SIR G. C. LEWIS ON GOVERNNIENT.*

Sin G. C. LEWIS is always publishing something. He seems to hold the French theory that the cultivation of literature can- not be derogatory to any position, and that a Minister is bound, like the rest of the world, to pour out all he possesses of special knowledge or original thought, without reference to his

office. That theory is secretly discredited in England, where people called Canning a jester for writing occasional squibs, still sneer at Earl Russell for composing a tragedy, and half doubt if it be possible for a man to know much about currency, yet study 41IIomeric rhythm. Sir G. C. Lewis has hitherto escaped reproof, partly because his books have exhibited orthodox English judg- ment, and partly because they have displayed so much of that classical knowledge which governing Englishmen in their hearts rank above every other. But the practice is not the less a dan-

gerous one, as dangerous as it would be for a Chancery barrister to publish a volume of love songs ; and this last brochure will not tend to diminish the public distrust of literary statesmanship.

It contains many broad truths very well expressed, and one strikingly original set of reflections ; but the total impression it

leaves is not altogether satisfactory. The author seems not quite to apprehend the points on which thinking men are craving for a

little more light. The personages of his dialogue, a monarchist, an aristocrat, and a democrat, aided by Crito, i.e., we presume, himself, dispose very completely of the notion of an ideal form of government towards which all existing systems should tend. 4‘ The ideal government " is not, however, the subject by which men of this generation are worried, the desire for the practical being indeed only too fully developed. They would rather discuss the very curious question -whether any new principles of government, any forms of power capable of adapta- tion to circumstances, still remain to be tried. A science cannot be exhausted by the words monarchy, aristocracy, democracy ; and yet we hear of no others, and in practice see no others tried, Yet others, whether expedient or not, are possible. Suppose political power restricted to the cities, or Paris invested with the legal as well as virtual government of France, or a free and absolute parliament based on a very limited intellectual suffrage,

or all power entrusted to a man changed every five years, or to a man, as once in Judea, chosen whenever wanted ; none of these forms come within the three definitions, yet all are, to say the least, possible. The advocate for monarchy puts very well the apologies for that system—by which Sir G. Lewis, by the way, implies only personal government—but he does not touch upon Csesarism, the form of monarchy which seems to-day to tempt so many otherwise judicious thinkers. A few short para- graphs upon that experiment by a man accustomed to govern would have been most acceptable—would, perhaps, have cleared up the doubt which the visible strength and celerity of that mode of administration so often tend to produce. There are men in England devoted to freedom, who doubt whether the rapidity of a true Caesar, and his disposition to secure the comfort

of the masses—whose quiescence is his guarantee—do not com- pensate for most of the evils inherent in personal government. Then, all through the dialogue into which Sir G. C. Lewis throws his arguments, there runs a strong bias in favour of aris- tocracy. Its advantages are admirably described, and the author never makes the mistake of supposing that it necessarily involves

either a peerage or the hereditary principle. But the point on which politicians want information is, we conceive,

rather this. Is it possible to make an aristocracy—to

select in a country where fortunes are pretty equal a class or classes of governing men ? In other words,

can aristocratic institutions exist without an aristocratic disposition of property ? Sir G. C. Lewis evidently thinks, or, rather, in some depths of his own intellect believes, that they can, and that certain forms of representation might be made by statesmanlike foresight to supply the deficiency.

"By a proper application of the method of local representation, and by the formation of limited constituencies, the representation of mino- rities, the great object of our modern builders of Ideal States can be legitimately accomplished. A representative assembly is itself a sort of aristocracy. It is a standing committee of the nation, elected by the body of the people to manage their affairs. Make the elective suffrage as wide as you please, and there is a vast difference between such a select assembly, and the promiscuous assemblage taken from the entire free population which met in the Athenian pnyx to vote upon public affairs. A parliamentary assembly acquires a limited corporate character; the members of it become personally known to each other ; and they gradually form almost professional habits of business. I would wish to see such a body elected by a large number of voters, sufficiently large to prevent the predominance of narrow interests, but • The Bat Fora of Coventment. By Sir G. C. Lewis. Parker and Son. not so large as to place the representative body under an overruling democratic control."

An expansion of the idea evidently latent in that paragraph would be exceedingly valuable, more especially if it displayed,

as we incline to think it might, the possibility of constructing an aristocratic representation on a democratic suffrage. That is the next line which the experiments of free communities will have to follow, and for which the example of Prussia is so exceedingly noteworthy. The tendency of the world is towards a democratic basis for power ; but it is by no means clear that a democratic mode of expression for power is equally inevitable. On the con- trary, experience seems to prova that the natural impulse of a people not poisoned by professional politicians is to choose out its eminencies, and give them rather too much of power. In France, where men have no longer to hunger after equality, the Assem- bly of 1848, elected by universal suffrage, was curiously conser- vative, and men like De Tocqueville, aristocrats in grain, were freely elected. Sir G. Lewis, however, instead of pursuing his own thought, breaks away into -considerations of the form of government applicable to oriental races, deciding at last that anything but despotism is for them purely speculative. In so saying he forgets, we conceive, the municipal systems of Asia, which are not despotic at all, and the very complex and delicate theory on which the Chinese Government was in its best days based. The example of Japan, too, is wholly forgotten, as well

as that of Arabia, both countries governed as fond by an overpowerful aristocratic idea. There is no more reason why a

Daimio should not develops into a peer than why a Baron should not. Suppose the Daimios forbidden, like English Barons after the wars of the Roses, to keep armed retainers !

By far the best passages in the pamphlet, however, are those

which describe our want of evidence as to the working of pure democracy. People are always fancying that experience con- demns that form of government, whereas it has never yet been tried by any great society, except, indeed, the Christian Church.

The ancient " democracies" were aristocracies based upon work- ing classes held to bondage. Modern France has never, except for a few months, had a democratic constitution, and as to

America— "I yet cannot consent that democracy should be judged by the working of the American constitution. The American constitution is an intricate system, compounded of federal and state elements ; the sovereignty is partitioned between the central federal power and the separate state governments. Both are indeed fashioned upon democratic principles ; but the constant conflict between federal powers and state powers, and still more between federal interests and state interests, prevents the democratic element from having a perfectly free play. This conflict has been particularly manifested during the present civil war. If the United States had been a nation under a simple democratic government, the civil war would either never have arisen, or, if it had arisen, it would not have assumed such gigantic dimensions, and it would have been brought to an earlier termination."

" The exclusion of able and highly educated men from political life in America, which appears to be a fact, is likewise attributed to the jealous and levelling spirit of democracy. I doubt whether such exclusion is the invariable concomitant of democracy ; and I attribute it rather to the working of the federal system,which splits the political career into two portions, neither of which includes the entire interests and concerns of the community. The state legislature spoils Congress, and Congress spoils the state legislature. When to this we add the disqualification of executive officers for legislative functions, we shall find, to a certain extent, an explanation of the secondary position of a public man in the United States. He is only one degree raised above the town councillor or the vestryman."

That is profoundly true, and so also is the remark that each

state in the North, which is in itself a real democracy, is, con- sidered as an instrument for securing the happiness of the masses, exceedingly successful. The misfortune of these petty commu- nities, as of the Swiss Cantons, is that, having no foreign affairs, or external finance, or war machinery, no haute politique, in fact, they have never felt the necessity for being governed by men of broad and exhaustive views, great experience, or. manifest training for administration. Whether with those advantages they would have broken down, or have developed novel and excep-

tional power, is the problem which, pace Mr. Beresford Hope, yet remains to be solved, and which men like Sir G. C. Lewis do England high service in teaching her to consider.