THE REPUBLICANISM OF THE POCKET.
SIR WILFRID LAWSON says that we are all Republicans, only that we choose to have a hereditary head to our Republic. There is not, we think, much truth in that assertion. No one who observes the extra- ordinary interest taken in Royal marriages, or even the indignation which a certain section of the working classes get up at what they ignorantly regard as the excessive expenditure on the Throne, can really believe that the question of rank and caste is regarded with that cool and judicial impartiality which a genuinely Republican state of mind would involve. The man whose mind is least in subjection to the conventional notions of rank does not become so excited on the subject as it appears that Mr. Labouchere's constituents, and Mr. Storey's con- stituents, and Mr. John Morley's constituents, must be, if we may judge by the nervousness which their representatives evince concerning Royal grants in the House of Commons. True Republicans do not underestimate the moral signi- ficance and importance of those who happen to be, in their opinion, disfigured by rank, any more than they overestimate them, and certainly would not have made so much unseemly and misdirected fuss about the Royal grants, as the con- stituencies seem to have made,—if, at least, we can really infer anything seriously as to the opinion of the con- stituencies from the tone of the representatives. Our own belief is that the Republicanism which really prevails is not what we may call the Republicanism of the mind, but a spurious Republicanism of the pocket, the principle of which, if it has a principle, is that you should always suspect people of high rank of doing the meanest things, and putting by a big purse out of allowances ex- pressly intended to ensure the due discharge of public duties and the support of a stately ceremonial and external splendour. That, at least, is how we interpret the Republi- canism of Mr. Storey's speech of last Thursday week, and the attitude of mind which it represented in the con- stituencies, if Mr. Storey may be regarded, as we.think be may, as the high-priest of the movement for reducing the scale of the Royal grants. On the other hand, Sir Wilfrid Lawson assures us that all those who do not attribute these mean and shabby tricks, with- out having any evidence to produce, to the highest personages in the realm, and who vote for standing by the tacit engagements which Parliament has made with the Throne by a long series of indisputable precedents, are the mere " swell-mob of politics," or, as he further defines them, " the nobility, clergy, and idle people of the country, the noble army of place-hunters, the beef-eaters and tax-eaters." Thus the Republicanism, which we term the Republicanism of the pocket, is to be learned, according to this great authority on democracy,—himself a baronet, by-the-way, and therefore cousin-german at least to " the nobility, clergy, and idle people of the country,"—exclusively from those who pay a very minute proportion of the taxes, or who do not pay any proportion of the taxes at all ; while the people to be condemned for this " wilful, wanton, and wasteful expenditure," are those who pay the highest taxes, on the ground that a very small number of them do sometimes get their income out of those taxes, and even when they do not, do sometimes desire the good opinion of those who do. The Republicanism of the pocket is the creed of those whose pockets are empty concerning those whose pockets are not empty, and not even of the best of those whose pockets are empty, but merely of those amongst them who are most angry with the people whose pockets are full. According to this unworthy creed, which treats as a " swell-mob " all the most honourable and most hard- working public men of our time, poverty, and not even poverty alone, but the poverty of men who are always coveting other people's means, and railing at them b3cause they have means while they themselves have none, is the one requisite for democracy, and the only quality which can be trusted to qualify electors for giving a just and independent vote at the General Election.
We can hardly trust ourselves to say how much we loathe this sort of democracy, and how utterly undemocratic in spirit it seems to us to be. It is utterly unworthy of the Parliamentary apostle of total abstinence, who, whatever we may think of his special superstition,—and though we do not admire it, we do at least recognise the nobility of the spirit which sacrifices a personal indulgence in order to make it somewhat easier to a multitude of fellow-men to avoid what is regarded as an overwhelming temptation,— has at least set the example of devoting a good deal of humour, ability, and energy to a very disinterested kind of philanthropy. Though some of the total abstainers are a little too much inclined to take up a Pharisaic attitude, and on the strength of their total abstinence say Stand by ; I am holier than thou,'—yet we should never have been disposed to charge either Sir Wilfrid Lawson or his fellow-teetotalers in general with a tendency to flatter the poor into imagining, as was once brilliantly said in these columns, that poverty is the only virtue, and that it is a virtue which Parliament should at once earnestly set itself to render impossible for the future. There is, as we believe, no kind of Republicanism that is more certain to deteriorate rapidly, and to betray how evil was its origin, as the Republicanism which treats all those who are not disposed to ascribe vulgar and selfish motives to the classes above them, as a " swell-mob," and to impute it to them for unrighteousness that they can recognise integrity and honesty and zeal for the public good among the richest and highest of the land. True Republicanism is not of this base kind. It can see virtue in all classes, and can believe that even a Queen who has zealously fulfilled all her duties, whose charities have been large, and who has constantly avoided applying to Parliament for special grants even when it was clear that a special grant might have been fairly asked for a specially onerous public duty, may have had as true a love for the Commonwealth, as pure a desire to vindicate the honour and magnify the virtues of the people at large, as the poorest elector who gives his vote honestly without thinking of any advantage to accrue from it to himself, for the policy which he believes really fittest to promote the welfare of the State. Republi- canism does not mean jealousy for the poor against the rich, though it may mean an even greater eagerness to improve the condition of the miserable than to maintain the prosperity of the well-to-do. But the very root of true Republicanism is impartiality, impartiality in recognising the good beneath a disfiguring outside, whether that dis- figuring outside be rank and position which disguise the true sympathies of a public-spirited nature, or the mask of misery which often hides real generosity and magnanimity. There is no true Republicanism which does not begin in justice, and which is not as careful to impress on the poor the duty of being just to those who are not poor, as it is to impress on the rich the duty of being just to those who are not rich. Envy in the poor is as fatal to true Repub- licanism as is insolence in the rich. You cannot see merit where merit exists unless you are on your guard against the special temptations of your particular condition of life ; and assuredly poverty is almost or quite as prolific in such temptations as wealth itself. Of these, the very worst and most fatal is the disposition to treat anybody who has anything to lose as a " swell-mob " bribed into injustice, which is exactly what Sir Wilfrid Lawson encouraged. the poor to do, in the base Republicanism of his speech on Friday week. And we sincerely hope that, in our English poor at all events, there will be found a kind of virtue, an earnestness of impartiality, which will be proof against this spurious type of democratic grudging. The type of democrat who flatters the mob, and calls all who can see nobility in the rich as well as in the poor, a " swell- mob,"—in other words, a pack of well-dressed plunderers who go about trying to increase their own means by robbing those who are poorer than themselves,—does not know what true democracy means. There is no such thing as real equality amongst men. True Republicanism means the clear and candid recognition of all those inequalities which, after all, constitute society, and enable the different sections of it to help and supplement each other's deficiencies. He • is a true Republican who, being a rich man, can see as clearly the self-denials and sturdy honesty of the poor as he can those of his own class ; and who, being a poor man, can see as clearly the generosity and tenderness of the rich as he can those of his own class ; who, living in the ranks of the aristocracy or on a throne, can enter into all the troubles and miseries of those who waste away in huts or slums, as if they moved in society ; and who, living in a but or a slum, has as keen an eye for the griefs and miseries of those who move in society, as if they lived in the next but or the next alley. And he is certainly not a true Republican who ;tries to hound. on the poor against the best and hardest-working public men of his time, as a mere " swell-mob " living on the robbery of the poor man's means. That is the sort of envious Republicanism which, if it multiplies at all, brings down society in a crash amidst shrieks of anguish and mutual charges of treachery. And we venture to say that the Queen of England is herself a far truer Republican in the sense in which we have just defined Republicanism, than Sir Wilfrid Lawson when he treats such statesmen as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Goschen as leaders of a "swell-mob " who are trying in their wantonness and wastefulness to spoil the patient and the meek, in order that they may the better pamper the whims of the selfish and the luxurious.
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