Chapter XV: Front Matter (15)

Similarly with the Central Government. Here the effects wrought by public agencies are still more dissociated from the costs they entail on each citizen. The bulk of the taxes being raised in so unobtrusive a way, and affecting the masses in modes so difficult to trace, it is scarcely possible for the masses to realize the fact that the sums paid by Government for supporting schools, for facilitating emigration, for inspecting mines, factories, railways, ships, etc., have been in great part taken from their own pockets. The more intelligent of them understand this as an abstract truth; but it is not a truth present to their minds in such a definite shape as to influence their actions. Quite otherwise, however, would it be if taxation were direct; and the expense of every new State-agency were felt by each citizen as an additional demand made on him by the tax-gatherer. Then would there be a clear, constantly-recurring experience of the truth, that for everything which the State gives with one hand it takes away something with the other; and then would it be less easy to propagate absurd delusions about the powers and duties of Governments. No one can question this conclusion who calls to mind the reason currently given for maintaining {374} indirect taxation; namely, that the required revenue could not otherwise be raised. Statesmen see that if instead of taking from the citizen here a little and there a little, in ways that he does not know or constantly forgets, the whole amount were demanded in a lump sum, it would scarcely be possible to get it paid. Grumbling and resistance would rise probably to disaffection. Coercion would in hosts of cases be needed to obtain this large total tax; which, indeed, even with this aid, could not be obtained from the majority of the people, whose improvident habits prevent the accumulation of considerable sums. And so the revenue would fall immensely short of that expenditure which is supposed necessary. This being assented to, it must perforce be admitted that under a system of direct taxation, further extension of public administrations, entailing further costs, would meet with general opposition. Instead of multiplying the functions of the State, the tendency would obviously be to reduce their number.

Here, then, is one of the safeguards. The incidence of taxation must be made more direct in proportion as the franchise is extended. Our changes ought not to be in the direction of the Compound-Householders-Act of 1851, which makes it no longer needful for a Parliamentary elector to have paid poor-rates before giving a vote; but they ought to be in the opposite direction. The exercise of power over the national revenue, should be indissolubly associated with the _conscious_ payment of contributions to that revenue. Direct taxation instead of being limited, as many wish, must be extended to lower and wider classes, as fast as these classes are endowed with political power.

Probably this proposal will be regarded with small favour by statesmen. It is not in the nature of things for men to approve a system which tends to restrict their powers. We know, too, that any great extension of direct taxation will be held at present impossible; and we are not prepared {375} to assert the contrary. This, however, is no reason against reducing the indirect taxation and augmenting the direct taxation as far as circumstances allow. And if when the last had been increased and the first decreased to the greatest extent now practicable, it were made an established principle that any additional revenue must be raised by direct taxes, there would be an efficient check to one of the evils likely to follow from further political enfranchisement.

* * * * *

The other evil which we have pointed out as rationally to be feared, cannot be thus met, however. Though an ever-recurring experience of the relation between State-action and its cost, would hinder the growth of those State-agencies which undertake to supply citizens with positive conveniences and gratifications; it would be no restraint on that negative and inexpensive over-legislation which trespasses on individual freedom—it would not prevent mischievous meddling with the relations between labour and capital. Against this danger the only safeguards appear to be, the spread of sounder views among the working classes, and the moral advance which such sounder views imply.

“That is to say, the people must be educated,” responds the reader. Yes, education is the thing wanted; but not the education for which most men agitate. Ordinary school-training is not a preparation for the right exercise of political power. Conclusive proof of this is given by the fact that the artizans, from whose mistaken ideas the most danger is to be feared, are the best informed of the working classes. Far from promising to be a safeguard, the spread of such education as is commonly given appears more likely to increase the danger. Raising the working classes in general to the artizan-level of culture, threatens to augment, rather than to diminish, their power of working political evil. The current faith in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, as fitting men for citizenship, seems to us quite {376} unwarranted; as are, indeed, most other anticipations of the benefits to be derived from learning lessons. There is no connexion between the ability to parse a sentence, and a clear understanding of the causes which determine the rate of wages. The multiplication-table affords no aid in seeing through the fallacy that the destruction of property is good for trade. Long practice may have produced extremely good penmanship without having given the least power to understand the paradox that machinery eventually increases the number of persons employed in the trades into which it is introduced. Nor is it proved that smatterings of mensuration, astronomy, or geography, fit men for estimating the characters and motives of Parliamentary candidates. Indeed we have only thus to bring together the antecedents and the anticipated consequents, to see how untenable is the belief in a relation between them. When we wish a girl to become a good musician, we seat her before the piano: we do not put drawing implements into her hands, and expect music to come along with skill in the use of pencils and colour-brushes. Sending a boy to pore over law-books would be thought an extremely irrational way of preparing him for civil engineering. And if in these and all other cases, we do not expect fitness for any function except through instruction and exercise in that function; why do we expect fitness for citizenship to be produced by a discipline which has no relation to the duties of the citizen? Probably it will be replied that by making the working man a good reader, we give him access to sources of information from which he may learn how to use his electoral power; and that other studies sharpen his faculties and make him a better judge of political questions. This is true; and the eventual tendency is unquestionably good. But what if for a long time to come he reads only to obtain confirmation of his errors? What if there exists a literature appealing to his prejudices, and supplying him with fallacious arguments for the mistaken beliefs which he naturally takes {377} up? What if he rejects all teaching that aims to disabuse him of cherished delusions? Must we not say that the culture which thus merely helps the workman to establish himself in error, rather unfits than fits him for citizenship? And do not the trades’-unions furnish evidence of this?

How little that which people commonly call education prepares them for the use of political power, may be judged from the incompetency of those who have received the highest education the country affords. Glance back at the blunders of our legislation, and then remember that the men who committed them had mostly taken University-degrees; and you must admit that the profoundest ignorance of Social Science may accompany intimate acquaintance with all which our cultivated classes regard as valuable knowledge. Do but take a young member of Parliament, fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, and ask him what he thinks Law should do, and why? or what it should not do, and why? and it will become manifest that neither his familiarity with Aristotle nor his readings in Thucydides, have prepared him to answer the very first question a legislator ought to solve. A single illustration will suffice to show how different an education from that usually given, is required by legislators, and consequently by those who elect them: we mean the illustration which the Free-trade agitation supplies. By kings, peers, and members of Parliament, mostly brought up at universities, trade had been hampered by protections, prohibitions, and bounties. For centuries had been maintained these legislative appliances which a very moderate insight shows to be detrimental. Yet, of all the highly-educated throughout the nation during these centuries, scarcely a man saw how mischievous such appliances were. Not from one who devoted himself to the most approved studies, came the work which set politicians right on these points; but from one who left college without a degree, and prosecuted inquiries which the established education ignored. Adam {378} Smith examined for himself the industrial phenomena of societies; contemplated the productive and distributive activities going on around him; traced out their complicated mutual dependences; and thus reached general principles for political guidance. In recent days, those who have most clearly understood the truths he enunciated, and by persevering exposition have converted the nation to their views, have not been graduates of universities. While, contrariwise, those who have passed through the prescribed _curriculum_, have commonly been the most bitter and obstinate opponents of the changes dictated by politico-economical science. In this all-important direction, right legislation was urged by men deficient in the so-called best education, and was resisted by the great majority of men who had received this so-called best education!

The truth for which we contend, and which is so strangely overlooked, is, indeed, almost a truism. Does not our whole theory of training imply that the right preparation for political power is political cultivation? Must not that teaching which can alone guide the citizen in the fulfilment of his public actions, be a teaching that acquaints him with the effects of his public actions?

The second chief safeguard to which we must trust is, then, the spread, not of that mere technical and miscellaneous knowledge which men are so eagerly propagating, but of political knowledge; or, to speak more accurately—knowledge of Social Science. Above all, the essential thing is the establishment of a true theory of government—a true conception of what legislation is for, and what are its proper limits. This question which our political discussions habitually ignore, is a question of greater moment than any other. Inquiries which statesmen deride as speculative and unpractical, will one day be found infinitely more practical than those which they wade through Blue Books to master, and nightly spend many hours in debating. The considerations that every morning fill a dozen columns {379} of _The Times_, are mere frivolities when compared with the fundamental consideration—What is the proper sphere of government? Before discussing the way in which law should regulate some particular thing, would it not be wise to put the previous question—Whether law ought or ought not to meddle with that thing? and before answering this, to put the more general questions—What law should do? and what it should leave undone? Surely, if there are any limits at all to legislation, the settlement of these limits must have effects far more profound than any particular Act of Parliament can have; and must be by so much the more momentous. Surely, if there is danger that the people may misuse political power, it is of supreme importance that they should be taught for what purpose political power ought alone to be used.

Did the upper classes understand their position they would, we think, see that the diffusion of sound views on this matter more nearly concerns their own welfare and that of the nation at large, than any other thing whatever. Popular influence will inevitably go on increasing. Should the masses gain a predominant power while their ideas of social arrangements and legislative action remain as crude as at present, there will certainly result disastrous meddlings with the relations of capital and labour, as well as a disastrous extension of State-administrations. Immense damage will be inflicted: primarily on employers; secondarily on the employed; and eventually on the nation as a whole. If these evils can be prevented at all, they can be prevented only by establishing in the public mind a profound conviction that there are certain definite limits to the functions of the State; and that these limits ought on no account to be transgressed. Having learned what these limits are, the upper classes ought to use all means of making them clear to the people.

* * * * *

In No. XXIV. of this Review, for October, 1857, we {380} endeavoured to show that while representative government is, by its intrinsic nature, better than any other for administering justice or insuring equitable relations among citizens, it is, by its intrinsic nature, worse than any other for all the various additional functions which governments commonly undertake. To the question—What is representative government good for? our reply was—“It is good, especially good, good above all others, for doing the thing which a government should do. It is bad, especially bad, bad above all others, for doing the things which a government should not do.”

To this truth we may here add a correlative one. As fast as a government, by becoming representative, grows better fitted for maintaining the rights of citizens, it grows not only unfitted for other purposes, but dangerous for other purposes. In gaining adaptation for the essential function of a government, it loses such adaptation as it had for other functions; not only because its complexity is a hindrance to administrative action, but also because in discharging other functions it must be mischievously influenced by class bias. So long as it is confined to the duty of preventing the aggressions of individuals on one another, and protecting the nation at large against external enemies, the wider its basis the better; for all men are similarly interested in the security of life, property, and freedom to exercise the faculties. But let it undertake to bring home positive benefits to citizens, or to interfere with any of the special relations between class and class, and there necessarily enters an incentive to injustice. For in no such cases can the immediate interests of all classes be alike. Therefore do we say that as fast as representation is extended, the sphere of government must be contracted.

* * * * *

POSTSCRIPT.—Since the foregoing pages were written, Lord John Russell has introduced his Reform Bill; and in {381} application of the general principles we contend for, a few words may fitly be added respecting it.

Of the extended county-franchise most will approve, save those whose illegitimate influence is diminished by it. Adding to the rural constituencies a class less directly dependent on large landowners, can scarcely fail to be beneficial. Even should it not at first perceptibly affect the choice of representatives, it will still be a good stimulus to political education and to consequent future benefits. Of the re-distribution of seats little is to be said, further than that, however far short it may fall of an equitable arrangement, it is perhaps as much as can at present be obtained.

Whether the right limit for the borough-franchise has been chosen is, on the other hand, a question that admits of much discussion. Some hesitation will probably be felt by all who duly weigh the evidence on both sides. Believing, as we do, that the guidance of abstract equity, however much it may need qualification, must never be ignored, we should be glad were it at once practicable more nearly to follow it; since it is certain that only as fast as the injustice of political exclusion is brought to an end, will the many political injustices which grow out of it disappear. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the forms which freedom requires will not of themselves produce the reality of freedom, in the absence of an appropriate national character; any more than the most perfect mechanism will do its work in the absence of a motive power. There seems reason to think that the degree of liberty a people is capable of in any given age, is a fixed quantity; and that any artificial extension of it in one direction brings about an equivalent limitation in some other direction. French republics show scarcely any more respect for individual rights than the despotisms they supplant; and French electors use their freedom to put themselves again in slavery. In America the feeble restraints imposed by the {382} State are supplemented by the strong restraints of a public opinion which, in many respects, holds the citizens in greater bondage than here. And if there needs a demonstration that representative equality is an insufficient safeguard for freedom, we have it in the trades’-unions already referred to; which, purely democratic as are their organizations, yet exercise over their members a tyranny almost Neapolitan in its rigour and unscrupulousness. The greatest attainable amount of individual liberty being the true end; and the diffusion of political power being regarded mainly as a means to this end; the real question when considering further extensions of the franchise, is—whether the average freedom of action of citizens will be increased?—whether men will be severally freer than before to pursue the objects of life in their own way? Or, in the present case, the question is—whether the good which £7, £6, or £5 householders would do in helping to abolish existing injustices, will be partly or wholly neutralized by the evil they may do in establishing other injustices? The desideratum is as large an increase in the electorate as can be made without enabling the people to carry out their delusive schemes of over-legislation. Whether the increase proposed is greater or less than this, is the essential point. Let us briefly consider the evidence on each side.

As shown by Lord J. Russell’s figures, the new borough-electors will consist mainly of artizans; and these, as we have seen, are in great part banded together by a common wish to regulate the relations of capital and labour. As a class, they are not as Lord J. Russell describes them, “fitted to exercise the franchise freely and independently.” On the contrary, there are no men in the community so shackled. They are the slaves of the authorities they have themselves set up. The dependence of farmers on landlords, or of operatives on employers, is much less servile; for they can carry their capital or labour elsewhere. But {383} the penalty for disobedience to trades-union dictates, pursues the rebel throughout the kingdom. Hence the great mass of the new borough-electors must be expected to act simultaneously, on the word of command being issued from a central council of united trades. Even while we write we meet with fresh reason for anticipating this result. An address from the Conference of the Building Trades to the working classes throughout the kingdom, has just been published; thanking them for their support; advising the maintenance of the organization; anticipating future success in their aims; and intimating the propriety of recommencing the nine-hours’ agitation. We must, then, be prepared to see these industrial questions made leading questions; for artizans have a much keener interest in them than in any others. And we may feel certain that many elections will turn upon them.

How many? There are some thirty boroughs in which the newly-enfranchised will form an actual majority—will, if they act together, be able to outvote the existing electors; even supposing the parties into which they are now divided were to unite. In half-a-dozen other boroughs the newly-enfranchised will form a virtual majority—will preponderate unless the present liberal and conservative voters co-operate with great unanimity, which they will be unlikely to do. And the number proposed to be added to the constituency, is one-half or more in nearly fifty other boroughs: that is, in nearly fifty other boroughs, the new party will be able to arbitrate between the two existing parties; and will give its support to whichever of these promises most aid to artizan-schemes. It maybe said that in this estimate we assume the whole of the new borough-electors to belong to the artizan-class, which they do not. This is true. But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that among the £10 householders there is a very considerable sprinkling of this class, while the freemen chiefly consist of it; and hence the whole artizan body in each constituency will probably {384} be not smaller than we have assumed. If so, it follows that should the trades-union organization be brought to bear on borough-elections, as it is pretty certain to be, it may prevail in some eighty or ninety places, and sway the votes of representatives in from 100 to 150 seats—supposing, that is, that it can obtain as many eligible candidates.

Meanwhile, the county-constituencies in their proposed state, as much as in their existing state, not being under trades-union influence, may be expected to stand in antagonism to the artizan-constituencies; as may also the small boroughs. It is just possible, indeed, that irritated by the ever-growing power of a rich mercantile class, continually treading closer on their heels, the landowners, carrying with them their dependents, might join the employed in their dictation to employers; just as, in past times, the nobles joined the commonalty against the kings, or the kings joined the commonalty against the nobles. But leaving out this remote contingency, we may fairly expect the rural constituencies to oppose the large urban ones on these industrial questions. Thus, then, the point to be decided is, whether the benefits that will result from this extended suffrage—benefits which we doubt not will be great—may not be secured while the accompanying evil tendencies are kept in check. It may be that these new artizan-electors will be powerful for good, while their power to work evil will be in a great degree neutralized. But this we should like to see well discussed.

On one question, however, we feel no hesitation; namely, the question of a ratepaying-qualification. From Lord John Russell’s answer to Mr. Bright, and more recently from his answer to Mr. Steel, we gather that on this point there is to be no alteration—that £6 householders will stand on the same footing that £10 householders do at present. Now by the Compound-Householders-Act of 1851, to which we have already referred, it is provided that tenants of £10 houses whose rates are paid by their {385} landlords, shall, after having _once_ tendered payment of rates to the authorities, be thereafter considered as ratepayers, and have votes accordingly. That is to say, the ratepaying-qualification is made nominal; and that in practice it has become so, is proved by the fact that under this Act, 4000 electors were suddenly added to the constituency of Manchester.

The continuance and extension of this arrangement we conceive to be wholly vicious. Already we have shown that the incidence of taxation ought to be made more direct as fast as popular power is increased, and that, as diminishing the elector’s personal experience of the costs of public administration, this abolition of a ratepaying-qualification is a retrograde step. But this is by no means the sole ground for disapproval. The ratepaying-qualification is a valuable test—a test which tends to separate the more worthy of the working classes from the less worthy. Nay more, it tends to select for enfranchisement, those who have the moral and intellectual qualities especially required for judicious political conduct. For what general mental characteristic does judicious political conduct presuppose? The power of realizing remote consequences. People who are misled by demagogues, are those who are impressed with the proximate results set forth to them but are not impressed by the distant results, even when these are explained—regard them as vague, shadowy, theoretical, and are not to be deterred by them from clutching at a promised boon. Conversely, the wise citizen is the one who conceives the distant evils so clearly that they are practically present to him, and thus outweigh the immediate temptation. Now these are just the respective characteristics of the two classes of tenants whom a ratepaying-qualification separates:—the one having their rates paid by their landlords and so losing their votes; the other paying their own rates that they may get votes:—the one unable to resist present temptations, unable to save money, {386} and therefore so inconvenienced by the payment of rates as to be disfranchised rather than pay them; the other resisting present temptations and saving money, with the view, among other ends, of paying rates and becoming electors. Trace these respective traits to their sources, and it becomes manifest that, on the average, the pecuniarily improvident must be also the politically improvident; and that the politically provident must be far more numerous among those who are pecuniarily provident. Hence, it is folly to throw aside a regulation under which these spontaneously separate themselves—severally disfranchise themselves and enfranchise themselves.

{387}

“THE COLLECTIVE WISDOM.”

[_First published in_ The Reader _for April 15, 1865_.]

A test of senatorial capacity is a desideratum. We rarely learn how near the mark or how wide of the mark the calculations of statesmen are: the slowness and complexity of social changes, hindering, as they do, the definite comparisons of results with anticipations. Occasionally, however, parliamentary decisions admit of being definitely valued. One which was arrived at a few weeks ago furnished a measure of legislative judgment too significant to be passed by.

On the edge of the Cotswolds, just above the valley of the Severn, occur certain springs, which, as they happen to be at the end of the longest of the hundred streams which join to form the Thames, have been called by a poetical fiction “the sources of the Thames.” Names, even when poetical fictions, suggest conclusions; and conclusions drawn from words instead of facts are equally apt to influence conduct. Thus it happened that when, recently, there was formed a company for supplying Cheltenham and some other places from these springs, great opposition arose. The _Times_ published a paragraph headed “Threatened Absorption of the Thames,” stating that the application of {388} this company to Parliament had “caused some little consternation in the city of Oxford, and will, doubtless, throughout the valley of the Thames;” and that “such a measure, if carried out, will diminish the water of that noble river a million of gallons per day.” A million is an alarming word—suggests something necessarily vast. Translating words into thoughts, however, would have calmed the fears of the _Times_ paragraphist. Considering that a million gallons would be contained by a room fifty-six feet cube, the nobility of the Thames would not be much endangered by the deduction. The simple fact is, that the current of the Thames, above the point at which the tides influence it, discharges in twenty-four hours eight hundred times this amount!

When the bill of this proposed water-company was brought before the House of Commons for second reading, it became manifest that the imaginations of our rulers were affected by such expressions as the “sources of the Thames,” and “a million gallons daily,” in much the same way as the imaginations of the ignorant. Though the quantity of water proposed to be taken bears, to the quantity which runs over Teddington weir, about the same ratio that a yard bears to half a mile, it was thought by many members that its loss would be a serious evil. No method of measurement would be accurate enough to detect the difference between the Thames as it now is, and the Thames _minus_ the Cerney springs; and yet it was gravely stated in the House that, were the Thames diminished in the proposed way, “the proportion of sewage to pure water would be seriously increased.” Taking a minute out of twelve hours, would be taking as large a proportion as the Cheltenham people wish to take from the Thames. Nevertheless, it was contended that to let Cheltenham have this quantity would be “to rob the towns along the banks of the Thames of their rights,” Though, of the Thames flowing by each of these towns, some 999 parts out of 1,000 pass by unused, it was held {389} that a great injustice would be committed were one or two of these 999 parts appropriated by the inhabitants of a town who can now obtain daily but four gallons of foul water per head!

But the apparent inability thus shown to think of causes and effects in something like their true quantitative relations, was still more conspicuously shown. It was stated by several members that the Thames Navigation Commissioners would have opposed the bill if the commission had not been bankrupt; and this hypothetical opposition appeared to have weight. If we may trust the reports, the House of Commons listened with gravity to the assertion of one of its members, that, if the Cerney springs were diverted, “shoals and flats would be created.” Not a laugh nor a cry of “Oh! oh,” appears to have been produced by the prophecy, that the volume and scouring power of the Thames would be seriously affected by taking away from it twelve gallons per second! The whole quantity which these springs supply would be delivered by a current moving through a pipe one foot in diameter at the rate of less than two miles per hour. Yet, when it was said that the navigability of the Thames would be injuriously affected by this deduction, there were no shouts of derision. On the contrary, the House rejected the Cheltenham Water Bill by a majority of one hundred and eighteen to eighty-eight. It is true that the data were not presented in the above shape. But the remarkable fact is that, even in the absence of a specific comparison, it should not have been at once seen that the water of springs which drain but a few square miles at most, can be but an inappreciable part of the water which runs out of the Thames basin, extending over several thousand square miles. In itself, this is a matter of small moment. It interests us here simply as an example of legislative judgment. The decision is one of those small holes through which a wide prospect may be seen, and a disheartening prospect it is. In a very simple case there {390} is here displayed a scarcely credible inability to see how much effect will follow so much cause; and yet the business of the assembly exhibiting this inability is that of dealing with causes and effects of an extremely involved kind. All the processes going on in society arise from the concurrences and conflicts of human actions, which are determined in their nature and amounts by the human constitution as it now is—are as much results of natural causation as any other results, and equally imply definite quantitative relations between causes and effects. Every legislative act presupposes a diagnosis and a prognosis; both of them involving estimations of social forces and the work done by them. Before it can be remedied, an evil must be traced to its source in the motives and ideas of men as they are, living under the social conditions which exist—a problem requiring that the actions tending toward the result shall be identified, and that there shall be something like a true idea of the quantities of their effects as well as the qualities. A further estimation has then to be made of the kinds and degrees of influence that will be exerted by the additional factors which the proposed law will set in motion: what will be the resultants produced by the new forces coöperating with preëxisting forces—a problem still more complicated than the other.

We are quite prepared to hear the unhesitating reply, that men incapable of forming an approximately true judgment on a matter of simple physical causation may yet be very good law-makers. So obvious will this be thought by most, that a tacit implication to the contrary will seem to them absurd; and that it will seem to them absurd is one of the many indications of the profound ignorance that prevails. It is true that mere empirical generalizations which men draw from their dealings with their fellows suffice to give them some ideas of the proximate effects which new enactments will work; and, seeing these, they think they see as far as needful. Discipline in physical {391} science, however, would help to show them the futility of calculating consequences based on such simple data. And if there needs proof that calculations of consequences so based are futile, we have it in the enormous labour annually entailed on the Legislature in trying to undo the mischiefs it has previously done.

Should any say that it is useless to dwell on this incompetency, seeing that the House of Commons contains the select of the nation, than whose judgments no better are to be had, we reply that there may be drawn two inferences which have important practical bearings. In the first place, we are shown how completely the boasted intellectual discipline of our upper classes fails to give them the power of following out in thought, with any correctness, the sequences of even simple phenomena, much less those of complex phenomena. And, in the second place, we may draw the corollary, that if the sequences of those complex phenomena which societies display, difficult beyond all others to trace out, are so unlikely to be understood by them, they may advantageously be restricted in their interferences with such sequences.

In one direction, especially, shall we see reason to resist the extension of legislative action. There has of late been urged the proposal that the class contemptuously described as dividing its energies between business and bethels shall have its education regulated by the class which might, with equal justice, be described as dividing its energies between club-rooms and game preserves. This scheme does not seem to us a hopeful one. Considering that during the last half century our society has been remoulded by ideas that have come from the proposed pupil, and have had to overcome the dogged resistance of the proposed teacher, the propriety of the arrangement is not obvious. And if the propriety of the arrangement is not obvious on the face of it, still less obvious does it become when the competency of {392} the proposed teacher comes to be measured. British intelligence, as distilled through the universities and re-distilled into the House of Commons, is a product admitting of such great improvement in quality, that we should be sorry to see the present method of manufacture extended and permanently established.

{393}

POLITICAL FETICHISM.

[_First published in_ The Reader _for June 10, 1865_.]

A Hindoo, who, before beginning his day’s work, salaams to a bit of plastic clay, out of which, in a few moments, he has extemporized a god in his own image, is an object of amazement to the European. We read with surprise bordering on scepticism of worship done by machinery, and of prayers which owe their supposed efficacy to the motion given by the wind to the papers they are written on. When told how certain of the Orientals, if displeased with their wooden deities, take them down and beat them, men laugh and wonder.

Why should men wonder? Kindred superstitions are exhibited by their fellows every day—superstitions that are, indeed, not so gross, but are intrinsically of the same nature. There is an idolatry which, instead of carving the object of its worship out of dead matter, takes humanity for its raw material, and expects, by moulding a mass of this humanity into a particular form, to give it powers or properties quite different from those it had before it was moulded. In the one case as in the other, the raw material is, as much as may be, disguised. There are decorative appliances by which the savage helps himself to think that he has something more than wood before him; and the {394} citizen gives to the political agencies he has helped to create, such imposing externals and distinctive names expressive of power, as serve to strengthen his belief in the benefits prayed for. Some faint reflection of that “divinity” which “doth hedge a king” spreads down through every state department to the lowest ranks; so that, in the eyes of the people, even the policeman puts on along with his uniform a certain indefinable power. Nay, the mere dead symbols of authority excite reverence in spite of better knowledge. A legal form of words seems to have something especially binding in it; and there is a preternatural efficiency about a government stamp.

The parallelism is still more conspicuous between the persistency of faith in the two cases, notwithstanding perpetual disappointments. It is difficult to perceive how graven images, that have been thrashed for not responding to their worshipper’s desires, should still be reverenced and petitioned; but the difficulty of conceiving this is diminished when we remember how, in their turns, all the idols in our political pantheon undergo castigations for failing to do what was expected of them, and are nevertheless daily looked up to in the trustful hope that future prayers will be answered. The stupidity, the slowness, the perversity, the dishonesty of officialism, in one or other of its embodiments, are demonstrated afresh in almost every newspaper that issues. Probably half the leading articles written have for texts some absurd official blunder, some exasperating official delay, some astounding official corruption, some gross official injustice, some incredible official extravagance. And yet these whippings, in which balked expectation continually vents itself, are immediately followed by renewed faith: the benefits that have not come are still hoped for, and prayers for others are put up. Along with proof that the old State-machines are in themselves inert, and owe such powers as they seem to have to the public opinion which sets their parts in motion, there are continually proposed {395} new State-machines of the same type as the old. This inexhaustible credulity is counted on by men of the widest political experience. Lord Palmerston, who probably knows his public better than any other man, lately said, in reply to a charge made in the House—“I am quite convinced that no person belonging to the government, in whatever department he may be, high or low, would be guilty of any breach of faith in regard to any matter confided to him.” To assert as much in the face of facts continually disclosed, implies that Lord Palmerston knows well that men’s faith in officialism survives all adverse evidence.

In which case are the hopes from State-agency realized? One might have thought that the vital interests at stake would have kept the all-essential apparatus for administering justice up to its work; but they do not. On the one hand, here is a man wrongly convicted, and afterward proved to be innocent, who is “pardoned” for an offence he did not commit; and has this as consolation for his unmerited suffering. On the other hand, here is a man whose grave delinquencies a Lord Chancellor overlooks, on partial restitution being made—nay, more, countenances the granting of a pension to him. Proved guilt is rewarded, while proved innocence is left without compensation for pains borne and fortunes blasted! This marvellous antithesis, if not often fully paralleled in the doings of officialism as administrator of justice, is, in endless cases, paralleled in part. The fact that imprisonment is the sentence on a boy for stealing a pennyworth of fruit, while thousands of pounds may be transferred from a public into a private purse without any positive punishment being adjudged, is an anomaly kept in countenance by numerous other judicial acts. Theoretically, the State is a protector of the rights of subjects; practically, the State continually plays the part of aggressor. Though it is a recognized principle of equity that he who makes a false charge shall pay the costs of the {396} defence, yet, until quite recently, the Crown has persisted in refusing to pay the costs of citizens against whom it has brought false charges. Nay, worse, deliberate attempts used to be made to establish charges by corrupt means. Within the memory of those now living, the Crown, in excise-prosecutions, bribed juries. When the verdict was for the Crown, the custom was to give double fees; and the practice was not put an end to until the counsel for a defendant announced in open court that the jury should have double fees if their verdict was for his client!

Not alone in the superior parts of our judicial apparatus is this ill-working of officialism so thrust on men’s notice as to have become proverbial; not alone in the life-long delays and ruinous expenses which have made Chancery a word of dread; not alone in the extravagances of bankruptcy courts, which lead creditors carefully to shun them; not alone in that uncertainty which makes men submit to gross injustice rather than risk the still grosser injustice which the law will, as likely as not, inflict on them; but down through the lower divisions of the judicial apparatus are all kinds of failures and absurdities daily displayed. If may be fairly urged in mitigation of the sarcasms current respecting the police, that among so many men cases of misconduct and inefficiency must be frequent; but we might have expected the orders under which they act to be just and well considered. Very little inquiry shows that they are not. There is a story current that, in the accounts of an Irish official, a small charge for a telegram which an emergency had called for, was objected to at the head office in London, and, after a long correspondence, finally allowed, but with the understanding that in future no such item would be passed, unless the department in London had authorized it! We cannot vouch for this story, but we can vouch for one which gives credibility to it. A friend who had been robbed by his cook went to the police-office, detailed the case, gave good reasons for inferring the direction of her {397} flight, and requested the police to telegraph, that she might be intercepted. He was told, however, that they could not do this without authority; and this authority was not to be had without a long delay. The result was that the thief, who had gone to the place supposed, escaped, and has not since been heard of. Take another function assumed by the police—the regulation of traffic. Daily, all through London, ten thousand fast-going vehicles, with hard-pressed men of business in them, are stopped by a sprinkle of slow-going carts and wagons. Greater speed in these comparatively few carts and wagons, or limitation of them to early and late hours, would immensely diminish the evil. But, instead of dealing with these really great hinderances to traffic, the police deal with that which is practically no hindrance. Men with advertisement-boards were lately forbidden to walk about, on the groundless plea that they are in the way; and incapables, prevented thus from getting a shilling a day, were driven into the ranks of paupers and thieves. Worse cases may be observed. For years past there has been a feud between the police and the orange-girls, who are chased hither and thither because they are said to be obstructions to foot-passengers. Meanwhile, in some of the chief thoroughfares, may constantly be seen men standing with toys, which they delude children and their parents into buying by pretending that the toys make certain sounds which they themselves make; and when the police, quietly watching this obtainment of money under false pretences, are asked why they do not interfere, they reply that they have no orders. Admirable contrast! Trade dishonestly, and you may collect a small crowd on the pavement without complaint being made that you interrupt the traffic. Trade honestly, and you shall be driven from the pavement-edge as an impediment—shall be driven to dishonesty!

One might have thought that the notorious inefficiency of officialism as a protector against injustice would have {398} made men sceptical of its efficiency in other things. If here, where citizens have such intense interests in getting a function well discharged, they have failed through all these centuries in getting it well discharged—if this agency, which is in theory the guardian of each citizen, is in so many cases his enemy, that going to law is suggestive of impoverishment and possible ruin; it might have been supposed that officialism would scarcely be expected to work well where the interests at stake are less intense. But so strong is political fetichism, that neither these experiences, nor the parallel experiences which every state-department affords, diminish men’s faith. For years past there has been thrust before them the fact that, of the funds of Greenwich Hospital, one-third goes to maintain the sailors, while two-thirds go in administration; but this and other such facts do not stop their advocacy of more public administrations. The parable of straining at gnats and swallowing camels they see absolutely paralleled by officialism, in the red-tape particularity with which all minute regulations are enforced, and the astounding carelessness with which the accounts of a whole department, like the Patent Office, are left utterly uncontrolled; and yet we continue to hear men propose government-audits as checks for mercantile companies! No diminution of confidence seems to result from disclosure of stupidities which even a wild imagination would scarcely have thought possible: instance the method of promotion lately made public, under which a clerk in one branch of a department takes the higher duties of some deceased superior clerk, without any rise of salary, while some clerk in another branch of the department gets the rise of salary without any increase in his responsibilities!

Endless as are these evils and absurdities, and surviving generation after generation as they do, spite of commissions and reports and debates, there is an annual crop of new schemes for government agencies which are expected {399} to work just as legislators propose they shall work. With a system of army-promotion which insures an organized incompetence, but which survives perpetual protests; with a notoriously ill-constituted admiralty, of which the doings are stock-subjects of ridicule; with a church that maintains effete formulas, notwithstanding almost universal repudiation of them; there are daily demands for more law-established appliances. With building acts under which arise houses less stable than those of the last generation; with coal-mine inspection that does not prevent coal-mine explosions; with railway inspection that has for its accompaniment plenty of railway accidents—with these and other such failures continually displayed, there still prevails what M. Guizot rightly calls that “gross delusion, a belief in the sovereign power of political machinery.”

A great service would be done by any man who would analyze the legislation, say of the last half century, and compare the expected results of Acts of Parliament with their proved results. He might make it an instructive revelation by simply taking all the preambles, and observing how many of the evils to be rectified were evils produced by preceding enactments. His chief difficulty would be that of getting within any moderate compass the immense number of cases in which the benefits anticipated were not achieved, while unanticipated disasters were caused. And then he might effectively close his digest by showing what immense advantages have, in instance after instance, followed the entire cessation of legislative action. Not, indeed, that such an accumulation of cases, however multitudinous and however conclusive, would have an appreciable effect on the average mind. Political fetichism will continue so long as men remain without scientific discipline—so long as they recognize only proximate causes, and never think of the remoter and more general causes by which their special agencies are set in motion. Until the thing which now usurps the name of education {400} has been dethroned by a true education, having for its end to teach men the nature of the world they live in, new political delusions will grow up as fast as old ones are extinguished. But there is a select class existing, and a larger select class arising, on whom a work of the kind described would have an effect, and for whom it would be well worth while to write it.

{401}

SPECIALIZED ADMINISTRATION.

[_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for December 1871_.]

It is contrary to common-sense that fish should be more difficult to get at the sea-side than in London; but it is true, nevertheless. No less contrary to common-sense seems the truth that though, in the West Highlands, oxen are to be seen everywhere, no beef can be had without sending two or three hundred miles to Glasgow for it. Rulers who, guided by common-sense, tried to suppress certain opinions by forbidding the books containing them, never dreamed that their interdicts would cause the diffusion of these opinions; and rulers who, guided by common-sense, forbade excessive rates of interest, never dreamed that they were thereby making the terms harder for borrowers than before. When printing replaced copying, any one who had prophesied that the number of persons engaged in the manufacture of books would immensely increase, as a consequence, would have been thought wholly devoid of common-sense. And equally devoid of common-sense would have been thought any one who, when railways were displacing coaches, said that the number of horses employed in bringing passengers and goods to and from railways, would be greater than the number directly displaced by railways. Such cases might {402} be multiplied. Whoso remembers that, among quite simple phenomena, causes produce effects which are sometimes utterly at variance with anticipation, will see how frequently this must happen among complex phenomena. That a balloon is made to rise by the same force which makes a stone fall; that the melting of ice may be greatly retarded by wrapping the ice in a blanket; that the simplest way of setting potassium on fire is to throw it into the water; are truths which those who know only the outside aspect of things would regard as manifest falsehoods. And, if, when the factors are few and simple, the results may be so absolutely opposed to seeming probability, much more will they be often thus opposed when the factors are many and involved. The saying of the French respecting political events, that “it is always the unexpected which happens”—a saying which they have been abundantly re-illustrating of late—is one which legislators, and those who urge on schemes of legislation, should have ever in mind. Let us pause a moment to contemplate a seemingly-impossible set of results which social forces have wrought out.

Up to quite recent days, Language was held to be of supernatural origin. That this elaborate apparatus of symbols, so marvellously adapted for the conveyance of thought from mind to mind, was a miraculous gift, seemed unquestionable. No possible alternative way could be thought of by which there had come into existence these multitudinous assemblages of words of various orders, genera, and species, moulded into fitness for articulating with one another, and capable of being united from moment to moment into ever-new combinations, which represent with precision each idea as it arises. The supposition that, in the slow progress of things, Language grew out of the continuous use of signs—at first mainly mimetic, afterward partly mimetic, partly vocal, and at length almost wholly vocal—was an hypothesis never even conceived by men in early stages of civilization; and when {403} the hypothesis was at length conceived, it was thought too monstrous an absurdity to be even entertained. Yet this monstrous absurdity proves to be true. Already the evolution of Language has been traced back far enough to show that all its particular words, and all its leading traits of structure, have had a natural genesis; and day by day investigation makes it more manifest that its genesis has been natural from the beginning. Not only has it been natural from the beginning, but it has been spontaneous. No language is a cunningly-devised scheme of a ruler or body of legislators. There was no council of savages to invent the parts of speech, and decide on what principles they should be used. Nay, more. Going on without any authority or appointed regulation, this natural process went on without any man observing that it was going on. Solely under pressure of the need for communicating their ideas and feelings—solely in pursuit of their personal interests—men little by little developed speech in absolute unconsciousness that they were doing any thing more than pursuing their personal interests. Even now the unconsciousness continues. Take the whole population of the globe, and there is probably not above one in a million who knows that in his daily talk he is carrying on the process by which Language has been evolved.