Political Power
IT is a pity that the B.B.C. has, intentionally or wantonly, surrounded the Reith Memorial Lectures with so portentous an atmosphere. The enterprise of commissioning each year a set of- lectures designed to be a major and original contribution to contemporary thought is admirable, if a little naive ; but. so far they have turned out to be something of a different character. And, since their character is not at all to be despised, it would be better not to obscure it with absurdly excessive claims which only invite disappointment.
Lord .Radcliffe (the author of last year's lectures) is himself nothing if not modest. He does not set himself up as a prophet or even as an instructor, and he is aware of the severe limits imposed by his medium, a medium in which he has clearly taken great pains
to school himself. He speaks unpretentiously out of a full mind ; his learning is ready, his touch is light and what he has to say is well considered. His theme is the exercise of political pbwer ; and his method is to consider some of the more notable pronouncements about it, and to consider a remarkable example of it in action. Political power, of course, is never absolute ; but what makes its exercise a peculiarly appropriate theme in these days is that there is now so much more of it available for use than at any earlier time in the world's history. The most nearly absolute governors of the past had not a tithe of the power available to the least ambitious Govern- ment of a modern State. Lenin observed in the ration-book a source of power which far exceeds even the power possessed by a Church whose claim to dispense salvation or damnation was recognised.
We are, then, quite right to be nervous about political power. And our nervousness is likely to be increased if we listen to the doc- trine that the exercise of power is insatiable, that power is inevitably abused, that (as Blake said) " The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar's laurel-crown."
But one of the interesting things about Lord Radcliffe's lectures is his criticism of this doctrine. It seems to him not only that the exercise of power is necessary to any civilised order in society, but also that even very great power is not always abused. And he adduces in favour of his view the convincing and inspiring example of at least one long period of British rule in India. But it is an example which puzzles him: he is hard put to it to find an explanation for this moderation. He recognises the moral and intellectual qualities of those who exercised power, but 1 do not think that he gives enough weight to the schooling in the Whig tradition at home which went to promote this quality. And, in any case, for every example of a great concentration of power not being abused, a hundred examples could be cited to the contrary. If we hesitate to believe that there is always a deterioration of human conduct when men find themselves in the possession of great power, at least Bossuet's more moderate view is difficult to oppose convincingly : " Let us candidly confess that there istno temptation equal to that of power, nor aught more difficult than to refuse yourself anything when men grant you everything and think only of stimul. ' Ong or even anticipat- ing your desires."
Great power, then, is something at least to be suspicious of, and I think Lord Radcliffe's suspicions would have been greater if there were not at some points in his argument a confusion between power and authority. For authority is authorised (that is, defined) power ; and whereas it may easily be true that " most men are the better, not thd worse, for having authority," the same is not necessarily true of mere power. However, Lord Radcliffe's main concern is, un- avoidably, with the moral and mechanical means which men have devised or recognised in order to guard against the abuse of political power. Plato, Locke, Rousseau and Bentham are the chief theoretical writers discussed ; and, among the practical engineers of the limita- tion of power, proper recognition is given to the authors of The Federalist. The chapter on the Middle Ages is perhaps the least adequate, partly because of the immense difficulty of saying anything significant in the space, and partly because it is concerned exclusively with mediaeval ideas about the authorisation of political power and not at all with mediaeval inventions for seeing that this authorisation was not exceeded. The theorists divide themselves into two classes —those who are out to produce an infallible remedy for the abuse of power (like Plato and, in his more mechanical manner, Rousseau) and those who offer more modest suggestions. These suggestions often, as in the case of Locke, reflect well-tried practices, but they are too often made to appear rather larger than life by being turned into a theory of government.
Lord Radcliffe has no inclination to sum up his reflections. But the thought which he seems to wish to leave with us in these admirably dispassionate lectures is that we can overdo our distrust of power, and that we should be wise to avert our minds from the illusion that there is any infallible method of preventing men who have authority from
Previous page
