On Compromise | Page 5

which at least testified
to the existence among us, in a very considerable degree, of a vivid belief in the
possibility of certain broad general theories being true and right, as well as in the
obligation of making them lights to practical conduct and desire. People a generation ago
had eager sympathy with Hungary, with Italy, with Poland, because they were deeply
impressed by the doctrine of nationalities. They had again a generous and energetic
hatred of such an institution as the negro slavery of America, because justice and
humanity and religion were too real and potent forces within their breasts to allow them
to listen to those political considerations by which American statesmen used to justify
temporising and compromise. They had strong feelings about Parliamentary Reform,
because they were penetrated by the principle that the possession of political power by
the bulk of a society is the only effective security against sinister government; or else by
the principle that participation in public activity, even in the modest form of an exercise
of the elective franchise, is an elevating and instructing agency; or perhaps by the
principle that justice demands that those who are compelled to obey laws and pay

national taxes should have a voice in making the one and imposing the other.
It may be said that the very fate of these aspirations has had a blighting effect on public
enthusiasm and the capacity of feeling it. Not only have most of them now been fulfilled,
and so passed from aspiration to actuality, but the results of their fulfilment have been so
disappointing as to make us wonder whether it is really worth while to pray, when to
have our prayers granted carries the world so very slight a way forward. The Austrian is
no longer in Italy; the Pope has ceased to be master in Rome; the patriots of Hungary are
now in possession of their rights, and have become friends of their old oppressors; the
negro slave has been transformed into an American citizen. At home, again, the gods
have listened to our vows. Parliament has been reformed, and the long-desired
mechanical security provided for the voter's freedom. We no longer aspire after all these
things, you may say, because our hopes have been realised and our dreams have come
true. It is possible that the comparatively prosaic results before our eyes at the end of all
have thrown a chill over our political imagination. What seemed so glorious when it was
far off, seems perhaps a little poor now that it is near; and this has damped the wing of
political fancy. The old aspirations have vanished, and no new ones have arisen in their
place. Be the cause what it may, I should express the change in this way, that the existing
order of facts, whatever it may be, now takes a hardly disputed precedence with us over
ideas, and that the coarsest political standard is undoubtingly and finally applied over the
whole realm of human thought.
The line taken up by the press and the governing classes of England during the American
Civil War may serve to illustrate the kind of mood which we conceive to be gaining
firmer hold than ever of the national mind. Those who sympathised with the Southern
States listened only to political arguments, and very narrow and inefficient political
arguments, as it happened, when they ought to have seen that here was an issue which
involved not only political ideas, but moral and religious ideas as well. That is to say, the
ordinary political tests were not enough to reveal the entire significance of the crisis, nor
were the political standards proper for measuring the whole of the expediencies hanging
in the balance. The conflict could not be adequately gauged by such questions as whether
the Slave States had or had not a constitutional right to establish an independent
government; whether the Free States were animated by philanthropy or by love of empire;
whether it was to the political advantage of England that the American Union should be
divided and consequently weakened. Such questions were not necessarily improper in
themselves, and we can imagine circumstances in which they might be not only proper
but decisive. But, the circumstances being what they were, the narrower expediencies of
ordinary politics were outweighed by one of those supreme and indefeasible expediencies
which are classified as moral. These are, in other words, the higher, wider, more binding,
and transcendent part of the master art of social wellbeing.
Here was only one illustration of the growing tendency to substitute the narrowest
political point of view for all the other ways of regarding the course of human affairs, and
to raise the limitations which practical exigencies may happen to set to the application of
general