THE ETHICS OF INVECTIVE.
TN the current number of the North American Review the -L first place is given to a curious piece of political writing by Mark Twain, in an article which he calls "The Czar's Soliloquy." Our readers have no doubt read the plentiful extracts that have appeared in the daily papers. If they have not, we may explain that Mark Twain showers his blows on the Emperor after the manner of a Juvenal or a Swift. He taunts Nicholas II. with his physical infirmities, and forces on him the full responsibility for the cruel and oppressive acts done in the name of the Czar. It is all very vigorous and violent, and yet we doubt whether it will have precisely the effect which the writer intended. He is savagely indignant, pours out his adjectives in showers, finds it difficult to get out what he wants to say fast enough—you can hear the voice growing shriller as the words tumble over each other—he is the more angry because he is helpless actually to do anything to prevent misrule, and, above all, he is patently honest. His honesty will gain him readers, and the ring of declamation may attract the more impressionable; but sober-minded men will not be convinced. The Czar may be all that Mark Twain thinks him, but it is quite as probable that he is not. He may, in the eyes of a. greater Judge than any man, be held personally responsible for the pain of his people at home, and for the horrors of the war abroad ; but if a single human being is to, bear so awful a responsibility, is it right for men who are more fortunate in their inherited position to lash him with, abuse P He might, at least, however weak and insignificant his body may be, be spared recrimination for that. He may be physically timid—though the best evidence on that point goes, we think, to show that he is by no means a coward—and he may lack that spark of kingliness which would have urged a braver man to risk his life by meeting his petitioning subjects face to face, and to think that he did well to risk his life in his people's presence, just because he was a King. Yet for all that, is he to be blamed for being born with the germs of physical debility working in his body, preventing him from doing what, perhaps—there is a " perhaps "—he would like to do, and would do if he had the moral power? If Mark Twain's article leads to sober comment, would it not be something of this kind, with the addition, too, that if these things need saying, they should be said by a Russian, and not by a man of another race and nationality ? If so, the actual violence of the invective defeats its own object; it suggests retort, provokes sympathy, reveals the line of reply. We detest as strongly as Mark Twain the horrible tyranny that prevails in Russia, and, like him, desire to see it exchanged for freedom. But this desire for liberty must not blind us to the injustice of a personal attack on the Emperor. Injustice was never yet cured by injustice. If there were evidence that the Emperor loved cruelty and bloodshed for its own sake, Mark Twain might be justified. As it is, his invective is merely a non- conductor of sympathy. In another age, it may be, it would have had its effect, would have called followers to the standard. To-day the bugle-call has changed,—the better kind of intel- lect follows sane reasoning rather than partisan oratory. Above all, we see, or think we can see, a growing dislike in public life to any form of openly expressed personal abuse. The opponents of the war in South Africa, for instance, who got most people to listen to them in the past, and who can attract the greatest audiences now, are certainly those who vilified least the men who believed the war to be just and unavoidable. They gave their opponents their due, they recognised that they were honest, even if they believed them wrong; and because.of that implied attribution of honesty to their opponents, they are recognised as honest themselves.
efiled.
They have never said too much, have never gone too far in suggesting unworthy motives; and for that reason they, to-
day, are listened to with more attention than those who in the early days of the war, when men were striving to get at the rights, applied the severer forms of invective to those who disagreed ,with them. They are recognised as being not only honest, but punctilious.
Is there, then, it might be asked, no room in our social or political system for the "splendid bile " of a Juvenal, or a Swift, or, to go even only three generations back, of a Hazlitt P We believe there is room, but the savage indignation which " makes verse," if it is to be listened to, will be directed against measures, not against men. It is, and must be, taken for granted—we have at least made that progress in the evolution of English political life—that there is always the premise in any modern English political argument that your opponent is honest, unbiassed, unpaid. If once you grant that, invective against persons becomes not only unreasonable and wrong, but ridiculous. In the days of Juvenal and Swift and Hazlitt—in the days when, so to say, the arena of politics and public life was perpetually contaminated by men who were really demoralised—there was not only place, but need, for savage invective against men who used their position to countenance, even to originate, corruption and bribery. In English politics of to-day, at all events, there is no crying need for a Swift to write another " Gulliver's Travels." There would be an absurdity felt on both sides in attacking the honesty of politicians. But in other countries, and perhaps in our own, outside and away from the arena of the secret ballot? It might at least be admitted by politicians of all beliefs that there is room for the genius of invective employed against systems, if not against men. In the 'United States, for example, there has been an opportunity open for thirty years, and never yet properly taken, for the writer who would begin with Semper ego auditor tantum on Tammany Hall. Because such a writer has not arisen, has not been thrown up by the life of New York, or, if he has been thrown up, has been hurled back by the power which he would try to threaten, it must not be argued that he would be unheard if he did arise. He would be listened to by the best men, and in the end would win; if he used strong words and ugly adjectives, he would still be, worth listening to, because he would be doing in a young State what has been done in the older States years ago; he would be setting the right names to the things which are bad, though only dimly supposed by the majority to be bad because they are so often and so cleverly hidden. It does not lessen our admiration for the genius of the American people to admit that. it takes more than two or three centuries to get political nomenclature properly established, and the right names given to the right things. A new Swift or Juvenal would rightly be listened to because be would be giving, for the first time, the real names to the real things, and because, when once those names have been given—when once they have taken, as it were, their proper place on the pages of the dictionary of the national conscience—nobody can touch the labels without labelling themselves. This or that practice may have hitherto escaped being labelled "corruption " or " thieving " or " lying " ; but when once the wielder of the savagest kind of political invective has done his work, no man may touch the unclean thing, then for the first time definitely labelled as horrible and unclean, without being
But if it is true of modern political and social life that a Juvenal or a Swift would not be listened to seriously, because his readers would instinctively refuse to countenance a writer who went too far in invective and abuse, one point is curious, and curious because it shows that the great users of invective in the politics of the past certainly saw the weakness, even if they knew the strength, of the position which they took up. Arbuthnot was a disciple of Swift, and he copied Swift's methods of attack, except that he left out the flaring invective. Swift wrote of him that if there were a dozen Arbuthnots in English public life, he would have tossed " Gulliver's Travels" into the fire. Why? Because he said sanely, or contradicted quietly, what Swift said with mordant fury I' Surely that is the real answer, and it is the more evidence of the power of Swift's bright, biting genius that he saw how great a man a quieter critic like Arbuthnot might be. Swift has used con-
. sTikillymoii7pitensive terms than Mark Twain in attacking a% Offbriefit. 'flat he was great enough to recognise that he was neither at his best himself] not did he best inspire actibn in otheiiiandto be 'Ale to inspire action must always be the aim of political partNans—when he took to plain aura, however witty. That kind of personal invective men enjoy up to a point, because some one else has said for them what they have wanted to say themselves and have not said, or not had the wit to say. But it often happens that if they admire, they also distrust, the man who has said in words of one syllable what they, by self-restraint, have pre- vented themselves from saying. Swift was necessary and valuable two hundred years ago. To-day, to get the attention be commanded in the days of George I., he would have the sense to wrap his phrases more quietly,—because there are not the same things for a politician to denounce.
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