FISHING IN TROUBLED WATERS. A FTER a time of storm and
stress, it not unfrequently happens that a period of perfect calm and stillness ensues ; of such stillness that one wonders how it could ever have been otherwise, and is almost disinclined to believe in the reality of the last visitation and the possibility of its recurrence. Only a few days ago, and the atmosphere of London was anything but peaceful ; from every quarter at once the storm seemed to burst on that luckless city ; the postmen were to strike, the police to revolt, the Guards to mutiny ; we were to be under the painful necessity of carrying our own letters and protecting our own property. In fact, we were threatened with the direst things, and sundry newspapers shrieked aloud in the agony of their apprehension. The Government was alternately bullied and entreated, and generally overwhelmed with offers of advice and intervention from its irresponsible critics ; and everywhere were raised above the clamorous turmoil, the fateful heads of the busy-bodies, exhorting, denouncing, and spreading the opinion of their own importance. And after all, nothing happened at all—nothing ; not one little wreck to show the course of all that blustering gale. As suddenly as the storm arose, so suddenly and completely it fell ; as all the malcontents began to talk at once, so, when silence fell upon one, it fell upon all ; and as to the busybodies, they have retired temporarily into private life until the next opportunity arises.
But is it not a curious characteristic of those amiable but restless people who are so anxious to reform the world in some one particular, or who have some pet panacea of their own for the general healing of mankind, that they seem to prefer a time of trouble and disturbance for pro- ducing and advocating their favourite grievance and its remedy ? One would think that, in a season of compara- tive peace and quiet, they would have a better chance of obtaining a hearing for themselves and gaining adherents to their cause. On the contrary, whatever the fish or the bait, the object or the method of their angling, they always love best to fish when the deep is stirred up and the waters muddy ; to uplift their voices at a time when the air is full of the conflicting cries of the multi- tude. One can only suppose that their aim is rather to swell the general volume of sound than to raise any particular cry of their own, and that there must be some kind of tacit understanding amongst themselves by which they help in turn to aid each other's noisy demonstrations according as the opportunity comes to one or another, and one cry or another is for the time uppermost. Thus, should the representatives of the costermongers goad that worthy body into a state of revolt against the public, and force them into the first rank of discontent, they will be- largely aided and abetted in creating a noise by the advisers of the crossing-sweepers and shoeblacks, who will expect similar aid when their opportunity and time comes. Take, for instance, one of those uncouth demonstrations which of late years have added a new and rather doubtful pleasure to London life. The meeting may be one that has been convened by teetotalers to protest against a measure in favour of temperance,—at any rate, let us suppose that that is the occasion and cause of their gathering. First mark the different banners that are carried through the streets, and then listen to some of the speeches that are afterwards delivered in the Park ; not those that are made on the principal platforms, which are, after all, only accessible to a com- paratively small proportion of the demonstrators, but the hundreds that are delivered on the outskirts of the throng, each attracting its own audience. It will then be apparent that they are not only teetotalers who make up this noble army of protestants, but that there are present also, Home-rulers, Trade-Unionists, Seventh-Day Christians, Seven-Dial Gladstonians, anti-va,ccinationists, anti-capitalists, men who are against the House of Lords, against the Bishops, against the Judges, against the taxes—especially those on spirituous liquors—and men who don't know what it may be, but who are against it on principle. Thus it is that the voice of the discontented few becomes the voice of the dis- contented many ; and teetotaling Tom is cheered by the co-operation of bibulous Dick and socialistic Harry. But discontent is not always divine, nor is the voce populi necessarily the voz Dei ; even if it were, one would be slow to seek its utterances in the street. At any rate, by this time we have at least learnt to discount such utter- ances, and to turn a deaf ear more resolutely to grievances that seek to make themselves heard by incoherent clamour. Neither processions nor demonstrations, however, are likely to cease on that account ; and wherever they take place, and whatever the question of the moment may be, the grievance-mongers will gather together and try to catch fresh supporters for themselves by fishing in the troubled waters. They and their supporters make up at least half the number and three-quarters of the noise of the whole assemblage. They are not in the least concerned with the matter which is being discussed, provided that the meeting is in some form a manifestation against the existing Government or the powers that be ; it is so obvious to them that a Government that refuses to redress their own particular wrong cannot be right in any other particular whatsoever. For this reason it is that the majority of the supportdrs of the Government can so often be outclamoured by the minority of the Opposition, because the latter contain in their ranks, de facto, the very noisiest section of the whole public. In the case of many of these men, one cannot question the honesty of their intentions ; they do actually believe that by hampering and obstructing the course of law and Order, they can further the particular cause that they have so much at heart. They are blind to every consideration except those that affect their own hobby. Entirely lacking any sense of proportion, and of the relative importance of things, they would gladly turn the rest of the world upside-down, if by so doing they could set in order that one corner of it. Being more blessed with zeal than with discretion, they are actuated simply by the strength of their convictions in one particular case, and by no care whatever for the public welfare in general. They fail to get a hearing in a time of peace, and so in any state of disturbance they see their opportunity, and hasten to make the most of it. Because the world will not listen to them when it is quiet and cool, they imagine that it will be more inclined to listen when it is heated and angry ; and if they are not sufficiently strong by themselves to annoy, irritate, and spur it into the requisite state of attention, they are fain to profit by the excitement caused by others, and will swell the ranks of a lawless movement in order to obtain their own legitimate end. And yet they are honest, good men, after their fashion. But the pity of it !—of the waste of all their misplaced energy and enthusiasm ; of the wrong- headed philanthropy that recklessly tramples down far more important interests than those it wishes to erect ! And the greater pity that they should sometimes succeed by employing such questionable means, and so give a dan- gerous encouragement to other reformers equally un- scrupulous but not equally single-minded.
For though they are honest, there are others who are not. The universal benefactor, who champions every cause, who is so quick to see oppression and so eager to right it, generally better deserves another title,—that of the professional agitator. Such a man partakes much more of the nature of Sancho Panza than of Don Quixote. His crusade against injustice and oppression is not under- taken so much for the sake of their victims, as in the interests of himself, and in the hopes of substantial reward. Panza obtained and enjoyed the Governorship of Barataria, while his wife Teresa and her children 'still rolled in the gutters of La Mancha. Our squire-errant at home often rises from an equally humble origin to a yet greater height. He may even become a Member of an English Parliament, an honour by the side of which the whole dignity of Barataria were indeed cheap. Whether the cause which he supports succeeds or not, he will generally succeed in advertising himself, and by dint of agitation and adver- tisement, in season and out of season, it goes hard with him if he cannot persuade the world that he is a man of weight and importance. His personal success, in spite of the failure of every cause that he advocates, is the strangest part of his career ; the public, who know him to be a self-seeking knave, will yet treat him as if he were an earnest enthusiast ; his unfortunate dupes, whom he stirs up, leads, misleads, and finally abandons, seem to bear him no grudge, and he experiences no difficulty in finding fresh victims elsewhere ; and, strangest phase of all, the man actually comes to believe in the sincerity and purity of his own motives, and to persuade himself of the reality of his mission as a reformer. That supreme piece of self-deception neither excuses him nor makes his pro- fession less dishonourable. The man who creates trouble and disturbance in order to profit himself, who wantonly stirs up the waters for his own fishing, is at once a danger and a disgrace to humanity.
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