IV.—Digressive, and may be skipped without mutilating
the History.
I STOP here to address any of the following
characters, should he perchance read these
memoirs:
-
You, Mr. Statesman—if there be such;
- Mr. Pseudo-Statesman, Placeman, Party
Leader, Wirepuller;
- Mr. Amateur Statesman, Dilettante Lord,
Civil Servant;
- Mr. Clubman, Littérateur, Newspaper
Scribe;
- Mr. People's Candidate, Demagogue,
Fenian Spouter;
or whoever you may be, professing to know
aught or do anything in matters of policy,
consider, what I am sure you have never
fairly weighed, the condition of a man whose
clearest notion of Government is derived from
the Police! Imagine one who had never seen
a polyp trying to construct an ideal of the
animal, from a single tentacle swinging out
from the tangle of weed in which the rest was
wrapped! How then any more can you
fancy that a man to whose sight and knowledge
the only part of government practically
exposed is the strong process of
police, shall form a proper conception of the
functions, reasons, operations, and relations
of Government; or even build up an ideal of
anything but a haughty, unreasonable,
antagonistic, tax-imposing FORCE! And how can
you rule such a being except as you rule a
dog, by that which alone he understands—
the dog-whip of the constable! Given in a
country a majority of creatures like these, and
surely despotism is its properest complement.
But when they exist, as they exist in England
to-day, in hundreds of thousands, in town
and country, think what a complication they
introduce into your theoretic free system of
government. Acts of Parliament passed by
a "freely-elected'' House of Commons, and an
hereditary House—of Lords under the threats
of freely-electing citizens, however pure in
intention and correct in principle, will not
seem to him to be the resultants of every wish
in the community so much as dictations by
superior strength. To these the obedience he
will render will not be the loving assent of his
heart, but a begrudged concession to circumstance.
Your awe-invested legislature is not
viewed as his friend and brother-helper, but
his tyrant. Therefore the most natural bent
of his workman-statesmanship—a rough,
bungling affair—will be to tame you—you who
ought to be his Counsellor and Friend. When
he finds that your legislative action exerts
upon him a repressive and restraining force
he will curse you as its author, because he
sees not the springs you are working. Should
he even be a little more advanced in knowledge
than our friend Ginx, and learn that he
helps to elect the Parliament to make laws on
behalf of himself and his fellow-citizens, he
will scarce trust the assembly which is supposed
to represent him. Will he, like a good
citizen and a politic, accept with dignity and
self-control the decision of a majority against
his prejudices: or will he not regard the whole
Wittenagemote with suspicion, contempt, or
even hatred? See him rush madly to Trafalgar
Square meetings, Hyde Park demonstrations,
perhaps to Lord George Gordon Riots, as if
there were no less perilous means of publishing
his opinions! There wily men may lead
his unconscious intellect, and stir his passions,
and direct his forces against his own—and his
children's good.
Did it ever occur to you, or any of you, how
many voters cannot read, and how many
more, though they can read, are unable to
apprehend reasons of statesmanship?—that
even newspapers cannot inform them, since
they have not the elementary knowledge
needed for the comprehension of those things
which are discussed in them; nay, that for
want of understanding the same they may
terribly distort political aims and
consequences?
Might it not be worth while for you,
gentlemen—may it not be your duty to devise
ways and means for conveying such elementary
instruction by good street-preachers on
politics and economy, or even political bible-women or colporteurs, and so to make clear to
the understanding of every voter what are the
reasons and aims of every act of Legislation,
Home Administration, and Foreign Policy?
If you do not find out some way to do this he
may turn round upon you—I hope he may—
and insist on annually-elected parliaments,
and thus oblige ambitious state-mongers, in
the rivalry of place, to come to him and
declare more often their wishes and objects.
Other attractions may be found in that solution:
such as the untying of some knots of
electoral difficulty, and removing incitements
to corruption. Ten thousand pounds for one
year's power were a high price even to a
contractor. Think then whether at any cost
some general political education must not be
attempted, since there is a spirit breathing on
the waters, and how it shall convulse them is
no indifferent matter to you or to me. Everywhere
around us are unhewn rocks stirred
with a strange motion. Leave these chaotic
fragments of humanity to be hewn into rough
shape by coarse artists seeking only a petty
profit, unhandy, immeasurably impudent; or
dress them by your teaching—teaching which
is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient
function of Government, which ought to be the
most lofty ambition of statesmanship—to be
civic corner-stones polished after the
similitude of a palace.
