TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE WORKING CLASS AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. THE greatest debate of the session, brilliant and charac- teristic of our present representative system as it has undoubtedly been, leaves behind it a flavour not altogether satisfactory. Though it was distinct in declarations of principle, powerful in argument, rich in illustration, there was also noticeable a certain flippancy of self-assurance, a cynical sense of superiority to the unrepresented classes, an exultation in the peculiar privileges of middle-class intelligence and respectability, which indicate the transition of the present electoral constituencies from the eager popular phase of 1832 to the conscious attitude of a privileged aristo- cracy. The arguments which we have urged year after year in these columns against any merely numerical repre- pentation of the English people were no doubt reproduced with a force and a unanimity sufficiently satisfactory. But the cause for which we have no less earnestly pleaded, the national duty which we have attempted to enforce of completing our representative system by summoning the working class to the aid of the middle class, was languidly conceded and joyfully deferred. Mr. Lowe, as we showed last week, treated the working class too much as a vulgar mob shouting for political plunder. Mr. Horsman, in a speech of almost equal ability and a higher and more dignified tone, spoke on Monday night of education as the result of leisure, —a partial truth which may easily be exaggerated into a dangerous falsehood,—and told the working classes that their want of leisure directly unfitted them for much political power. Mr. Gregory, in a tone even more grating than that of Mr. Lowe, because it substituted for Mr. Lowe's intellectual scorn that repulsive sort of chuckle over the political vices of the working class which reminds one of the way in which fast societies contrive to extract merriment from mud, recited as many of the blunders and as many of the crimes of which modern democracies have been guilty as could be crammed into a speech of moderate length. And Sir George Grey, on the part of the Government, though he lent no countenance to the self-congratulations of the middle class on its political wisdom, also lent no countenance to the demands of the middle class for the aid of the working class in the duty of government. He certainly contrived to give a complete air of imbecility to his official manifesto,—to convey the notion that the whole question depends solely on the binding force of past pledges, and is completely destitute of intrinsic moral or political interest.
Now, we do not hold this to be a satisfactory result. The obvious fact is that the House of Commons accepts the negative conclusions which our own and other journals have urged on the subject of representation, but practically rejects the positive conclusions, or at least cancels them, by the policy of indefinite delay. It refuses to admit the representation of mere numbers ; it postpones indefinitely the representation of those political thoughts and specific interests which have as yet no voice in our representative system. Nay, it does worse ; it connects the just and cogent logic which insists on keeping a due representation for the various knowledge and sincere convic- tions of the superficial strata of society, with a levity of tone towards the same demand on behalf of the deeper strata which is at once inconsistent with the principle and full of danger for the practical end in view. On what show of justice can we base our claim to keep a fair political influence for ourselves—the few—if we view it as a matter of purely theoretical concession to admit a positive influence in our Constitution to the many? Democracy is a great danger. But what is the true antithesis to democracy ? Not the provisional exclusion of the working classes until they have gathered energy and power to force the gates,—but the deli- berate inclusion of all great sections of society in a plan which shall claim to be something more than provisional. Mr. Horsman seemed to us to give eloquent expression to a great truth when he said, "The franchise is conferred by law not as matter of private right or individual advantage, but as a public trust. It is for this reason the Legislature has guarded its exercise with stringent pains and penalties. You punish the elector who sells his vote. Why ? Because the vote is not his to sell. You punish the candidate who buys a vote. Why ? Because he corruptly contrives to procure the violation of a public trust. But public trust is conferred on individuals and constituencies or withheld from them solely upon considerations of .public interest. An individual therefore is no more entitled to be an elector than to be a magistrate, or a member of Parliament, or a judge,"-- except public right requires it. And in Mr. Horsman's theoretic judgment public right does require us to trust the working-class, or rather to invite the aid of the working class in the Constitution. "For my own part," he says, "I will trust the working class =far as any other class, and no further," an assertion which he justifies by deferring sine die all serious efforts to bestow upon them any political trust at all. "We have reason," he says, "to be proud of our English working class,"—a pride for which he finds expression by adjourning to a completely indefinite future every bond fide proposal for gaining their political co-operation. "I should be sorry to see the time when the operative class in this country shall have become indifferent to political affairs,"—a sorrow which finds its utterance in the energetic repudiation of a false measure for securing their interest in politics, and the equally energetic recommendation of a long pause of medita- tive silence to the country before it even attempts to construct a true measure for the same end. Now, does this, the most striking and most earnest of the anti-democratic speeches in the late debate, express any real and earnest wish to press the working class into the service of the State ? Does not Mr. Horsman rather convey the impression that all services of this kind are declined with thanks by the present House of Commons, as at once superfluous and embarrassing? The duty which Mr. Horsman courteously postponed sine die, Mr. Gregory tried to render ridiculous, and Mr. Lowe to transmute from a duty into a loathsome superstition.
Yet in fact the one argument against democracy is deprived of all its worth by this reluctance to enforce it equally against the exclusive rule of the middle class. Somebody may ask what service the working class can render to the State ; how it can help to make the Parliament more like what Mr. Horsman so eloquently described as the ideal national council, "the best selection and combination which the nation can furnish of high intelligence, of morality, of political experience, of administrative capacity, with all the attributes of a great deliberative and representative assembly,. of traditional honour, revered as the grand council of the nation, the centre of that wisdom and peace which governs not only England, but the Empire." By insisting at once on administrative experience and traditional political virtues,— neither of which can be possessed by a class never yet- enfranchised,—Mr. Horsman has no doubt done his best to describe a council in which the political aid of the working class shall not be reckoned as an element. Still, accepting. even this description, we think it certain that that class could contribute to the House of Commons qualities in which it is now remarkably deficient. For how can there be "higher intelligence" without energy and earnestness, which are beginning to be exchanged in the House of Commons. for that languid or cynical self-satisfaction in superior education which marks a point at which leisure and cul- ture tend to disorganize a class living under the pres- sure of no great wants ? How can there be the highest national morality, without that complete sense of responsi- bility to the whole which the exclusive tone of middle-class feeling is beginning to undermine ? How can there be the attributes of a "great deliberative and representa- tive assembly" when the class whose intellectual wants- are just now emerging most distinctly into the light is not represented and cannot deliberate ? How can the Commons- be the centre of gravity of the nation's power if it does not speak the voice of its most powerful class, the class which produces all its wealth and protects all its territory ? Talk as we will of the perfections of the present House of Commons, the Head Master of Rugby will be felt by all thoughtful men to be right in the assertion of his admir- able letter to Thursday's Times, that it is, and will remain, deficient in impulse, in force, in the grave sense of responsible work yet to be done, so long as it continues to exclude the one class that can never be a dilettante class from its walls. The truth is that the House of Commons does not represent the nation, and is conscious that it does not. And it will con- tinue to be pursued by that flippant and feverish cynicism of intellect which comes out along with much true and noble thought in most of our recent debates, so long as it feels it necessary to apologize for the selfishness of claiming to represent a majority of the people whose notions and wants it can barely understand. While the head says to the hand, "I have no need of thee," the head is pretty sure to be nervous, irritable, and liable to hysteric fears. This is the case with our present House of Commons, and we cannot but regret to see arguments so unanswerable for refusing to give up the right of the middle class to a full representation, coupled with pleas so feeble for indefinite delay in justice, and hopes so languid that the time may come when these delays may cease. The members for Halifax and Bradford, Mr. Stansfeld and Mr. Forster, who seem to us to represent the manly part of the working class better than any other members in the House of Commons, held out distinct hopes of an agree- ment. Mr. Stansfeld gave in his adherence to the minority prin- ciple; Mr. Forster said "ho had no wish to insist that honour- able or right honourable gentlemen should go to the hustings pledged to a 6/. franchise, provided he had reason to believe that it was their intention to take up the question of Reform in a fair, candid, and sincere manner." He himself thought— we believe erroneously—Mr. Baines's Bill the best for the purpose of giving the working class a genuine representation in Parliament. But "if there were any other mode by which that object could be effected, let a proposal be made to accom- plish it." If we had a Government in England that piqued itself on anything but "masterly inaction," these proposals on behalf of the working class would be accepted, and we should be no longer left to choose between a great injustice to one class and an equally great injustice to all the others.
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