TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NATIONAL NIGHTMARE.
WE cannot get up a national movement. Our boasted tranquillity turns out to be as much the weakness of inertia as the strength of self-possession. In fact, the nation does not thoroughly possess itself; it is not master of its own action: desiring to move, it can ret no further than the uneasy, convulsive, but enchained twitch- jigs of a nightmare. The signs of the mortified wish for move- ment are many,—the Chartist demonstration ; the counter move of the special constables ; the endless recognition of "something to be done," in the newspapers even of Conservative colour; the Nottingham meeting to deprecate tumult and demand greater legislative diligence on behalf of the people; Lord John Russell's declaration that he is open to proposals ; the organized agitation of fifty-one Members of Parliament, &c. We are told, indeed, that this is no time for measures of altera- tion; and the Reform Bill is pointed out as a proof that such measures end in vain frustration. The. Reform Bill was a measure confessedly imperfect : even Lord John Russell, notwithstanding his subsequent "finality" crotchet, admitted as much when he introduced the bill; but it was necessary to secure what could be got then, leaving needful appendages to the progress of time : those remain to be supplied. But a period of revolution, we are told, is a bad time : a man who wishes to render his house secure even against the storm, does not make his repairs in time of hur- ricane. Yes, he does, if he can, and if he has been foolish enough not to make them before. Especially he does so if there is any foretokening of the hurricane before it comes. But this is an old pretext for shuffling out of inevitable duties : in times of quiet no one will attend to the precautions against the storm; in stormy times we are told that the calm is the period for repairs. The time, we say, is that in which they can be made, fair or foul.
We need not, however, talk of hurricanes in England : the dif- ficulty, it appears, is not to control but to get up any truly na- tional movement.
We have small expectation of witnessing any such movement ; and certainly it will not be advanced by those who shut their eyes to the obstructions, and accept pretences of action in lieu of the reality. The state of public opinion in this country is such as to impede and defeat action. The essentials of action are power and will ; of virtuous action, also conscience. For all our oft- boasted manliness, it is the tendency of public opinion amongst us at present to waste its decision in weighing and balancing mi- nute conflicting details: absorbed in the inspection of particles, the pensive public has for the time lost the faculty of large con- ceptions. Will is checked by a moral cowardice. Conscience has degenerated into an effeminate, self-interested, pedantic dread of consequences, unless they be foreseen with a superhuman dis- tinctness and certainty. Our public will not go into the water until it can swim. Conscience—the instinctive perception of what is good and beautiful, and the instinctive desire to consum- mate it without regard to self-interest or "profit "—is further corrupted by a moral scepticism which has sapped our faith in all but material welfare. We can do little from a generous desire for what is noble, but must justify it in figures. Even when we would chivalrously aid the helpless, it is only in some prudential way. We cannot read now how Mary Magdalene "wasted " the ointment, without sympathizing with the objectors, and thinking that it might have gone in diminution of the poor-rates. Hence narrow and mechanical conceptions, a force of opinion frittered away upon details and trivialities, disuse of great simple move- ments by means of large sections of society. We are always wishing, hoping, and claiming, and cannot screw up our courage to realize our wishes in facts.
This general tendency of public opinion was practically con- firmed by the Reform Bill, which expunged the " rotten bo- roughs" and direct nominees of the landed aristocracy, and re- placed them by a new town constituency of the middle classes. Those classes are the furthest removed of all from impulse to ac- tion : they do not obey in any great degree the behests of educated thought, they do not feel the ruder instincts and the coercion of want : they are shielded from extremes, settled in mediocrity, dislike change, feel neither ambition nor the rougher impulse of passion ; they have no love of adventure—that love of action, and even of braving risk, which has distinguished every nation while it was rising in greatness and prosperity ; but rather they feel for any adventure, for any action without guaranteed consequences, all the dread of strangeness and effeminate timidity.
The present substitute for a national movement is the organized agitation of the Fifty-one Members. The essentials of their movement are—extended suffrage, revision of taxation, reduced expenditure, and general reform. We can form no very high ex- pectations from this new attempt. It is evidently a sequel to that abortive " Peace " movement, which was to employ the ma- chinery of the late Free-trade agitation, and which was so lu- dicrously estopped by the universal outbreak in Europe. The promise of "general reform " is too vague to raise any specific hope. As to reduction of expenditure and revision of taxes, we have already expressed our opinion : they are laudable objects, but in themselves they possess no quality for filling the public mind and satisfying the want for action. Mere extension of the suffrage can do little in the way of producing material improve- ments, or staying the public expectation. But the manner of the new agitation is what daunts too sanguine expectation : it is
trivial ; it looks like a "humbugging " project for improving an opportunity to restore consequence to certain Members who have made mistakes, by tying them to the tail of " popular measures," and to augment the importance of the gentlemen who club their resources together. At the same time, it is to be admitted that the actual state of the House of Commons is a scandal and a public shame. The representative assembly meets annually to exhibit its inefficiency in the service of the nation—its disregard for the interests and wishes of the poor and most numerous classes, who form so large a part of " the people." It " represents " nothing, at least with any directness or accuracy. The narrow suffrage, reckoned at one in seven of the adult male population, makes the House a mockery of " popular" representation ; it has ceased to represent the aris- tocracy; the manageable boroughs, and the element of corruption in the shape .of " freemen " and other electoral mercenaries, de- stroy all authenticity, and constitute an odious scandal. The Members of Parliament are not " representatives," but merely a privileged class—a sort of Peers by purchase, on a short term of years.
While there exists this fraudulent institution, concurrently with a real power in the nation at large that ought to be repre- sented, but is defrauded of its right, there cannot be real tran- quillity or contentment; but agitation will only be kept in check by that effeminate and corrupt state of public opinion which makes it waver among doubts and compromises. We shall not have a thoroughly sound guaranteed tranquillity until the nation recover a spirit of manly activity and a generous ambition to do its work properly. Were such a spirit evoked, in lien of that puffing, Brummagem activity, which is its substitute, the real Parliamentary reform would commence ipso facto. With many the theory of our political system is a counterpoise of mutual checks, and our practice partakes too much of that idle and be- numbing notion. The greatness and prosperity of every nation must depend upon the power that is in it ; whatever the nation can achieve must be the result of that power brought into activity. The greatness and prosperit7 of the nation are to be advanced, therefore, by developing, uniting, and directing that power, not by neutralizing and checking it. Our so-called representative branch does not truly and effectively represent the influential and potential part of the nation but representation is adulterated and enfeebled by the introduction of fictitious or base elements. It bears a very. imperfect relation, in point of distribution, to the- numbers or intelligence of the population. The nature of the re- quisite reform is indicated by the nature of the abuse. It is not so much a mere extension of the suffrage which is demanded to make the representative body truly to represent the real power of the country, but a readjustment of the franchise, so as to cast out the vicious elements that enfeeble the representative power, and take in a larger share of electoral intelligence and energy. But to the House of Commons broad principles are foolishness ; it labours under a congenital incapacity for great and de- cided action : if it could act at all, it would only be at the instance of some man capable of grasping the large subject of the nation and its wants struggling for utterance. We observe no sign that any man is prepared with a plan ; so we must even be content with the Fifty-one. May we get out of them a trifle more than talk !
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