largely the chance of a candidate depends upon his skill in appealing to the direct and immediate interests, or supposed interests, of large sections of the electorate; in making use of claptrap and popular cries; in inflaming class animosities and antipathies, and pledging himself so far as to conciliate many distinct groups of faddists. Let him then observe how Parliament itself is breaking into small groups; how the permanent forces of intelligence and property, which once enabled governments to pursue their paths independently of fluctuating or transient gusts of ignorant opinion, are weakened; how large a part of legislation, especially in the closing period of a Parliament, is manifestly intended for mere electioneering purposes; how very few public men look much beyond the interests of their party and the chances of an election. He must be a sanguine man who can look across such a scene with much confidence to the future.
He will not, if he is a wise man, be reassured by the prevailing habit, so natural in democracies, of canonising, and almost idolising, mere majorities, even when they are mainly composed of the most ignorant men, voting under all the misleading influences of side-issues and violent class or party passions. ‘The voice of the people,’ as expressed at the polls, is to many politicians the sum of all wisdom, the supreme test of truth or falsehood. It is even more than this: it is invested with something very like the spiritual efficacy which theologians have ascribed to baptism. It is supposed to wash away all sin. However unscrupulous, however dishonest, may be the acts of a party or of a statesman, they are considered to be justified beyond reproach if they have been condoned or sanctioned at a general election. It has sometimes happened that a politician has been found guilty of a grave personal offence by an intelligent and impartial jury, after a minute investigation of evidence, conducted with the assistance of highly trained advocates, and under the direction of an experienced judge. He afterwards finds a constituency which will send him to Parliament, and the newspapers of his party declare that his character is now clear. He has been absolved by ‘the great voice of the people.’ Truly indeed did Carlyle say that the superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and of all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers.
It has led many politicians to subordinate all notions of right and wrong to the wishes or interests of majorities, and to act on the maxim that the end justifies the means quite as audaciously as the most extreme Jesuit casuists. This new Jesuitism has, indeed, much real affinity with the old one. The root idea of the old Jesuitism was a strongly realised conviction that the Catholic Church is so emphatically the inspired teacher of mankind, and the representative of the Deity upon earth, that no act can be immoral which is performed in its service and is conducive to its interests. The root idea of the new Jesuitism is the belief that the moral law has no deeper foundation and no higher sanction than utility, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is its supreme test and ideal. From this it is easily inferred that minorities have no rights as against majorities. In both cases, too, the love of power plays a great part. The old Jesuit found in his doctrine a strong lever for governing the Church and influencing the world. The new Jesuit finds his doctrine peculiarly useful in a society in which all political power is obtained by winning the votes of a majority. Many good Catholics will maintain that the old Jesuit misread the teaching of the Church, and some of them believe that religion has had no worse enemy than a society which has associated the most sacred Name given among men with falsehood, imposture, unscrupulous tyranny, and intrigue. Many good utilitarians will say that the new Jesuit has calculated falsely the balance of utilities, and that no course of policy which shakes the security of property or contract, and the rights of minorities, can be, in its far-off results, for the benefit of the majority. But in each case the inference of the Jesuit is plausible and natural, and it is an inference that is certain to be drawn.
Some of my readers will probably consider it fanciful to attribute to theories of moral philosophy any influence over political conduct. In England, speculative opinion has not usually much weight in practical politics, and English politicians are very apt to treat it with complete disdain. Yet no one who has any real knowledge of history can seriously doubt the influence over human affairs which has been exercised by the speculations of Locke, of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, of Adam Smith, or of Bentham. The force and the intensity which the doctrine of nationalities has of late years assumed throughout Europe is not unconnected with the new importance which speculative writers have given to race affinities and characteristics, and something of the current Radical notions about land is certainly due to our increased knowledge of the wide diffusion, in the early stages of society, of joint or communal ownership of the soil.
So, too, I believe the views of many politicians have been not a little coloured by the doctrines of moral philosophy, which have of late years been widely popular, which reduce our conceptions of right and wrong, of justice or injustice, to mere general utility, or a calculation of interests. Philosophy has its fanatics as well as religion, and to this conception of ethics may be largely traced the utter unscrupulousness in dealing with the rights of minorities which is sometimes found among men who are certainly not mere unprincipled self-seekers. In every conflict of interests between the few who own a thing, or have produced it, or paid for it, or run the risks attending it, and the many who wish to enjoy it, this bias may be discerned. In the eyes of many politicians, all differences between the landlord and his tenants, between the author and his readers, between railway-shareholders and the travelling public, between the producer and the consumers, are simply regarded as conflicts between the few and the many, and the rights of the few cease to have any binding force if their destruction is likely to confer an immediate benefit on the many.
Herbert Spencer has said, with profound truth and wisdom, that ‘the end which the statesman should keep in view as higher than all other ends is the formation of character.’ It is on this side that democratic politics seem to me peculiarly weak. Let us once more look at the representative body. Even taking the lowest test, can it be confidently said that its moral level is what it was? Too much stress may perhaps be laid on the many grave private scandals that have taken place among its members within the last twenty or thirty years. It is impossible, however, not to be struck by the number of cases in which members of that House have during this space of time been found guilty of acts of financial dishonesty that brought them within the scope of the criminal law, or of other forms of immorality sufficiently grave to come before the law courts. The House of Commons consists of 670 members. About the year 1892 the committee of a great London club containing nearly twice as many members had their attention called to the fact that, by a curious omission in their rules, no provision had been made for the expulsion of any member who, without breaking the precise rules of the club, had been guilty of any of those gross scandals which make men unfit for the society of gentlemen. The omission had been unnoticed because, although the club had existed since 1824, no such case had arisen among its members. It would be unreasonable to expect from a body elected under such stormy and contentious conditions as the House of Commons a standard as high as that in the Athenæum Club, but surely the contrast is too great and too marked to be lightly dismissed. And if we extend our survey beyond England, and count up the instances of gross profligacy or dishonesty which have been detected, often in very high places, in the Parliaments of the Continent, of the United States, and of the Colonies, in the present generation, the evidence will accumulate, showing how little democratic election secures a high standard of integrity and morality.
The House of Commons, however, as I have before said, is essentially a body of trustees, and it is by their performance of their public duty that its members must be chiefly judged. Is it too much to say that, in the opinion of the great body of educated men, there has been in this respect a marked decline? I am anxious on this subject to avoid all exaggeration. It is not yet true of England, as it is of America, that the best men in intellect and character avoid public life, though there are ominous signs that this may before long be the case. Parliament still contains a large body of such men, and there have been several conspicuous modern instances showing how much the weight of character still tells in public life. Probably a large proportion of my readers will be of opinion that the year 1886 witnessed the worst act of modern English politics; but it at least brought with it the consoling spectacle of a large body of public men, several of them of the highest political eminence, deliberately and without any possible selfish motive breaking
