POLITICAL WHITE-HEAT.
THE next week will be one of white-heat. Those who have the truest insight into the significance of the ques- tions at issue between the two great parties in the State will probably labour, for a week at least, under the most com- plete illusion as to the irreparable character of the calamity which the defeat of their cause must entail. This is one of the peculiarities of all great moral contests where large num- bers are enrolled on either side, that those to whom they mean the most, to whose minds the issues involved are the noblest and the highest, are, for that very reason, most inclined to exaggerate the importance of victory or failure. If they did not see the cause for which they fight to be noble, they could not fight for it so heartily ; and it is impossible to fight heartily and disinterestedly for any cause whatever, and yet realise fully while you do so, that it by no means follows that you ought to win because your cause is good. If you feel, as you ought to feel, that you would move heaven and earth to gain the battle by fair means, and especially if you feel this in company with hundreds of thousands of others who feel the same, it is simply impossible to recognise also,—though, nevertheless, it may be very true and very plain to a solitary imagination not heated by the fray,—that what you are so passionately resolved to win, if you can win without unfairness, it might, nevertheless, be better, both for you and for your opponents, that you should lose. We say that it is especially impossible to feel this, if you are fighting as one in a great host, who all feel with you, because it is quite clear that these are just the conditions under which the value of symbols is most sure to be exaggerated. Au army worth its salt values victory so inordinately as it does rather be- cause victory is, to an army, the symbol of military efficiency. The excuse, as it were, for its existence at all,—for an army the certain doom of which was failure would never be drilled or even desired,—is its capacity to win battles. No doubt, discipline, valour, readiness in emergencies, fortitude, are all nobler characteristics of an army than mere success. An army which fails through sheer inequality of numbers and appliances may have far more reason to be proud of itself, than an army which succeeds by virtue of superior numbers and better guns. But none the less, what an army fights for is victory, because the one thing which it is always taught to keep in mind is victory ; and if it were not taught to keep that in mind, it would not be in existence at all. The qualities of discipline, valour, readiness in emergencies, fortitude, and so forth, are all cultivated by an army in order to secure victory, and they cannot throw off their subordination to their chief end, especially if that end is realised as the true end by each and all around. The qualities by which the end is secured may be them- selves greater than the end, nay, may be themselves ends higher than that end ; but nevertheless, so long as they are habitually looked upon by all the host as subservient to that end, that subservience will be recognised by the imagination of all, and will leave its stamp upon their minds.
And so it is in political battle. We fight, as we believe, for justice, for mercy, for honesty, for good-faith ; but, though it be for the very sake of these things, we fight first for victory ; and if we do not win, we believe that justice, mercy, honesty, and good-faith must suffer, since the course taken to embody these principles, if we win, will, in all probability, not be taken if we lose. Yet of course it may well happen that we may gain our best ends no less effectually, perhaps even more effectually, by failure than by success. The old Christian maxim, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, may be just as true in politics as in religion, nay, often has been true. Reforms of all kinds were advocated for the thirty first years of the present century, and advocated in vain; but it is more than probable that had the Liberals won their cause sooner than they did, they would have won it much less effectually. Nay, the same is often true of the long-delayed victory of very poor causes. Mr. Disraeli himself waited long and patiently for his Tory democracy. If he had waited a shorter time than he did, he would to all appearance have waited with less effect, and not have had the chance he has now really had of appealing effectually to the arbitrary and tyrannical side of ignorant popular feelings, or of showing the nation how strong these are, and how intimate is their connec- tion with Conservative prejudices and privilege. Though it is impossible, and indeed most undesirable, when once a course of action is discerned as the better, not to fight, and fight desperately, for the very end of securing the adoption of that course of action, it is far from true that you necessarily obtain the greatest possible acceptance for the principles which have induced you to take your side, by at once winning your battle. Had the Americans who adopted the Free-soil prin- ciple of strictly confining slavery to a given area, and hedging it in within that area, succeeded in their purpose, the chances are that slavery would have lingered on within those limits far longer than it did. Had those who resented most keenly the political and religious disabilities of the Roman Catholics and the Dissenters, succeeded sooner than they did, in applying a remedy, the remedy would, in all probability, have been much less complete and thorough-going. It is often vastly better even for the highest cause to suffer defeat on defeat, till the moment is ripe for its thorough spiritual victory. But none the less the host who fight for that cause must feel, and perhaps ought to feel for a time, that these defeats involve a kind of utter despair, nay, that they may imply the final triumph of the principles of which they really only secure the most absolute and final rejection. Human creatures being what they are, they could by no possibility struggle with the highest hope and earnestness and courage for the triumph of the true princi- ples, unless they identified with that triumph the immediate conversion of the majority to their side. But it is none the less true that, whether Liberal or Tory wins, the ulti- mate gain may well be that of the party which seems to lose, and the ultimate loss that of the party which seems to gain. If, therefore, as we hope, the Liberals win, they ought to take fully to heart the serious danger of losing by their gain ; as also, if they should lose, the very reasonable hope of gaining by their loss.
This is just the prospect which political passion at a white- heat is very apt to keep out of sight, and yet it is just the pro- spect which it is most most needful to have constantly in view, in order that the passion may remain pure, and not sully itself by alloys of a very bad sort. What we mean is this. We have no wish to see any one fight for anything less than immediate victory. We have no belief in the dispassionateness which can calmly contemplate defeat, before it comes, as anything but dis- aster. But then, again, we do wish to see it recognised that defeat,--the most real sort of defeat,—may be incurred under a spurious semblance of victory. A victory gained by partial sup- pression of the true principle,—by holding out, for instance, to the British nation that they may reap all the fruits of an unjust policy of aggression, as well as all the credit of denouncing that policy,—or by prudently concealing from the Irish electors that there is no intention at all of ever consenting to a repeal of the -Union while Ireland remains in the British Empire,—would be a far more serious calamity than an admitted defeat associated with no such suppression of principle. There are plenty of victories in which the victors were not merely temporarily, but permanently, discredited, because they won by abandoning in reality the cause for which they took up arms. Such was the vic- tory of the Conservative party in 1867,—we do not say of the Tory Democrats, but of the Conservatives, those who really professed to rely on Conservative principles in resisting the influx of the democracy, and who actually opened the flood-gates for that which they affected to resist. Such, too, in a less degree, was the
victory of the Liberal party, under Lord Palmerston, in 1859, when they carried the day against the Conservatives on the pre- tence of popular sympathies which disappeared as soon as the party was installed in power, and gave place to the more genuine determination to " rest and be thankful," content with the feat of having ejected the Conservatives from office. Such victories are not victories of principle over men, but victories of men over principle, and are really quite inconsistent with that true white-heat of political passion, which cares for no success riot really and avowedly won in the name of the cause for which it fights.
At all events, it is well to subdue the fever of the moment by bearing in mind that, whatever the superficial result, no such re- salt is final. We may win, and win by a great majority, and yet some day think that it had been better for us if we had lost. The Tories may win, and win by a great majority, and yet come to rue their triumph more than they ever yet rued a defeat. The higher issues, great as they are, are not really so abso- lutely bound up with the success or failure of the immediate contest as they seem to be. No victory we could win is worth a single dereliction of principle to obtain. It is a better thing by far to lose, than to win and yet feel in the very hour of victory that, though we have been victorious, our principles must go to the wall, in order to make the victory secure. Either party may win, and yet recognise this. And if either party wins and knows this, for that party the victory will be a crushing defeat.
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