THE DUKE OF SOMERSET IN A FOG.
THE Duke of Somerset has just published a little book on "Monarchy and Democracy : Phases of Modern Politics,"* the outcome of which is that the Duke sees almost every poli- tical movement of modern times with profound dissatisfaction, and without even being able to suggest what alternative courses he would himself have advocated. He thinks the theory of constitutional monarchy an "incongruous mixture" of incom- patible elements. The King who reflects on his position will discern, he says, that the constitutional theory of his rights and duties is "intrinsically false." And if the Sovereign is in a false position, so are all the other elements of our political system. The aristocracy, he says, is rapidly losing political power, which it is for the benefit of all that it should possess, and exercise. The democracy which is rapidly gaining power is animated by the bad principle of envy,—that is, the desire of the masses to ignore, and even level-down, all distinctions which it is not possible for any but a few to share. Furthermore, "democracy, so far as limited experience enables us to form an opinion, is a system of government ill fitted for the management of distant dependencies, and for negotiations with foreign States." Nor is this even the worst. Not only is the animating spirit of democracy one of vulgar grudge, not only is a democratic government necessarily a clumsy instrument for the purpose of conducting foreign negotiations and ruling distant dependencies ; but, besides all this, the system which democracy has adopted, the system of popular representation, is radically defective, placing power ulti- mately in the least competent hands, and requiring, in all the forms it has assumed, to be worked by men who know a great deal more of what the people will like than of the real issues which determine what is good for the people. Popular educa- tion is, in the Duke's opinion, no remedy for these evils. It is a good thing in itself, but in its earlier stages at all events, it stimulates political discontent and caprice even more than
it strengthens the popular judgment. Finally, the Duke declares that our representative system, "judged by its moral, or rather its immoral, effect on the character of the nation, is a blot on our civilisation. The noble science of government has degenerated into the ignoble art of electioneering, with all its debasing concomitants," In any law of progress, more- over, so far as we can judge, the Duke almost wholly dis- believes,—we say almost, because he reserves the department of scientific discovery, as one in which our satisfaction may be wholly unmixed. Otherwise, he has great doubts of the durability of progress, and his view of such progress in human well-being as there has been, is marked by only one emphatic conviction,—that we owe a great deal more to Rome than to Greece, since Greece diverted men from physical science to vague philosophy, in which the Greeks attained nothing ; since in politics Greece preferred petty oligarchies, based on slavery, to any larger system calculated to benefit the human race ; and since in religion, Greece all but smothered in intellect- ual subtleties the germ of revealed truth. It is to Rome, says the Duke, that the world owes the seeds of its best civilisation; and it is to Rome not in its democratic, but in its aristocratic or imperial aspects. Such are the Duke of Somerset's generally pessimist conclusions. From influences affecting the monarch's position to those affecting the people, he is dissatisfied with everything except physical science, and looks back to those
* James Bain, Haymarket.
elements in the politics of the past which are most irrecoverably passed away with the most tenderness and the most regret.
Two reflections at least are forced upon us by the Duke of Somerset's sad and rather incoherent little wail. The first is that one can hardly wonder at the failing power of aristo- cracies to hold their own against the power of popular feeling, if the most cultivated minds of the aristocracy, instead of taking the lead of the best movements of the people, indulge themselves in such helpless and distracted wailings over what cannot be regained. Aristocracies do, no doubt, as the Duke says, "cultivate refinement in their tastes and studies. They associate with the educated society of other nations, from which they acquire enlarged views and varied experience." But it is of no use to complain that "a form of government which repudiates and ostracises this class is defective." Of course it is. But when was it ever repudiated or ostracised, except for its own weakness and excessive fastidiousness I Who can justly say that in England the aristocracy are either ostracised or repudiated, where they show the least desire to lead the best movements among the people ? It is a subject for constant ridicule, though we do not think for right ridicule, that in England a member of the aristocracy who heartily sympathises with popular views, has an immense advantage over a member of the middle-class of no more than equal ability. But of course, if the members of the aristocracy become, like the Duke of Somerset, mere critics, and if they find so much fault with all positive tendencies, that there is nothing left in the popular life with which they can cordially ally them- selves, the aristocracy must sooner or later become obso- lete, Aristocracies cannot and ought not to live by their superior refinement,—which means, in the main, their superior faculty for finding fault,—alone. Unless they can use their superior refinement in the cause of those who have much less, and much more need of help than they have, they must expect to be repudiated and ostracised as useless superfluities of the body politic. It is the frigid and selfish tone taken by such politicians as the Duke of Somerset which is chiefly responsible for what- ever tendency to repudiate aristocratic leadership may be visible in England. Hear him, for instance, commenting on Tocqueville's assertion that if you want to cultivate the loftier side of the human spirit, and a generous temper in looking at the world, to inspire a certain contempt of material good, to implant deep con- victions and great enthusiasms, to polish manners and embellish art, you should avoid democracy ; but that if you wish to turn the intellectual and moral activity of men on to the best mode of providing for material wants, and of producing a certain com- fort among the people, then democracy is the right instru- ment for attaining your end. On this remark of Tocque- villa's the Duke says :—" It would seem that all the noblest results of civilisation, the amenities of social life, the refinements of taste, the cultivation of the arts which elevate and dignify mankind, are to be relinquished, for the sake of promoting the well-being of the working-man, the animal existence of the manual labourer. Has this object been attained ? Is the working-man in the United States satisfied and contented ?" Might not the working-man reply, "Even under the present re:gime, is the Duke of Somerset satis- fied and contented ?" And we think the true answer would be, that the Duke is even less so than the working-man in the United States. The truth is, that it is a complete mistake to suggest that the contentment of any class is the goal of civilisation. Our object should be not to make any class content, but to make it desire the highest things. The real defence for democracy is that amidst, no doubt, many mistakes and a great waste of the nobler elements of life, it helps the masses to rust so much material well-being as is essential for giving them a strong and even restless desire for higher things. The chief and only important re- joinder to this plea for democracy is, that though it helps the people to grow discontented with what they are, and desirous of being something better, it is apt to mislead them into false and flattering conceptions of their own power and of their own worth, and to put them on a wrong road for learning better. But this is just what a true aristocracy should aid them to guard against. While heartily sympathising in every effort to help the people to a higher standard of life, instead of coldly depreciating, as the Duke does, all such efforts, only because they appear likely to undermine the classes above them, a true aristocracy would not admit, with Tooqueville, that in gaining a step or two for the material well-being of the masses, you must sacrifice those nobler aims which have hitherto been the aims of select classes, and not of the whole people. It is because aristocratic critics like the
Duke of Somerset catch so eagerly at such admissions, that they lose their power over the people, and are reduced to railing at the people because they have lost it.
Our second remark is that the Duke of Somerset, when ha asserts that envy is the animating spirit of democracy, is thinking chiefly of democracies which have to thank the past corruption of the aristocracy for that debased feeling. No doubt, it was so in great measure in Rome ; but it was Patrician exclusiveness and selfishness which had produced that spirit. No doubt, it was BO in France at the Revolution ; but it was the base and degraded state of the French nobility which had engendered that fierce envy. In England, our aristocracy has been, on the whole, a more humane, popular, and generous aristocracy, and the conse- quence is, that this fierce popular envy of it hardly exists. Where it does exist, it is the frigid and contemptuous spirit of such writers as the Duke of Somerset that has produced it. Listen to his scornful mode of contemning the enthusiasm of popular meetings :—" In all accumulations of animal matter, there is an immediate tendency to ferment, and a crowd of human beings is especially liable to this effervescence. His- tory records the fanatical and tumultuous riots of populous cities, and it is often noticed that the most numerous urban constituencies are the most unreasonable,"—and yet hardly more unreasonable in their way than the Duke of Somerset in his. Multitudes, no doubt, often merge their judgment in politi- cal feeling, not unfrequently in feeling irrelevant to the matter in hand. On the other hand, politicians like the Duke of Somerset merge their feeling for large issues in their cold displeasure at exaggerated statements, and become at last as genuinely un- reasonable in their disposition to trample on the feelings of the masses—those more aggregations of fermenting "animal matter" —as the popular orator becomes who, in his wish to touch the heart of his audience, ignores altogether many of the most important considerations which ought to influence their judgment. The Duke of Somerset is in a fog, but it is a fog composed quite as much of that cold, raw mist due to his own strong antipathies for popular aspirations, as it is of the flying atoms of smoke and dust rising up from the squalid life of thought- less multitudes and the hasty tramp of heavy feet.
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