may be unduly cynical; but is it not absurd to ask that recompense for the doing of acts of simple justice? Former generations of Englishmen deprived the Irish of their rights. To what thanks are later generations ent.i.tled for simply restoring to the Irish the rights of which they had been robbed?

"Be just and fear not," was said of ancient time: "Be just and expect not grat.i.tude," should be added to-day. And when it is stated that "the Irish ought to accept what we choose to give them," it must be replied that this is the purely despotic argument which has already done England sufficient injury by losing her the United States.

It is only in this, the briefest, fas.h.i.+on that an answer has been sketched to the various arguments and a.s.sumptions against Home Rule. In determining to grant it, the Liberals are acting strictly according to their old policy of favouring struggling nationalities. The support given by Burke to the cause of America; by Fox to Ireland; by Canning (in this, as in some other matters, truly Liberal) to Greece; by Palmerston to Italy; and by Mr. Gladstone to Bulgaria, indicates with sufficient clearness the traditional Liberal position. For a century we have been telling the whole world the advantages of autonomy; are we now to decline to adopt, in similar circ.u.mstances, the remedy for discontent we have all along preached to, and sometimes forced upon, others?

The Liberals say with Landor, "Let us try rather to remove the evils of Ireland than to persuade those who undergo them that there are none."

They are utterly opposed to the idea that it is right to give a people free representation and then deliberately to ignore all that that representation asks. They are, it is true, in a minority at this moment, but they do not forget that all great causes have three stages--first to be laughed at, next to be looked at, and last to be loved. Home Rule has certainly reached the second stage; it will soon reach the third. The Liberals have been beaten before, but they have always won in the end.

And it is well to be beaten sometimes. If life were all suns.h.i.+ne we should find it oppressive; an occasional cloud serves to temper the heat. To the Liberals, as to nature itself, a misty morning is often the prelude to the brightest day.

XI.--WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE LORDS?

In dealing with the other questions which the Liberals will have to consider, it will be well to take them in what may be called their const.i.tutional order, and a beginning, therefore, may be made with the reform of the House of Lords. The theory upon which that House is upheld is that it is an a.s.sembly of our most notable men, called to rule either by descent from the great ones of the past, or by the proved capacity of themselves in the present, who discuss every question laid before them with impartiality, and who act as a check upon the hasty and ill-considered legislation of the House of Commons.

So much for the theory: what of the fact? Those peers who are not creations of to-day mainly spring either from Pitt's plutocrats or from those who have been granted their patents because of having lavishly spent their money in electoral support of some party; those who can claim their peerage by direct descent from the great ones of the past can be numbered by tens, while the whole body is numbered by hundreds; and just as a sprinkling of successful lawyers, soldiers, and brewers adds nothing to its historical character, it in no sense brings the peerage into clear and close contact with the people. As to the impartiality displayed by the House of Lords, it is notorious that in these days it is little other than an appanage of the Carlton Club, and that, whatever the Tory whips desire it to do, it accomplishes without demur. And its power as a check upon hasty and ill-considered legislation may be judged from the fact that it never dares reject a measure which public opinion strongly demands and upon which the Commons insist.