TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLITICAL DUTIES OF THE RECESS.
WHAT does the Times mean by its constant and emphatic exhortation to Members of Parliament to hold their tongues during the Recess ? It seems to us to show that that paper does not in the least appreciate what a democracy means, or what is the best way to educate it. If we thought of training the electors, and of training the electors alone, we should desire not that politicians should take a long rest, but that they should all of them at once begin that useful drill of their constituents in the different views that may be taken of Parliamentary questions, on which the intelligence of the votes to be given at the next General Election must, for the most part, depend. It may be very true that, looking to the necessities of Parliament alone, Parliamentary politicians may be justified, and even more than justified, in taking a good rest. The petty fag and squabbling of the Session must have worn out many of our representatives, and predisposed almost all with any share of wisdom for a time of reticence and political repose. But unfortunately for this repose, Members of Parliament are not elected only for the purposes of representation. It is very doubtful whether, as the suffrage widens and the constituencies increase, the obligation of the Member to keep his constituents well informed of his view of the questions of the day, and to answer the criticisms of those who take different and opposite views to himself, is not greater and even more useful to the public than his duty of giving the views he has an- nounced the full weight of his vote and influence in the House of Commons.
How is the Democracy to be taught what are the important issues of politics, and what are the most telling views on
the subject of those issues Partly, no doubt, by the help of the public journals ; but, in truth, the public journals them- selves are almost powerless to force any subject on public notice without the help afforded by the speakers, whether Liberal or Conservative, who canvass these questions in the country. The public journals are hardly read unless they take their text from the events of the day. And almost the only test that any question is one of the subjects of the day is the evidence that it is much discussed in public, and that this view and that are given of it in great town and county meetings. The only effect of a universal reticence of politicians would be a universal effort on the part of the journals of the day to find social topics more interesting to their readers than the politics of which Members of Parliament seemed to be oblivious. And then, if the silence of politicians produced, as it would, a political apathy of the public Press, the people would sink into a similar apathy, the greater issues of politics would no longer be kept before them, and the elections, whenever the elections came, would be conducted under the extreme disad- vantage that the electors would not be prepared for them by the growth of any serious conviction, and would vote in the haphazard fashion which leads to no satisfactory result, or, perhaps, even to a result just the opposite of that at which the people, if fully awake to the chief issues, would have arrived. What the Times is thinking of when it deprecates Long- Vacation oratory is no doubt the inutility, so far as Mem- bers of Parliament and journalists may be concerned, of repeat- ing over and over again the criticisms which Parliament has so often heard, and which the London and provincial papers have so often weighed in their balance. But it forgets how very different is the effect produced on a voter's mind by glancing at the Parliamentary reports and at the leading articles written on those reports,—even when he does glance at them, whereas multitudes of electors never do,—and the effect produced on him by hearing the representative to whom he has given his confidence explain fully, in his presence, what con- siderations weighed upon his own mind,or by hearing the candi- date of the opposite party assail the view thus presented, and discuss elaborately all the objections to which it is open. That is the process which really forms political conviction in the country, and which keeps it active and vigilant. Without that process, we should have more and more voters every day boasting that they took no interest in politics, and did not care a farthing whether their constituency returned its former Members, or turned them out in favour of new Members. Only the frequent contact of Members with their constituencies keeps the political judgment of the country alert and earnest, and therefore no man is fit to be an ordinary Member of Par- liament,—a Member, we mean, not burdened with Minis- terial duties,—who does not contribute his full share to the political education of the people, as well as to the guidance of the judgment of the House of Commons. It may be quite, right for the ordinary Member of Parliament to hold his. tongue very sedulously in the House. If there are others who can say better what he would say, he must be right in generally leaving it to them to say for him. But he can never be right in leaving his constituents to their own devices. He, and he only, can really speak to them with the sort of authority which they need for the purposes of political education. They have chosen him to represent them, and. therefore they listen to him with the sort of deference with which people always listen to the man of their own choice. What he says will receive a sort of attention from them which the words of few other speakers will receive. And what those who support or oppose him say, will be listened to with a kind of interest that nothing said in favour of or against other politicians will attract. Whether a representative has the ear of Parliament or not, he has always the ear of his own con- stituents; and it is a duty almost more incumbent upon him, because more completely in his power, to ripen the public opinion of his own constituency, than to ripen the opinion of Parliament itself. We maintain that when a man is chosen to represent in the House of Commons the views of many thousands of electors, his explicit and pledged duty, though the most obvious, is by no means the most important of the duties which he undertakes. From that moment, he is the exponent of public opinion within a certain area on certain important subjects, and is the only person who can really keep- that public opinion healthy, vigilant, and candid. This he can do by frequent interchanges of opinion and confidences with his constituents, by keeping his attention fixed on all= points on which he thinks opinion doubtful and unsound, by taking pains to clear up opinion on those subjects, by bringing the most formidable objections to which his own opinions are exposed clearly before his constituents, and by giving them the best answers he can find to those objections,—in short, by treating himself as the natural focus of the political opinion of the community which he represents, and doing all in his power to bring the various rays of political light to converge in that focus.
It will be said that this view of a representative's duty to his constituents is a "counsel of perfection." Perhaps so ; but we are deeply convinced that the more democratic our Con- stitution grows, the more its efficiency will depend on this view being generally taken of a Member's duties to his con- stituents. It is not for the formation of Members' opinions, it is not for the formation of journalists' opinions, it is not for the modification of experts' opinions, that all this speaking and listening is necessary. It is for the formation of some- thing at least approaching to an opinion, in numbers of voters who never get.near to the real sources of opinion at all except when they hear the voice of their Member, and hear the criti- cisms passed upon him by his fellow-townsmen or his county neighbours. Lord Sherbrooke once told us, very justly, that it was our duty" to educate our masters." And so it is, in a much larger sense than he at that time intended to convey. Mr. Forster's Act is educating them in one way ; and every true political discussion educates them in another way. It is no easy achievement to give a true political education to a democracy. That is not a feat to be accomplished by the superfine fastidiousness and supercilious contempt for reitera- tion which the Times expresses. Line upon line, and precept upon precept,—incessant earnestness and incessant candour, — a constant sense of responsibility and in- exhaustible patience—are essential on the part of politicians, if the great majority of the electors, present and prospective, are to be awakened to the sense of their duties, and to the genuine desire to perform their duties as electors, and not merely to exercise their rights. Members of Parliament may be weary, nay, must be weary, if they are to dis- charge well their function in educating the opinion of their constituencies. Journalists must be sickened by hearing the same things said over and over again,. in very much the same way. But the weariness of Members of Parliament and the nausea of journalists will be but slight evils, when balanced against the great result of keeping awake in the whole community the deep sense of political responsibility, and of imparting to the people enough knowledge to ensure the honest and intelligent exercise of that responsibility by the great mass of the electors.
Previous page
