Part 3

Many such men do serve as governors or trustees of educational or other public institutions which make nearly as great a demand on their time as the membership of a public body would. Others, in Europe, if less frequently here, give to amusement much more of their leisure than the needs of recreation and health require. This is often due rather to thoughtlessness than to a conscious indifference to the call of duty.

Some of your political reformers have dwelt on the difficulties which party organizations, specially powerful in the United States, place in the way of educated and public-spirited men seeking to enter politics. There may be truth in this as regards the lower districts of the larger cities, but one can scarcely think it generally true even of the cities. More frequently it is alleged that the work of local politics is disagreeable, bringing a man into contact with vulgar people and exposing him to misrepresentation and abuse.

This is an excuse for abstention which ought never to be heard in a democratic country. If politics are anywhere vulgar, they ought not to be suffered to remain vulgar, as they will remain if the better educated citizens keep aloof. They involve the highest interests of the nation or the city. The way in which they are handled is a lesson to the people either in honesty or in knavery. The best element in a community cannot afford to let its interests be the sport of self-seekers or rogues. Moreover, the loss by maladministration or robbery, large as it may sometimes be, is a less serious evil than is the damage to public morals. If those who have the manners and speak the language of educated men refuse to enter practical politics, they must cease to complain of a want of refinement in politics. In reality, good manners are the best way in which to meet rudeness; and he who is too thin-skinned to disregard abuse confesses his own want of manliness. The mass of the people, even those who are neither educated nor fastidious, know honesty when they see it, and discount such abuse. When a man is firm and upright, nothing better braces him up and fits him to serve his country than to be attacked on the platform or in the press for faults he has not committed. It puts him on his mettle. It toughens his fibre. It gives him self-control and teaches him how to do right in the way which is least exposed to misrepresentation. It nerves his courage for the far more difficult trials which come when friends as well as opponents censure him because honour and obedience to his conscience have required him to take an unpopular line and speak unwelcome truths. A little persecution for righteousness’ sake is a wholesome thing.

The deficient sense of civic duty, though most frequently noted in the form of a neglect to vote, is really more general and serious in the neglect to think. Were it possible to have statistics to show what percentage of those who vote reflect upon the vote they have to give, there would in no country be found a large percentage. Yet what is the worth of a vote except as the expression of a considered opinion? The act of marking a ballot is nothing unless the mark carries with it a judgment, the preference of a good candidate to a bad one, the approval of one policy offered the people, the rejection of another. The citizen owes it to the community to inform himself about the questions submitted for his decision, and weigh the arguments on each side; or if the issue be one rather of persons than of policies, to learn all he can regarding the merits of the candidates offered to his choice.

How many voters really trouble themselves to do this? One in five? One in ten? One in twenty?

It may be asked, How can they do it? What means have they of studying public questions and reaching just conclusions? If the means are wanting, can we blame them if they do not think? If they feel they do not understand, can we blame them if they do not vote? In every free country the suffrage is now so wide that the great majority of the voters have to labour for their daily bread. In most European countries many are imperfectly educated. In the rural districts they read with difficulty, see either no newspaper or one which helps them but little, lead isolated lives in which there are scanty opportunities for learning what passes, so that the best they can do seems to be to ask advice from the priest, or the village schoolmaster, or take advice from their landlord or their employer. In the northern parts of the United States and also in Canada, the native population has indeed received a fair instruction, and reads newspapers; but the mass of voters is swelled by a crowd of recent immigrants, most of whom cannot read English and know nothing of your institutions.

Broadly speaking, in modern countries ruled by universal suffrage the Average Citizen has not the means of adequately discharging the function which the constitution throws upon him of following, examining, and judging those problems of statesmanship which the ever-growing range of government administration and the ever-increasing complexity of our civilization set before him as a voter to whom issues of policy are submitted.

As things stand, he votes, when he votes, not from knowledge, but as his party or his favourite newspaper bids him, or according to his predilection for some particular leader. Unless it be held that every man has a natural and indefeasible right to a share in the government of the country in which he resides, the ground for giving that share would seem to be the competence of the recipient and the belief that his sharing will promote the general welfare. So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.

It may no doubt be argued that even if he is not competent, it is better he should be within than without the voting class. But this was not the ground generally taken by those who brought in universal suffrage.

Does this mean that widely extended suffrage is a failure, and that the Average Man is not a competent citizen in a democracy?

This question brings us to reflect on another branch of civic duty not yet mentioned. Besides the civic duties already described of Fighting, Voting, and Thinking, there is another duty. It is the duty of Mutual Help, the duty incumbent on those who possess, through their knowledge and intelligence, the capacity of Instruction and Persuasion to advise and to guide their less competent fellow-citizens. No sensible man ought ever to have supposed that under such conditions as large modern communities present, the bulk of the citizens could vote wisely from their own private knowledge and intelligence. Even in small cities, such as was Sicyon in the days of Aratus, or Boston in the days of James Otis, the Average Man needed the help of his more educated and wiser neighbours. While communities remained small, it was easy to get this help. But now the swift and vast growth of states and cities has changed everything. Private talk counts for less when the richer citizens dwell apart from the poorer; their opportunities of meeting are fewer, and there is less friendliness, if also less dependence, in the relation of the employed to the employer. Public meetings do not give nearly all that the Average Man needs, not to add that being got together to present one set of facts and arguments and deliberately to ignore the other, they do not put him in a fair position to judge. Besides, the men who most need instruction are usually those who least come to meetings to receive it.

To fill this void the newspapers have arisen,--organs purporting to supply the materials required for the formation of political opinion. Whatever the services of the newspaper in other respects, it has the inevitable defect of superseding, with most of those who read it, the exercise of independent thought. The newspaper--I speak generally, for there are some brilliant exceptions--is, in Europe even more than here, almost always partisan in its views, often partisan in its selection of facts or at least in its way of stating them. Presenting one side of a case, addressing chiefly those who are already adherents of that side, putting a colour on the events it reports,--it serves up to the reader ideas, perhaps only mere phrases or catchwords, which confirm him in his prepossessions, and by its daily iteration makes him take them for truths. Seldom has he the leisure, still more seldom the impulse or the patience, to scrutinize these ideas for himself and form his own judgment. He is glad to be relieved of the necessity for thinking, because thinking is hard work. Indolence again! The habit of mind that is formed by hasty reading, and especially by the reading of newspapers and magazines in which the matter, excellent as parts of it often are, is so multifarious that one topic diverts attention from the others, tends to a general dissipation and distraction of thought. It is a habit which tells upon us all and makes continuous reflection and a critical or logical treatment of the subjects deserving reflection more irksome to us in the full sunlight of to-day than it was to those whom we call our benighted ancestors.

This is only one form of that supersession of the practice of thinking by the vice commonly called “the reading habit” which is profoundly affecting the intellectual life of our time. Yet as steady thinking was never really common even among the educated, the difference from earlier days is not so correctly described by saying that people think less than formerly, as by noting that while people read more, and while far more people read, the ratio of thinking to reading does not increase either in the individual or in the mass, and may possibly be decreasing. Intelligence and independence of thought have not grown in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge. The number of persons who both read and vote is in England and France more than twenty times as great as it was seventy years ago. The percentage of those who reflect before they vote has not kept pace either with popular education or with the extension of the suffrage.

The persons who constitute that percentage are, and must for the reasons already given continue for some time to be, only a fraction, in some countries a small fraction, of the voting population. But the fraction might be made much larger than it is. The citizens who stand above their fellows in knowledge and mental power ought to set an example, not only by themselves thinking more and thinking harder about public affairs than most of them do, but also by exerting themselves to stimulate and aid their less instructed or more listless neighbours. The voter, it is said, should be independent. Yes. But independence does not mean isolation. He must not commit his personal responsibility to the keeping of another. Yes. But personal responsibility does not mean the vain conceit of knowledge and judgment where knowledge is wanting and judgment is untrained.

Just as his religion throws upon every Christian the duty of loving his neighbour and giving practical expression to his love by helping his neighbour, succouring him in the hour of need, trying to rescue him from sin, seeking to guide his steps into the way of peace, so civic duty requires each of us to raise the level of citizenship not merely by ourselves voting and bearing a share in political agitation, but by trying to diffuse among our fellow-citizens whose opportunities have been less favourable, the knowledge and the fairness of mind and the habit of grappling with political questions which a democratic government must demand even from the Average Man. Democracy, they say, is based on Equality. But in no form of government is leadership so essential. A multitude without intelligent, responsible leaders whom it respects and follows is a crowd ready to become the prey of any self-seeking knave. Nor is it true that because men value equality they reject eminence. They are always glad to be led if some one, eschewing pretension and condescension, speaking to them with respect, but also with that authority which knowledge and capacity imply, will point out the path and give them the lead for which they are looking. To do this has now, in our great cities, become more difficult than it used to be, because men of different classes and different occupations do not know one another as well as they once did, and economic conflicts have made workingmen suspicious. But there are those in our English and Scottish cities who do it successfully, and I have never heard that it is resented. It is largely a matter of tact, and of knowing how to express that genuine sense of human fellowship which is commoner in the richer class than the constraint and shyness that are supposed to beset Englishmen sometimes allow to appear.

If you and we, both here and in Britain, are less active than we should be in this and other forms of civic work, the fault lies in our not caring enough for our country. It is easy to wave a flag, to cheer an eminent statesman, to exult in some achievement by land or sea. But our imaginations are too dull to realize either the grandeur of the State in its splendid opportunities for promoting the welfare of the masses, or the fact that the nobility of the State lies in its being the true child, the true exponent, of the enlightened will of a right-minded and law-abiding people. Absorbed in business or pleasure, we think too little of what our membership in a free nation means for the happiness of our poorer fellow-citizens. The eloquent voice of a patriotic reformer sometimes breaks our slumber. But the daily round of business and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and public duty fades into the background of life. This dulness of imagination and the mere indolence which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a chief cause of that indifference which chokes the growth of civic duty. It is because a great University like this is the place where the imagination of young men may best be quickened by the divine fire, because the sons of a great University are those who may best carry with them into after life the inspiration which history and philosophy and poetry have kindled within its venerable walls, that I have ventured to dwell here on the special duty which those who enjoy these privileges owe to their brethren, partners in the citizenship of a great republic.

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

In the preceding three lectures the chief hindrances to the discharge of civic duty have been considered. Let us now go on to inquire what can be done to remove these hindrances by grappling with those faults or weaknesses in the citizen to which they are due. When symptoms have been examined, one looks about for remedies.

The two lectures reprinted in this volume are the first and last of a series of four given by Mr. Bryce at Yale University.

We have seen that of the three causes assigned, Indolence, Selfish Personal Interest, and Party Spirit, the first is the most common, the second the most noxious, the third the most excusable, yet also the most subtle, and perhaps the most likely to affect the class which takes the lead in politics and is incessantly employed upon its daily work. Whether the influence of these causes, or of any of them, is increasing with that more complete democratization of government which we see going on in Europe, is a question that cannot yet be answered. Fifty years may be needed before it can be answered, for new tendencies both for good and for evil are constantly emerging and affecting one another in unpredictable ways.

The remedies that may be applied to any defects in the working of governments are some of them Mechanical, some of them Ethical. By Mechanical remedies I understand those which consist in improving the structure or the customs and working devices of government, i. e., the laws and the institutions or political methods, by Ethical those which affect the character and spirit of the people. If you want to get more work and better work done in any industry, you may either improve the machinery, or the implements, by which the work is done, or else improve the strength and skill of the men who run the machinery and use the tools. In doing the former, you sometimes do the latter also, for when the workman has finer tools, he is led on to attempt more difficult work, and thus not only does his own skill become more perfect, but his interest in the work is likely to be increased.

Although in politics by far the most real and lasting progress may be expected from raising the intelligence and virtue of the citizens, still improvements in the machinery of government must not be undervalued. To take away from bad men the means and opportunities by which they may work evil, to furnish good men with means and opportunities which make it easier for them to prevent or overcome evil, is to render a great service. And as laws which breathe a high spirit help to educate the whole community, so does the presence of opportunities for reform stimulate and invigorate the best citizens in their efforts after better things.

I will enumerate briefly some of the remedies that may be classed as Mechanical because they consist in alterations of institutions or methods.

Two of these need only a few passing words, because they are so sweeping as to involve the whole fabric of government, and therefore too large to be discussed here.

One is propounded by those thinkers whom, to distinguish them from the persons who announce themselves as enemies of all society, we may call the Philosophical Anarchists, thinkers who are entitled to respectful consideration because their doctrine represents a protest that needs to be made against the conception of an all-engulfing State in which individual initiative and self-guided development might be merged and lost. They desire to get rid of the defects of government by getting rid of government itself; that is to say, by leaving men entirely alone without any coercive control, trusting to their natural good impulses to restrain them from harming one another. In such a state of things there would be no Citizenship, properly so called, but only the isolation of families, or perhaps of individuals--for it is not quite clear how far the family is expected to remain in the Anarchist paradise--an isolation more or less qualified by brotherly love. We are so far at present from a prospect of reaching the conditions needed for such an amelioration that it is enough to note this view and pass on.

A second and diametrically opposite cure for the evils of existing society comes from those who are commonly termed Socialists or Collectivists. It consists in so widely enlarging the functions of government as to commit to it not merely all the work it now performs of defending the country, maintaining order, enacting laws, and enforcing justice between man and man, but also the further work of producing and distributing all commodities, allotting to each man his proper labour and proper remuneration, or possibly, instead of giving any pecuniary remuneration, providing each man with what he needs for life. Under this régime two of the hindrances to good citizenship would be much reduced. There ought to be less indifference to politics when everybody’s interest in the management of public concerns had been immensely increased by the fact that he found himself dependent on the public officials for everything. Nobody could plead that he was occupied by his own private business, because his private business would have vanished. So also selfish personal interest in making gains out of government must needs disappear when private property itself had ceased to exist. Whether, however, self-interest might not still find means of influencing public administration in ways beneficial to individual cupidity, and whether personal selfishness might not be even more dangerous, under such conditions, in proportion to the extended range and power of government,--this is another question which cannot be discussed till some definite scheme for the allotment of work and of remuneration (if any) shall have been propounded. Party Spirit would evidently, in a Collectivistic State, pass into new forms. It might, however, become more potent than ever before. But that again would depend on the kind of scheme for the reshaping of economic society that had been adopted.

We may pass from these suggestions for the extinction, or reconstruction on new lines, of the existing social and political system to certain minor devices for improving the structure and methods of government which have been put forward as likely to help the citizen to discharge his duties more efficiently.

One of these is the system of Proportional Representation. It is argued that if electoral areas were created with more than two members each, and if each elector was either allowed to vote for a number of candidates less than the number to be chosen, or was allowed to concentrate all his votes upon one candidate, or more, according to the number to be chosen, two good results would follow. The will of the electors would be more adequately and exactly expressed, because the minority, or possibly more than one minority, as well as the majority, would have everywhere its representative. The zeal of the electors would be stimulated, because in each district a section of opinion not large enough to have a chance of winning an election, if there were but one member, and accordingly now apathetic, because without hope, would then be roused to organize itself and to take a warmer interest in public affairs. The Proportional system is, therefore, advocated as one of those improvements in machinery which would react upon the people by quickening the pulses of public life. Some experiments have already been made in this direction. Those tried in England did not win general approval and have been dropped. That which is still in operation in the State of Illinois has not, if my informants are right, given much satisfaction. But the plan is said to work well both in Belgium and in some of the cantons of Switzerland; so one may hope that further experiments will be attempted. It deserves your careful study, but it is too complicated and opens too many side issues to be further discussed now and here.