SOCIAL CANT.
CANT is the unctuous utterance of fervent language without pro- portionate fervour of feeling or conviction at the time of the ut- terance. An age of cant is not an age of hypocrisy. Cant is the connecting link between hypocrisy and truth. It always supposes earnestness and reality somewhere, perhaps in the bo- som of the very person on whose lips it is found. The commu- nity, on the contrary, where hypocrisy prevails, is heartless, apathetic, selfish ; simulating virtues only for the purpose of concealing vices, which if known would prevent the gratification of other vices still more infamous than these. A thorough hypo- crite is never vain, not even of his skill in hypocrisy. The dex- terous dealer in cant, however is always vain in proportion to his dexterity. Hypocrisy is a labour, a calculation, an art prac- tised for a purpose. Cant is indulged more for its own sake : men in general cant from the pleasure of canting. When any one employs cant to increase influence or to attain an object, he is no longer a canter but a hypocrite. Hence the canters of our day may be divided into two classes : the smaller, including those who cant that they may give rein to their sensual propen- sities or ambitious daring under a saintly mask ; the larger, com- prehending such as cant for no other reason than that they have acquired the habit of canting, prevalent in the religious sect, the literary coterie, or the political circle, to which they happen to belong. An age of cant is much feebler, but infinitely less cor- rupt, than an age of hypocrisy. The reign of Louis the Four- teenth was eminently the age of hypocrites ; but it was an age of strong fierce passions, and of great though decorous vices. It shows much ignorance of society and of human nature, that a popular writer in his " Pecksniff ' should have given us the cari- cature of " Tartufe "; as if this Pecksniff could exist as a con- temporary fact. The passions of men at present are not violent or tragic enough to render consummate hypocrisy either possible or necessary. The men of our generation are too weak to be wicked ; and therefore it does not require any very elaborate hypocrisy to deceive them. A characteristic that better than any other separates the thorough hypocrite from the man who merely cants, is that the former has no faith in moral distinc- tions, and considers them as the phantasies of theorists and the delusions of the superstitious ; while the man who cants has the profoundest faith in them, but finds it more convenient to talk of brave sacrifices for truth, freedom, and other things of equal import, and warmly to recommend such sacrifices to his fellow- creatures, than to make them himself.
The two chief cants in England have hitherto been the theo- logical cant andthe political cant. To these a third has just been added—the social cant. Theological cant had its birth simulta- neously with Methodism. Of course we readily enough admit, that the religious revolution of which Methodism was the cause was much needed, and in many respects salutary. But from the beginning Methodism was an exaggeration. It did not, indeed, demand extraordinary virtues ; but it tried to excite, and it suc- ceeded in exciting, extraordinary feelings. The language which those feelings uttered was sincere enough, and had no tincture either, of hypocrisy, or cant. But exhaustion speedily follows excitement. Silence would become such a state. Silence, how- ever, would argue a-decrease of zeal. The language of excite- ment was therefore kept up among the Methodist devotees when the excitement itself was gone. Whatever was uttered during the exhaustion was cant; being the expression of a feeling that no longer existed. Thus, the same man, though using exactly the same extravagant phrases—the same fanatical exclamations— might be sincere at one moment and canting at another, accord- ing as he was in a state of excitement or a state of exhaustion. Among the Methodists themselves, and in the other sects that have caught the contagion of Methodist fanaticism, cant has in- creased precisely in the degree that the excitement has been more and more of an artificial kind, and agencies antagonistic to the theological mania have been extending their influence. Before the Reform Bill, there was in this country abundance of .political hypocrisy, but little political cant. There was the noisy pretence of patriotic ardour, and devotedness on the part of many, who thought patriotism itself the dream of fools. With the Reform Bill the true reign of political cant began; and with the breaking up of the Melbourne Ministry it may be said in the main to have ended. The enthusiasm that welcomed the Reform Bill could not have lasted even if the Whigs had been as earnest as the people. The exhaustion was inevitable after the excite- ment; but the far-nientc-ism of the Whigs added disgust to the exhaustion. Hence, cant on all sides ; cant from the Whigs them- selves, cant from their apologists, cant from the nation, cruelly deceived, but deceiving itself more. The vain attempts to raise again from the dead the original excitement, or to create some fresh excitement, and the affected belief that the attempts had
succeeded, were all so many causes, so many exhibitions of poli- tical cant.
With the advent of Peel to office political cant declined : for it was felt that realities were about to take the place of semblances. The man might not be a favourite with the people; • but there was faith in the capacities of the statesman. He came to power, how- ever, at a time of total political disenchantment. Whatever of important and memorable he has done, therefore, though it has met with popular gratitude, has not been greeted by popular em- thusiaam. In the absence of this, and of the consequent exhaus- tion, there has been no room for political cant to grow ; the place of which has been supplied by social cant. For a year or two previous to the downfal of the Whigs, the attention of men had turned to social questions ; not from any intense interest in these, but it seemed as if an universal paralysis had crept over the world of politics, and that if any good was to be done to the com- munity, it must be accomplished entirely through social means. The working of the New Poor-law also, which at first was viewed entirely in its political aspects, has generated a whole host of social problems, some of which extend greatly beyond the organ- ization, the objects, the operation of the law itself. The excite- ment on social questions, though comparatively of recent origin, has existed long enough on certain points to have been followed by exhaustion, and by the invariable language of this when try- ing to imitate excitement—cant. A section of Dissenting minis- ters, many lecturers on subjects apart from physical science, nearly all political adventurers, deal in social cant. But in its most pernicious and repulsive forms, social cant—the cant of social contrasts, social anomalies, and social regeneration—is principally found in the pages of some living novelists, who with great dex- terity as caricaturists lack skill as painters, and who find it less profitable as a matter of trade to portray society as a whole than to whine over its diseases.
Social cant, while quite as odious as any other cant, is more dangerous, and more apt to infect earnest minds with sentimen- tality, from the vagueness that belongs so preeminently to social questions. This vagueness arises from the circumstance that the settlement of political questions is always embodied in institu- tions, which with social questions is not the case. To save our- selves from social cant, we must endeavour to avoid merelyfec/- ing them, as many do, but calmly and patiently to view them by the light of an enlarged philosophy.
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