SIX RADICAL THINKERS.*
IT would be difficult to overpraise the technical skill with which Professor MacCunn has used his six Radicals— Bentham, J. S. Mill, Cobden, Carlyle, Mazzini, and T. H. Green—as stepping-stones for traversing a difficult period in political and philosophical thought. The argument has a perfect continuity. Every explorer in modern democratic thought must, of course, begin with that "prophet of the public good," the inventor of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," Jeremy Bentham. Bentham saw his road stretching so clearly before him that he was, so to speak, hypnotised by the fair prospect, and was unable to give
• Six Radial Thinkers. By John MaeCunn, LL.D. London: E. Arnold. pa net]
enough of his preoccupied attention to the simple questions: What is happiness P and, Has democracy enough strength to make a journey that requires many moral qualities, even if it be proved that happiness lies at the end of the road ? But, after all, no reformer settles a whole question. Bentham started democracy off with a watchword. He provided a provisional philosophy of reform. John Stuart Mill, 'carefully trained in the strait doctrines of Benthamism by his painstaking father, justifiably disregarded his father's narrow testament, examined the foundations of democracy, and acted in accordance with his conclusions. Cobden, the inspired commercial traveller, ignored the course set by Bentham and reshaped by Mill because he had no eye for routes of that sort. The problem for him was not immediately philosophical or utilitarian, but practical and economic,—the workers starving for food and the mechanics for materials must be given commercial freedom. Yet, of course, in his own way he helped democracy forward innumerable stages. Carlyle comes in as a corrective, dividing the democratic spirit, which was something heroic to be worshipped, from the democratio method, which he loathed. Mazzini tries to inform democracy with the fierce religious zeal of one who came, not to bring peace, but—when necessary—a sword. The argument enluri, nates in an almost affectionate appreciation of the political idealism of T. H. Green, which is in many senses a solvent of the difficulties raised. We have thus rapidly sketched the thesis of these fascinating essays to show their unity. But we must turn to them again in detail.
The first essay, on Bentham, is perhaps the best biographi- cally. It so happens that many grimly entertaining extracts from Bentham's precious memorandum-book throw the required enlightenment on his political temperament. We wish that similar material had been both available and appropriate in the case of the others. Bentham said that the motto of a good citizen was "to obey punctually, to censure freely." His observance of the second injunction might establish his right to be called a perfect citizen. He hated Oxford from the moment he signed the Thirty.nine Articles. Her streets were "paved with perjury." He hated lawyers and the law, which through its complications was the fount of all corruption. He hated the Whigs among whom his fortunes fell. The Whig leaders laughed at him. Of =Me they did ! He was not, and could not be, really a Whig. Whiggei7 at the head was a matter of family. "To be a Whig," said Mr. Gladstone, whom we hope we are not mis- quoting, "one must be born a Whig." Sydney Smith, speaking of the close corporation of the great Whig houses, all related to one another, had called them the "Sacred Circle of the Great-grandmotherhood." "I am not a Whig," said Thackeray, "but, oh, how I should like to be one!" Bentham did not wish to be one at all. He wrote in his memorandum- book :— "I. Bentham's knowledge of the world, Whig lords, dm Those who live with them, and by describing their doings, and looking at their titles, pretend to know what they are—know only what they say. I who might have lived with them, and would not live with them, and who neither know nor care what they say, know (and without living with them) what they think."
In spite of his terrific candour and bearishness, his influence was so vast that Sir Henry Maine could not discover a single law reform, when writing his Early History of Institutions, which was not traceable to Bentham. Bentham was a master of detail, but in Professor MacCunn's opinion he was, like Hobbes, without the historic sense. He could add two to two indefinitely, and never trip ; but, unhappily, that two and two make four is seldom true in the life of a nation which works successfully an illogical Constitution. Our political method is logic most carefully leavened with the wisdom of our ancestors, and Bentham left out the ancestors. Mill acted differently. He found that he could not go far with the help of a vast assumption ; he examined the human material of democracy, and saw how unprepared it was for the application of specifics which depended for their success on the responsive ability of the people. The political history of the country could not be divided into the days before and after Bentham.- "Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only." Mill was a Radical of evolution, who knew and respected history. His optimism was unwavering; his individualism was final ; but how he could combine the two, believing as he did that the individuals of whom democracy was to be formed were
liars and self-seekers, is a puzzle for the boldest philosopher. We should simplify the matter ourselves by saying that the explanation is physiological rather than philosophical. Mill's Optimism, at all events, expressed itself in proposals for legis- lation, voluntary association, education, and self-assertion, with the emphasis on the last two.
The essay on Cobden we find the least satisfactory in the book, because it is so " judicial " that it is in fact rather nebulous. It gives no instruction to the jury. In all the other essays, though the author is never preaching, he does succeed in guiding. Mazzini passed from Radicalism to reverent Conservatism whenever he approached the family. He regarded the family as "immortal" :—
"Re says it is snore imperishable even than the nation. And of all the maladies that could befall society the deadliest would be the decay of the home. It is not too much to say that for him (unlike some of the later friends of democracy) the decline of the family would be the path to decadence. This was, of course, in part at any rate, because the family was so substantially justified of history. But it was also because he felt, with a pathetic personal conviction, that in missing this, the individual life, be its other resources what they may, runs the risk of an Irretrievable impoverishment. He who, from some fatality of position has been unable to live the calm life of the family has a shadow of sadness cast over his soul and a void in his heart which nought can fill, as I who write these pages for you know.' No political thinker has written of the family with a more discerning sympathy than this exile from home as well as country. Even this, however, was far from the central considera- tion. For this lies in the larger, more civic conviction that the family carries in it the germ and first principle of the public affections."
It is with the conception of the family as the norm of citizen- ship that modern Radicalism is breaking. The alliance with Socialism pulls it further from that conception every day.
T. H. Green came when democracy was already established. The franchise had been twice extended in 1832 and 1867, and was soon to be further widened in 1884. He was the first resident member of the University who sat in the Oxford City CounciL He bridged the chasm between the academic or speculative and the practical worlds. Bentham had reviled Oxford ; but a son of Oxford, by a miracle of irony, made Benthamism feasible. Himself a man of learning, he admired nothing so much as character. But even character was the unconscious result of ideas working in men. This was the great conjunction which, to his thinking, made Oxford necessary to City Councils and City Councils to Oxford. His habit of mind made him an apostle of sanity. He believed in the "force of circumstances." He held that legislation which outstripped the wishes of the bulk of the people could never endure. No law can stand unless the people consent to the working of it. He was thus a Radical "of a very peculiar kind." No doubt he would be too cautions for the Radical of to-day ; but we commend this, the most ardent of the six essays, to our readers for as able an exposition as we have seen of a democratic philosophy which still seems to us a solution of many present difficulties. Readers of these essays will probably experience, like ourselves, when they lay the book down, an unsatisfied feeling (which by the nature of the ease is very creditable to the author), as though the end of a novel or biography were missing. If only Bentham, Mill, Mazzini, and the rest could come to life, and see individualism Blipping away from Radicalism ! What would they do P what would they say P Would they call themselves Radicals now p
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