RESCUE FOR WILSON!
Tnn rumoured appointment of Mr. James Wilson to be Vice- President of the Board of Trade has drawn upon him rather sharp attacks : but surely the assailants are too hard ? The Morning Post, for instance, is wrong to attack him for his Utili- tarian Epicureanism and his composition. Our contemporary Cites a long passage in which Mr. Wilson argues thus- " Laisser-faire and Free Trade are surely not limited to buying and selling. If the great principle of self-love may be relied on in business, it will surely not be found defective in morals. If we may rely on individuals promoting the public wel- fare when they are successful as merchants, bankers, manufacturers, and farmers, why not rely on the same principle in all their family concerns, and in most of the relations of man to man? Instead of relying on selfishness, however, we find in politics that all individuality must be submerged in some abstract general good. A principle of public welfare,or of national union, is set up, and individuals are required to govern their actions by that abstraction instead of their private interest. This i is particularly the case n France, where never-ending chimeras concerning the great nation aie made the rule of conduct. When we reflect on the limited nature of man's faculties, how imperfectly even they make the individual to provide for his own happiness, to which end they are more peculiarly adapted, it must be at once apparent that those faculties are not intended to enable man to secure the order of society or the happiness of nations. We know, in fact, from experience, and we now know it more firmly than ever, that the best-informed and wisest statesmen, the most celebrated lawgivers of modern times, with all the knowledge of all ages at their command, have very generally failed to promote the public welfare by their measures. The plain reason is, that the faculties of no man are adapted to promote the welfare of many millions, except as he promotes, in the most enlightened manner possible, his own welfare. But if this be true of well- educated statesmen—men acquainted with all the knowledge that ever has been gathered—how true must it be of those persons who without any of that know- ledge, start at once on the spur of the moment into statesmen, and, having pre- viously only written a small history, or a few remarks on workmen, or never having written anything, suppose that they can at sight regulate the affairs of national Louis Philippe, M. Uuizot, Prince Metternich, and the King of Prussia have all failed. We do not impute bad intentions to them. We, on the contrary, believe them and the great majority of statesmen to have the best intentions; but they have failed from the inadequacy of the human faculties to accomplish the great object proposed by legislation."
But, surely, prejudice blinds the Post to the true character of this passage—its delicate irony. The argument it fortiori, tnat if selfishness succeeds in business it must succeed in morals, is an excellent burlesque of the logic current in political writers ; the large postulate, that people are to be patriotic by cultivating their own happiness "in the most enlightened manner," rivals Voltaire in turning a solemn argument inside out ; the keen remark, that the faculties of man are not given him to secure the order of so- ciety or the happiness of man, reads like the reflection of a satirist fresh from the shocking little poems of Catullus or the scepticism of Lucretius ; and the ascribing of Louis Philippe's failure to lack of self-seeking is an exquisite reductio ad absurdum. It is evident that Mr. Wilson intended to expose the whole fallacy of pure Utilitarian economy in a single paragraph, and we cannot but congratulate him on his triumphant success. He shows, as the Post is careful to notice, that " laisser faire" is tantamount to no government; for it is manifest that if a government not only laisse what it ought not to faire, but also laisse what it ought to _Aire, it does not perform any functions of government at all, though it perfectly fulfils the doctrine which Mr. Wilson so cle- verly exposes. But why does not the Post allow him credit for his Voltairesque achievement ? Again, his reductio of the self- seeking doctrine—which, indeed, distinguished Pagan philosophy from the new basis of morals, "Love one another —is capitally executed. But why not generously allow that merit to a political opponent ! The Post also exposes many flaws in the composition or style of the writer in the Economist, having previously cited still more curious examples of the "dreary waste of words." But we do not know that skill in composition is a necessary qualification in "a candidate for official station." Indeed, we know the very reverse to be the fact, from the internal evidence of most official documents. A master of style, in the department of newspaper writing, is to be found in the same office ; but it will be observed that is in a subordinate situation. It might be an improvement if candidates for office were put through a course of exercise under the schoolmaster in English composition; but we do not see that Mr. Wilson should be picked out for exception. We will venture to rely on the faith of our readers when we assure them that even worse writers are to be found in office. French is re- quired in one department, but English in none ; so that Mr. Wil- son's enemies will be disappointed of any hopes on that score.
In the Board of Trade, it should seem from the inquiries of the Navigation-laws Committee of the Lords and the lucubrations of Mr. George Frederick Young, the chief requisite is a power of dressing up a case and adorning it with plausible statistics ; and our readers have before had occasion to notice the skill of that kind displayed by Mr. Wilson. We do not see, therefore, where a better selection could have been made.
The Manchester Examiner assails Mr. Wilson on another ground- " No doubt, Mr. Wilson will be very glad of the situation, if lie can get it— he would have accepted a much humbler one some time ago. But the recreant Whigs, in these their Conservative days, have need of help; and Mr. Wilson has been quite petted for those articles in the Economist, abusing France, traducing the working classes of this country, and pandering to the shabbiest fears of a panic-struck aristocracy.. But we will pay our respects to Mr. James Wilson and the Economist on Saturday next; and, meantime, wish him pleasant dreams of a realization of those hopes which he has nursed for years." Then a co#respondent of the same paper chimes in— "Lord John Russell may wish to have a man who has a reputation on ques- tions which have some relation to the office; and he will want one whose scruples will not interfere with the regularity and obedience of his votes. In both these respects Mr. Wilson will snit him admirably. Again, he will require to choose some one who does not represent a large and Liberal constituency, or his reelection would be a most improbable thing; and in this also Mr. Wilson may possibly be unexceptionable. Besides this, Mr. Wilson has shown by his speeches and votes in Parliament, that he could act in a disciplined corps, and, by his recent writ- ing in the Economist, that his pen and his reputation are at the service of the privileged order."
This is the bitterness of the Free-trade patty; whom, it would appear, Mr. Wilson has used as the fox used the goat in the well. But the writer involuntarily supplies further proof of Mr. Wil- son's qualifications,—his superior mastery over scruples, his gene- ral utility, and his sitting for a manageable constituency. Why not candidly admit the facts as they are? We protest against this conspiracy of all parties—Protectionists and Free-traders, Tories and Liberals—to write down Mr. Wilson.
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