A PLEA FOR THE HISTORY OF " CROWDS."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"] you permit me to offer to your readers a specimen of American history which may induce you to reconsider your decision as to the impossibility of giving graphic interest to " a history in which everything accomplished has been accomplished by masses, and not by individuals ?" I confess I have much diffidence in attempting the task, because I believe that an incident which is, I conceive, without parallel in the history of the world, demands a pen like that of Mr. Goldwin Smith to give it its full interest ; and I have the further disadvantage that, as I am at this moment living in the country, I cannot verify dates, and am there- fore obliged to sacrifice very much of the vividness of a narrative the interest of which hinges entirely on the order in which the events described occurred. But I do not think it possible that any carelessness in my narrative can entirely dull the surpassing brilliancy which belongs to the history itself. For the sake of brevity, I shall give the story as nearly as I can in the words of one of the actors, from whose lips I heard it:—
"It was in the end of December, 1860, that the agitation connected with the election of President Lincoln began to tell in a decisive way upon the State politics of Missouri. I was at that time a barrister in St. Louis, and like most men of my class, had till then abstained entirely from all connection with polities. The government of the State was entirely in the hands of the puppets of the wirepullers, men whose whole idea of government was the same as John P. Robinson's,' to get as much as they could out of the State, and overawe anybody who interfered with their monopoly. Such men were, of course, easy instruments for Jefferson Davis and his friends, and joined readily in a plot to secure the State to the South. They believed, however, that the people were so entirely in their hands, that the safest means by which they could effect their object was the summoning of a Convention, with absolute powers, which should decide on . the future action of the State. The discussions which preceded the appointment of this Convention roused our more cultivated and disinterested men from their political lethargy.
"A few of us began to assemble in the back rooms of houses in as secret a manner as we could, and to endeavour to organize an opposition to the threatened scheme. We dared not show our- selves publicly, the power and the rowdyism of the opposite party were so absolute, that it would have been impossible to venture it. We could influence a few men in the Assemblies, and such opposi- tion as we could thus bring to bear we offered, first, to the appoint- ment of the Convention, and then to the extent of the powers which it was proposed to bestow on it. But we were beaten at every point.
" The assembly of the Convention was decreed. The Convention was made absolute. It was declared competent to depose the Governor, to dissolve the Houses, to decree every act that had ever been passed by them null and void, and to decide absolutely on the future fate and constitution of the State. The Houses after these decrees had been passed were prorogued, to allow of the elections for the Convention. Then the struggle began. We, who had now organized a small party, began to show ourselves publicly. We were night after night, and day after day, haranguing crowds, writing letters, papers, addresses, going through the severest work I ever had in my life. We had nearlyall the intelligence and cultivation in the State on our side, on the other was all the organized power, long-standing tenure of office, and absolute recklessness. When the Convention met, it was tolerablrevident that as far as votes and wishes were concerned we had in it won the day. We had carried St:Louis itself with its nine divisions without a non-Union candidate getting a seat there. But no overt act had been com- mitted by the opposite party ; the Convention had nothing at the moment to do, and it was absolutely necessary that individual members should not be committed to too decided a line of con- duct before the actual necessity arrived ; because so great was the power and so complete the organization of the non-Unionists, that any man who had so committed himself would have found his life in danger on his return to the very constituency which had just elected him. The Convention, therefore, after appointing a Committee to watch the course of events, with power to reassemble the Convention whenever it became necessary, prorogued itself indefinitely. The anti-Union House of Representatives and Senate, who had not been slow in discovering that the Convention was not so entirely their own creature as they had hoped it would be, taking courage by its inaction, resolved to act for themselves. They voted the State out of the Union. They decreed the enrolment of an army to assist the South. These acts were ratified by the Governor, and as everything had been long before prepared, the force was rapidly organized.
"The Committee of the Convention called that body together. I shall never forget the voting on the decrees that followed. Every man knew that though the Convention was now the only lawful power in the State, no armed force existed which could support it or carry out its decrees ; every man knew that if the cause failed, every Union vote that he gave was fastening a halter round his own neck. But there was no hesitation as to the course to be pursued by virtue of the powers which had been forced on us so much against our will. We deposed the Governor, we dissolved. the Legislative Assembly ; we declared all their recent acts null and void ; we ordered the disbandment of; the pro-Southern levies and the enlistment of a body of Union Woo* ps by men whom we could trust. The struggle that followed was short and sharp, but the game was won, the State was saved for the Union."
Now, Sir, I think you will perceive in that rough sketch the outlines of a story which, adequately worked out as Mr. Goldwin Smith could work it out, would be of quite unsurpassable interest. Mr. Goldwin Smith is, perhaps, the one of all living Englishmen who can express in the most trenchant English the most genuine sympathy for " a crowd." I use the word in the sense in which you use it in your last number, as implying " a mass" of men who are not a mob because they are acting together under the influence of one overpowering impulse or spirit, but who are led by no " men who have stamped themselves on society."
Mr. Goldwin Smith's decision between a literary and a parlia- mentary career is, however, not likely to be much influenced by a discussion between two anonymous writers in a newspaper, and I should not have troubled you with this letter with any object of that kind. But the fact is, Sir, that we of the crowd have for some time writhed under the scorn of a body of men whom you originally christened ' thinking Liberals.' Most of the other papers have accepted your lead with an obedient obsequiousness, and now, Sir, we find, to our horror, that we who try to think and would like to be liberal, are told on every possible occasion that all ' thinking Liberals' have already decided very clearly and definitely on questions which still puzzle most of us a good deal, on which we are still ' thinking ' and on which till lately we had considered it a part of our liberality to be open to conviction. But your short paragraph of last week threatens our rights with a new invasion.
It was among those telling little epigrams which grace the first three pages of the Spectator that the ' thinking Liberal' first saw the light. And now I begin to perceive that he intends to demand: from the crowd not only the surrender of all its thinking power, but also of all its natural admiration; for who but he intends eventually to stamp himself upon society ? He has succeeded already very far in that matter ; society feels the impress of his heel.
But, Sir, I must ask you to let me tell him, and 1 am sure that in this matter I speak for all of us, that we of the crowd do still possess our own hearts and feelings, and do know what draws forth. our sympathy and admiration. There is a certain feeling which. we Englishmen suppress so systematically that we have never yet succeeded in discovering a name for it. The French, who know it better, express it by saying, "Js neattendris." There are not many passages in history which excite that feeling in an English- man, but he knows well that among that small number, by far the greater proportion are the stories of some body of "noble nameless Englishmen," whom he admires all the more because it was " theirs not to reason why,"—who were governed, not by some command- ing intellect, but by some inspiring spirit, whether that spirit was one of "enthusiasm" or of discipline. If I were to select the two pas- sages which touch him most nearly, I should say they were that mag- nificent description of the battle of Busaco which begins, " And then was seen with what a majesty the British soldier fights;" and that other story of the English regiment which went down in their ranks on parade, sinking, and knowing that they were sinking to their graves in the sinking ship without stirring a muscle to save themselves, because to do so would have been to break through discipline, and to endanger the lives of women and children. I confess that I believe either of those two stories touches your average Englishman far more nearly than, I say it boldly, even the act of sublimest self• sacrifice which was ever accomplished on earth by one man. I for my part should account for it by saying that in either story, as the ordinary Englishman knows it, there is more of the spirit which for the moment breathed itself out of a human body on Calvary than even in the story of that act itself, as the same average Englishman conceives (or partially conceives) it ; and, as I have touched on that subject, and as it lies at the root of the question which I am now discussing, I will ven- ture to say that his interest in the book which has excited most enthusiasm in him during recent years was due not, as you assume in your recent article on Mr. Gladstone's review, to any particular method adopted in it, but to the recognition of the fact that Christ's work on earth was not, as you once appeared to understand the author of Ecce Homo to mean, the commencement of a 44 series of Christlike men," nor, as Others have understood him, as that of founding " a church on earth to last till He should come again ; " but the infusion of a spirit among men which may either animate an individual who is opposing a crowd for the sake of a greater and nobler crowd, or a crowd who are opposing, in a like spirit, the might of an individual. Hero-worship, especially hero-worship of Christlike men, is doubtless good for all men ; but it will be offered, as long as he is an Englishman, until he becomes a Hindoo, not to the intellect, but to the spirit of a hero,
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