THE SENSITIVENESS OF PARTISANS.
" Q W /JET reasonableness" is supposed to be one of the
ideals of modern life, and all cultivated people resent the imputation of controversial unfairness. It is so unscientific, it is allowed, not to listen to facts which tell against your own view, or to refuse to answer arguments which make for your opponents. Every one is required by the laws of culture to "see the other side," and most men of our day will confess to ignorance more genially than they will admit the existence in their minds of wholly unreasoning prejudice. A labourer will tell you that he thinks Mr. Smith quite right ; but Mr. Smith is a Tory, and he "can't abide" Tories; but it takes a man low down in the scale to be as frank as that. It is not good intel- lectual form to grow angry in discussion, or to hit your adversary with anything heavier than a fairly pungent sarcasm. We suppose, too, there is some ground for the pre- tension we all make, and that in spite of Nihilists, Socialists, ultra-Radicals, teetotalers, and fanatics of a hundred kinds, there is really a perceptible decline in the virulence of controversy. Outside Ireland the language of the platform is certainly moderated, and though partisans avoid meeting at dinner with a certain care, still if they do meet there is no danger of the decanters flying at each other's heads. We hear men say, "That is a good argument from your point of view," pretty often, and the remark, if intolerably patronising, still shows a certain openneas of mind. People will listen, if required, to things they do not like to hear ; and do to an extraordinary extent read newspapers and magazine articles with which they disagree. The world, it must be admitted, has in some respects grown intellectually tolerant ; but there is one marked excep- tion to the general rule. Men were never more unreasonable about attacks upon their political leaders. There is a development rather than a decrease of personal feeling towards them ; a visible impatience of criticism upon their views, when quoted as specially their views ; an acrid anger aroused by the slightest imputation upon their political conduct. You may call Tories the stupid party as much as you like, and you will be forgiven, as Mr J S Mill was but to call Lord Salisbury stupid is to make deadly enemies of half the members of the Carlton. You are not bound, in talking to Gladstonians, to profess belief in Home-rule ; but you are bound to conceal disbelief in Mr. Gladstone, or even in Mr. Parnell, the latter an addition to the restrictions -very recently made. The personal bitterness, on the other hand, is equally great; and if you do not, in speaking to Unionists or Gladstoniaais, asperse the hostile leader, your honesty is always silently, and sometimes even openly, impugned. A sincere Tory feels quite hurt if his interlocutor speaks respectfully of Mr. Gladstone ; while a Liberal of the stronger sort considers justice to Mr. Goschen from a Liberal mouth as something almost of the nature of sin. Englishmen are by nature a little slow, and uninventive in the way of epithets, so that they have not as yet attached allitera- tive adjectives to their opponents' names after the Irish fashion of describing "bloody Balfour," but they show symptoms of wishing to do it, and we quite expect, if Dissolu- tion is long delayed, to hear of "gyrating Gladstone," "gloomy Goschen," and" supercilious Salisbury," as customary modes of speech.
It is a singular exception to modern moderation, and we should like very much to ascertain its causes with some precision. We assume, of course, that the main cause is and must be the old one, the one which in a different age de- veloped the enduring passion we call loyalty; the fact that while a Cause appeals mainly to the intellect, the leader in that cause appeals also to the affections. Nobody is so devoted to matrimony as he is to his wife, or hates treason in the abstract quite as much as he hates a special traitor. The Person wakes the emotions as well as the sentiments, and that so strongly that love or hatred for him often survives his lifetime, and helps to found a dynasty or enforce a permanent and most unreasonable decree of ostracism against his descendants. That explanation is perfectly true, and as old as history ; but is there not in our time, when political gratitude is somewhat cool and people criticise their own fathers, something beside this ? We have a suspicion that there is, and that, as we all nowadays, in one fashion or another, elect our leaders instead of taking them ready-made, a subtle kind of vanity becomes strongly enlisted on their side. That is undoubtedly the reason why men are so exceedingly offended by criticism on their horses, or on the pictures they have just bought, or on the gardens they have laid out, and there is no reason why amour propre should not feel wounded when individual objects of regard are derided or aspersed. Men understand their leaders, or think they do, much better than the causes those leaders embody, they identify themselves with them, and they resent any deroga- tion from their dignity as insult to themselves. Implicitly their own judgment is declared to be at fault. The resentment is warmed no doubt very often by a kind of affection, often most sincere, and sometimes very deep,—we should find, if we knew the truth, that Raleigh's cloak was flung by a devotee as well as a courtier,—but it has its root in a kind of pride, noble in one man perhaps, but not so noble in many more. The thousands who spring to their feet in some great hall because their leader's name has passed a speaker's lips, are moved by reverence for that leader, but also by reverence for themselves, who, in electing him to that position, have shown such patriotism and far-sightedness. For you will observe that there are occasional and very striking exceptions to the rule. Prince Bismarck, though by far the most successful leader of our time, never excited this special form of adoration, the people who were so ready to follow and obey him nevertheless hearing aspersions on him with very little emotion. He had come, he had not been elected, and his
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