Iv.]

MAJORITY. MONGERING.

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private opinions, a wise Public Opinion can be formed?

Let us look at the process of its formation as exhibited daily in this country. If any question of current politics presents itself, two diametrically opposed views are at once taken regarding it. The party in office, and desirous not to go out, will adopt one view. The party out of office, and desirous to come in, will adopt the other. The end and aim of the two great political parties is to secure popular favour, and the power which popular favour confers. To win an election-that is the object ever kept in view, in order to which sca and land are compassed. And the way to win an election is to secure a majority of votes in a majority of constituencies. Party politics-and politics in any other sense can hardly be said to exist among us—are mere majority-mongering. Their whole art has been described, not amiss, as "a clever manipulation of the electors and a nice opportunism in selecting measures which satisfy one portion of the people without too much offending others": the "high motives and great causes to which appeal is occasionally made, being but "bits of broken mosaic that the Jew dealer throws in to complete the bargain." "To educate Public Opinion" is a phrase

* I am speaking of what takes place, as a rule. There are, happily, from time to time, exceptions to it when patriotism transcends party, as, for example, when Lord Hartington and his followers severed themselves from Mr. Gladstone in 1886.

commonly used. And the chief means employed for that end are public meetings and newspapers. Both are, assuredly, curious instruments of education. Does any one ever attend a public meeting for any other purpose than to obtain a confirmation of his own views? Who ever heard a crowd confess its ignorance or interrupt an orator, to say, "We don't know; we can't understand?" Or who ever heard a demagogue point out to his audience their utter incompetence to understand even the elements. of grave political questions and invite them "to trust superior sense and doubt their own"? But, indeed, the object of the demagogue is not to teach. It is rather to flatter: to persuade his hearers that, like Molière's people of quality, they know everything without having learnt anything. He adulates them, in order to trade upon them: he tells them that they are light and leading, reason and revelation and having first manufactured the oracle finds his own account in ministering as its priest. A hundred years ago, Burke, when warned that he had become unpopular with the electors of Bristol, replied, "What obligation lay on me to be popular? To be pleased with my services was their affair, not mine." Is there now any member of the House of Commons who would dare thus to make light of Public Opinion? His place in Parliament would soon know him no more, if he should venture so to blaspheme. Assuredly Mr. Mill is not without warrant when he laments "the decay of individual

iv.]

“MONSTER MEETINGS."

115

And as

energy and the weakening of the influence of superior minds over the multitude.” * assuredly men in numbers especially need the guidance of such minds: for men in numbers are even less wise than they are individually. A crowd is more impulsive, more credulous, more irrational, than any one of the men who compose it. And the larger it is, the more brutal is it. Does this planet just now exhibit any more insensate spectacle than the "monster meetings "-the description is aptwhich disfigure Hyde Park from time to time? Mere multitudinous assemblages taught to yell at the word of command, with no pretence of discussion, no opportunity of hearing the other side of a question, and no capacity of understanding it, if they did hear it: hindrances to the discharge of the lawful business of a law-abiding subject and a gross infringement of his liberty: overflowings of rascaldom and anarchy: nefarious menaces of brute force, which in any well-ordered country would be sternly repressed as a public danger. True is the word of Spinoza: "terret vulgus nisi metuat."

But there is that other instrument for educating Public Opinion, the newspaper press. What are we to say of that? Well, I should like to know if there are more than a score of newspapers in England--if, indeed, there are a score-which candidly consider any political question on its merits? In the overwhelming majority of them Discussions and Dissertations, vol. i. p. 187.

party spirit takes the place of patriotism, and the chief result of their discussions is the production of what Mr. Bright called that state of vast and unconscious hypocrisy" which enwraps the nation. If they ever ask, "What is truth ?" it is in the sense of jesting Pilate: What has truth to do with the matter? What place is there for truth in the reckless competition of demagogues bidding against one another in their appeals to the greed of human nature? To record and justify the prepossessions, prejudices, passions, and prevarications of the party which they serve, is the recognised function of journalists. I do not know who has better described it than Plato in words as fresh now as when they were written.

"All those mercenary adventurers, who are called sophists by the multitude really teach nothing but the opinions of the majority to which expression is given when large masses are collected and dignify them with the title of wisdom. As well might a person investigate the caprices and desires of some huge and powerful monster in his keeping, studying how it is to be approached and how handled-at what time and under what circumstance it becomes most dangerous or most gentle-on what occasions it is in the habit of uttering its various cries, and further, what sounds uttered by another person soothe or exasperate it and when he has mastered all these particulars by long continuous intercourse, as well might he call his results wisdom, systematize them into an art, and open a school, though in reality. he is wholly ignorant which of these humours and desires is fair and which foul, which good and which evil, which just and which unjust, and therefore is content to affix all these names to the fancies of the huge animal, calling what it likes good, and what it dislikes evil, without being able to render any account of them-nay, giving

iv.]

"A STRANGE INSTRUCTOR."

117

the title of "just" and "fair" to things done under compulsion, because he has not discerned himself, and therefore cannot point out to others, that wide distinction which really holds between the compulsory and the good. Tell me, in heaven's name, do you not think that such a person would make a strange instructor?" *

A strange instructor, indeed! And who that will clear his mind of cant can fail to comprehend, to sympathize with, the refusal of intelligent persons to reverence what is thus presented as Public Opinion? It is no humiliation if a wise man bow down before that which he believes to be higher than he, be it Zeus or Allah, be it "Jehovah's awful throne" or the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. But to prostrate himself in adoration before the will, or rather wilfulness, of the multitude; before the dominant opinion of a number of men of like passions with himself, most of them more under the sway of those passions, more ignorant, more esurient, less self-restrained! No. He may, not unreasonably, say with Quinet: "Que ferai-je de ce dieu-la ? O, le curieux fétiche! je l'ai vu de trop près. Ramenez-moi aux ibis et aux serpentsà-collier du Nil."

But there is another side to this question. It sometimes happens that what is presented to us as Public Opinion is really such, is truly the natural expression of the communis sensus of a people at

* Republic, Book VI. 493. I avail myself of Messrs. Davics and Vaughan's excellent translation.