Mark Rutherfords Deliverance | Page 2

my evenings being spent at the House.
At first I was rather interested, but after a while the occupation became
tedious beyond measure, and for this reason. In a discussion of any
importance about fifty members perhaps would take part, and had made
up their minds beforehand to speak. There could not possibly be more
than three or four reasons for or against the motion, and as the
knowledge that what the intending orator had to urge had been urged a
dozen times before on that very night never deterred him from urging it
again, the same arguments, diluted, muddled, and mispresented,
recurred with the most wearisome iteration.
The public outside knew nothing or very little of the real House of
Commons, and the manner in which time was squandered there, for the
reports were all of them much abbreviated. In fact, I doubt whether
anybody but the Speaker, and one or two other persons in the same

position as myself, really felt with proper intensity what the waste was,
and how profound was the vanity of members and the itch for
expression; for even the reporters were relieved at stated intervals, and
the impression on their minds was not continuous. Another evil result
of these attendances at the House was a kind of political scepticism.
Over and over again I have seen a Government arraigned for its
conduct of foreign affairs. The evidence lay in masses of
correspondence which it would have required some days to master, and
the verdict, after knowing the facts, ought to have depended upon the
application of principles, each of which admitted a contrary principle
for which much might be pleaded. There were not fifty members in the
House with the leisure or the ability to understand what it was which
had actually happened, and if they had understood it, they would not
have had the wit to see what was the rule which ought to have decided
the case. Yet, whether they understood or not, they were obliged to vote,
and what was worse, the constituencies also had to vote, and so the
gravest matters were settled in utter ignorance. This has often been
adduced as an argument against an extended suffrage, but, if it is an
argument against anything, it is an argument against intrusting the
aristocracy and even the House itself with the destinies of the nation;
for no dock labourer could possibly be more entirely empty of all
reasons for action than the noble lords, squires, lawyers, and railway
directors whom I have seen troop to the division bell. There is
something deeper than this scepticism, but the scepticism is the easiest
and the most obvious conclusion to an open mind dealing so closely
and practically with politics as it was my lot to do at this time of my
life. Men must be governed, and when it comes to the question, by
whom? I, for one, would far sooner in the long run trust the people at
large than I would the few, who in everything which relates to
Government are as little instructed as the many and more difficult to
move. The very fickleness of the multitude, the theme of such constant
declamation, is so far good that it proves a susceptibility to impressions
to which men hedged round by impregnable conventionalities cannot
yield. {1}
When I was living in the country, the pure sky and the landscape
formed a large portion of my existence, so large that much of myself
depended on it, and I wondered how men could be worth anything if

they could never see the face of nature. For this belief my early training
on the "Lyrical Ballads" is answerable. When I came to London the
same creed survived, and I was for ever thirsting for intercourse with
my ancient friend. Hope, faith, and God seemed impossible amidst the
smoke of the streets. It was now very difficult for me, except at rare
opportunities, to leave London, and it was necessary for me, therefore,
to understand that all that was essential for me was obtainable there,
even though I should never see anything more than was to be seen in
journeying through the High Street, Camden Town, Tottenham Court
Road, the Seven Dials, and Whitehall. I should have been guilty of a
simple surrender to despair if I had not forced myself to make this
discovery. I cannot help saying, with all my love for the literature of
my own day, that it has an evil side to it which none know except the
millions of sensitive persons who are condemned to exist in great
towns. It might be imagined from much of this literature that true
humanity and a belief in God are the offspring of the hills or the ocean;
and by implication, if