THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF POLITICAL HEAT. -FI ORD ARTHUR RUSSELL, a
tolerant Whig who has withdrawn himself a little, as we regret to per- ceive, from the political arena, tries, in a letter we publish elsewhere, to explain the social bitterness visibly growing up between Liberal Unionists and Radicals. It is the result, he says, of an irreconcilable difference in ethics. The parties cannot think alike about the morality of condoning that toleration of crime which has marked the Irish move- ment, or about that pliability of conscience which enables .so many politicians to follow their leader in a new career, in spite of their own recorded convictions that it will land 'their country in disaster. There is a great deal of truth in that view, and especially as to the way in which this -difficulty affects the daily intercourse of society. That is spoilt, because everybody is compelled by politeness to " talk from his teeth outwards," instead of from his heart or mind. You cannot tell your friend on the opposite side of the -dinner-table, though you think it, that he has become the defender of men he would have imprisoned a few years ago, and imprisoned, not as enemies of the State, but as breakers of unchangeable moral laws ; nor can he tell you, as he is itching to do, that you are only a rat, though probably a rat from perversity instead of greed. A certain insincerity has been forced upon society, and though insincerity is -consistent with politeness, and may even develop it, as we see in diplomatists, it very soon spoils the pleasure of conversation. Ambassadors enjoy life as well as most men, but they do not feel it most enjoyable in the moments when they are perforce concealing all their real opinions. All that is true, but it is necessary to be just to one's adversaries if one is to comprehend them, and our correspondent omits one very important element in the causes of irritation now prevailing, which, if it were recog- nised, would rather diminish the apparent badness and virulence of either side. The eyes of the two parties are not of the same convexity, and the same things do not appear to them of the same size. There is nothing in social intercourse more vexing than that. Your best friend may be pouring out the most unimpeachable sentiments upon the most interesting of questions, and still, if you think he is exaggerating trifles, he will seem to you a bore ; or if you suspect him of doing it designedly, a bore and a bit of a hypocrite, too. On the other hand, it is not pleasant to see that things which quite carry you away are to your friend little trifles, about which he would not, except from courtesy, condescend to express, or even to entertain, a definite opinion. This cause of irritation between the two parties, which always exists, has, we are convinced, all through the Irish contest been unusually strong. The Radicals do not think even the main question one of first-class importance. The fight over Home-rule is to their minds only a dispute over a method of governing Ireland, and to make it an excuse for breaking up such an instrument of good as the Liberal Party, seems to them in all sincerity hopelessly perverse. A politician might as well change his party on account of bimetallism, or a new mode of collecting the Income-tax. They cannot see the greatness of the political question ; and to call it a moral one is, to their minds, positively sanctimonious. " Higher morals ! " the Radical exclaims ; " there is no morality in the matter," and gets as angry as a Bishop does if, when he is denouncing sweaters, you throw at his head the parable of the pennies. On the other hand, the Unionist thinks the possible loss of Ireland, at all events as a taxable province, quite the gravest danger to which the Kingdom is likely to be exposed, and can hardly believe his opponent honest in treating Home-rule as one of those subjects upon which, for grave party cause, a man may justifiably hold successive opinions. It is the same with the more directly moral side of the matter. The Radical does not see why a Parnellite should not receive money from dynamiters, any more than why a hospital should reject subscriptions from the bad ; while the Unionist regards such an act as, at best, a condona- tion of crime, if not virtual complicity with it. The acts done, in fact, do not differ in meaning only to the different observers, but in size ; and interlocutors who are discussing them hardly understand one another. " Why shouldn't he boycott ! " thinks one ; " Catholic priests do ;" and he invents an excuse for boycotting. " Boycotting," thinks the other, " is malignant and continuous cruelty, torture by isolation—just as it would be to lock a cat for a week in a cellar ; " and he hardly knows how to endure being told that it "is only sending to Coventry" after all. The Radical thinks of the Spectator just as the Catholic Archbishop thinks of the man who tells him that excommunication is in itself a torture, and im- putes, therefore, cruelty to the Church ; while the Spectator thinks of the Radical upon this point as a man who has forgotten in his party excitement the first elements of Christian morality. We are not speaking, be it understood, of the accuracy or inaccuracy of either view— though we hold our own upon " boycotting" as strongly as we should hold it about the before-mentioned cruelty to a cat—but only of the influence exercised on the judgment by the convexity or concavity of the mental eyes. Half a century ago the same cause greatly increased the animosity of the two parties towards each other. The Tory sincerely held the Liberal to be an anarchist, the Liberal sincerely held the Tory to be a deliberate advocate of oppression, and naturally social intercourse between them was never enjoyable, because it was nearly impossible to be frank. So far as this maximising and minimising is involuntary, it reduces the moral perversity of both sides, and, of course, the convexity or concavity of the mental eyes may occasionally be entirely without volition or con- sciousness. A Scotch Presbyterian of the old opinions— how many are there now ?--cannot think a brother- Presbyterian guiltless if he recommends the use of an organ, and cannot, when he gets upon the subject, help being either irritable, or a bore, or both. Lord Arthur Russell has not allowed quite sufficiently for the convexity in the eyes of oxen, and thinks the bull is charging the poodle for reasons in his own mind. The bull, on the contrary, though he has his reasons, charges also because he sees the poodle as quite a large beast. This shape of the mental eyes affects, above all things, the conduct of the man who brings the charge of ratting. As a fact, all but the wiser Radicals and Unionists hold that their opponents have " ratted,"—that is, have quitted their party or their opinions either from perversity or in hope of political gain. Well, that charge is either a grave one or an absurd one, according to the size of the motive for which the accused " ratted." The English rule of opinion, as we understand it, is that a man may quit his party for adequate cause,—that is, when he has changed his opinion upon a very grave question in which his party has decided in a way contrary to his own—but that party allegiance is a moral bond not to be thrown off either for political gain, or out of perversity, or for a wholly in- adequate cause. The man who " rats " to get place is, in the general judgment, a rascal ; the man who " rata " from per- versity is cantankerous; the man who " rats " for a trifle is not only untrustworthy, but has in him something of moral shallowness, a natural deficiency of conscience as it were. We are not saying. the opinion is right, but undoubtedly that is the opinion governing society; and, in the third case, it is immensely affected by the size of which objects appear to be. A considerable proportion of all the Radicals who accuse Unionists of " ratting " from the Liberal Party, do so in full sincerity. They honestly can- not see what thiere was to " rat" for, what was the change of policy so grave that it could justify decent men in dis- organising the great instrument of government, and retarding legislative advance perhaps for a generation. There must, they think, either be levity in such recreants' minds, or an exaggeration purposely adopted in order to conceal a gradual change of faith. Home-rule in Ireland, they say, is self-government for thirty counties ; and if you may give self-government to one county, why should you not give it to thirty also ? They deny the magnitude of the cause at stake, and con- sider those who quit them for such a reason faithless, either from incurable flightiness, or more commonly from a dishonest readiness to grasp at an inadequate pretext for what is really in its true sense the moral offence of " desertion." In many cases, the denial is perfectly honest —with the masses, we believe, it is more than honest ; it is nearly instinctive, owing to inability to comprehend great changes before they arrive—and when it is so, we do not know that the anger is blamable. It arises from an error of judgment, or a want of insight, rather than a moral perver- sity. In the same way, we do not doubt that many Unionists condemn the sudden gyration made by their opponents too bitterly, from not recognising the amazing bulk which the idea of nationality assumes in some men's eyes. They cannot get it out of them, it fills the whole retina, and the moment it is visible obscures everything that ought to be in sight except itself. That is a mental defect, or rather peculiarity, which should not be blamed as if it were a moral one, and in this particular struggle such defects have played an unusual part. We agree with Lord Arthur Russell most heartily in saying that the root of the bitter- ness between parties is a difference of ethical judgment ; but it is not the only root. There is also a difference in the structure of the eyes which behold events. There are thousands of men in this country who think the importance given to Mitchelstown is positively dishonest; but they do not know what the ox-eye may see in the colour red. Something it sees most certainly, honestly sees, which is apart from the fact, or the ox would not get so excited.
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