Everywhere we shall find in our thinking a sort of warp inclining it aside of the real mark, and thus depriving it of value. The common run of peers who write to the Times about reform of the House of Lords one would not much expect, perhaps, to “understand the signs of this time.” But even the Duke of Argyll, delivering his mind about the land-question in Scotland, is like one seeing, thinking, and speaking in some other planet than ours. A man of even Mr. John Morley’s gifts is provoked with the House of Lords, and straightway he declares himself against the existence of a Second Chamber at all; although – if there be such a thing as demonstration in politics – the working of the American Senate demonstrates a well-composed Second Chamber to be the very need and safeguard of a modern democracy. What a singular twist, again, in a man of Mr. Frederic Harrison’s intellectual power, not, perhaps, to have in the exuberance of youthful energy weighted himself for the race of life by taking up a grotesque old French pedant upon his shoulders, but to have insisted, in middle age, in taking up the Protestant Dissenters too; and now, when he is becoming elderly, it seems as if nothing would serve him but he must add the Peace Society to his load! How perverse, yet again, in Mr. Herbert Spencer, at the very moment when past neglects and present needs are driving men to co-operation, to making the community act for the public good in its collective and corporate character of the State, how perverse to seize this occasion for promulgating the extremest doctrine of individualism; and not only to drag this dead horse along the public road himself, but to induce Mr. Auberon Herbert to devote his days to flogging it!
We think thus unaccountably because we are living in an unnatural and strained state. We are like people whose vision is deranged by their looking through a turbid and distorting atmosphere, or whose movements are warped by the cramping of some unnatural constraint. Let us just ask ourselves, looking at the thing as people simply desirous of finding the truth, how men who saw and thought straight would proceed, how an American, for instance – whose seeing and thinking has, I have said, if not in all matters, yet commonly in political and social concerns, this quality of straightness – how an American would proceed in the three confusions which I have given as instances of the many confusions now embarrassing us: the confusion of our foreign affairs, the confusion of the House of Commons, the confusion of Ireland. And then, when we have discovered the kind of proceeding natural in these cases, let us ask ourselves, with the same sincerity, what is the cause of that warp of mind hindering most of us from seeing straight in them, and also where is our remedy.
The Angra Pequeña business has lately called forth from all sides many and harsh animadversions upon Lord Granville, who is charged with the direction of our foreign affairs. I shall not swell the chorus of complainers. Nothing has happened but what was to be expected. Long ago I remarked that it is not Lord Granville himself who determines our foreign policy and shapes the declarations of Government concerning it, but a power behind Lord Granville. He and his colleagues would call it the power of public opinion. It is really the opinion of that great ruling class amongst us on which Liberal Governments have hitherto had to depend for support – the Philistines or middle class. It is not, I repeat, with Lord Granville in his natural state and force that a foreign Government has to deal; it is with Lord Granville waiting in devout expectation to see how the cat will jump – and that cat the British Philistine! When Prince Bismarck deals with Lord Granville, he finds that he is not dealing mind to mind with an intelligent equal, but that he is dealing with a tumult of likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, stock-jobbing intrigues, missionary interests, quidnuncs, newspapers – dealing, in short, with ignorance behind his intelligent equal. Yet ignorant as our Philistine middle class may be, its volitions on foreign affairs would have more intelligibility and consistency if uttered through a spokesman of their own class. Coming through a nobleman like Lord Granville, who has neither the thoughts, habits, nor ideals of the middle class, and yet wishes to act as proctor for it, they have every disadvantage. He cannot even do justice to the Philistine mind, such as it is, for which he is spokesman; he apprehends it uncertainly and expounds it ineffectively. And so with the house and lineage of Murdstone thundering at him (and these, again, through Lord Derby as their interpreter) from the Cape, and the inexorable Prince Bismarck thundering at him from Berlin, the thing naturally ends by Lord Granville at last wringing his adroit hands and ejaculating disconsolately: “It is a misunderstanding altogether!” Even yet more to be pitied, perhaps, was the hard case of Lord Kimberley after the Majuba Hill disaster. Who can ever forget him, poor man, studying the faces of the representatives of the dissenting interest and exclaiming: “A sudden thought strikes me! May we not be incurring the sin of blood-guiltiness?” To this has come the tradition of Lord Somers, the Whig oligarchy of 1688, and all Lord Macaulay’s Pantheon.
I said that a source of strength to America, in political and social concerns, was the homogeneous character of American society. An American statesman speaks with more effect the mind of his fellow-citizens from his being in sympathy with it, understanding and sharing it. Certainly one must admit that if, in our country of classes, the Philistine middle class is really the inspirer of our foreign policy, that policy would at least be expounded more forcibly if it had a Philistine for its spokesman. Yet I think the true moral to be drawn is rather, perhaps, this: that our foreign policy would be improved if our whole society were homogeneous.
As to the confusion in the House of Commons, what, apart from defective rules of procedure, are its causes? First and foremost, no doubt, the temper and action of the Irish members. But putting this cause of confusion out of view for a moment, every one can see that the House of Commons is far too large, and that it undertakes a quantity of business which belongs more properly to local assemblies. The confusion from these causes is one which is constantly increasing, because, as the country becomes fuller and more awakened, business multiplies, and more and more members of the House are inclined to take part in it. Is not the cure for this found in a course like that followed in America, in having a much less numerous House of Commons, and in making over a large part of its business to local assemblies, elected, as the House of Commons itself will henceforth be elected, by household suffrage? I have often said that we seem to me to need at present, in England, three things in especial: more equality, education for the middle classes, and a thorough municipal system. A system of local assemblies is but the natural complement of a thorough municipal system. Wholes neither too large nor too small, not necessarily of equal population by any means, but with characters rendering them in themselves fairly homogeneous and coherent, are the fit units for choosing these local assemblies. Such units occur immediately to one’s mind in the provinces of Ireland, the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, Wales north and south, groups of English counties such as present themselves in the circuits of the judges or under the names of East Anglia or the Midlands. No one will suppose me guilty of the pedantry of here laying out definitive districts; I do but indicate such units as may enable the reader to conceive the kind of basis required for the local assemblies of which I am speaking. The business of these districts would be more advantageously done in assemblies of the kind; they would form a useful school for the increasing number of aspirants to public life, and the House of Commons would be relieved.
The strain in Ireland would be relieved too, and by natural and safe means. Irishmen are to be found, who, in desperation at the present state of their country, cry out for making Ireland independent and separate, with a national Parliament in Dublin, with her own foreign office and diplomacy, her own army and navy, her own tariff, coinage and currency. This is manifestly impracticable. But here again let us look at what is done by people who in politics think straight and see clear; let us observe what is done in the United States. The Government at Washington reserves matters of imperial concern, matters such as those just enumerated, which cannot be relinquished without relinquishing the unity of the empire. Neither does it allow one great South to be constituted, or one great West, with a Southern Parliament, or a Western. Provinces that are too large are broken up, as Virginia has been broken up. But the several States are nevertheless real and important wholes, each with its own legislature; and to each the control, within its own borders, of all except imperial concerns is