TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DECAY OF POLITICAL FEAR.
THE Franchise Bill, which was to have been resisted with such energy, passed its third reading in the Lords on Friday week without challenge, and on Saturday became the law of the land. The new Register remains to be completed, but by January 1st, 1886, 2,000,000 new electors will be in a position to vote, and the next Dissolution will be an appeal to all the men in the Kingdom possessed of settled homes. We have dwelt repeatedly on the greatness of the change thus effected, which transfers all power in the counties from the owners of the soil to those who till it ; and desire to-day only to remark on the amazing ease and absence of contention with which the revolution has been effected. Not only has there been no bloodshed, no threat of an appeal to force, no rioting of the smallest moment, but there has been no open resistance. A few county Members have expressed, and many have probably felt, dislike of a change which shakes their seats, and compels them to sue for favour to classes which they have been accustomed to direct. A great many farmers have intimated their distrust of a scheme which raises their labourers to a political equality with themselves, and their dread of legislation which, by maki the toilers too independent, might deprive the farmers in the end of their supply of labour. The resistance, however, has been mostly formal, and has not extended in any percepti- ble degree to the leaders either of Conservatism or of society. They have all declared with one voice, that although they still desired this, that, or the other guarantee, single seats, increase of power in counties, or separation between urban and rural voters, they did not dread the mass of new electors. They were willing to give them power even if they asked conditions partly restrictive of its exercise. Nor, though we believe there was much concealed hope of a dissolution, and some desire to protect a particular kind of influence, do we think it fair to deny that these protestations were in substance true. The big folk do.pot hate the wide franchise as they used to do. It is incredible, if they had done so, that no man should have stood up to denounce the measure, as, for example, Mr. Lowe denounced the measure of 1867, should have shown that England was hurrying to Republicanism, or should at the least have betrayed the temper of his mind by pouring out scorn upon the multitude. It may be said that this was not convenient, as the multitude to be scorned was sure to be enfranchised ; but it was found con- venient in 1832, thousands followed with delight Mr. Lowe's denunciations in 1867, and neither independence nor eccentricity have perished in 1884. There are men by the dozen among those sure of an audience who would delight'to stand alone, as, when the nation is resolved on war or peace, annexation or abandonment, they do, at the risk of political death, utter their lonely views. Tories are not cowards ; and the risk which Sir W. Lawson constantly runs on other sub- jects would have been run by many a Conservative upon this, the enthronisation of the popular power. It is the fear of the multitude, and not individual courage, which has died away ; and the cause of that strange alteration of opinion—an altera- tion so great as to divide opinion in the latter half of this century from opinion in the former half by a deep fissure— is well worth a moment's speculation. It is all the more strange because the intellectual separation between the culti- vated and the uncultivated has become, not narrower, but broader. Education has done much of its work with the upper classes, and has only begun to do it with the lower, the children of the poor who can read well being scarcely yet electors.
We believe the change is due to several causes, some of them distinctly traceable, while others are more obscure. Of the latter, the strcngest is undoubtedly one which all acknowledge and none explain, the growth of the root-idea of democracy, the belief that the moral right is with the masses, that they in some ultimate sense own the world, and that their superiors, whether in fortune or in power, have at best but the privilege of advice. How that idea, which as a political force is as novel as sympathy with the wretched, was begotten, and spread silently among the strong, changing their whole policy if they received it, loosening their knees if they detested it, it would take volumes to explain, but nobody questions the fact, or denies its extreme import- ance. There is not a statesman left in Europe, not even Prince Bismarck, who will deny openly the ultimate claim of the
nation, or define "the nation " except by an expression which means the aggregate of tax-paying males. This root-idea has caught England also, and its effect has been to diminish resistance both to wide franchises and to the abolition of privilege to an incredible degree. The educated would doubt though Coriolanus spoke, and for reasons other than the pruden- tial. The.next cause, of the obscurer ones, has been the softening of the people. They are still hard enough and fierce enough, and in places brutish enough ; but those who have studied the manners of the eighteenth century know that the change in Great Britain has been amazing ; that the old ferocity has dis- appeared; that rioting, besides being infrequent, has altered in. character; that all amusements are more gentle ; that the bull-dog is no longer the most fitting type of the common Englishman. The multitude of to-day would not bear the scenes which in 1780 gave them most pleasure, would rise against the old bloody laws ; and if the pillory were set up again, would stone the executioners sooner than the victim. The direct physical dread of the " mob," which was once apparent in all genteel literature, and in all general conversa- tion, has, except in one or two districts, entirely passed away, and has been replaced at the worst by a not unkindly toler- ance which seriously modifies political judgment. Then, to come to more provable causes, experience has reduced the fear of the action of the multitude. The horrors of the French Revolution have, been shown to be confined to a single people —a people with an element of cruelty in its nature—which had risen against the diffused, and therefore most intolerable, oppression of a caste. No people, once fairly invested with legal power, has shown any disposition to resort to cruelty, or to punish superiors for being superior. Even slaves, once emancipated by law, have passed everywhere, except in Hayti, their informal Act of Oblivion. The masses entrusted with the vote have obeyed more quietly than the directing classes ever did ; and as against Governments, have substituted agitations, which, at least in appearance, appeal to reason and sentiment, for the old risings, which so recent and so strong-nerved a statesman as Sir James Graham said made government all but impossible. Nor has the multitude shown any disposition towards the movement which in 1832 was seriously apprehended by wealthy Tories, and which far cooler intellects—Macaulay's, for instance—thought it not un- reasonable to apprehend. Demos does not plunder, and does not consider the tax-gatherer his enemy. Nowhere is property so rigidly protected as in France, where the sovereign Assembly springs from universal suffrage ; while in America the multi- tude looks quietly, or even with an odd pride, on aggregations of property in the hands of individuals which begin to consti- tute a social danger. These things, too, occur, although both in France and America the electors are well aware that they hold all power in their own hands, and can, after brief delays, change both Legislatures and Governments at will. With the fear of mob violence gravely diminished, and that of mob plunder temporarily extinct, there remains only the fear of mob folly; and that, though still strong, has lost much of its active power. Experience shows that except upon one class of questions, the fiscal, the multitude is self-distrustful, disposed to confide in leaders too much rather than too little, and able to choose leaders fairly well. Gracchus does not carry France, or Cleon the United States. If the mob is foolish, it does not love fools, least of all in- efficient fools. Of the men politically canonised by the multi- tude in recent years—Napoleon III., Cavour, Garibaldi, Thiers, Gambetta, Pio Now, Bismarck, Abraham Lincoln, Beacons- field, and Gladstone—only one, Garibaldi, was in any respect whatever entitled to such a designation ; and he, for the separate and extraordinary work he had to do, was the most effi- cient of mankind. On fiscal questions, no doubt, there is more evidence of folly ; but then it is just of the kind which the upper classes as a body do not fear. A Professor may grow infuriated or alarmed because the multitude, under an illusion like the silver craze in America, or the Protectionist craze in Germany, choose to pillage themselves ; but the rich man does not greatly care, may even, if he is an able man, find his advantage in the perversity of the populace. The fear of fiscal folly does not operate ; and all other fear has so died away that resistance to wide franchise is without heart, scarcely arouses true hate, and leaves men like Mr. Lowther, who is the nearest approach we have to Coriolanus, and a very odd travesty of the character, free to serve under a chief who has given the struggle up, and lent his entire energy to pull down the remaining obstacles to the rule of numbers alone.
How long this placidity may continue it is impossible to foresee, without foreseeing that much more complex event, the
course democracy will take. We should be inclined to judge, however, that, as a political force really affecting the march of human affairs among the white races, the fear of the multi- tude was dead. It may revive again as a thought, but not as a force: That is to say, the multitude may betray tendencies which will again make the cultivated or the wealthy deeply distrustful of its dominance, or even disposed to terminate it ; but they will be powerless, and will stand aside content to be dissatisfied or amused spectators, repaid for their fear by an inner sense of their prevision. That is the mental attitude of men like M. Scherer in France, of Mr. Matthew Arnold among ourselves, and of many a cultivated American ; but that atti- tude will not affect the movement of events. A tree stops the ocean just as little as Mrs. Partington's mop, and exerts itself even less to stop it.
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