GIFT OF MICHAEL REESE NOTES ON POLITICS AND HISTORY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YOEK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO NOTES ON POLITICS & HISTORY A UNIVERSITY ADDRESS BY VISCOUNT MORLEY, O.M. CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1914 COPYRIGHT First Edition 1913 Reprinted 1914 NOTE THESE pages are a version, amplified and recast, of an Address delivered by the writer as Chancellor of the University of Manchester, in the summer of 1912. The strict rules that limit the contents of a Bill in parliament by its Title, would be fatal to an academic address like this. I only hope that my Notes are not too dispersive to prevent some points of thought from being of use in the way of suggestion, interrogatory, and perhaps as spur to curiosity. M. 285549 NOTES ON POLITICS AND HISTOKY WHEN I had the pleasure of coming among you a um few months ago, I offered some remarks upon the politick obvious truth that democracy in the discussions mmd. f of the day means government working directly l through public opinion ; and upon the equally urgent importance of a body, like this University, making it one part of its office to help in forming those habits of mind and temper upon which, along with knowledge of the right facts, the sound- ness of opinion depends. To-night I propose (to harp upon the same string,) and to say something about politics and history. I intend a double subject with a single object. I need your indulgence, for of history I know too little, and of politics some of you may think I know too much, and know it wrong. Pretty manifest roots of mischief easily spoil both contemporary politician and historian ; both the minister or the elector of to-day, and the interpreter of days long ago. Looseness of mind is one ; 1 B 2 POLITICS AND HISTORY - narrowness of vision is another. Plenty of infirmities besides are left. You know the worst of them, at least by distant report indolence, impatience, procrastination, incoherence, pugnacity. I include pugnacity among defects, for it is no vice of intellect if our first attitude towards new opinion is one of readiness and attentive response, rather 11 than instantaneous combat ; to give a hearing, before rushing to controversial fire-arms. A recep- tive mind is after all no hindrance to firm love of truth. On the other hand life is short, and there are limits to patience with quackish fungoids. You have not, I would fain believe, forgotten the spirit of a passage from Spinoza that I quoted here last time : " When I applied my mind to politics, so that I might examine what belongs to politics, with the same precision of mind as we use for mathematics, I have taken my best pains not to laugh at the actions of mankind, not to groan over them, not to be angry with them, but to understand them." By understanding them, he says, he means looking at all the motives of human feeling, love, hatred, envy, ambition, pity, not as vices of human x nature, but as properties belonging to it, just as heat, cold, storm, thunder belong to air and sky. signs of So much to begin with the mood and temper : then the application and occasion. Any re- flective observer, if he likes, can sketch some of the signs of the times in rather formidable outline. POLITICS AND HISTOKY 3 Let us look at it. Political power is described as lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, / with scanty regard for tradition or history. What is history to me ? asks the plain busy man. Demo- cracy, they warn us, is going to insist on writing its own programme. The structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing half-hidden but profound alterations. The two Houses of our Parliament are being fundamentally transformed before our eyes. The Cabinet, keystone of the arch, in size and in prerogative is not altogether safe against invasion. The great wholesome system of party is said to be melting into groups and coalitions. The growth of special interests, each / claiming for itself a representative Minister in the Cabinet, has turned it into a noun of multitude indeed, and a noun not wholly favourable to that concentrated deliberation which was possible when Pitt had first six, then seven colleagues, Peel twelve, and Gladstone fourteen. To-day we are a score. A body of professional experts is now united to committee a selected body of ministers, to shape conclusions Defence, in the sphere of military defence, and therefore of expenditure ; and such conclusions, though nomin- ally advisory or for information only, naturally carry a weight that cannot but affect the judgment and responsibility of a Cabinet. The appearance, moreover, of a leader of Opposition in this important committee seems to point to the neutralisation both 4 POLITICS AND HISTORY of military and foreign affairs (for each of these must necessarily depend upon the other), and to their withdrawal from the field of party contention. This would not be the first instance in our history of a vast slow silent disguised transformation in the constitution of the empire, without either embodi- ment in any single instrument, or any coherent and systematic transaction. Everybody knows, though nobody has ever exactly comprehended, the famous plan of Sir William Temple in the time of Charles II. Ingenious observers may trace, if they like, a sort of return to Temple's scheme in what they take to be the slow re-modelling of our cabinet system, turning it into a species of supreme imperial senate, but always owing its existence to a majority of the House of Commons a vital condition entirely f alien to Temple's age and mind. Another important element cannot be left out of even the barest summary. Self-governing commonwealths over the seas are making initial claims for a direct voice in the control of imperial affairs. The most recent move in this direction the adjustment of naval contribution has not so far been decisive. National More than all this alteration in machinery, are sphere and signs of change in national atmosphere. These, we ter ' have good reason to hope, may be only superficial and transient, for nothing is more certain than that in a survey of the modern world, national character is slowest of all things to alter in its roots. Mean- POLITICS AND HISTORY 5 while, we discover a shaken attitude towards law as law ; a decline in reverence for institutions as institutions ; a latter-day antinomianism. Even powerful lawyers use language that treats a statute as a cobweb ; and sealed agreements by great in- dustrial organizations, are sometimes no better than ropes of sand. Nor is the change peculiar to England. American citizens of a reflective turn sometimes tell us of the same thing even there. If we remember, for instance, that administration of law is the keystone of all civilized government, it is startling to hear American statesmen who have held posts of supreme responsibility, passionately denouncing the administration of criminal law as a disgrace to their country, and declaring the English system of judges appointed for life to be better than their system of elected judges. Or else on the other hand they demand appeal to a popular referendum against decisions of State Courts on constitutional issues, and are for cashiering the judges who made them in either case shattering the foundations of the judicial fabric. Weakened confidence in our parliament would be formidable, but confidence destroyed in courts of justice would be taking out the linch-pin. Yet it would not be at all true to say that sense of political curiosity, interest, and obligation has declined. The case is just the opposite. Political obligation as tested by the numbers who take part at elections is in fact 6 POLITICS AND HISTORY stronger rather than weaker, and sense of social duty, which is not by any means the same thing as political obligation, has vastly grown alike in strength and range. May I, without peril, here add another engrossing element in the political landscape ? You have all heard how, just before the revolutionary storm broke over France in 1789, Sieve's published one of the most effective pamphlets ever written : its title was this : " What is the Third Estate ? Every- thing. What has it been in politics until now ? Nothing. What does it ask ? To become something." A good critic of to-day warns us that behind the third estate, behind the fourth estate, a fifth estate has risen, with which we have to count. " Women who were nothing, and who rather claim to be everything, to-morrow are going to be something." : some People capable of serious rumination will ask sociT themselves, what is the precise connection, if any connection at all, between the embarrassing changes of the hour, and, say, five profound changes in our scheme of national life and thought within the last fifty years ? Such changes are these. Predominant political power has been transferred from a landed and hereditary aristocracy and the middle class to the nation as a whole. A system of compulsory education has been spread over the length and breadth of the land. Old ecclesiastical pretensions 1 Faguet, Prob. Pol xvi. POLITICS AND HISTORY 7 have vanished, and a singular elasticity is working its way into the forms, symbols, and standards of theo- logical creed. Science and the scientific spirit have, for the time at least, mounted into the thrones of literature and art. Finally, the whole conception of the State has been enormously extended. The exer- tion of all the powers and duties of a State is every day more and more insistently demanded. One result of this last advance concerns that change in the cabinet system to which I have already referred, for it means extension of departmental labour for the minister, and this makes the task of miscellane- ous deliberation all the more arduous or impossible. Nothing is easier than to make a crisis out of close . . , observation this signal conjuncture ot interesting, perplexing, the and exciting circumstance. Still the long experi- O f ence of our national history shows it safest, wisest, soundest, in respect of all English-speaking com- munities, to be in no hurry to believe that, in John Bunyan's pithy phrase, " passion will have all things now." Let us pray to be delivered from exaggeration, and to have vouchsafed to us that cautious sense of proportion, which is one of the main differences between a wise man and a foolish. Above all, how well it would be for everybody, if you who have a share in the moulding of the future in your hands, would write on the tablets of your minds the words of a man who first brought scientific method effectively to bear on social problems. The 8 POLITICS AND HISTORY present writer, said Malthus of himself, is in no .. temper to find plans for the future improvement of society visionary. " But he has not acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him to believe what he wishes, without \ evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence." This is the temper that we may expect to see grow up and spread in universities. value of Our present case, as to social cause and effect, ethos. } offers tempting material for high party dispute, and sectarian recrimination and reproach, but nothing is to be gained on that line here to-night. An important observer of our own day looks for progress to a social force, new in magnitude if not in kind, described by him as the modern alliance between pure science and industry. 1 How far this new force will go may be dubious, but what- ever strength it has, must be centred in these great teaching corporations. They must be its main organs. It is their ethos, their inner genius, that must, apart from the instruction they provide, lead and sustain us in the march. Universities have been boldly ranked by com- petent historians with trial by jury and parliaments, among leading institutions of the Middle Ages. At any rate in England the power of universities and the 1 Decadence. Sidgwick Memorial Lecture. By A. J. Balfour. 1908. POLITICS AND HISTORY 9 public schools that feed them, has been immeasur- able in the working of other institutions. They have been main agents in moulding both our secular and ecclesiastical politics. They have worked too often for darkness as well as light. Too often and too long have they been the mirror of stolid pre- judices and childish conventions ; the appendages of old social form and institution, rather than great luminaries dispensing knowledge, and kindling that ardent love of new truth for which youth is the irrevocable season. Power of this high dimension is not likely to be missing in our new universities, though its forms are undergoing rapid revolution. Well was it said, " C'est toujours le beau monde qui gouverne le monde." That is still a great deal more true than people think, even in countries like our own where aristocratic polity has in large degree gone down. But the privileges of the fine world of social class must yield henceforth to the forces that shape temper, judgment, and range of public interest, in educational centres such as yours. The infusion of their thought and temper is what will impart its colour to the general discussion. It will reduce the number of those who think they have opinions, when in truth they have not. Universities, besides imparting special knowledge, are meant for reason's refuge and its fortress. The standing enemies of reason, in spite of new weapons, altered symbols, changing masks, are what 10 POLITICS AND HISTORY they have always been everywhere. I will spare you the catalogue of man's infirmities, of which I said enough when I began. It is both pleasanter and sounder to turn our eyes the other way, to man's strength, and not his weakness towards equity, candour, diligence, application, charity, disinterestedness for public ends, courage without presumption, and all the other rare things that are inscribed in epitaphs on men of whom kind friends thought well. Wide and stirring is the field. There is no unkindness, and there is useful truth, especially under popular governments, in pressing people to realize the whole bearings of the commonplace, that time and mutations of political atmosphere are incessantly attaching a different significance to the same ideas and the same words. We are so apt to go on with our manful battles as if the flags and banners and vehement catchwords all stood for old causes. This is only one side of all the changing aspects of the time. I ventured to speak of narrowness of vision. The vision would indeed be narrow, that overlooked the reaction on our own affairs of circumstances outside the new map of Europe, the shifting balances of fighting strength, Hague tribunals, tariffs, the Panama Canal, strange currents racing in full blast through the rolling worlds of white men, black men, brown men, yellow men. POLITICS AND HISTORY 11 II The most dogmatic agree that truth is pro- digiously hard to find. Yet what rouses intenser r< anger than balanced opinion ? It would be the ruin of the morning paper. It takes fire out of conversation. It may destroy the chance of a seat in the Cabinet, and, if you are not adroit, may weary constituents. The reason is simple. For action, for getting things done, the balanced opinion is of little avail or no avail at all. " He that leaveth nothing to chance," said the shrewd Halifax, " will do few things ill, but he will do very few things." As King Solomon put it, " He that considereth the wind shall not sow, and he that looketh to the clouds shall not reap." Modera- tion is sometimes only a fine name for indecision. The partisan temperament is no gift in a judge, and it is well for everybody to see that most questions have two sides, though it is a pity in a practical world never to be sure which side is right, and to remain as " a cake that is not turned." You even need the men of heroic stamp with whom " a hundred thousand facts do not prevail against one idea." Nations are lucky when the victorious idea happens to have at its back three or four facts that weigh more than the hundred thousand put together. Some well-trained observers find history abounding 12 POLITICS AND HISTORY in volcanic outbreaks of fire and flame, seeming only to leave behind hardened lava and frozen mud. Only too true. Only too familiar is the exaggerated and mis-shapen rationalism that shuts out imagination, distrusts all sentiment, despises tradition, and makes short work alike of the past, and of anything like collective or united faith and belief in the present. But to be over-impatient with what may prove by and bye to be fertilizing Nile floods, is pure foolishness. They will subside, and a harvest well worth saving remain for the hand of the reaper. Generous Ardent spirits have common faults in an expect- illusion * and the ant age. We know them all. They are so apt to struggle, begin where they should end. Pierced by thought of the ills in the world around them, they are over- whelmed by a noble impatience to remove, to lessen, to abate. Before they have set sail, they insist that they already see some new planet swimming into their ken, they already touch the promised land. An abstract a priori notion, formed independently of experience, independently of evidence, is straight- way clothed with all the sanctity of absolute principle. Generous aspiration, exalted enthusiasm, is made to do duty for reasoned scrutiny. They seize every fact or circumstance that makes their way, they are blind to every other. Inflexible pre- conceptions hold the helm. They exaggerate. Their sense of proportion is bad. POLITICS AND HISTORY 13 If party politicians are with us, they will observe, that in this place to-night I am bound to carry political impartiality to the point of passion, and they will not quarrel with me for saying that such vices of political method as I have hinted at the substitution of generous illusion for cool induction are just as common among glowing conservatives as among glowing liberals. Nobody in any camp will quarrel with the view that one of the urgent needs of to-day is a constant attempt to systematize political thoughts, and to bring ideals into closer touch with fact. There can be no reason why that should turn brave and hopeful men into narrow, dry, or cold-hearted. The French Kevolution has not realized its ideals. But then no more has the Reformation. Even as to Christianity itself, one of the most famous sayings of the eighteenth century that " Christianity had been tried and failed, the religion of Christ remained to be tried," is not even now quite out of date. In a thousand forms, the Manichean struggle between Good and Evil, be- tween Good and Better, persists. About one-third of the inhabitants of our planet are Christian, the adherents of the Roman Communion being put at 240 millions, the Protestant Communions at 150, the Greek Church at 100 millions. The Jews, only 10 millions, lowest in number, but possessing a vast effective power of various kinds in the politics of Europe. The relation of creeds to new phases of 14 POLITICS AND HISTORY social idealism must break into cardinal issues, and light may be thrown upon the interesting question what proportion of the ideas that men live with and live upon, are held open to discussion in their minds, and how many of them are inexor- able and sacrosanct. There is good promise that the common temper of willingness to try all things, and hold fast that which is good, will prevail. 1 Misuse of It will do us no harm to digest a sobering mlhTroot thought from Locke : "If any one shall w T ell fusion. consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes and confusion, that are spread in the world by an ill use of words, he will find some reason to doubt whether language, as it has been employed, has contributed more to the improvement or hindrance of knowledge among mankind." Dismal as this may be at any time, how especially perturbing to people with such questions before them, as we are called upon to face to-day. Now, if ever, what mistakes and confusion are likely to follow an ill use of political words, and of the ideas that words stand for. What would become of a lawyer in the Courts who argued his cases with the looseness in point and language, the disregard of apt precedents, the slack concatenation of premiss and conclusion, the readiness to take one authority 1 For a remarkable consideration of Religion in respect of Politics, see Lord Hugh Cecil's little volume, Conservatism (Williams and Norgate, 1912). POLITICS AND HISTORY 15 for as good as another, which even the best of us so often find good enough for politics ? Is there any other field where Bacon's hoary idols of Theatre, Tribe, Market Place, and Cave, keep such contented house together ? Five-and- twenty centuries have passed since one great Greek historian, perhaps casting a stone at another, re- buked in famous words the ignorant carelessness of mankind. " People do not distinguish ; without a test they take things from one another : even on things of their own day, not dulled in memory by time, Hellenes are apt to be all wrong. So little pains will most men take in search for truth : so much more readily they turn to what comes first." 1 To these hints of mine an American newspaper An supplied an apt illustration. The number of niustra- questions, says the writer, now before the American people, on which it is urgent that they should have an intelligent opinion, is staggering. Take one of the most intricate of them all, what to do with Trusts. How are the masses going to know the precise legal and financial effect of the decree of the court dissolv- ing the Tobacco Trust ? They see eminent lawyers radically differing. They hear politicians railing. Nobody can seriously argue that the intricacies of Trust repression and regulation can be mastered by " the wisdom of the people." What the people 1 Thuc. i. 20 ; OVTWS aTaAcu7ra>/>os rots TroAAots 17 7Jr?