The English Constitution | Page 8

statesmen have
now especially a great responsibility if they raise questions which will
excite the lower orders of mankind; if they raise questions on which
those orders are likely to be wrong; if they raise questions on which the
interest of those orders is not identical with, or is antagonistic to, the
whole interest of the State, they will have done the greatest harm they
can do. The future of this country depends on the happy working of a
delicate experiment, and they will have done all they could to vitiate
that experiment. Just when it is desirable that ignorant men, new to
politics, should have good issues, and only good issues, put before
them, these statesmen will have suggested bad issues. They will have
suggested topics which will bind the poor as a class together; topics
which will excite them against the rich; topics the discussion of which
in the only form in which that discussion reaches their ear will be to
make them think that some new law can make them comfortable--that
it is the present law which makes them uncomfortable--that
Government has at its disposal an inexhaustible fund out of which it
can give to those who now want without also creating elsewhere other
and greater wants. If the first work of the poor voters is to try to create
a "poor man's paradise," as poor men are apt to fancy that Paradise, and
as they are apt to think they can create it, the great political trial now
beginning will simply fail. The wide gift of the elective franchise will
be a great calamity to the whole nation, and to those who gain it as
great a calamity as to any.
I do not of course mean that statesmen can choose with absolute
freedom what topics they will deal with and what they will not. I am of
course aware that they choose under stringent conditions. In excited
states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the
tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what
shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times
statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can
settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be
tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because
their power is great too.
And the mode in which the questions dealt with are discussed is almost
as important as the selection of these questions. It is for our principal
statesmen to lead the public, and not to let the public lead them. No

doubt when statesmen live by public favour, as ours do, this is a hard
saying, and it requires to be carefully limited. I do not mean that our
statesmen should assume a pedantic and doctrinaire tone with the
English people; if there is anything which English people thoroughly
detest, it is that tone exactly. And they are right in detesting it; if a man
cannot give guidance and communicate instruction formally without
telling his audience "I am better than you; I have studied this as you
have not," then he is not fit for a guide or an instructor. A statesman
who should show that gaucherie would exhibit a defect of imagination,
and expose an incapacity for dealing with men which would be a great
hindrance to him in his calling. But much argument is not required to
guide the public, still less a formal exposition of that argument. What is
mostly needed is the manly utterance of clear conclusions; if a
statesman gives these in a felicitous way (and if with a few light and
humorous illustrations, so much the better), he has done his part. He
will have given the text, the scribes in the newspapers will write the
sermon. A statesman ought to show his own nature, and talk in a
palpable way what is to him important truth. And so he will both guide
and benefit the nation. But if, especially at a time when great ignorance
has an unusual power in public affairs, he chooses to accept and
reiterate the decisions of that ignorance, he is only the hireling of the
nation, and does little save hurt it.
I shall be told that this is very obvious, and that everybody knows that
2 and 2 make 4, and that there is no use in inculcating it. But I answer
that the lesson is not observed in fact; people do not so do their political
sums. Of all our political dangers, the greatest I conceive is that they
will neglect the lesson. In plain English, what I fear is that both our
political parties will bid for the support of the working man; that