POLITICAL PESSIMISM.
WHEN out-of-door work has to be done it is occasion- ally necessary under the present scheme of things to risk getting wet. That is the homely truth which, as it seems to us, Mr. Morley, and those who borrow his ideas, too frequently overlook. Ho says that he is not a pessimist, but only a realist who looks facts in the face, and we certainly have no intention either of nicknaming him or of denying his value in political discussion. Just now, especially, with an Opposition all at sixes and sevens, and a Govern- ment which, for want of that Opposition, is careless about explanations, a speaker like Mr. Morley, who really thinks, who knows much, and whose criticism is not perfunctory, does good service to a slightly bewildered community. He makes objections definite, and compels those who act to consider whether they are acting with sufficient regard to future consequences. The man of business who tells his employer when he is spending largely that balances are getting low, and that he has other claims to provide for, is a very useful servant ; and the master who pardons his dis- agreeableness in consideration of his fidelity is the man most likely to come through a big speculation safe. Mr. Morley himself, however, would acknowledge that whether he is pessimist or not, the total effect of his counsel is the avoidance of action; and it is by the inner meaning of that counsel, and not by its apparent soundness, that the merit of the counsellor must be judged. Mr. Morley says that we ought not to be puffed up ; ought not to be extravagant ; ought not to trust bad though pleasant advice ; and there is no answer or possibility of reply. But his inner mean- ing is that we should not have fought to make South Africa British ; should not permit the expansion of the Empire ; should not increase our armaments ; should not yield, as no doubt we are yielding, to the incessant cry for more and yet more expensive improvements in all Departments. As we have done these things, he says, we are sure to suffer, and nearly sure to suffer heavily. It is therefore by that advice, and not by his frequent abstract counsels, that Mr. Morley's place as a statesman must be decided by the people. For ourselves, we hold him wrong. The expenditure may be regrettable, and the willingness to spend prompts much extravagance, while the value of a full pocket as a source of strength can hardly be over- estimated ; but if the two hundred millions had not been spent, our Colonial Empire would have crumbled ; if we had not constructed our Army and Navy at great cost, we should have been menaced by a coalition ; if we had not conceded much to the endless demands for more, the strength of the Government would have been sapped by general discontent. The work had to be done irrespective of consequences, and as to the consequences Mr. Morley's outlook is far too gloomy. Rain does not last for ever any more than sunshine, and if it lasts while work is doing, well, we must just get wet, and display that virtue which Radicals in their pity for humanity seem inclined to con- sider a vice,—the ancient virtue of endurance. To hear them talk, nobody just now is to bear anything patiently, under penalty of Canning's commination as a " sordid, un- feeling, reprobate, degraded, spiritless outcast."
This is our main charge against political pessimists. We are not enough impressed by Cassandra to hate her, and we highly estimate sharp criticism as a steadying influence ; but the pessimists who exaggerate every chance of misfortune, and deride experiment as waste, whenever they get the upper hand diminish not only the sum of effort, but the chance of success in such effort as is made. Courage is an essential basis for capacity ; and though many pessimists are brave, the effect of their pessimism on action is the precise equivalent of timidity. The " sickly cast " of their thought takes energy out of them. They tell us every day that they are looking facts in the face, and ask us if that can be unwise; and forget that the charge against them is not their regard for the present, but their outlook on the future.—No man is a pessimist because he says the British Army is too weak. That is a fact or a fallacy, as may happen. The charge against him is that, weak or strong, he expects it to be defeated, and will, therefore, do nothing for its repair.—The pessimists believe at heart that fate is hostile, and, shrinking from the encounter, remain as far as they can quiescent. They reckon up all the chances against them as if they were certainties, and forget that if there is such a thing as chance, it must by the law of its being be absolutely impartial. They forget, too, that in politics inaction is action of a sort, and must have consequences which, if they applied to it the method they apply to action, they would see or imagine to be disastrous. The able pessimists who would have had Britain abstain from the great war with Napoleon pre- dicted from the war every variety of ruin, never seeing that if the great condottire mastered the world his first victim must necessarily be Britain. They, like Mr. Morley, would have saved on military and naval expenditure ; they, like him, would have had attention concentrated on internal affairs ; and they, like him, expected that the rush of over- weening energy which they perceived in their countrymen's minds would end finally in disaster. Fortunately for the world and for Britain itself, our people are essentially optimists, and are always for action ; they also at that time held endurance to be a virtue, and mankind was saved from the world-Empire which would have arrested its progress and destroyed its spirit. Optimists are often very foolish in their neglect of calculation, but they do things, they risk things, and they succeed in things. If we were asked to define in a line the reason for the extraordinary success of Americans as compared with Englishmen, we should attribute it to the fact that, owing to causes which it would take a book to set forth, Americans are of all mankind the most incurably optimistic. No experiment appals them, because they never expect defeat, or any consequences which they will be unable in the end to bear.
There is one peculiarity about political pessimists for which, after much thinking, we find ourselves fairly un- able to account. They have rather more tendency than optimists to appeal to broad general principles of action. They say constantly, when about to indulge in prophecy, that war is bad, or freedom always beneficial, or the right always victorious. Yet broad principles ought to be destructive of pessimism. If you can once convince your- self fully that such-and-such a political law is infallible, or such-and-such a course invariably wise, there is no room for pessimism, for if you obey the law or follow the wise course there is no room for doubt as to the issue. Religious men all from time to time admit this and act on it, yet we all have met religious men who, even as to the subjects on which they are most strongly convinced— for instance, that good always overcomes evil, or that the righteous are always protected—are nevertheless hopelessly pessimist. Are we to suspect them of in- sincerity ? or is it only that, as temperament will often prevail against reason, so also it makes a fierce struggle even with conviction ? We prefer to believe the latter, and should expect Mr. Morley, even if we were waging a war against slavery, to doubt whether after all the energy and the unscrupulousness which spring from holding slaves would not give the slaveholder the victory. The optimist would be foolishly sure that the struggle must be short, and that, once emancipated. the slave would display every virtue of the freeman ; but then he would fight on enduringly till emancipation was decreed. The impulse to action would be with him rather than his rival, and with it the kind of rashness which most conduces to victory. One half of the disasters which marked Pitt's wars at the beginning were caused by the inner pessimism which made his military policy feeble, and caused him to say when Austerlitz had been fought, " Roll up the map of Europe." To be strong, you must have hope ; and if a perfect pessimist could exist, he must be a hopeless, and therefore a non-victorious, man, and this in the political battle as well as in speculation.
Previous page
