Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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Democracy and Liberty - William Edward Hartpole Lecky


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with the area of public opinion. Every one who will look facts honestly in the face can convince himself that the public opinion of a nation is something quite different from the votes that can be extracted from all the individuals who compose it. There are multitudes in every nation who contribute nothing to its public opinion; who never give a serious thought to public affairs, who have no spontaneous wish to take any part in them; who, if they are induced to do so, will act under the complete direction of individuals or organisations of another class. The landlord, the clergyman or Dissenting minister or priest, the local agitator, or the public-house keeper, will direct their votes, and in a pure democracy the art of winning and accumulating these votes will become one of the chief parts of practical politics.

      Different motives will be employed to attain it. Sometimes the voter will be directly bribed or directly intimidated. He will vote for money or for drink, or in order to win the favour or avert the displeasure of some one who is more powerful than himself. The tenant will think of his landlord, the debtor of his creditor, the shopkeeper of his customer. A poor, struggling man called on to vote upon a question about which he cares nothing, and knows nothing, is surely not to be greatly blamed if he is governed by such considerations. A still larger number of votes will be won by persistent appeals to class cupidities. The demagogue will try to persuade the voter that by following a certain line of policy every member of his class will obtain some advantage. He will encourage all his utopias. He will hold out hopes that by breaking contracts, or shifting taxation and the power of taxing, or enlarging the paternal functions of government, something of the property of one class may be transferred to another. He will also appeal persistently, and often successfully, to class jealousies and antipathies. All the divisions which naturally grow out of class lines and the relations between employer and employed will be studiously inflamed. Envy, covetousness, prejudice, will become great forces in political propagandism. Every real grievance will be aggravated. Every redressed grievance will be revived; every imaginary grievance will be encouraged. If the poorest, most numerous, and most ignorant class can be persuaded to hate the smaller class, and to vote solely for the purpose of injuring them, the party manager will have achieved his end. To set the many against the few becomes the chief object of the electioneering agent. As education advances newspapers arise which are intended solely for this purpose, and they are often almost the only reading of great numbers of voters.

      As far as the most ignorant class have opinions of their own, they will be of the vaguest and most childlike nature. When personal ascendencies are broken down, party colours will often survive, and they form one of the few elements of real stability. A man will vote blue or vote yellow as his father did before him, without much considering what principles may be connected with these colours. A few strong biases of class or creed will often display a great vitality. Large numbers, also, will naturally vote on what is called ‘the turn-about system.’ These people, they will say, have had their turn; it is now the turn of the others. This ebb and flow, which is distinct from all vicissitudes of opinion, and entirely irrespective of the good or bad policy of the Government, has become of late years a conspicuous and important element in most constituencies, and contributes powerfully to the decision of elections. In times of distress the flux or reflux to the tide is greatly strengthened. A bad harvest, or some other disaster over which the Government can have no more influence than over the march of the planets, will produce a discontent that will often govern dubious votes, and may perhaps turn the scale in a nearly balanced election. In all general elections a large number of seats are lost and won by very small majorities, and influences such as I have described may decide the issue.

      The men who vote through such motives are often most useful members of the community. They are sober, honest, industrious labourers; excellent fathers and husbands; capable of becoming, if need be, admirable soldiers. They are also often men who, within the narrow circle of their own ideas, surroundings, and immediate interests, exhibit no small shrewdness of judgment; but they are as ignorant as children of the great questions of foreign, or Indian, or Irish, or colonial policy, of the complicated and far-reaching consequences of the constitutional changes, or the great questions relating to commercial or financial policy, on which a general election frequently turns. If they are asked to vote on these issues, all that can be safely predicted is that their decision will not represent either settled conviction or real knowledge.

      Men of these two classes no doubt formed parts of the old constituencies, but they formed so small a part that they did not seriously derange the constitutional machine or influence the methods of candidates. When they are very numerous they will naturally alter the whole action of politicians, and they may seriously impair the representative character of Parliament, by submerging or swamping the varieties of genuine opinion by great uniform masses of ignorant and influenced voters. That symptoms of this kind have appeared and increased in English politics since the Reform Bill of 1867 is, I believe, the growing conviction of serious observers. The old healthy forces of English life no doubt still act, and on great occasions they will probably do so with irresistible power; but in normal times they act more feebly and more uncertainly, and are more liable to be overborne by capricious impulses and unreasoning fluctuations. The evil of evils in our present politics is that the constituencies can no longer be fully trusted, and that their power is so nearly absolute that they have an almost complete control over the well-being of the Empire.

      One of the great divisions of politics in our day is coming to be whether, at the last resort, the world should be governed by its ignorance or by its intelligence. According to the one party, the preponderating power should be with education and property. According to the other, the ultimate source of power, the supreme right of appeal and of control, belongs legitimately to the majority of the nation told by the head—or, in other words, to the poorest, the most ignorant, the most incapable, who are necessarily the most numerous.


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