THE USE OF " GOLDWIN SMITHS" IN PARLIAMENT
MR. GOLDWIN SMITH acted as Chairman to the meeting of the Reform League assembled on Tuesday to hear Mr. Forster's lecture on Education. In moving and seconding the customary vote of thanks for his services, Mr. Forster and Mr. Stansfeld took occasion to express a strong hope that Mr. Smith would soon find himself in Parliament, a hope which the chairman did not, in his return speech, attempt to quench. It has not been the lot of this journal, so far as we know, ever to agree cordially with Mr. Goldwin Smith,—who always appears to us to lack Imperialism in its best sense, the con- sciousness that it is sometimes a binding duty to perform highly irksome or offensive tasks, such as the defence of Canada or the government of Ireland,—but we can heartily share in Mr. Forster's aspiration. A Parliament of Goldwin Smiths would probably be overthrown in a month, as being wholly out of rapport with the constituencies ; but there is nothing the British Parliament needs so much as an infusion of Goldwin Smiths—of men, that is, who "to the highest culture add a strong sympathy with popular ideas," and who, we may add, will actually vote for those ideas, instead of merely discussing them—who will not be content with affirm- ing that East London is a disgrace to the Empire, but will in a more or less trenchant and Jacobinical way insist on reform- ing East London. In all probability the modes of reform they will suggest will be unpractical, Utopian, violent, or too com- plete for popular appreciation ; but the stir they will make, the ultimate questions they will raise, the exasperation their pro- posals will create, will all not only hurry on reform, but help to make it thorough, and to make it rapid. Such men bring to Parliament what may be fairly called the professorial intel- lect, and though it is the habit of Englishmen, and especially of English squires, to despise the politics of professors, they bring to discussion one greatly needed quality, intellectual courage. They can bear to think whether a parish is really a 4'natural division" of the soil, and bear to express their thought,
even if the House should laugh at them as mere philosophers. Very few Englishmen outside Parliament know how timid Members of Parliament really are. There is not a distinguished man among them who will say straight out what he really thinks, who is not afraid of the phrase "unpractical," who does not shrink from carrying a principle to its logical extreme, as if thinking out anything were almost immoral. Much of this dread is well founded, the British mind being habitually and wisely afraid of confusing action with speculation, of de- fining first principles when settling a Railway Bill ; but much of it is unfounded, is the result mainly of secret intellectual scorn for the opinion of the masses, a belief that they will apprehend nothing but platitudes, and well founded or ill founded, it produces weakness. We should like to know, for example, the number of Members of the House of Commons who honestly believe a conscription to be inevitable, and hold that it might be so managed as to be a grand and most suc- cessful popular training school. Nevertheless, in the next debate on recruiting not a syllable will be said of a con- scription, its advantages, or its drawbacks. Every Member, whether friendly or opposed, will fear to be considered "rash," "visionary," or " un-English," and at th, utmost will hint, as Lord Elcho has done, that the right of bal- loting for the Militia—that is, of enforcing conscription in its least useful or honourable form—is invaluable to the State. We are by no means saying conscription ought to be imposed. On the contrary, we should prefer greatly to see the experiment of a great free Army—that is, an Army in which every soldier had the same rights as every officer has now—fairly tried ; but no reasonable politician will deny that the Continental plan ought to be freely discussed, and with many Goldwin Smiths in the House it would be. We do not know what his opinions on military questions are, but we do know that if they are in favour of conscription, no fear of the middle class, or of the workmen, or of ancient prejudice, or of anything else will have any influence on his mind, except to urge him to bring forward his view in its barest and least attractive form. We are opposed altogether to his suggestion of can- tonal government for Ireland ; but it would be of infinite advantage if, in the next Irish debate, some one as vigorous as Mr. Smith dared suggest and defend some of the more- extreme remedies for Irish grievances ; would take them out of the region of pure speculation into that of practical politics. Most of them would be exploded, but we may depend on it the remedies actually adopted would be the broader and more thorough-going for the discussion. He would not be afraid of attacking the prerogative, or denounc- ing purchase, or pointing to the possible dangers of irritating military Powers ; but would say effectually the things, what- ever they were, which seemed to him steps in the argument, with little reference to consequences, and none to popularity within the House—perhaps, of all new Members' tempations, the one which is most debilitating. Every such discussion, if carried on by any considerable group of Members, would have this effect. It would not drive the moderate majority from their position —it would not be well that it should drive them—but it would compel them to reconsider it, to improve it, to main- tain it for reasons, and not simply from prejudice. A vote is a vote, whether given from conviction or ignorance ; but a policy of conviction is never weak, and a policy of ignorance always is. The majority may, for example, maintain the- existing tenure of Ireland, from a vague prejudice in favour of landlordism, or from an intelligent conviction that its- maintenance is, on the whole, a wiser policy than its abolition. In the first case the question will remain open, a perpetual temptation to agitators, a perpetual source of weakness to- authority ; while, in the second, it would be, for one genera- tion at least, closed. In the first case, nothing would be settled ; in the second, everything would begin adjusting itself as to some unpleasant but indisputable natural fact. The per- manency of our Free-Trade policy is due mainly to the fact that the governing class accepted it with a clear notion that it might be pushed to certain extreme results, which results they pre- ferred to the existing condition of mercantile affairs. They fairly faced the extreme and, as it proved, wholly inaccurate idea that the manufacture of corn might be transferred to other countries, and have therefore never receded from their own resolve. The work was accomplished by politicians, but the victory was mainly achieved by men who, on this subject, were "professors."
There is another reason why we should welcome with plea- sure the entrance of men like Mr. Goldwin Smith into political life. They will add a new element of variety to the list of candidates for the represedation of great cities. Such men I for the lower class of all, the begging Arabs of the great cities. will never, in all probability, be elected by the counties, even We ourselves can demand no wider description of the end to be though the counties should adopt household suffrage as a secured, at all events, till the notion that education ought not qualification. They will seldom be elected by the small to end at thirteen has taken hold of the national mind. boroughs, except perhaps as direct nominees, for those How far short are we now of this ? Mr. Forster, we are boroughs, when corrupt, will not look at them, and when pure happy to see, does not quote for the hundredth time that will think their views " dangerous " either to property, or useless return about the signatures to the marriage register,— to Church-rates, or to the local manufacture, or to some other useless because of the deep dread entertained in many parts "interest.' They will be compelled to appeal usually to the great of England as to the effect of signing one's name to any- cities where the workmen can be attracted by views as definite thing,—but he states that in good manufacturing districts and incisive as their own, where a reverence for intellectual only about 63.per cent. of the children can read, in medium capacity as such has a chance of development, and where the districts like Manchester only half, and in bad districts like multitude cares excessively for the economic questions upon the Potteries barely one-fourth. The education, too, even which of all others this class is most strong. We do not when plentiful, is often bad, and altogether he affirms that know that the great cities will elect them in any number. the existing machinery is insufficient, that a work remains to Germany is not, we fear, English enough for us to rely on be done which only the State can thoroughly do. " The its example as a precedent; and the example of America immediate responsibility rests with the parent, but the ulti- is not hopeful, though • the States are no doubt cruelly mate responsibility with the State," which is " as much hampered by the law which forbids them to elect any but bound to prevent the starvation of the mind as of the body," local notabilities—New York cannot elect a Connecticut or a sentiment which was loudly cheered by an audience mainly Massachusetts man—and though Pennsylvania has for years composed of working-men. The duty being accepted, and returned Thaddeus Stevens, a man of the professorial kind its universality proclaimed, it remains to provide the ma- in all but knowledge, whose claim on her is the intellectual chinery. In the first place, he would abolish nothing that one that he framed, carried, and protected her common- exists. In the second place, he would compel every parish school system. Still, the great cities may be attracted by or district insufficiently supplied with education to provide them, as they have been every now and then by much less for schools as it provides for the poor, but would assist worthy candidates, and in the great cities their popularity such provision out of the national revenue in the proportion would be of very great public benefit. It would be their in which voluntary subscriptions are now assisted. Every direct interest to make war on corruption. They would be such school must be thoroughly inspected, must give religious, able to guide instead of merely opposing the great associa- or at least moral, instruction, must -be accessible to all, and tions of labour. They would express because they would must exempt any child whose parents object from its special sympathize with the special city necessities, the social reforms religious teaching, must, in fact, insert in its rules a conscience which can only be carried by men of almost revolutionary habits clause as beneficial to Churchmen as to Nonconformists or of mind. Above all, they would set before the cities ideas, ideas Jews. If unavoidable, every such school should be as in it might be fallacious, or visionary, or even occasionally danger- America, absolutely free, no fee whatever being demanded ; ous, but still ideas, and therefore infinitely more useful than the and this he considers would be unavoidable if compulsion were cut-and-dry platitudes uttered by the average member for a ultimately introduced. He adds a singularly suggestive hint, great borough, platitudes of which one-half are fatal to pro- .that in the long run it may be expedient to make higher grass of any kind, and the other half are only uttered schools free also, employing for that purpose the "endowment because the candidate thinks his seat depends upon their funds "—a remark which opens up a long vista of possibili- utterance. Next to the aristocrat, the most formidable rival the ties. But suppose parents do not send their children ? Then plutocrat can have is the intellectual democratic, and every rival they shall not hire them out. If a father is such a brute as who diminishes the chance of the "eminent citizen "—the to leave his child a brute, Mr. Forster is not quite prepared to man who has no claim except his success in making money—is punish him, as we undoubtedly should be, but he is prepared pro tanto a benefactor. There is no fear in a country like to take care that he does not profit by his brutality. If thd this of too many Goldwin Smiths in Parliament, and a few child receives wages, the master must see under penalties that of them would, we believe, give it a new vivacity, a new much of his time is spent at school. In great cities the children energy, and a new intellectual force. They would replace the without masters will be caught by a severe Vagrant Act, and young men of parts, so often regretted, who were once elected in the country they must be taught on (say) alternate days. If for nominee boroughs, the men whose first quality was in- even then large numbers stay away from school, it may tellectual brilliancy, a brilliancy which, though for itself ultimately be necessary to call in the policeman ; but Mr. it effected little, stirred up and brought out statesmanship in Forster obviously hopes that opinion will in England, as in
men of other and more strictly constructive powers. Switzerland and Prussia, at last coerce the refractory.
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