THE BLUNDERS OF SOCIETY.

ONE cause of the decline in the political influence of Society, upon which we did not touch last week, is that it is so frequently, almost constantly, wrong. The shrewd, observant Scotehmau who recently managed the elections for the Liberal side, who is, perhaps, as able as a man without genius can be, and who, because he understands England so thoroughly, has been sent to govern Madras, said recently in public that he knew of no better guide in politics than the opinion of London Society. You had only to watch it carefully, ascertain clearly what it was, and then act in direct opposition, and you were quite sure to be right, 'Mat is, of course, in form, a humorous exaggeration, as Society might go right on

some occasion by chance, or might by accident; really uuderstand sonic personage whose action was essential

to the issue ; but the general proposition is undoubtedly correct. Loudon Society for the last twenty years has been as ill-infermed as Sydney Smith said Consols always were. Not only has it never understood which .side ought -

to win, that being, of course, matter of opinion ; but it has never comprehended which side would win, though that is dependent upon ascertainable facts. Not only, for example, did Society sympathise with the South in the American Civil War, which is intelligible, the South fighting for an institution which is the logical outcome and perfection of the system of' privilege, but it persistently believed the South would win. The most staring facts, such as that the losses of the North were every mouth made up by immigration, never impressed it ; and when the South was, in facilkeaten, and Sherman began his great march through a territory empty of armed defenders,

Society declared that he had "gone into space," and that the South

would soon be triumphant. When, in 180, Prussia, the country of the professor and the drill-sergeaut, declared war upon

Austria, tlx country of the aristocrat—where the plebeian Premier's daughter at the Hofburg found no partner for the dance, till the Emperor, pitying her isolation, asked her himself —Society believed up to the eve of Sadowa in an Austrian

victory. How could so pleasant and gentlemanly a people be beaten by so unpleasant and sergeautlike a race ? In 1869, it firmly believed that the Irish Church could not be overthrown, for had not Mr. Disraeli accepted the new suffrage? In 1870, it anticipated victory for the French Army, and a new triumph for Cassarism. 114874, it was seized with a spasm of joyful

surprise at the electoral victory of the Tories. In 1877, it firmly believed that the " brave Turk" would drive out the Russian, that the "cowardly Roumanian" would never fight, and that the "heroic Osman" would never surrender Plevna ; and in 1880, up to the very day of the elec.

tions, it refused to credit the possibility of Tory humilia-

tion,—and had it been etiquette, would have illuminated prematurely, as the Carlton Club is said to have done. Not

three weeks before the election, one of the most influential men in England, who had made it his business for months to study Opinion in London, and who avowedly decided by what he

heard in a singularly wide range of society, told the writer that " Liberalism was dead," and that "in his life-time the party would never return to power." The result suggests that he Was incompetent to judge, but he was

not ; he was only deceived by his confidence iu the opinion

of the immense majority of the well-placed persons he met. Society as a corporation entirely agreed in the opinion he expressed. The body of it, untaught by experience, unable to learn, as incapable of forgetting, is, as we believe, making a similar blunder now. We have, of course, as yet, no means of stating the result ; but no one who hears Many opinions from persons well above the comfortable, doubts that three-fourths of all Society, in drawing-rooms, in assemblies, 1.13 clubs, at plea- sure-meetings, believes that the Government, by its.conduct in Ireland, has forfeited.the confidence of the country, and will be overthrown. Within a fortnight, we shall see.

Tim puzzle of the matter is not that Society takes the bad side of any question, or even that it cannot follow the drift of the popular mind. A plutocratic society is naturally very selfish—which a strictly aristocratic society, when moved by any impulse it genuinely feels, as, for example, loyalty to a person or an institution, sometimes is not— and. adheres to the Side which a.ppeals to its interests, without paying much attention to any other, and especially to any °thee less concrete, consideration. The strong must not become stronger, lest England suffer ; and " disturbers ' must be put down everywhere, lest there be war, and England's uu- readiness be inconveniently revealed. All that is a very intel- ligible line of thought. So also is the savageness excited by insurrection in a cob-my, by an agitation in Irelatd, by a strike among miners or cotton-spinners, or by a riot against game-preserving. Such occurrences are unpleasant to the content, and Society being content sways naturally all one way. Nor can it he expected to have in it much capacity of sympathy with popular views. It does not know what the masses of mankind are wanting or thinking, or how they are guided, or what power moral ideas, or philanthropic ideas, or sentimental ideas have with them, and therefore is always taken aback, as it were, by their action. It is not so much annoyed as astounded to find Mr. Plimsoll an idol. It no more understands what the English people will do or think than what a prophet will do or think, and for the same reason, —inability to enter into a mind ruled by influences so foreign to those which rule its own. It is the ignorEince of Society, not the bias or even the obtuseness of Society, which is so perplex- ing. 'Take, on any excited night of the Season, a couple of first- class Loudon assemblies, and a political Club and a fashionable Club. One would think that a man who spent four hours in gathering up the opinion floating in those four sets of rooms, granting him competent to do it, would know at the end a good deal of the subject of Conversation. All that is known any- where of the facts ought to be common property. The talkers know the people concerned, in a superficial way, better than anybody. The best-informed men on the special subject are, probably, gliding in and out. Amidst the crowd are some of the keenest observers, the hardest heads, the coolest calculators.

The latest knewled.ge of occurrences, sometimes if the matter is in diplomatic hands, of occurrences of importance, is usually there; while the "private information" which outsiders think so invaluable, and which, if true, is valuable or the reverse in exact proportion to the bearer's general knowledge, just as a glimpse of a card would enlighten or deceive him, according to his genius for the game, is there, and there alons, All the materials for accurate judgment must be in solution among those four places, and yet the total impression will, in nine eases out of ten, be entirely false, Society will be as ill- informed as the diplomatist who, in 1809, with every means of information, said that there was not a cloud in the European sky. Why ? Why should Society, which, being so numer- ous, should have some of the instinctive perception of truth common to other aggregates of humanity, be so commonly deluded by a falsehood? Why, to quote again our first illustration, should. some hundreds of fairly educated people, among whom trained. soldiers, and, ex- perienced statesmen, and great travellers were talking freely, and giving out all the views they could, not have seen that force, common, brute, physical force, lay in a positively hopeless degree of superiority on the side of the North? Nobody saw it except Lord Beaconsfield, who, caring for neither side, had the benefit of one of his flashes of insight ; Prince Albert, who disliked rebels of any sort ; a few politicians, made unnaturally acute by hatred of slavery ; and the body of suffering workmen, who were taught by their sympathy with those who, as they in- stinctively felt, were fighting their battle. Why

We believe the explanation to be that " Society " is a cor- porate voluptuary, and like the individual voluptuary, dislikes to look disagreeable facts, or views, or possibilities in the face, —rejects facts, in truth, half-unconsciously, when they disturb its ease. It likes to be intellectually titillated, but it does not like to be at the trouble of thinking hard, of dismissing mere impressions, of studying events as if they were the factors in a mathematical problem to be solved. It has become critical, like those below it, and, therefore, disinclined to pay the old deference to experts, while it will not go through the labour of working out its own sums. All the thinking it can do easily it does, but in the infinite complexity of modern life that is not sufficient, and it will do no more. There is violence in Ireland. Repression is the remedy for violence. It takes no exertion to think -that, for it is a customary thought, and, therefore, Society thinks it ; but as to studying Ireland, or its history, or its tenure, or its people's character, or the results of repression, Society would. as soon read a Blue-book of Educational statistics. It could not do it, from mental indolence and, distaste, and, therefore, it goes wrong. Or take the momentary political situation. Society receives easily the impression perfectly accurate —that of the men it meets, three-fourths are enraged with Mr. Gladstone's Government, and therefore believes it must fall. But as to studying the view, often obscure, of the thirty millions 'whom it does not meet, and wearying itself with local meetings, and, local speeches, or even the reserves with which its own friends follow up their own sarcasms, it will no more endure that tedium than any other, and consequently its knowledge, which on a trivial point is extensive and even profound, is on the vital point, totally worthless and deceptive. For the same reason, it is not always clear-headed, even on subjects within its purview, for it not only dislikes hard thought, but disagreeable thought even when it is easy. It is not difficult to think that a Club Committee, or even a body of ball stewards, can get along very well, even though the former is divided on the great question of guests or no guests, and the latter are always arguing about vouchers ; but the thought as regards the Committee of the National Club is disagreeable, and therefore if there are differ- ences in that, its resignation is inevitable. Pleasantness, we will not say pleasure, is the object of Society, and it is as much annoyed at mental fatigue as at any other unpleasantness ; and those who form it, knowing that, avoid creating dislike. Why disturb opinion in s, drawing-room, any more than a dance No one would deliberately tread on a lady's dress, and. why tread on her possibly passionate mental

. conviction ? That is the unwritten law, and so Society goes on pleasantly and ebeerf tiny till it stumbles, not indeed over the precipice, as in France, but over an unseen footstool or step down, and gets a provoking fall. There never were keener brains than those of the French nobles, who thought for so long that "this swell of the public mind." would. speedily "abate somewhat." If they had only known the facts, they would have judged rightly enough ; but the facts were only to be learned by uupleasing investigations, and listening to disagreeable people, and amassing horrid little details,

and so they were not learned, and till the Terror came the Revolution was to French Society only an agitation.

Society in England is in no danger of that sort, for when.

startled. into itself, the national temperament, which is serious, manifests itself even in Society; but till startled, it loves its ease, and. part of its ease is the absence of any compulsion to

think hard. Time to "rough it" mentally, when the necessity arrives. If Society were wholly. .frivolous in its topics, that

would not signify, for no one would accept its opinion ; but that is not the case. It is ths, peculiarity of this country that politics interest everybody, Society included, and we have therefore the inconvenience — so horribly trying to able journalists—that grave matters are 'studied and " settled" in the easy method suited only to frivolities. There is no contempt for great subjects, and no avoidance of them, only a refusal to think them out when thinking involves either painful effort, or the acceptance as data of disagreeable truths. Perhaps there will be an improvement by-and-by, but as yet Society has not even accepted the most fundamental and

disagreeable truth of all, namely, that since 180; the governing classes no longer govern ; and of course, on English polities, its opinion, failing that datum, can never be correct. It will always be exclaiming, in angry astonishment, as it did after the Elections, "Who ever would have thought it ?"