TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ATMOSPHERIC DISCONTENT.
THERE is just now an element in both the Continental and Home politics which we regard with some anxiety,—we mean a certain disproportionate fretfulness and bitterness of discontent with which relatively small grievances are denounced and their remedy demanded, an absence of that calm and lucid sense with which the leaders of the greater Reform movements of the past insisted on the objects they had in view. In France the existence of this nervous excitability would not, now at least, be in the least wonderful, for there has been quite enough to cross the political temper and jar the political senses of that great nation in the calamities of the last fifteen months ; only that in point of fact the morbid condition of the country preceded, and in very large measure indeed caused, the succession of calamities by which it has been prostrated. And it is worthy of note that this condi- tion of nervous irritability was developed during a period of considerable commercial prosperity, prosperity beyond any- thing that France had known before. In Germany there has been on the surface less of this morbid effervescence, but some of those who study the interior declare that the great victories of last year were but counter-irritants to prevent the otherwise certain outbreak of a social revolution at least as formidable as that which tried to gain Paris for the Commune, and that even now the outbreak of this revolution cannot be much longer deferred. In Belgium, as we all know, the social condition has for a long time been painfully high-strung, while flashes of rage from time to time cast a threatening gleam over the prospects of the country. But in all these cases it is hardly possible for foreigners to say how much of the bitterness and fretfulness is due to real and deep-seated evils, how much to a mere electric atmosphere and suscepti- bility of temperament. At home we can judge better on these points. We can compare the symptoms of discontent with the causes imputed for it. We can compare the tone with the tone of greater agitations in recent times ; and we are almost tempted to say that the bitterness and fretfulness dis- played are not unfrequently in inverse proportion to the grievances ; that the matters complained of sound almost petty when you catch the angry tone of the complainant ; that the soreness of modern Radicalism often appears to be rather a constitutional symptom of overwrought nerves, than the result of specific injuries. Take first, for instance, the singular outbreak, on which we have BO often commented, of the new Republicanism. The symptoms of that outbreak are, not any new conviction of the radical unsoundness and insincerity of our existing system of social caste, not any new enthusiasm for the principle that a man should be estimated by what he is, and not by the circumstances of his birth or possessions,—states of feeling with which we could heartily sympathize,—but a strange intensity of fury against the Monarchy for what it costs,—a bitter resolve to attack, and if needful even demolish, it from the pecuniary side. Now, as we observed last week, when we all know that the very first step taken by a Republic would be to decree the payment of Members of Parliament, and that very many subse- quent steps would be steps in the same direction,—the charges of Congress for the free supply of official papers and postage alone is something enormously in excess of the same items for our Parliament,—there is something perfectly ludicrous in this anger against the Monarchy for its expensiveness. Moreover, it is perfectly clear that it is not the real ground of offence. Those who bring the charge can never quite make up their minds whether to complain of it for its expensiveness or for its meanness, for costing so much, or for distributing so little. We do not say the two charges are wholly inconsistent, but they are certainly so different indrift that the very fact of urgingboth seems to imply that neither is more than a mode of expressing extreme and inarticulate political irritation, — a mode, as one may say, of political swearing. The long and short of the matter really is, that the Throne is being railed at because it does not just now either captivate the showy fancy, or appeal to the utilitarian sense of the people, so that the grounds on which it is ostensibly criticized would appear to be removed if either it became more lavish or more humble. In fact, however, if it became either the one or the other,—either more prodi- gal of national resources, or more mean in its mode of daily 14a—this would only be the occasion for a new and bitterer outbreak -against it. The cavils against the Crown are excuses and not reasons for bitterness. Where the
bitterness really comes from, unless it be the irritable mood of the people, is hard to say.
Again, excluding all Republican tendencies, consider only the extreme rancour of the left wing of the Liberal party after three sessions in which they have certainly exerted more influ- ence on legislation than that party ever exerted in times past, —when a Church has been disestablished, a tenant-righti law enacted, University tests abolished, the compulsory prin- ciple in education affirmed, middle-class school endowmento snatched from misappropriation, purchase in the Army ex- tinguished, and a Ballot-Bill carried by Government through the House of Commons and only rejected on time considera- tions by the Peers. Yet read Mr. Fawcett's article in the Fortnightly of the present month, and you would say from its general tone that never was there a Government more careless of popular interests and indifferent to popular rights. Some. grounds of complaint which Mr. Fawcett might well have brought against the constituencies,—it was notoriously, for in- stance, the contemptible reluctance of many popular municipali- ties to pay a rate for election expenses, which defeated the clause- in the Ballot Bill throwing those expenses on the public,— he urges with great acridity against a Government which did. its very best not to deserve that charge. And more incom- prehensible still, he almost inveighs against the Government, for occupying BO much time in pressing through the Ballot Bill, and throwing on the Lords the responsibility of rejecting it, though he knows perfectly well that had it not done so, the whole Radical party would have accused the Government of hidden disloyalty to the popular cause,—a charge freely brought against it for not passing a Ballot Bill in the pre- vious Session. But we only take Mr. Fawcett's article as representative of the tone of the party of which he is perhaps the most distinguished member. And we say advisedly that, never in any previous Parliament has that party exercised so great an influence over the haute politique, and yet never has it been so much disposed to rail against the Government on grounds more or less obviously unreal,—we do not mean insincere, but not in any proportion at all to the irritation and anger dis- played. The rancour of the extreme Radicals cannot possibly be really clue to the causes assigned. There must be discon- tent and irritation in the political atmosphere, or these causes would appear to be, what they are, ludicrously disproportioned to the resentment of which they are the ostensible grounds. Then, again, take the attitude of the Dissenters towards the' present Government. We are not going to deny that there may be still very considerable Dissenters' grievances left. We know the Dissenters themselves think the mere existence of an Established Church such a grievance ; and from the point of view of men who deny that the nation in its organized form has any spiritual trust for the constituent elements of the- nation, and especially for the people of its own destitute and desert places, they are undoubtedly right. Still, the grievance of the Established Church is not a new one; the present Government have never held or admitted. that it is an evil, and no one can pretend that they are untrue to their policy of religious equality in not acting in a spirit virtually hostile to it. Yet unless they did so, they would, as far as we can make out, be subjected to far bitterer and more hostile criticism on the part of the Non- conformists than any government of recent days. Certainly Lord Russell's Government was always popular with them, and even Lord Palmerston's was high in their favour, as com- pared with Mr. Gladstone's at the present moment, One' would suppose, to hear the bitterness of the criticism on the Education Act, that every step taken by the present Govern- ment had been retrograde ; that Mr. Forster had, been carefully emulating in his educational policy the example set by Lord John Russell in 1839; that the Administration had defended the monopoly of the Universities ; and that in all their schemes for middle-class education they had. done nothing, or less than nothing, in the interests of religious equality and liberal management. No one, for instance, could derive his concep- tion of the Education policy in relation to Nonconformists from the earnest, but acrid and far from impartial letter of Mr. Jenkyn Brown published in our correspondence columns this week, without forming that very false impression of it ; and if such a person were told that it was this Administration which has put the last stroke to the abolition of testa in our Universities, and is preparing to investigate the use made by them of their endowments in a sense that inspires a complete panic among the friends of clerical fellowships,—that it has recast in a very liberal spirit the educational trusts through- out the country, so as to make them as completely available for the children of Nonconformists as for those of Church people,—that it has passed a primary education Act which gives no advantage of any kind to religious over even strictly secular voluntary schools, and positively prevents the ascend- ancy of any one religion on the School Boards of those places which elect School Boards,—such a man would open his eves in astonishment, and ask, ' Whence, then, this exceptional bitterness of the Nonconformists against the present Govern- ment '? And the answer must simply be that, although they have gone with the Nonconformists a long way, they have not gone with them quite to the end ; and that it is harder for any but singularly and sedulously fair-minded persons to forgive friends who leave you at a given point, than enemies who have never been with you at all.
We take no note of the very similar attitude of the Irish politicians, who have gained so much from the existing Government, and are fighting so hard against it, because that is hardly perhaps an instance of exceptional discontent in a country which has never yet conceived the attitude of loyalty towards the British Government. But the instances we have given seem to show that there is at the present moment a political irritability and discontent in the very air, even of Great Britain, which tends to exaggerate greatly the bitter- ness of political criticism, and to inflate very small grievances till they swell to the bulk of very large ones. Now, though, as our readers know, we are far from sus- taining the present Government in all it does, and can often find fault freely enough, we do urge upon Liberals everywhere to cultivate complete sanity of feeling and treatment in relation to the evils of which they justly complain. Let us cry aloud and spare not, but let us not misconceive the tone in which to cry. Let us not speak of practical errors as if they were errors of principle, or of errors of principle as if they were sins of malice. Let us not thunder like prophets when we are setting ourselves to correct a blunder ; let us not scream like fanatics when we are really compelled to nurse a grievance lest it should be overlooked ; let us not scourge with our invective those whom in our secret conscience we deem at most faulty in judgment ; let us not brood over our own injuries till they engender within us an artificial heat, and we begin to speak out of an indignation proportionate not to the evil to be swept away, but to the nervous excitement we have managed to kindle in ourselves. Surely, if the tragedy of the Paris Commune ought to teach us anything, it ought to teach us this,—t,hat the first great condition of all healthy Liberalism is perfect sanity of thought and feeling, openness of eye, im- partiality and candour of intellect, and a serenity of temper that, if it is sometimes wisely angry, can yet "be angry and sin not." There is a falsetto tone about some of the Liberal agitations of the day which alarms us far more than any Tory resistance for the immediate future of Liberalism.
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