The hindrances to good citizenship

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LIBRARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
QTY PLANNING AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

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TALE LECTURES ON THE
RESPONSIBILITIES OF CITIZENSHIP

THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD
CITIZENSHIP

THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD
CITIZENSHIP

JAMES BRYOB

NEW HAVEN : TALE DNIVBRSITT FBESS

LONDON: HENBT FROWDE

OXPOBD UNITER8ITY FBE8B

MCHIX

HARVARD U:ilVERS!TY

i/iO Library cI \':yj Dcpt.

of City Planning and LanJsupe Architecture

r^ % Copyright, 1909,

BY

Yalb Univbbsity Pbbbs.

Ektbbbd at Stationbbs* Hall, London.

1892

^

13 I ^

Fbinted in the Unitbd Statbs.

THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD

CITIZENSHIP

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTION

When first I was honoured by the request to
deliver this course of lectures, founded by one
whom I knew and respected, and who was himself
the model of a generous and public-spirited citizen,
zealous in many good works, I hesitated to under-
take a function which could, as it seemed to me, be
better discharged by some American citizen who,
because he was a citizen, knew from personal ob-
servation and experience what are the duties and
responsibilities that belong to citizenship in this
country. Such a lecturer would, I thought, have
the facts more thoroughly before him than a stranger
could, and could deal with them more freely than
one who might feel that it would be unbecoming
for him to criticise the standard of civic duty in
a nation to which he did not belong.

Presently, however, it struck me that the funda-
mental problems of citizenship are the same in all

free countries, that as all preceding lecturers had

3

4 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

viewed them from an American point of view,
there might be some advantage in having them
presented from an European point of view also,
that the experience we Europeans have gained
might be profitable to you here, and finally that
every man who has in one country enjoyed excep-
tional opportunities of studying the actualities of
politics owes it to his friends in other countries to
give them such conclusions as he has been able to
form. Such opportunities have, as it happens,
come in my way during many years spent in active
political life in the British Parliament. Moreover,
we English students owe a special duty to America,
not only in respect of our fraternal attachment
to your nation, but also because our political phe-
nomena resemble yours more nearly than they do
those of any other country, so that reflections
drawn from Great Britain are likely to have some
practical ^orth for you. Thus, I came eventually
to the conclusion that the privilege of addressing
you on the Duties of Citizenship was one I ought
not to forego.

What I have to say to you will accordingly be
mainly based on what I have seen in Europe, and
especially in England. When my observations are

INTRODUCTION 5

expressed in general terms, you will understand that
they primarily refer to the phenomena of Europe,
and when they are meant to refer to the United
States, I shall say so expressly. I dwell on this point
in order to avert possible misconceptions and to
prevent you from supposing that I shall in any way
approach that field of current politics which is to
me, who represent here another country, a forbidden
field. It will be only natural if some remarks I may
have to make, though drawn from English expe-
rience, should be applicable here, because the differ-
ences between your institutions and ours are
differences more often of form than of substance.
The hindrances to good citizenship are at bottom
and in principle the same in both countries, though
the particular shape and aspect they take in one
or the other may sometimes conceal their resem-
blance. Accordingly, when I have occasion to note
and comment on some phenomenon which occurs
both in Europe and here, you will not suppose that
my remarks are necessarily suggested by, or directed
to, what I have observed in the United States.

Everywhere in human society two principles Principles

underlying

have been and are at work, principles antagonistic popular
to one another, yet equally essential to the well- ma^

6 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

being of civil society. These are the principle of
Obedience and the principle of Independence, the
submission of the individual will to other wills and
the assertion of that will against other wills. The
former principle, carried to excess, gives Despotism.
The latter, carried to excess, and generally diffused
through a people, ends in Anarchy. The undue
extension of the former has been so widespread
as to have brought nearly all communities into a
stage of despotic government and (till very re-
cently) kept most of them there, whereas Anarchy
has scarcely existed except in that detachment
of individuals or families from one another which
belongs to the very rudest states of society.

The reasonable mean between, or an adjustment
to one another of, these two principles creates
what we call Free or Popular government, in which
a relatively large number of individual wills agree
to form a collective will of the community, and to
obey that will cheerfully because each individual
has borne a part in forming it.

This scheme seems to offer not only the best
security that the interests of all will be fully con-
sidered and the common interest best attained,
but also the best prospect that each individual

INTRODUCTION 7

will be stimulated to bear his proper share in the
efforts and labours of the community. Accord-
ingly^ men are now agreed, far more generally
agreed than at any previous moment in history,
that governments of a more or less popular type
are to be preferred. The progress of civilized
societies is evidently in that direction.

Popular government, however, resting on the Civic
recognition of the principle of Independence no less
than on that of Obedience, requires for its success
the presence of the conditions which make Inde-
pendence real and serviceable. Each member of
a free community must be capable of citizenship.
Capacity involves three qualities — Intelligence,
Self-control, Conscience. The citizen must be able
to understand the interests of the community,
must be able to subordinate his own will to the
general will, must feel his responsibility to the
community and be prepared to serve it by voting,
working, or (if need be) fighting.

Upon the extent to which these civic capacities
are present in the community, the excellence of
its government will generally depend. Such as
are the stones, such will be the temple into which
they are fitly compacted together.

8 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Of the three requisites, the two former are the
more frequent and are the more easy to produce
by proper training. The last, Conscience, or a
sense of civic duty, is the rarest.

Why is this?
Rights and When the struggle for political liberty began

Duties.

by the wresting of power from kings or ruling
groups^ the war was waged in the name of Rights.
Whether the claim of Rights was based on old
precedent, as happened in the England of Pym
and Hampden, or deduced from the nature of man
himself, as his inherent possession, as happened in
France in 1789, or on both, as was the way of
your ancestors in 1776, the demand was made for
something which the citizen was to receive and
enjoy. It might be a share in the government.
It might be exemption or immunity from some
exercise of arbitrary power. It might be equality
of taxation. It might be the freedom to express
opinion or to worship God. But in every case it
was something claimed by the citizen as due to
him, to be held and exercised by him for his benefit
and satisfaction. He stood over against the ruling
man or ruling class and said defiantly, ^'Thus
far, and no farther." Rights to be won were the

INTRODUCTION 9

cry of battle. Rights to be enjoyed were the
crown of victory.

In the long conflict the other side of the civic
relation naturally fell out of sight. Whoever
claims a right for himself must respect the like
right in another. Whoever wishes to assert his
will as a member of the community must not only
consent to obey the will of the community, but
bear his share in serving it. As he is to profit by
the safety and prosperity the community provides,
so he must seek its good and place his personal
will at its disposal. Benefit and burden, power
and responsibility, go together. Duty is the cor-
relative of Right. Nevertheless, the latter relation
is the one which always tends to be forgotten
and to drop into the background, so much more
do men enjoy being honoured by the ascription
of Rights than they do being reminded of Duties.
It is more blessed to give than to receive. But to
the average man it is less agreeable.

Although in point of fact. Rights rather than
Duties have been in the mind and on the lips of
the champions of popular government, it needs no
argument to prove that the theory of such a gov-
ernment implies and assumes both intellectual

10 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD aTIZENSHEP

capacity and moral zeal on the part of the citizens.
A democracy which the bulk of its members did
not care to join in directing would not be a
democracy at all, but a government of the many
by the few. If the citizens were ignorant and
foolish; the laws would be bad and failure would
dog the steps of government. If each sought his
own good disregardf ul of the good of the commu-
nity; it would go to pieces or succumb to violence.
Ideal There was in the latter part of the eighteenth

oonceptloiis

of popular and the earlier part of the nineteenth century a
^^ faith widespread among educated men, and not
wholly confined to those of a sanguine temper; that
the government of the people by the people was
the chief and a sufficient remedy for the ills that
had afflicted society. It would be interesting to
examine the sources of this Perfectionist doctrine
(as one may call it). Was it partly a reaction
from the theological violence and intolerance of
the seventeenth century? Was it due to a per-
ception of the faults of existing governments, so
strong as to induce the belief that when they had
been removed, all would go well? How much was
contributed to it by the advance of scientific
knowledge and by the notion that progress in man's

INTRODUCTION 11

mastery over nature must somehow be accom-
panied by a mastery over his own worse impulses ?
how much by the first stirrings of the spirit of
Romanticism and the longing to return to nature
and simplicity? For such an inquiry, however,
this is not the place. All I ask you to note is
that these Perfectionists based their ideal of
Democracy on a view of human nature which had
been held neither in the ancient world nor (so far as
I recall) by anybody in the Middle Ages. They as-
sumed, and the modern apostles of popular govern-
ment have generally assumed, that the mass of
mankind, at any rate in what are called civilized
countries, will be Capable Citizens, i,e, that they
will have sense enough to judge of public affairs,
discernment enough to choose the right men for

•

office, self-control enough to accept the decision of
the majority, honesty enough to seek the general
interest rather than try to secure their own at the
expense of the community, public spirit enough to
take trouble or even face danger for the good of
the community. When in the course of events it
became painfully evident that the bulk of the
people at any given time in any given country
might not and in fact did not possess these merits.

12 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

the idealist was not dismayed. His faith in the
vivifjdng force of freedom made him hope all
things and believe all things.

"The people/' so he used to argue, "may be
more ignorant and apathetic than we foresaw.
That is because they have not been heretofore
trusted. Now that their destinies are being com-
mitted to their own hands, their capacity will
grow. Opportunity will soon evoke intelligence.
Power wiU bring responsibiUty and kindle zeal.
Trust the people and they will quickly justify your
trust."

Throughout the long struggle for liberty and
nationaUty which began in Western Europe in
1789, and has now reached the shores of the Bos-
phorus, these hopes sustained the combatants and
found voice in predictions still more confident,
predictions which saw in freedom the cure for all
human ills.
American The founders of your republic were somewhat less
sanguine. They had enjoyed self-government long
enough to know that it is not a sovereign remedy
for the faults of poUtical society. Some of them,
especially in Connecticut and Massachusetts, had
the Puritan faith in Original Sin. Others, like

INTRODUCTION 13

Hamilton and Morris, were keen observers and
austere censors of human frailty. They knew that
there would be some bad mer in politics, and plenty
of weak, ignorant, or foolish men. They made
due provision in their Constitutions against those
who should try to deceive and mislead the people.
But Jefferson had, at least till he gained experience
as President, boundless reliance on the capacity of
the people to know and do what was best. To
hold or at least to profess such a belief became in
the United States the habit, almost the duty, of
good republicans for many a long year. The most
daring application of the doctrine in a concrete
case was that made by the men who more than a
generation ago carried the Fourteenth and Fif-
teenth amendments to the Federal Constitution.
In Europe, those who, early in the last century, European

idealists

sympathized with the patriots in Greece and Spain,
those who conspired and fought for liberty in Italy
and Poland, those who made or approved the
revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in France, those who
worked for constitutional government and national
unity in Germany, were filled with the brightest
hopes for the future. Under the light of Uberty
all the evils which misgovernment had produced

14 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Popular
govern-
ment in
practice.

in the past were to vanish. A reign of brother-
hood and peace, an age of tranquil prosperity and
assured order, was to dawn upon the long afflicted
peoples. They would govern themselves well, not
merely because every one would seek the common
good, but because Freedom is the parent of Virtue.
These feelings were less passionately expressed by
Liberals in England than by the disciples of Mazzini
in Italy, or by men like Victor Hugo, Lamartine,
and Louis Blanc in France. But from 1830 to
1870 the general atttitude of most of the powerful
intellects and nearly all the finest characters among
the thinkers and writers of Europe was a hopeful
one, expecting immense gains to human progress
and human happiness from the establishment of
free institutions.

These expectations have been in so far realized
that the" condition of all the countries where such
institutions now exist shows a marked improve-
ment in the condition of the masses of the people,
an improvement due not merely to the advance
of science and consequent diffusion of comfort, but
also to a juster and more humane legislation. No-
body denies that our world of to-day is a better
world for the common man. Few deny that this

INTRODUCTION 15

is largely due to better political institutions. A
striking evidence of this general conviction is to
be found in the efforts which Japan and Russia
have made, which Persia and the Turks are be-
ginning to make for the establishment of parlia-
mentary institutions. Even in China these have
been talked of: De conducendo loquitur iam rhetore
Thule.

Nevertheless, there has been disappointment.
Freedom has done much for the European and
American continents, yet far less than was ex-
pected. This cannot be ascribed to defects in the
particular form of government adopted, for many
forms have been tried in many countries. Neither
is it wholly due to inexperience, for the faults
incident to popular government appear in peoples
which have long enjoyed a considerable measure of
freedom as well as in those that have but lately
won it. Some of the evils familiar under a mo-
narchical system have recurred, such as class hatred,
corruption, extravagance, the spirit of militarism,
the tendency to disorder and disregard of the law.
Other new evils have emerged. Though the aspect
these evils take differs in different countries, you
are everywhere told that the cause is practically

16 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

the same. The citizens have failed to respond to
the demand for active virtue and intelligent public
spirit which free government makes and must
make. Everywhere there is the same contrast
between that which the theory of democracy re-
quires and that which the practice of democracy
reveals. Remember, for this is the kernel of the
matter, that the theory of democracy assumes a
far higher level of good sense, judgment, honest
purpose, devotion to the public welfare in the
citizen of a free country, than is either looked for
or needed in the subject of a despotic monarchy
or of an oligarchy. Thus the deficiencies which
free governments show reduce themselves to the
failure of the citizens to reach the needed standard
of civic excellence.

Human nature, which may appear to have im-
proved and to be still improving, has not yet come
anywhere near to reaching the Christian standard
set forth in the New Testament. Neither has it yet
shown itself quite good enough for the responsi-
bilities which self-government imposes. In no
European country is the average citizen what the
citizen in a democracy ought to be, and in Switzer-
land, the country where he seems to have attained

INTRODUCTION 17

the highest level, his superiority may be largely
due to the comparative absence of the temptations
which wealth brings.

Let us fix our eyes on the Average Man, because The Aver-
in a popular government he is the man to whom
everything is ultimately referred, upon whom
everything ultimately turns. The government is
his. Officials are only his agents, working under
his eye. The principles of a democracy ascribe
and must ascribe to him the supreme and final
voice in the conduct of public affairs. He cannot
disclaim his responsibility without the risk of for-
feiting his rights.

Strictly speaking, there is no Average Man.
Every individual has qualities which make his •
character more or less different from that of other
individuals. Hence the conduct of no single per-
son can ever be predicted with certainty. Those
who have studied living things, oak trees, for in-
stance, or kittens, know that there is no normal
oak tree and, still more evidently, no normal kitten.
Kitten differs from kitten in character, as you may
see when they are only a fortnight old. Neverthe-
less, we form for ourselves a notion of the average
kitten and its probable behaviour; and most of the

\

18 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

so-called ''social sciences" are obliged to posit for
their purpose an average individual. The Roman
lawyers created a normal ''good householder" (I say
normal; because he was conceived of as rather
better than average) whom they called the bonvs
paterfamilias, and whose conduct in managing his
own property was deemed to set the standard of
diligence to which the law expected every man to
conform when he had to care for the property of
others.

If, taking any group of men, we strike off ten per
cent as exceptionally intelligent and ten per cent
as exceptionally dull, and then try to find a de-
scription which is broadly or roughly true of the
remaining eighty per cent in the particular aspect
— here the civic aspect — in which they are to be
studied, that will be a description of the Average
Man. It will not be exactly true of any one per-
son in the eighty per cent, but it will be so far
true that the range of variation between the ex-
tremes will be small; and it will therefore be true
enough for most practical purposes in a given con-
crete case, as regards any mental habit which the
majority may evince, any action to which the ma-
jority may incUne.

INTRODUCTION 19

When a man sitting beside you in the cars
makes a remark on some incident of the day, and
you say to yourself, " Just what one expects," you
recognize him as a specimen of that class of Aver-
age Man which you cannot ' define, but which you
respect as constituting the majority of your fellow-
voters.

The person whom it is proposed chiefly to con-
sider in these lectures is the Average Citizen, and
the question to be asked is — Why does he fall
short of the proper standard of civic duty ?

Man is confessedly a very imperfect being.
Nowhere has that been more emphatically stated
than in Connecticut and in this University, the
home of Jonathan Edwards. The special point we
have to discuss is the source of man's deficiencies
in the performance of that particular class of his
social duties which he owes to the poUtical com-
munity whereof he is a member.

Those deficiencies may be traced to three main Three chief
causes. They are Indolence, Personal Self-interest, the defeo-
Party Spirit. I propose to devote a lecture to c^rg^f
each of these causes, and in a concluding lecture <»vicduty.
to inquire what are the remedies that offer the
best prospect of removing the evils found to exist.

20 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Why in-
dolence is
specially
operative
in public
matters.

INDOLENCE

Dr. Samuel Johnson; being once asked how he
came to have made a blunder in his famous Eng-
lish Dictionary, is reported to have answered, " Ig-
norance, Sir, sheer ignorance." Whoever has grown
old enough to look back over the wasted oppor-
tunities of life — and we all of us waste more
opportunities than we use — will be apt to ascribe
most of his blunders to sheer indolence. Some-
times one has omitted to learn what it was
needful to learn in order to proceed to action;
sometimes one has shrunk from the painful effort
required to reflect and decide on one's course,
leaving it to Fortune to settle what Will ought to
have settled; sometimes one has, from mere self-
indulgent sluggishness, let the happy moment sUp.

The difference between men who succeed and
men who fail is not so much as we commonly
suppose, due to differences in intellectual capacity.
The difference which counts for most is that be-
tween activity and slackness; between the man
who, observing alertly and reflecting incessantly,
anticipates contingencies before they occur, and
the lazy, easy-going, slowly-moving man who is

INDOLENCE 21

roused with difficulty, will not trouble himself to
look ahead, and so being taken unprepared loses or
misuses the opportunities that lead to fortune. If
it be true that everywhere, though perhaps less here
than in European countries, energy is the exception
rather than the rule, we need not wonder that men
show in the discharge of civic duty the defects
which they show in their own affairs. No doubt
public affairs demand only a small part of their
time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong
where public affairs are concerned. The need for
activity is not continuously present. A duty shared
with many others seems less of a personal duty.
If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citi-
zens are as much bound to speak, vote, or act as
each one of us is, the sense of obligation becomes to
each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when
one perceives the neglect of others to do their
duty. The need for the good citizen's action, no
doubt, becomes then all the greater. But it is only
the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater.
The Average Man judges himself by the average
standard and does not see why he should take
more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive
at a result summed up in the terrible dictum,

22 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

which reveals the basic fault of democracy, " What
is Everybody's business is Nobody's business."
Causes Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no

tended to Hiore need be said. It is a sin that easily besets
lencere^ US all. We might suppose that where public
the growth affairs are concerned it would decrease under the

of CIVIC

duty. influence of education and the press. But several

general causes have tended to increase it in our
own generation, despite the increasing strength of
the appeal which civic duty makes to men who
are, or if they cared might be, better informed
about public affairs than were their fathers.

Anindui- The first of these causes is that manners have

gent spirit.

grown gentler and passions less angry. A chief duty
of the good citizen is to be angry when anger is
called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to
attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in
power, to expose his dishonesty, to eject him from
office, to brand him with an ignominy which will
prevent his returning to any post of trust. In
former days indignation flamed higher, and there
was little tenderness for offenders. Jehu smote the
prophets of Baal. Bad ministers — and no doubt
sometimes good ministers also — were in England
beheaded on Tower Hill. Everywhere punishment

INDOLENCE 23

came quicker and was more severe, though to
be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the
arm of justice is often arrested by an indulgence
which forgets that the true aim of punishment
is the protection of the community. The very
safeguards with which our slower and more careful
procedure has surrounded trials and investigationsi
proper as such safeguards are for the security of
the innocent, have often so delayed the march of
justice that when a conviction has at last been
obtained, the offence has begun to be forgotten and
the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or
with none. This is an illustration of the principle
that as righteous indignation is a valuable motive
power in politics, the decline in it means a decline
either in the standard of virtue or in the standard
of zeal, possibly in both.
Another cause may be found in the fact that the Vast size

of modem

enormous growth of modern states has made the states,
share in government of the individual citizen seem
infinitesimally small. In an average Greek repub-
lic, he was one of from two to ten thousand voters.
In England or France to-day he is one of many
millions. The chance that his vote will make any
difference to the result is so slender that it appears

24 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

to him negligible. We are proud, and justly
proud, of having adapted free government to
areas far vaster than were formerly thought capa-
ble of receiving free institutions. It was hoped
that the patriotism of the citizen would expand
with the magnitude of the State. But this did
not happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient re-
publics. Can we say that it has happened in the
modern world ? Few of us realize that though our
own share may be smaller our responsibility in-
creases with the power our State exerts. The late
Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from Davos
in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the
town of Cambridge in England and back again to
deliver his vote against Home Rule at the general
election of 1886, though he knew that his own side
would have a majority in the constituency. Those
who knew applauded, his opponents included, but I
fear that few of us followed this shining example of
civic virtue.
Indepen- Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult

ri ftfi fifl less

easy in huge duty, of a citizen is to fight valiantly for his con-

— ""- victions when he is in a minority. The smaUer the

minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more

violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder

INDOLENCE 25

is the call of duty to defend one's opinions. To
withstand the "ardor civium prava iubentium" —
to face "the multitude hasting to do evil" — this
is the note and the test of genuine virtue and
courage. Now this iS; or seems to be^ a more
formidable task the vaster the community be-
comes. It is harder to make your voice heard
against the roar of ocean than against the whis-
tling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake.

Lastly, there has been within the last century other in-
a great accession to our knowledge of nature, a petingwith
more widely diffused and developed interest in ^ *^'
literature and art as well as in science. This de-
velopment, in itself fraught with laudable means
of enjoyment; has had the unforeseen yet natural
result of reducing the interest in public affairs
among the educated classes, while the ardour with
which competitions in physical strength and skill
are followed has in like manner diverted the thoughts
and attention of the less educated — and indeed,
not of them alone but of many also in a class from
whom better things might have been expected.
Politics, in fact, have nowadays to strive against
more rival subjects attracting men's eyes and
minds than they had before scientific discovery and

26 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

art; and above all; athletic sportS; came to fill news-
papers and magazines.

But so far from being less important than they
were, politics are growing in every country more
important the wider the sphere of governmental
action becomes. Nevertheless, even in England,
which is perhaps slightly less addicted to this new
passion for looking on at and reading about athletic
competitions than are North America and Australia,
a cricket or foot-ball match or a horse race seems,
if one may judge by the eager throngs that snatch
the evening newspapers, to excite more interest in
the middle as well as in the richer and in the upper
section of the poorer classes than does any political
event.
Forms in How to overcome these adverse tendencies is a

which the

indifference question which I reserve till the last of these lec-
duty ap- tures. Meantime, let us look at some of the forms
^^®*"' in which indifference to the obligations of citizen-

ship reveals itself.
Neglect to The first duty of the citizen used to be to fight,

fight.

and to fight not merely against foes from another
State, but against those also who, within his own
State, were tr3dng to overturn the Constitution or
resist the laws. It is a duty still incumbent on us

INDOLENCE 27

all, though the existence of soldiers and a police
force calls us to it less frequently. The omission to
take up arms in a civil strife was a grave offence in
the republics of antiquity, where revolutions were
frequent; as they are to-day in some of the states
of Latin America. When respectable people stayed
at home instead of taking sword and spear to drive
out the adherents of an adventurer trying to make
himself Tyrant, they gave the adventurer his chance :
and in any case their abstention tended to prolong
a civil war which would end sooner when it was
seen which way the bulk of the people inclined.
There was accordingly a law in some of the Greek
republics that every citizen must take one side or
the other in an insurrection. If he did not, he
was liable to punishment. I have not heard of
any one being indicted in England or the United
States for failing to discharge his legal duty to
join in the hue and cry after a thief, or to rally
to the sheriff when he calls upon the posse comita^
tiLS to support him in maintaining law and order.
But possibly an indictment would still lie; and
in England we have within recent times enrolled
bodies of special constables from the civil popula-
tion to aid in maintaining public tranquillity.

28 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Neglect More peaceful times have substituted for the

duty of fighting the duty of voting. But even in
small communities the latter duty has been often
neglected. In Athens the magistrates used to send
round the Scythian bowmen, who acted as their
police, to scour the streets with a rope coloured
with vermilion, and drag towards the Pnyx (the
place of assembly), citizens who preferred to lounge
or to mind what they called their own business, as
if ruling the State was not their business. So in
modern Switzerland some cantons have enacted
laws fining those who, without reasonable excuse,
neglect to vote.^ This is the more remarkable be-
cause the Swiss have a good record in the matter
of voting, better, I think, than any other Euro-
pean people. Such a law witnesses not to excep-
tional negligence but to an exceptionally high
standard of duty. In Britain we sometimes bring
to the polls at a parliamentary election eighty,
or even more than eighty, per cent of our regis-
tered electors, which is pretty good when it is re-
membered that the register may have been made
up eleven months earlier, so that many electors are
sure to have moved elsewhere. At elections for

1 This example has, I believe, been followed in Belgium.

INDOLENCE 29

local authorities a much smaller proportion vote;
and I f ancy^ though I have no figures at hand, that
in France, Bel^um, and still more in Italy the per-
centage voting at all sorts of elections is less than
in Switzerland or in Britain. The number who vote
does not perfectly measure the personal sense of
duty among electors, because an efficient party or-
ganization may, like the Scythian bowmen, sweep
voters who do not care but who can be either driven
to the polls or paid to go. Unless it is money that
takes the voters there, it is well that they should
go; for it helps to form the habit.
Another form of civic apathy is the reluctance to Neglect to

seek or to

undertake civic functions. In England this is not serve in
discoverable in any want of candidates for Parlia-
ment. They abound, though sometimes the fittest
men prefer ease or business success to public life.
But seats upon local authorities and especially
upon municipal councils and district councils, sel-
dom attract the best ability of the local community.
In English and Scottish cities the leading com-
mercial, financial, and professional men do not
often appear as candidates, leaving the work to
persons who are not indeed incompetent, being
usually intelligent business men, but whose edu-

office.

30 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

cation and talents are sometimes below the level
of the functions which these bodies discharge. No
great harm has followed, because our city coun-
cillors are almost always honest. Local public
opinion is vigilant and exacting, so a high
standard of probity is maintained. But munici-
palities have latterly embarked on so many kinds
of new work, and the revenues of the greater cities
have so grown, that not merely business capacity
and experience, but a large grasp of economic
principles is required. This is no less true here
in America, yet I gather that here it is found even
more difficult than in Europe to secure the pres-
ence of able administrators in city councils.

A man engaged in a large business who takes up
municipal work may doubtless find that he is
making a pecuniary sacrifice. But if he has
already an income sufficient for his comfort, may
it not be his best way of serving his fellow-men?

Many such men do serve as governors or trustees
of educational or other public institutions which
make nearly as great a demand on their time as
the membership of a public body would. Others,
in Europe, if less frequently here, give to amuse-
ment much more of their leisure than the needs

dU

INDOLENCE 31

of recreation and health require. This is often due
rather to thoughtlessness than to a conscious in-
diflference to the call of duty.
Some of your political reformers have dwelt on Exouaes

made for

the difficulties which party organizations, specially failure to
powerful in the United States, place in the way ^bUc"*
of educated and public-spirited men seeking to ^^^'
enter politics. There may be truth in this as re-
gards the lower districts of the larger cities, but
one can scarcely think it generally true even of
the cities. More frequently it is alleged that the
work of local politics is disagreeable, bringing a
man into contact with vulgar people and expos-
ing him to misrepresentation and abuse.

This is an excuse for abstention which ought
never to be heard in a democratic country. If
politics are anywhere vulgar, they ought not to
be suffered to remain vulgar, as they will remain
if the better educated citizens keep aloof. They
involve the highest interests of the nation or the
city. The way in which they are handled is a
lesson to the people either in honesty or in knavery.
The best element in a community cannot aflford to
let its interests be the sport of self-seekers or rogues.
Moreover, the loss by maladministration or robbery.

32 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

large as it may sometimes be, is a less serious evil
than is the damage to public morals. If those who
have the manners and speak the language of edu-
cated men refuse to enter practical politics, they
must cease to complain of a want of refinement in
poUtics. In reality, good manners are the best
way in which to meet rudeness; and he who is
too thin skinned to disregard abuse confesses his
own want of manliness. The mass of the people,
even those who are neither educated nor fastidious,
know honesty when they see it, and discount such
abuse. When a man is firm and upright, nothing
better braces him up and fits him to serve his
country than to be attacked on the platform or in
the press for faults he has not committed. It
puts him on his mettle. It toughens his fibre.
It gives him self-control and teaches him how
to do right in the way which is least exposed to
misrepresentation. It nerves his courage for the
far more difficult trials which come when friends
as well as opponents censure him because honour
and obedience to his conscience have required him
to take an unpopular line and speak unwelcome
truths. A little persecution for righteousness' sake
is a wholesome thing.

INDOLENCE 33

The deficient sense of civic duty, though most Neglect to
frequently noted in the form of a neglect to vote, is and reflect
really more general and serious in the neglect to actions *°
think. Were it possible to have statistics to show
what percentage of those who vote reflect upon the
vote they have to give, there would in no country
be found a large percentage. Yet what is the
worth of a vote except as the expression of a con-
sidered opinion? The act of marking a ballot is
nothing unless the mark carries with it a judg-
ment, the preference of a good candidate to a
bad one, the approval of one policy offered the
people, the rejection of another. The citizen owes
it to the community to inform himself about the
questions submitted for his decision, and weigh
the arguments on each side; or if the issue be one
rather of persons than of policies, to learn all he
can regarding the merits of the candidates offered
to his choice.

How many voters really trouble themselves to do
this ? One in five ? One in ten ? One in twenty ?

It may be asked, How can they do it? What Difficulties
means have they of studying public questions and round the
reaching just conclusions? If the means are votwf^
wanting, can we blame them if they do not think?

34 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

If they feel they do not understand, can we
blame them if they do not vote? In every free
country the suffrage is now so wide that the
great majority of the voters have to labour for
their daily bread. In most European countries
many are imperfectly educated. In the rural
districts they read with difficulty, see either no
newspaper or one which helps them but little,
lead isolated lives in which there are scanty oppor-
tunities for learning what passes, so that the best
they can do seems to be to ask advice from the
priest, or the village schoolmaster, or take advice
from their landlord or their employer. In the
northern parts of the United States and also in
Canada, the native population has indeed received
a fair instruction, and reads newspapers; but the
mass of voters is swelled by a crowd of recent
immigrants, most of whom cannot read English
and know nothing of your institutions.

Broadly speaking, in modern countries ruled by
universal suffrage the 'Average Citizen has not the
means of adequately discharging the function
which the constitution throws upon him of follow-
ing, examining, and judging those problems of
statesmanship which the ever growing range of

INDOLENCE 35

government administration and the ever increasing
complexity of our civilization set before him as a
voter to whom issues of policy are submitted.

As things stand, he votes, when he votes, not
from knowledge, but as his party or his favourite
newspaper bids him, or according to his predilec-
tion for some particular leader. Unless it be
held that every man has a natural and indefea-
sible right to a share in the government of the
country in which he resides, the ground for giv-
iilg that share would seem to be the competence
of the recipient and the belief that his sharing will
promote the general welfare. So one may almost
say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes
that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed,
intelligent ruler of his country.* The facts con-
tradict this assumption.

Does this mean that widely extended suffrage is
a failure, and that the Average Man is not a com-
petent citizen in a democracy?

This question brings us to reflect on another The duty
branch of civic duty not yet mentioned. Besides competeDt

citisens to
* It may no doubt be argued that even if he is not competent, }ieln the less

it is better he should be within than without the voting class, competent.

But this was not the ground generally taken by those who brought

in universal suffrage.

36 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

the civic duties already described of Fighting,
Voting, and Thinking, there is another duty. It
is the duty of Mutual Help, the duty incum-
bent on those who possess, through their know-
ledge and intelligence, the capacity of Instruction
and Persuasion to advise and to guide their less
competent fellow-citizens. No sensible man ought
ever to have supposed that under such conditions as
large modem communities present, the bulk of the
citizens could vote wisely from their own private
knowledge and intelligence. Even in small cities,
such as was Sicyon in the days of Aratus, or Boston
in the days of James Otis, the Average Man needed
the help of his more educated and wiser neigh-
bours. While communities remained small, it was
easy to get this help. But now the swift and vast
growth of states and cities has changed everything.
Private talk counts for less when the richer citi-
zens dwell apart from the poorer; their oppor-
tunities of meeting are fewer, and there is less
friendliness, if also less dependence, in the rela-
tion of the employed to the employer. Public
meetings do not give nearly all that the Average
Man needs, not to add that being got together
to present one set of facts and arguments and

INDOLENCE 37

deliberately to ignore the other, they do not put
him in a fair position to judge. Besides, the men
who most need instruction are usually those who
least come to meetings to receive it.

To fill this void the newspapers have arisen, — Newspapen
organs purporting to supply the materials required ^^^ *°
for the formation of political opinion. Whatever **^**"«^^'
the services of the newspaper in other respects, it
has the inevitable defect of superseding, with
most of those who read it, the exercise of inde-
pendent thought. The newspaper, — I speak gen-
erally, for there are some brilliant exceptions, — is,
in Europe even more than here, almost always par-
tisan in its views, often partisan in its selection of
facts or at least in its way of stating them. Pre-
senting one side of a case, addressing chiefly those
who are already adherents of that side, putting a
colour on the events it reports, — it serves up to the
reader ideas, perhaps only mere phrases or catch-
words, which confirm him in his prepossessions, and
by its daily iteration makes him take them for
truths. Seldom has he the leisure, still more seldom
the impulse or the patience, to scrutinize these
ideas for himself and form his own judgment. He
is glad to be relieved of the necessity for thinking,

38 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

because thinking is hard work. Indolence again I
The habit of mind that is formed by hasty reading,
and especially by the reading of newspapers and
magazines in which the matter, excellent as parts
of it often are, is so multifarious that one topic di-
verts attention from the others, tends to a general
dissipation and distraction of thought. It is a habit
which tells upon us all and makes continuous
reflection and a critical or logical treatment of the
subjects deserving reflection more irksome to us in
the full sunlight of to-day than it was to those
whom we call our benighted ancestors.
"The read- This is Only one form of that supersession of the
practice of thinking by the vice commonly called
"the reading habit" which is profoundly affecting
the intellectual life of our time. Yet as steady
thinking was never really common even among the
educated; the difference from earlier days is not so
correctly described by saying that people think
less than formerly, as by noting that while people
read more, and while far more people read, the
ratio of thinking to reading does not increase either
in the individual or in the mass, and may possibly
be decreasing. Intelligence and independence of
thought have not grown in proportion to the dif-

INDOLENCE 39

fusion of knowledge. The number of persons who
both read and vote is in England and France more
than twenty times as great as it was seventy years
ago. The percentage of those who reflect before
they vote has not kept pace either with popular
education or with the extension of the suffrage.

The persons who constitute that percentage are. How the
and must for the reasons already given continue citizens
for some time to be, only a fraction, in some "^y*««*-
countries a small fraction, of the voting popula-
tion. But the fraction might be made much
larger than it is. The citizens who stand above
their fellows in knowledge and mental power
ought to set an example, not only by themselves
thinking more and thinking harder about public
affairs than most of them do, but also by exerting
themselves to stimulate and aid their less instructed
or more listless neighbours. The voter, it is said,
should be independent. Yes. But independence
does not mean isolation. He must not commit his
personal responsibility to the keeping of another.
Yes. But personal responsibility does not mean
the vain conceit of knowledge and judgment where
knowledge is wanting and judgment is untrained.

Just as his religion throws upon every Christian

40 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP
ReBponsible the duty of loving his neighbour and giving prac-

leadership

essential in tical expression to his love by helping his neigh-
gover^ hour, succouring him in the hour of need, trying
ments. ^ rescue him from sin, seeking to guide his steps

into the way of peace, so civic duty requires each
of us to raise the level of citizenship not merely
by ourselves voting and bearing a share in political
agitation, but by trying to diffuse among our
fellow-citizens whose opportunities have been less
favourable, the knowledge and the fairness of mind
and the habit of grappling with political questions
which a democratic government must demand
even from the Average Man. Democracy, they
say, is based on EquaUty. But in no form of
government is leadership so essential. A multi-
tude without intelligent, responsible leaders whom
it respects and follows is a crowd ready to be-
come the prey of any self-seeking knave. Nor is
it true that because men value equality they
reject eminence. They are always glad to be led
if some one, eschewing pretension and condescen-
sion, speaking to them with respect, but also with
that authority which knowledge and capacity
imply, will point out the path and give them the
lead for which they are looking. To do this has

INDOLENCE 41

now, in our great cities, become more difficult
than it used to be, because men of different classes
and different occupations do not know one another
as well as they once did, and economic conflicts
have made workingmen suspicious. But there are
those in our English and Scottish cities who do it
successfully, and I have never heard that it is
resented. It is largely a matter of tact, and of
knowing how to express that genuine sense of
human fellowship which is commoner in the richer
class than the constraint and shyness that are
supposed to beset Englishmen sometimes allow to
appear.

If you and we, both here and in Britain, are
less active than we should be in this and other
forms of civic work, the fault lies in our not caring
enough for our country. It is easy to wave a
flag, to cheer an eminent statesman, to exult in
some achievement by land or sea. But our imag-
inations are too dull to realize either the grandeur
of the State in its splendid opportunities for pro-
moting the welfare of the masses, or the fact that
the nobility of the State lies in its being the true
child, the true exponent, of the enlightened will of
a right-minded and law-abiding people. Absorbed

42 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

in business or pleasure, we think too little of what
our membership in a free nation means for the
happiness of our poorer fellow-citizens. The elo-
quent voice of a patriotic reformer sometimes
breaks our slumber. But the daily round of busi-
ness and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and
public duty fades into the background of life. This
dulness of imagination and the mere indolence
which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a
chief cause of that indifference which chokes the
growth of civic duty. It is because a great Uni-
versity like this is the place where the imagina-
tion of young men may best be quickened by the
divine fire, because the sons of a great University
are those who may best carry with them into after
life the inspiration which history and philosophy
and poetry have kindled within its venerable walls,
that I have ventured to dwell here on the special
duty which those who enjoy these privileges owe
to their brethren, partners in the citizenship of
a great republic.

LECTURE II

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST AS A HIN-
DRANCE TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

The school of political philosophers dominant in The recent
France and England a century ago sought to re- eiJarge°the
duce the functions of government to a minimum. L'^ernmen-
To them, the freedom of the individual was the *»! action,
indispensable guarantee for progress and happiness.
The less he was interfered with, or superseded, or
exposed to competition, by the State, so much the
better for him and for it. Some writers of this
school went so far as to leave to the State hardly
any sphere of action except defence against foreign
enemies — a danger which was then believed to be
disappearing and which has never seriously threat-
ened the United States — together with the main-
tenance of law and order at home. The old
catchword "Anarchy plus a street constable,"

expressed this view of the ideal community.

43

44 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Both in Europe and in America this doctrine
was deserted in practice long before it was denied
in theory. Some forty years ago the current
turned, and has been thereafter running toward a
widening of the State's range of action and the
multiplying its points of contact with the individ-
ual.* That it did so silently, and so to speak uncon-
sciously, in England, and even more unconsciously
in the United States, shows how strong were the
actual forces moving in that direction. Both here
and in England the earher manifestations of the
new tendency were defended, or excused, as mere
trivial exceptions to a principle still recognized as
generally sound. But latterly theory has adapted
itself to practice. We see an active propaganda
carried on by various groups from various motives,
all constantly demanding, and justifying on prin-
ciple, more and more interference by public
authorities with matters formerly left to private
enterprise.
Influence of Without disparaging the value of the theoretical

the flTt 1 Aif ir A»

mentof arguments employed to recommend or discredit
in*^n^h-° this tendency, we may agree that it must ulti-

* This subject has been treated with great knowledge and pene-
tration by Mr. A. V. Dicey in his book entitled Law and Opinion.

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 45

mately be tested by experience, and that our present ing oppor-
tunities for
experience is too limited to justify general con- making

elusions. But one aspect of the matter which has by means of
so far received little attention concerns our present *^® ***®'
inquiry. I mean the influence which the exten-
sion of State action has had upon the part played
by private interests in legislation and adminis-
tration. The more any pubUc authority, be it a
county or city, or a State of this Union, or any
national government, either itself undertakes, or in-
terferes with the conduct by private persons of, any
matter in which money can be either made or
spent, the more grounds does it supply to private
persons for trying to influence its action in the
direction which will benefit such persons. So much
the more, therefore, will those persons have a
private interest diflEerent from the interest of the
community, so much the more will they be
tempted to raise their voices and give their votes
with a view, not to the common good, but to their
own pockets.

Never was there a time when or a country where
politics were not more or less tainted and per-
verted by selfish private interests. Bangs sought
their own personal advantage. So did the rela-

46 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

tives and ministers or favourites of kings. So
did nobles, so did the members of those small
councils through which oligarchies have ruled.
The land-owning class, which controlled Eng-
lish legislation in the eighteenth century, thought
first of itself, and passed laws to benefit itself. In
fact, one of the strongest practical arguments used
on behalf of the extension of the suffrage has been
that it would secure the general interest of the
nation by depriving any class of a predominant
influence. And the friends of democracy expected
that by setting up the common good as the com-
mon aim, the pursuit of selfish purposes, whether
by oflicials or by particular privileged classes,
would be discredited and practically banished.

Nevertheless, selfish purposes have continued in
all popular governments to determine the action of
classes or groups of citizens. They constitute a
grave temptation, obscuring with many persons
that sense of the duty to think first of the whole
community which ought to be the pole star
guiding the citizens' course.

Let us note some of the forms in which this
evil appears in modern States. They are as many
as the ways in which the action of government.

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 47

whether legislative or administrative, can afifect Various

.... forms in

private pecuniary interests. which seif-

Of some old and vulgar forms no more need be j^tCTeet***
said than is sufficient to indicate that these forms °^*yp«^-

vert CIVIC

have not escaped our recollection. Bribery is one ^^^y*
of them. The taker of a bribe, be he an elector The buying
or a member of a legislature, makes an obviously
flagrant sacrifice of public duty to personal cupid-
ity. The briber who tempts him may seem less
base, but is even more mischievous, because he
a£Fects a wider circle. Yet not long ago — I can
myself remember the time — the corruption of a
constituency was treated in England as a sort of
joke. The humble bribe-taker did not su£Fer much
in the opinion of the class to which he belonged.
The rich bribe-giver was not deemed a really black
sheep, but only gray, or perhaps a little spotted.
Public opinion has within the last thirty years
risen. Stringent legislation, the enactment of which
witnessed to an improving tone, has attached
graver penalties to the oflEence, although of course
it has not been able to prevent voters from being
influenced by the recollection, or expectation, of
favours from a candidate. There are now-a-days
only a very few constituencies in England, and

48 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

none in Scotland, where corruption survives. The
different view men have come to take of the
practice shows how the law may serve to form
popular sentiment and may maintain the ethical
standard which it helped to raise.
The in- I pass to a class of cases in which it is scarcely

Gidenceof mi . . ^ j.^ p

taxes. possible to prevent personal motives from warp-

ing the sense of duty to the nation, and which for
that very reason presents especial difficulties.
Taxes have to be imposed both for national and
for local purposes. The widening range of gov-
ernmental action, both national and local, and the
tendency, strong in most European countries, to
increase the expenditure on naval and military
armaments, make taxation go on constantly ris-
ing. Now, taxes may be so imposed as to press
more heavily upon some one class or classes in the
nation, less heavily upon the others. Each class,
therefore, has a motive for trying to shift the bur-
den on to the others. The manual labourers,
though of course opposed to a poll tax, are dis-
posed to favour a direct tax upon property or in-
come rather than indirect taxes in the form of
duties on imports, because income or property
taxes can be most easily levied on the rich, and

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 49

can be raised progressively, i.e., in proportion to
the wealth of the persons required to pay. The
poor escape them, not only because it would seem
harsh to charge an income tax on the poor, but
also because the expense of collection would be
practically prohibitive. Progressive income taxes
are much in favour in many of the cantons of
Switzerland, and progressive succession duties
have been adopted in Great Britain. Such taxa-
tion may be entirely right in itself, but the ques-
tions connected with it are apt to present them-
selves to the individual citizen rather as affect-
ing his own pocket than as matters of general
policy.

One particular form of taxation specially tends Duties on
to afifect political action. In nearly all countries affecting
of Europe, though not in the United Kingdom, P"^®^*
duties on imports are imposed not merely for
the sake of raising revenue, but in order to check
foreign competition in the home market, and
thereby to give an advantage to home products.
Such duties, since they are deemed to benefit the
home producer by more or less keeping out the for-
eign product, and since they evidently enable him
to raise the price of what he sells, are much in

50 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

favour with the producing classes. Accordingly,
the agriculturists in France, a very large part
of the population, demand a high tariff on food
products brought from abroad. As you know,
the German land-owners have fought for years,
and fought successfully, to keep up duties on
bread-stuffs and bacon, while the working class
oppose these duties, because they desire cheap
food. Similarly, in both those countries, manu-
facturers have pressed for high import duties on
manufactured goods.

Tariff issues have come to be among the most
cardinal issues and the most constant issues in
many countries, so that the voter is apt to ask
himself not who is the best man to be chosen and
what is the best policy for the country, but whether
the candidate, be he a good man or a bad one,
stands pledged to a high tariff which will put money
into his own pocket if he looks at the subject as
producer, or will increase the price of the com-
modities he consumes if his point of view is that
of a consumer. Rarely does a voter find any diffi-
culty in convincing himself that what is for his
own interest is for the interest of the country.
Anyhow he always says so. But every one knows

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 51

what a disturbing, and possibly a perverting, in-
fluence, these considerations must exercise and do
exercise upon the citizen's mind.

In many countries large sums are taken from Appropria-
the public treasury to be spent on public works, locaUties
the expenditure in the locality, as well as the work ^orto.
itself when completed, being deemed a benefit to
the place. There is, therefore, much eagerness to
secure appropriations of public money for local
objects, such as harbours, piers, canals, roads, and
public buildings of various kinds. Accordingly, the
voters who reside in a place which is trying to
secure such an appropriation, are prone to set
their private interest as residents, or expectants of
wages, before their general duty as citizens. They
give their support to the candidate or to the party
which seems most likely to procure for them what
may really be a needless or wasteful expenditure
of public money, or at least an expenditure in so
far unfair that the benefit to the locaUty is no
benefit at all to tax payers in other places to
whom no corresponding grant is to be made.
There are countries in which the distribution of
favours by the government to localities is steadily
practised as a means of securing votes in particu-

52 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

The obtain-
ing of local
franchises.

Govern-
ment con-
tracts.

lar localities; and this practice may come pretty
neat to a species of political corruption.

Similar self-regarding motives of a business
order operate upon smaller sections of local com-
munities. As we all know, such franchises as the
construction of street railways, or water-works or
gas-works, for the supply of a city, are often of
great value. The directors of a joint stock com-
pany seeking to secure such a franchise are tempted
to postpone the common interest of the city to
their own interest as promoters. They are some-
times not only thus tempted themselves, but dis-
posed to tempt others. The shareholders, who in
most European countries are usually numerous,
though here the stock of these large undertak-
ings is often in comparatively few hands, think of
their dividends and cease to regard the interests
of the city with a single eye. When questions arise
between the city and the corporation that works
their undertaking, they are not impartial, and
may seek to bring unfair influence to bear upon
elections.

Modern governments, the governments of cities
as well as those of nations, are large employers of
labour and large contractors. The more works any

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 53

public authority undertakes, the more ships it
builds, the more camion it casts, the more roads it
constructs, so much the more numerous are the
opportunities for gain to those with whom it deals
and to those whom it employs. Whoever has, or
seeks to have, dealings with a public authority has
a private interest of his own to study and pursue,
distinct from, and usually opposed to, the public
interest, for he wishes to sell dear and the public
wish to buy cheap. The dangers arising from
such a private interest were deemed so serious
in the case of members of the British Parlia-
ment that a statute was long ago passed forbid-
ding contractors with the government to sit in
the legislature. But this is evidently only a par-
tial check.

One class who deal with governments need to Govem-
be specially mentioned; I mean those who sell pioyeea."
their labour. They desire higher wages and shorter
hours than they might be able to obtain from other
employers, with such other favourable conditions
as they can secure. In some countries these gov-
ernment servants are numerous enough to affect
elections. In one of the Australian colonies, for
instance, where the railroads are the property of

54 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

the State^ the employees in each electoral area
organized themselves to extort from every candi-
date a promise to vote for raising wages. Where
parties were nearly divided, their vote might often
be decisive. The pressure thus put upon the legis-
lature proved at first disagreeable and at last intol-
erable, so a law was passed taking these employees
out of the ordinary constituencies where they re-
sided and putting them into two constituencies all
by themselves. Thus, while deprived of the in-
ordinate power they had enjoyed, they were given
representatives who could present their claims as
avowed advocates.*

In England the clerks employed in the postal
and telegraph services have frequently endeavoured
to exert similar pressure at parliamentary elections,
to the great inconvenience of the Administration.
So, too, the elections in towns where government
dockyards are situated have often turned upon the
claims of the dockyard workmen to better wages
or more favourable conditions. Similarly the per-
sons employed by municipal authorities have in
some cities attempted to start a similar agitation.

' I have been informed since these lectures were prepared that
this law is now no longer in force.

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 65

Much disapproval is expressed by the govern-
mental authorities, but the obvious remedy of dis-
franchising every one who receives any government
pay so long as he receives it, including, of course,
judges, administrative ofiBicials, and members of
the military and naval services, has never been
resorted to, because the notion that every man
has a sort of natural right to vote is now gen-
erally diffused, and any administration that pro-
posed to withdraw the electoral franchise from a
large class would risk its popularity.

There are many ways in which public legisla- other ways
tion may affect for their gain or their loss particu- %^^^
lar professions or industries, or particular sections be^a^ectS^
of the community. Labouring men may desire fej/^
laws shortening the hours of labour, or awarding
compensation for accidents, or legalizing certain
modes of conducting strikes. Employers may
object to such laws. Shipowners may protest
against the laws regulating the load line and deck
cargoes. Railroad directors may resist proposals to
impose conditions on the working of their lines
or the publication of their accounts, most of all
upon the rates of freight they charge; and the
shareholders may join in the resistance. Horse

56 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

breeders or saloon keepers may think it in their
interest to have horse racing maintained as an
attractive sport and may therefore oppose laws
seeking to extinguish betting. A recent English
instance is illustrative. The businesses of brewing
and of distilling have largely passed from private
firms into the hands of joint stock companies, so
that the persons interested as shareholders in these
industries are now very numerous. When meas-
ures are proposed in Parliament, proposing to re-
strict the number of places licensed to sell liquor,
the directors of the companies issue circulars call-
ing upon the shareholders to defend their property
by putting pressure on Parliament to reject these
measures; and it is supposed that the opposition
to such bills is thereby greatly strengthened, be-
cause not a few legislators may be afraid to lose
the votes of the shareholders aforesaid.

There is in our time a great deal of what is
called social legislation, directed to securing reforms
which cannot but interfere with existing trades.
Some of it may be thought to attempt too much.
Some goes so far that, being in advance of
public opinion, or of public opinion in certain
localities, it fails to be enforced, and so does

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 57

harm by presenting the spectacle of laws dis-
regarded with impunity. That, however, is . be-
side the present question. What we have here to
note is the large number of cases in which private
interest may, in the mind of the voters, over-ride
considerations of public policy.
One more class of instances deserves attention. The interest

,1 - I • , , of persons

VIZ., the case of persons who have a personal m- employed
terest in keeping a political party in power. Every n^nt In™"
government has, besides soldiers and sailors and ^®®?^^^_^

° ' their party

police and workmen in navy yards or gun f ac- « power,
tories, a large number of civil employees in its
service, from the higher officials in the adminis-
trative departments down to clerks and custom-
house examiners and letter carriers. In some
countries school teachers belong to this category.
Adding to all these the persons who are em-
ployed by cities, such as engineers, clerks, tax
collectors, and adding further the persons who
have not got, but desire to have, a post under
the central or under a local government, the num-
ber of those who have a personal motive for sup-
porting one or other political party may be, at
any rate in a constituency where parties are nearly
equal, large enough to affect the result of an

58 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Position of
public em-
ployees in
European
countries.

election. If these government employees are
permanently employed, i.e., not appointed for a
term and not dismissible at pleasure, they may be
expected to vote like other citizens, because their
tenure will not be affected by the vote they give.
If, however, they are liable to be dismissed on a
change of government, they are usually deemed
bound to vote, and probably also to work, for the
government actually in power. Presumably they
belonged at the time of their appointment to the
party which appointed them, and therefore did not
change their politics to secure a place. Still, the
interest they have in supporting that party, what-
ever their personal opinions, tends to lessen their
independence and to reduce them to the level of
voting machines, because their livelihood depends
on the government. With them private interest
must needs displace civic duty.

The status of public servants differs in different
parts of Europe. In some their tenure is perma-
nent, and they can vote as they please. This has
now become the case in England, where, however,
they are very properly forbidden to take any part
in party politics, — to canvass, for instance, or to
speak at public meetings. Formerly many were

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 59

appointed and dismissed on party grounds, but
this plan worked so badly that it was by degrees
abolished; and abolished with universal approval.
Members of Parliament themselves rejoiced to be
set free from the importunities of applicants and
from the odious task of pushing candidates whose
competence they did not know or might even dis-
trust. In Germany, the instinct of loyalty to the
, Crown or that of deference to authority is said to
induce employees usually to support the govern-
ment. In France they are still generally expected
to do so; and although they no longer exert the
local pressure which was common under Louis
Napoleon and Marshal MacMahon, they sometimes
do electoral work for the party in power. Teach-
ers in public elementary schools are said to be
active and effective in this way.

As I have referred to France, it may be added that
in that country two other motives of interest exist
which may affect the citizen's action. The sale
of tobacco and of hquor requires a license, and this
is apt to be granted as a favour to supporters
of the party in power. Although the decoration
of the Legion of Honour is, so far as regards its
higher ranks, bestowed upon eminent men of all

60 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

parties^ yet in the distribution of the lower grades
regard is apt to be had to political services. The
red ribbon in the button-hole is so much prized in
France that this species of patronage is largely
used to win or reward political support among men
of some local influence.

The result of European experience generally has
been to show that the more the administrative
service both of the nation and of local authorities
is kept .entirely apart from politics, so much the
better all round. The voter is more free. The
official is exposed to less temptation. He is sure
to be more trusted. He is likely to be more efficient.
I need not tell you, for you all know it, what the
situation formerly was in the United States; what
evils the "spoils system" used to breed, what
efforts were made to get rid of it; how by slow
degrees public offices have more and more been
taken out of the category of party rewards, and
how much good has resulted therefrom. This has
been the work partly of an enlightened public
opinion, partly of the action of such strong and
public-spirited men as President Cleveland and
President Roosevelt.

If we desire to estimate the total number, in any

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 61

given State, of the citizens whose action on public Proportion
issues, whether national or municipal, is distorted SS^be
or depraved by personal self-interest, we must by private
begin by distinguishing the cases in which that "^*«^«st.
interest is solely pecuniary, or otherwise purely Two classes
selfish, from that larger class in which an interest tinguished.
which is in one sense personal may be advocated
also on general grounds of economic or social policy
which may appeal to those who have nothing di-
rectly to gain or to lose. Labour legislation belongs
to this latter category. An Eight Hours law, for
instance, or a law making an employer liable to
pay compensation to a workman for all accidents,
does directly benefit one class, no doubt a very
large class. But it may also be recommended
as just and beneficial, or censured as unjust and
pernicious, to the community at large. A Pro-
hibition law directly affects the makers and sellers
of intoxicating beverages, and they may oppose
it because it will reduce their profits. But it may
be opposed as unduly restricting personal liberty,
or as unlikely to be effectively enforced. A teeto-
taler who has no personal interest in selling or in
getting liquor might disapprove it for those reasons.
The same may be said of a protective tariff. Some

62 THE fflNDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

consumers who have no personal motive for desir-
ing a duty to be imposed on imported foodstuffs,
because they do not produce or sell foodstuffs,
are nevertheless Protectionists, for the issue of
Free Trade or Protection is one which may be
argued on general economic principles. Although
manufacturers who profit by protective duties must,
of course, feel the influence of personal motives,
still they cannot be ruled out of a debate which has
large general bearings going beyond the interest
of a section. However, when the fixing of a
customs tariff comes down to details and the
scale has in each case to be settled, we may
expect personal interest to be paramount. The
Belgian or German manufacturers who sell a par-
ticular kind of agricultural machinery may employ
comparatively few persons, and their branch of
industry may be of no great importance to the
nation. But their interest in excluding American
competition will be keen, and where self-interest is
keenly felt, public interest goes to the wall. They
may persuade themselves that the protective duty
they desire will benefit the nation at large. But
they cannot be deemed impartial judges; and in
practice it is seen that those who expect benefit

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 63

from such a duty fight fiercely for it. The results
of bringing these private interests, enormous in
their aggregate, into the field of politics have
been too frequently pointed out to need discussion
here and now.
If we put aside this large class of persons whose Percentage

1 . . J. T • i 1 f » 1 • 1 o^ citizens

personal interest lies in the scope of issues which uabietobe
may claim to be disputable, apart from personal in- pn^a^ini^
terest, because they happen to coincide with a ^^'^^^s-
policy advocated on general grounds, the percentage
of citizens who have selfish reasons to determine
their political action becomes small. That percent-
age includes those who want to have public money
expended in their own neighbourhood, those who
seek lucrative governmental contracts or public
franchises, those who in some other way desire to
draw from the public some advantage by private
legislation, those who, being servants of a public
authority, agitate for higher wages, those who are
striving, by voting or by working for a party, to
win, or to keep, public office. It may be thought
that these persons, taken all together, are too tri-
fling a part of the electorate to afifect the course of
politics, or lower the level of good citizenship in
the nation.

64 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Why the
class
affected
by selfish
interests,
though
small, is
important.

Energy of
self-
interest.

Secrecy.

Numerically they are insignificant. Their im-
portance arises from two facts. One is the keen-
ness of their selfish interest. The other is the se-
crecy of the means to which most of them resort.
These men, and especially those who promote
private bills or intrigue to secure contracts and
franchises, have a spur of self-interest which sharpens
their ingenuity and keeps them incessantly active.
They are too strong for the ordinary citizen. His
individual personal interest in efficient government
and cheap government is slender. A rise in city
taxation which may result from the improvident
grant of a franchise or a corruptly placed contract,
will make only an infinitesimal difference to him.
The bad city administration he will receive at the
hands of incompetent men put into office for po-
litical reasons will only occasionally touch him.
But to the man who wants a contract or a franchise
the getting of it means wealth and influence. He
becomes strenuous and adroit. He is like a pro-
fessional golfer pitted against you or me. He
"wins all the time."

The men who are "after money," — and this
is largely true also of the men who are after office,
where it is the reward of political work — prefer

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 65

to pursue their object by covert means. Many
are the kinds of influence, political, personal,
pecuniary, they can bring to bear. Those who
expect to make a fortune out of the public are
willing to spend freely to over-reach the public.
The least part of the harm done is the pecuniary
loss the public suffers. Far worse is the example
which the successful tempter sets and the demoral-
ization which he spreads.

Even the purchase of political support in a
locality by spending money there on public works,
a thing said to be frequent in Italy, and not un-
known in some British colonies, is not only dis-
creditable to the politicians who practise it, but
involves some dereliction of duty on the part of
the local citizens who give their votes in a particular
way because money is coming to the locality. It
lowers the moral standard of the administration
that consents to spend the money, of the member
who procures the grant, of the constituency that
receives it.

It has been said that the evil most generally The Power

of Money as

incident to modern democratic states, and most a danger
characteristic of modern as distinguished from popular
ancient democracy, is the tendency to turn govern- moT^'

66 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

mental action to private ends.* Perhaps with even
more general truth may it be said that as the Love
of Money is the root of all evil, so the Power of
Money is for popular governments the most con-
stant source of danger, worse than ignorance, worse
than apathy, worse than faction, worse than dema-
gogism. This is because it is so multiform, so
insidious, so hard to detect, so quick to spread.
You may remark that among the average voters
there are comparatively few who have anything
to gain from the government. Indolence afifects
more people than selfish interest does. But where
the influence of sordid personal aims is felt, it is
more harmful. Moreover it tells chiefly on the
class whose wealth or education or connection
with public affairs makes them prominent.
Results of Those men constitute what may be called the
ardinthe Tone-Setting class, by which I mean the class
ciass.^ which from its social authority as well as its
intelligence and power forms the standard not only
for those who conduct public business but also
to a great extent for the whole community. Such

^ Although the debasement of politics by private interests
never appeared on a more tremendous scale than in the struggle
for office, and for provinces as a means of enrichment, which
went on in the later days of the Roman republic.

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 67

a class ought to set a high standard. When it, or
any considerable part of it; sets a low standard
and admits or tolerates in public life motives and
methods which would be condemned in private
life, it depraves the morality of the community,
and thus the stream is poisoned at its source and
politics are defiled and debased, selfishness and
trickery are taken to be natural, and public life
becomes the favourite hunting ground of unscru-
pulous or reckless men. The republic of Rome in
the last century of its life is the most familiar
example of these evils.

Philip of Macedon used to say that he could
take any city into which he Could drive an ass
laden with gold. Modern governments control
enormous pecuniary interests and the men who
administer the government are often poor. Con-
sidering the temptations which wealth can offer
it is creditable to most of our modern democracies
that they have on the whole maintained a pretty
high standard of honour. But the danger is ever
present. Once the moral standard is allowed to
sink, the task of restoring it becomes a hard
task, harder than that of rousing a people from
indolent indifference, for a national crisis, a real

68 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

issue which comes suddenly and thrills all hearts^
may do this, while moral decay, eating into the
national character, destroys the very sentiments
to which the reformer has to appeal. A nation
may be stirred to splendid effort by schemes of
conquest or by the need for self-defence, and yet
remain the prey of sordid interests.
Publicity To eliminate from politics the money power with

against the the rapacity which moves it and the selfishness on
Money. which it plays, ought to be a first aim of all pa-
triotic citizens. Publicity is the most generally
available means of effecting this. In free countries,
the people are rightly jealous of the power of wealth,
and the better its methods are known the less dan-
gerous does it become. But on the general principle
that prevention is better than cure, it is much to be
desired that legislation and administration should
offer the fewest possible facilities for enabling men to
grow rich by their dealings with the public or through
special provisions of the law. The difficulty of limit-
ing these facilities is so great and with the increase
of governmental action becomes daily so much
greater, as to make a sweeping application of this
doctrine seem to be a Counsel of Perfection. Never-
theless^ the more broadly it is applied the better.

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 69

The two best and purest democratic States of The Orange
recent times have been those two in which the and Swit»-
administration was most cheaply conducted and ^^ ° '
which gave the fewest opportunities to their citi-
zens of using government as a means for gain.
But I must add that in one of these republics, the
Orange Free State, there were no men, in the other,
Switzerland, there are very few men, rich enough
to be able to pervert either administration or
legislation, or before whose eyes large temptations
glittered.

Our consideration of the part played in politics
by self-regarding interests suggests a reflection
with which this lecture may close.

The chief issues which have divided nations Nature of
and given rise to political conflict have belonged ©n which
to one or other of four classes. There have been ^ntests
strifes of diflFerent races or class-groups within ^f^®^'
the same State. There have been quarrels of ^^^^rned.
religion. There have been struggles over political
power between those who held it as their exclusive
possession and those who sought to be admitted
to share it. There have been struggles between
different economic classes in which the poorer
strove to improve by legislation their material

70 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

condition, as, for instance, to obtain possession of
land or to shake off burdensome taxes. The three
former kinds of conflict have now almost passed
away from west and middle European countries
with the cooling of reUgious passion and the de-
mocratization of nearly all States. There remain
only conflicts of the fourth kind, which turn upon
material conditions, and which tend to become
struggles between the richer and the poorer classes.
The efforts of the latter to better their lot in the
world have often caused and sometimes justified
revolutions, and several long steps in human prog-
ress have been marked by their success. The
liberation of the French peasantry from the sort
of serfdom in which many of them had remained,
was one of the best results of the movement that
overthrew the old French monarchy. Through
a more peaceful series of political struggles and
changes the British legislature has bettered during
the last forty years the condition of the peasantry
in Ireland, and has given to the masses of the
British people the inestimable benefits of untaxed
food and a system of universal public education.
Unavoidable as are these struggles between the
more and less wealthy parts of the community,

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 71

it is unfortunate when they become the chief Evils to be
issues in politics and draw the lines by which par- when the
ties are divided. Every free people may well say ^^^ ''
with the Hebrew sage, " Give me neither poverty ^^^®
nor riches." The ideal condition for a State would "°*^ *^^

poor.

be that in which the fortunes of its members were
pretty nearly equal. Aiistotle tells us that power
is most safely lodged in the hands of the citizens
of moderate means who have no motive for plun-
dering the rich and are not likely to be plundered
by the poor. This class, he thinks, is less tempted
to show insolence. Neither does it excite envy.
And Plato, deploring the intestine strife which tore
Greek republics, explains it by observing that in
every city there are two cities, the Rich and the
Poor.

Where a small body of rich men are set over
against a large body of poor men, both having
equal political rights, the majority will naturally
be tempted to use their power to secure economic
benefits for themselves. Where this goes so far
that the rich form one party and the poor another,
there being comparatively few of middling fortune
between the two, the temptation to the latter to
throw undue burdens on the former, and the con-

72 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

sequent temptation to the former to defend them-
selves by those illegitimate means which wealth
provides, will seldom be resisted. In former days
such a conflict of interest and parties used to end
in a clash of arms. Even where the strife is car-
ried on by constitutional methods the community
will hardly escape unscathed. Class hatreds are
embittered. Confidence is weakened. Capital may
be driven out of the country, or may try to save
itself by methods of corruption which demoralize
public life.
In England Nothing, therefore, is more to be desired than
divisions that in every free government the lines which divide
followed^ ^ political parties should not be the lines which divide
ec(momic ^j^^ ncher from the poorer. It was the good fortune
of England that the Whig party, which from the
time of Charles the Second onwards was, generally
speaking, the advocate of popular rights, included a
large section of the gentry, some even among the
great land-owners, and a still larger proportion of
the well-to-do commercial class, while the Tory or
Conservative party included plenty of the poorer
citizens. Thus those who were usually the advo-
cates of political reform and champions of freedom
were led to proceed cautiously and had a respect;

PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST 73

perhaps sometimes an undue respect, for what are
called the rights of property, and for vested rights
generally. So also in the United States the lines of
political parties have run quite across those lines This still

more true of

by which men are classified according to property, the United

Stfttes

Neither the Republicans and Federalists of your
early days, nor the Democratic Republicans and
Whigs of your second period, nor the Democrats
and RepubUcans of the last fifty years, have ever
been associated with the claims and efforts either
of the richer or of the poorer classes. This
means that neither in England nor in the United
States has self-interest in its more sordid form of
the selfish assertion of pecuniary interest, been a
mainspring in the machinery of political life.
Those who attacked the existing state of things,
those who resisted proposals to change it, have
been actuated by many motives. Self-interest
has been present, has indeed been more or less
constantly active. But it has seldom, if ever, been
consciously dominant. Neither abstract justice, nor
the interest of the whole nation, have, in the minds
of either set of partisans, been subordinated to
the gain they expected to secure for themselves.
That the mass of the poor should in the United

74 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

States come to form one party, and the mass of the
rich another, seems highly improbable. You have
what Aristotle desired, the decisive voice lodged
in an enormous body of citizens, well-to-do town
workers and small rural land-owners, who possess
enough property to be inclined to disapprove and
oppose measures of a revolutionary kind. This
body of intelligent and steady men, who have
something to lose, yet are not interested in main-
taining abuses or excusing evasions of the law
contrived by unscrupulous wealth, bridges the
chasm between the extremes of wealth and pov-
erty. The same holds true of Canada. It is less
true of most European countries.

Serious as are the economic problems which now
confront all civilized nations, the conditions which
you in North America enjoy, and the traditions you
have inherited, may well encourage you to look for-
ward to their peaceful solution by constitutional
means. But you, like all other nations, have already
found that you must guard yourselves against the
insidious power of money, which knows how to play
upon the self-interest of voters and legislators, pol-
luting at its source the spring of Civic Duty.

LECTURE III

PARTY SPIRIT AS A HINDRANCE TO

GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Those who have written on the philosophy of
politics or of history have usually placed the spirit
of Party among the hindrances to good citizenship.
I have followed the custom in so placing it for our
consideration this evening. But is it really a hin-
drance? Some may deem it to be just as much a
help; a means of instruction, or a stimulus to action.
Anyhow, does not experience show it to be indis-
pensable ?

Very different views have been taken of the Diflferent

views en-
worth and results of Party as a motive force in tertained

politics. Philosophers, treating the matter in their p^y ^
idealistic and abstract way, and historians, recording x^^
the violence of civil strife, have usually condemned
it altogether. They call it Faction. They point
out how it blinds men to the truth, how it incites
them to mutual hatred, substitutes the interest of a
section for that of the nation, engenders seditions

75

76 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

and conspiracies, treasons and rebellions. The classic
description — and a terrible description it is — of the
excesses into which the spirit of faction drives
men, perverting or destroying the principles of
morality, and the ordinary instincts of human
nature, is that given by Thucydides in the Third
Book of his History, where he narrates the massacres
in Corcyra.

Practical politicians, on the other hand, especially
in England and America, have little but praise
for party spirit. It supplies the motive power in
free governments. It enables men to work together.
It "brings out the vote." I remember that nearly
forty years ago, being in the company of Robert
Lowe, then a member of Mr. Gladstone's first
Cabinet, and the talk turning on the difficulties
in the way of Parliamentary business, something
was said deploring the vehemence of party spirit.
Lowe promptly replied, " I wish we had much more
of party spirit. There isn't enough." We saw
that what he wanted was an unquestioning support
from the Liberal party in the House of Commons, and
no doubt he was right. That was what the Ministry
did want, and what every Ministry wants. As law-
yers say that it is more important that the law

PARTY SPIRIT 77

should be certain than that it should be just^ so a
statesman, even a philosophical one such as Lowe
was, might well hold that it was better that the
party which constituted the majority of the House
should steadily and heartily support the Executive
through thick and thin than that the members of
this majority should think more of truth than of
party, each man or group voting according to his
or its own view of what was right.

Those philosophical writers who have also been Better and
immersed in practical politics, have, like Edmund ©f Party.
Burke, the greatest among them, while recognizing
the necessity for Party as a means of government,
usually distinguished its legitimate from its per-
verted forms. Burke defines it as "a body of men
united for promoting by their joint endeavours the
national interest upon some point in which they are
all agreed." It is, in the view of such writers,
legitimate and useful when it is based on a principle
and embodies a doctrine. It is pernicious when it
blindly follows a leader or concentrates the eflForts
of a group to seize or keep political power, or per-
haps some other more distinctly material benefit.
Its worth is in any given case to be tested by
inquiring whether in each case it does or does not

78 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

stand for a genuine principle or line of policy hon-
estly advocated as being for the good of the com-
munity.
Party in A Party appears under analysis to be a complex

the ab- .

stractand sort of thmg, in which the abstract or subjective
Crete!*'*' ^^® ^^^ ^^^ Concrete or objective side do not neces-
sarily correspond. It is abstract so far as it repre-
sents the common adhesion of many minds to one
set of opinions. It is concrete in respect of its con-
sisting of a number of men who profess to be acting
together because they hold or say that they hold
those opinions. But these men may practically
be indifferent to the opinions they appear to stand
for, and may be really bound together by other
motives and feelings which have little to do with
the party tenets. Thus the concrete reality of the
party as embodied in its members may be diflFerent
from the description any one would give of it who
knew only its history and its formal declarations of
principle.

Party, being a natural offspring of the condi-
tions under which popular governments have to
be worked, is coloured and moulded by certain per-
manent tendencies of human nature and especially
of the four following — to wit :

PARTY SPIRIT 79

Sympathy,

The disposition to imitate,

The liking for association,

The love of a fight.
These tendencies are intermingled, in each group and
indeed in each individual, in var3ring proportions,
some being more prominent in one person or group,
some in another. So, too, what we call Party Spirit
is itself, as the result of these tendencies, a sin-
gular blend of Thought and Emotion, the element
of reason and that of feeling being present in very
different relative strength in diflFerent persons.

Let us see how Parties are formed. In every Mode in
community there must needs be diversities of view parties are
regarding public matters. Leading men become °"^® *
the exponents of opposed views. Other men fall
in behind them, professing agreement. To gather
adherents and to make their views prevail they
combine and organize. Forthwith a party emerges.
The matter in dispute need not be important and
may be anything in the world, perhaps something
which is at first quite apart from politics. Re-
ligious quarrels, family quarrels, a rivalry between
two prominent men for a particular post, attach-
ment to one or other side in some competitive

80 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

game or sport, have sometimes started the Party,
which has presently become committed to a set
of political tenets. A party may be built on any
foundation; wood or stubble will do as well as rock.
Once it is formed, its members acquire the habit of
thinking and acting together in many things besides
those which originally drew them together. Once
alive, nothing is more tenacious of life. Often it
tends to become hereditary, especially in the ruder
states of society. It may continue to live by its
traditions, by its war-cries, even by its hatreds, when
it has long outlived its doctrines and its usefulness.
Since we are going to examine in what way
Party Spirit may become an obstacle to the dis-
charge of civic duty, let us begin by admitting its
merits and recognizing the sort of necessity that
has produced it.
Political Party has been a practical necessity — and I

give birth ^1^ i^ot now Speaking of the natural human ten-
^ ^ ^' dencies that develop and shape it, but of the political
circumstances that call it into being — because
in a large, free community, where each man has
his own affairs to occupy him, there must be some
means of bringing current questions to the know-
ledge of the citizens, of explaining their meaning

PARTY SPIRIT 81

and purport, of presenting and advocating par- The need
ticular proposals for handling current issues. The pubUc
larger the community grows, the greater the need ^ ®^^ '
for this. Accordingly, those who think together
and wish to act together must organize; and their
organization becomes a party.

Furthermore, in a large commtmity the great Theselec-
bulk of the citizens do not and hardly can know candidates,
who are their best men, the fittest to think, to lead,
to be selected for office. When persons have to
be chosen by vote to hold office, there must be
some means of recommending them and getting
the electors, some of whom will be remiss, or heed-
less, or ignorant, to come and vote for them. Where
the community is a very large one, or where the
structure of society does not indicate particular
persons as prima facie fit men for office, there must
be some means of selecting particular persons to
be candidates, else voting will be all at random.
A party organization supplies the obvious means.
This function of nominating candidates increases
not only the range of its action, but its power,
because ambitious men become forthwith eager
to control it and to develop it for their own
purposes.

82 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

An instance Where the posts filled by election do not cany

ficuity in" much distinction and are not greatly sought after,

S^d^ ^^^ member of a large community may find it hard

of knowing ^^ know whom to vote for. London, while governed

for whom ' P

to vote. for certain common purposes by a body called the
County Council, is divided for other local purposes
into a large number of boroughs, each administered
by its Borough Council.* The candidates for seats
on these Councils are mostly men of so little per-
sonal eminence that one may reside in a borough
during a lifetime and have never heard their names.
Not long ago at an election for the London borough
in which I had lived for many years, a long list of
candidates was issued, which I studied carefully,
seeking, as a citizen ought, to vote for the best
men. There was but one name I had ever seen
before. It was that of a man who had won fame
by his classical attainments at Cambridge Uni-
versity and had afterwards become one of our
leading Homeric scholars. Having nothing else
to guide me, no suggestions from private acquaint-
ances or from any party organization, I voted for ^

^ The Ancient City, a small area within the now vast London,
retains its ancient government and is not subject to the County
Council.

PARTY SPIRIT 83

him, and for some of those other men on the same
list who appeared, bo far as I could gather, to be
associated with his candidacy. I happened to
know that he was a man not only of learning, but
of the highest personal character, but had I known
nothing except that he was a distinguished Homeric
scholar, I should have had to vote for him just the
same, in default of all other data for a judgment,
and not happening to know anybody to whom
I could apply for information with a certainty of
getting it.

In such a case, though the principles of our
political parties have nothing to do with the ques-
tions that arise in boroueh administration, it
might ]
dates I
have nt
respecti
have b(
of the
whose 1
have CB ..>.„_..

If parties existed, as they profess to exist, solely
for the purpose of promoting the public welfare
by advocating views and proposals deemed to be

84 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

The nature
and com-
ponent
elements of
Party
Spirit.

Variations
in the
strength
of these
elements.

conducive to that welfare, Party Spirit could
hardly do mischief. It would then be nothing
more than zeal for doctrines held to be true and
wholesome. But in fact parties exist for other
reasons and the spirit that moves them ceases to
be regardful solely or even mainly of the public
weal.

This appears when we consider what are the
forces of sentiment that hold a party together.
One is faith in the principles it professes. An-
other is attachment to its leaders. A third is the
desire to see the party strong and successful. A
fourth is the love of combat, the wish, not merely
to succeed, but to fight with and overcome the
opposing party. This last mentioned element in
Party Spirit is pretty conspicuous in Englishmen,
Irishmen, and Americans, and gives -tt^^lections the
vivacity which makes their charm. During the
later hours of an election it is supreme; the merits
of the issue are forgotten, and each side fights to
win.

The extent to which each of these several senti-
ments, which taken together make up Party Spirit,
exists in any given party, is constantly varying.
Sometimes devotion to leaders, sometimes an-

PARTY SPIRIT 85

tagonism, rising into hatred, to the opposite party,
acquires a strength out of all proportion to the
interest felt in the principles and tenets of the
party. It may happen that passion and principles
are powerful in an inverse ratio. But it may also
happen that when there is little passion there is
also little thought or care for the doctrines of the
party, because the organization stands simply as
an organization. The party may have drifted
from its old moorings and ceased to care for its
old doctrines, but may still hold together as a
concrete body which desires to maintain its as-
cendancy in the nation, its leaders having a strong
interest in that ascendancy.

However, this is not the place for a Natural
History of Party, fascinating as the subject is.
We are now considering only the effects of Party
Spirit on Civic Duty, having to examine the allega-
tion that it seduces the citizen from a fair and candid
judgment.

There are endless instances to show that the
spirit of party may be so diverted from its original
character of an attachment to certain principles as
to become a mere instinct of loyalty to a leader,
or to a name, or to a set of catchwords. Then

86 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

the dominant desire is to win the game and defeat
the antagonists. When it is thus transformed, it
may supersede independent thought and con-
scientious purpose in the citizen's mind. Alle-
^ance to the party replaces loyalty to the nation.
Victory, not truth, becomes the aim; and the
victory is less that of a doctrine than of a man or
a group. Measures are judged not on their merits,
but according to the quarter they proceed from.
Sometimes strife grows so bitter that fellow-citi-
zens of the opposite party are treated as enemies
rather than partners in a common state. Each
party hates and reviles the standard bearers of
the other. Hostility may go so far as to distract
the counsels of the State and expose it to foreign
intrigue or invasion.

Recognizing this liability to perversion which
inheres in Party Spirit, let us see how it may be-
come a hindrance to good citizenship, even in that
milder aspect which it wears in the more advanced
parts of modern Europe, for in some of the smaller
southern eastern countries those harsher lineaments
to which I have referred may still be discerned.
Suppose an ordinary honest citizen to be considering
how he shall vote on some public issue. Presumably

PARTY SPIRIT 87

he belongs to one party, and prefers to continue to
support that party. If he finds his own opinion on
the question, be the question that of a legislative
proposal or that of the election of a particular per-
son, to coincide with his party's opinion, all is simple.
If, however, he differs in opinion from his party,
what is his action likely to be and what ought it
to be?

In four cases out of five (perhaps more), the Aver-
age Man will simply follow his party, not troubling
himself to examine the matter. The party has
done the thinking and made the decision. That is
enough for him.

If, however, being a somewhat more active or
conscientious citizen than is the Average Man, he
examines the issue for himself, and concludes that
his party is wrong, the question follows whether he
shall be ruled by his own opinion, or subordinate
it to that of the party.

Let us distinguish the case of the conscientious citi-
zen, who is only a private in the party army, having
nothing to do but cast his vote, from the case of the
prominent conscientious citizen, who is an oflBcer, per-
haps a colonel, or even a general in that army. The
conscientious citizen, who is what I call a private,

88 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

will usually hesitate to desert his party. He is bound
to it by habit and by a preference for its leaders
over those of the other side. It is unpleasant to
support by his vote those whom he has hitherto
opposed, and he hates to be regarded by his party
associates as a deserter. Nevertheless, the voice
of duty seems to require him to obey his convic-
tions. He may, and if the issue is an important
one, he probably will, being ex hypothesi conscien-
tious, and in this instance convinced, ultimately
follow it. But he has not been, and cannot be, a
detached and impartial judge in the matter.

Let us, however, suppose the citizen to be a
leader in his party, not necessarily one of the chief-
tains, but so far a prominent politician that others
look to him and that his own political future is
bound up with the party fortunes. To such an
one it is doubly hard to form or give effect to a
perfectly disinterested opinion. His career may
be at stake. He will be exposed to censure, per-
haps to obloquy, from his own side if he for-
sakes them, and will receive from the other side
those compliments for his candour which are even
more deadly than abuse. The entrance into the
matter of his personal interest, as a man having a

PARTY SPIRIT 89

political reputation and career, cannot but afifect
his judgment.

Other considerations come in to confuse the
issue. A man prominent in his party may think
that the good he can do by remaining in it and
trying to back it up, so that it may fight efifec-
tively in other then pending questions, outweighs
the harm he will do by voting on this particular
instance against his own conviction. Or he may
value so highly the influence of his party on the
welfare of the nation, and may so much fear to
weaken it by helping to expose it to defeat on
this particular issue, that it will in the particular
case seem right to do what would otherwise be
wrong for the sake of the greater good to follow
from keeping the party in power.

Though a politician may of course use such argu-
ments as these to deceive himself and justify any
line of action his interest prompts, still they are
arguments which have their weight and worth, and
deserve to be considered by men who seek to do right.
Much depends on the gravity of the particular issue.
If it is one profoundly afifecting the national wel-
fare, the statesman must at all hazards follow his
conscience. If it is of passing and secondary con-

90 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

sequence^ he may feel it his duty to forego his
own views for the sake of the party. Most cases
lie between these extremes. They are not easy
even for the ordinary voter who has nothing to
lose or gain, while for the political leader they are
far harder, not only because his personal interest
is involved, but also because he sees more of the
general conditions of party government and can
survey the whole field of politics.

In England, for instance, which I take because
I know it best, our system of Cabinet and Parlia-
mentary Government rests on Party. Without
stable parties, commanding the habitual alle-
giance of a body of electors in the country, and
receiving the habitual support of their adherents
in the House of Commons, the business of the
country could not go on. If the majority which
supports the Ministry in the House were to be al-
ways chopping and changing, voting with them
one day and against them the next, they would
have no authority. Indeed, they could not stay
in office. Accordingly, a member of the House
cannot always vote according to his personal con-
victions. He must support the Ministry, not
only because his constituents sent him there to

PARTY SPIRIT 91

stand by it upon the main lines of policy, but also
because it is more important to maintain a strong
Executive and make its policy consistent and con-
tinuous than it is to please one*s self by always
following one's own views.

This general principle is — I am still speaking of
the British Parliament — subject to two exceptions.
In small matters, not affecting the fate of a Minis-
try, the member has some latitude, can now and
then oppose Ministers, and may benefit them by
doing so, because he apprises them of the diver-
sities of view among their followers, and warns them
not to put too severe a strain on party loyalty.
I remember, when a private member, to have often
told the government Whips that I was doing better
for them by voting against them than by voting
with them ; and sometimes (not indeed always, to be
sure), they admitted this to be true. In very great
matters, where the welfare of the nation may be
involved, he must put that welfare, as he sees it,
above party loyalty, and be prepared to turn out
the Ministry rather than help it to do wrong.
Mutatis mutandis, similar considerations affect the
action, though, of course, to a much smaller ex-
tent, of the private members of the Opposition

92 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

party in Parliament, for the leaders of the Op-
position, being presumably the persons out of which
the next Ministry will be formed, hold a position of
high responsibility, and are deemed entitled to the
support of their party.

The questions of honour and duty that arise
under our conditions of parliamentary government
in England are infinitely perplexing. The experi-
ence of one who sat for five years as a private mem-
ber in the House of Commons was that in nearly
every week there arose more cases of conscience to
settle as to what was the right course to take in
voting in a division than had arisen every year dur-
ing all the time when he practised law as a barrister.
One soon learns not to worry over these things; it is
seldom that one vote makes a difference to the par-
liamentary result, though of course it may make a
difference to the member's own future. When a man
becomes a member of the Administration, the con-
ditions change, and though questions of conscience
are at least as difficult, they do not arise so often,
because a government must at all hazards keep to-
gether, and resignation (the proper course when a
minister seriously disagrees from his colleagues) is
justified only by the gravest differences of opinion.

PARTY SPIRIT 93

Lord Melbourne is said to have once observed,
"The supporters I value are those who will sup-
port me when I am wrong. Any one can sup-
port me when I am right." The saying may
seem cynical, but those who know practical poli-
tics will recognize a truth in it. It may be proper
sometimes to follow a leader whom in a partic-
ular issue you think mistaken. In political life
there is seldom an absolutely right and an abso-
lutely wrong course. The choice is usually be-
tween that which is somewhat the worse and that
which is somewhat the better. You may think
your party is committing an error and wish to dis-
sociate yourself from that error. But if you quit
your party, you lose such chance as you have of
saving it from other errors. If your vote helps to
turn it out of oflSce, the consequences of bringing
in the other party may be more damaging to the
country, for the errors you think that party likely
to commit may be far more serious. It used to
be a maxim with some of us when we were new
private members in the House of Commons that
while it was sometimes right and even necessary
to vote against the Government, it was very sel-
dom right to vote against the Government along

94 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

with the Opposition, because our views on general
policy differed so profoundly from those of the
latter, that if we went along with them on a par-
ticular division, it was quite probable that we
might, however innocently, be taking a course
harmful to our own principles. We were, so to
speak, freshmen in Parliament, and were modest,
as freshmen ought to be, and we felt that the
"old hands" of the Opposition might see further
into a political situation than we did, and we
might be furthering what we thought their per-
nicious purposes with the help which our simplicity
gave.

Whoever holds a more or less leading position
in poUtics — and a member of a legislative body
may be deemed a leader when compared with the
ordinary private citizen — is perhaps less liable to
be carried away by Party Spirit than is the aver-
age member of a party, because he is behind the
scenes; he has got to know the seamy side of
politics, and he so often, if a man of any thinking
power, personally dislikes the line which he sees
the party (or its most prominent figures) to be
taking, that he can stand pretty free from mere
partisan bias or prepossession. The most incisive

PARTY SPIRIT 95

criticism of party blunders is usually to be heard
in the inner councils of the party ; and party leaders
are the last people to be blind to one another's
faults. But to the average party man, especially
if he be a local worker, eager for the success of his
own side, party is apt to become a fetish. He
shouts for it, he canvasses for it, he supports it
without stopping to think whether it is right or
wrong. So the ordinary citizen who has all his life
belonged to the party, is glad to be relieved of the
trouble of thinking for himself, shuts his eyes, and
goes forward with a rush. It is chiefly among these
well-meaning, heedless men that Party Spirit sub-
stitutes passion or habit for independent reflection.
It is they who, honest and well intentioned as they
may be, fail to apply a candid mind to the merits
of measures and the characters of men.

So far we have been considering national rather
than local politics. A word may now be said
about local, and especially municipal elections.
Here in the United States the practice of making
elections turn on party seems to be almost universal
in cities but much less frequent in rural areas of
local government, and sometimes departed from in
State elections held in those areas. I understand

96 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

that in electing representatives to the State Legis-
lature from your towns in Connecticut it often
happens that little regard is had to party. In
England municipal elections are frequently, perhaps
in about half or two-thirds of the boroughs, fought
on party Unes. In Scotland party feeling comes
very much less into them. In Ireland they are
almost always political. Now the principles which
national parties profess have seldom, in any coun-
try, a real bearing on municipal issues. What a
city wants is, first and foremost, honest and capable
men. Whether they are Tories or Liberals makes
no practical difference. It is sometimes said that
by running city elections on party lines better men
can be induced to stand for office, because they get
an opportunity of making themselves known, and
because the party indorsement furnishes a certain
guarantee of their merits. Nevertheless, our English
and Scottish experience suggests that Party Spirit
ought to be kept out of city elections. It distracts
the minds of the electors from considering those per-
sonal merits of the candidates which ought to be
the ground of choice. It is more likely to tend to
jobbery. It may diminish that vigilant and im-
partial criticism of municipal administration which

PARTY SPIRIT 97

is needed to maintain efficiency as well as purity.
If a political party has put a man into office, it is
apt, when his conduct is impugned, to think itself
bound to stand up for him and see him through,
whereas he ought to be judged simply by his con-
duct and neither by his political opinions nor by
his affiliations.

This definite conclusion, drawn from our British
experience, I can accordingly give you. — The less
national politics in city elections the better.

But if you ask for definite conclusions as to the
use and abuse of Party Spirit in national affairs, all
I can do is to indicate on the one side the dangers
that attend it, and on the other the difficulty of dis-
pensing with such a motive power. The case is Uke
that of the Roman poet who said to the provoking
lady he loved, Nee cum te possum vivere, nee sine te.
Party spirit has at least this merit as compared with
Indolence or Apathy, that it does at any rate stimu-
late the interest of the citizen. It is far less per-
nicious than Selfish Interest, because it is not sordid.
It is the excess — an excess which is doubtless apt
to run to an extreme — of a feeUng in itself natural
and wholesome. Exactly how far it ought to be
allowed to fill one's mind and guide one's action

98 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

is a matter on which no rule can be laid down.
Each man must exercise his common sense and
deal with each case as it arises, tr3ring to be honest,
but not splitting hairs, for fine-drawn casuistry
defeats itself.

Although practical politicians are always extoll-
ing the obligations of party loyalty, they admit
that there are cases in which a man must forsake
his party; for we in Europe observe that they fre-
quently appeal, especially on the eve of an election,
to the "moderate and reasonable men" on the
other side in politics to put the interests of the
nation above party, to abandon their own leaders,
who are (so it is alleged) sacrificing those interests,
and to cast a vote, if only for this once, for the party
to which the speaker belongs. Such speakers must
sometimes wish that they could address the other
side in a tongue which their own friends did not
understand. I have been told that in the Highlands
of Scotland, there are shepherds who keep two
dogs, to one of which they talk English, to the
other Gaelic. (I have never myself seen these dogs,
but I believe in them.) When the flock of sheep,
scattered along the side of a mountain, has to be
gathered and driven to a point halfway up the slope.

PARTY SPIRIT 99

the shepherd shouts to one of the dogs m Gaelic,
bidding him drive the upper sheep down, and to the
other dog in English, bidding him drive the lower
sheep up. Each dog understands the orders given
in the tongue he comprehends and there is no con*
fusion.

Independence is a good thing; conscience a vital
thing. Politics would soon become rotten if the
citizens did not exercise their own judgment, and
keep in check that instinct of association which
makes the strength of Party Spirit. But one must
also beware of magnifying smaU differences, of
indulging the habit and exaggerating the tone of
independence, into which there may possibly enter
a spice of vanity and self-importance. You will
sometimes see a man of ability and courage who
effects less than he ought to do in the world be-
cause he finds it hard to work with others, and lets
divergencies of opinion on secondary issues isolate
him from his party.

There is a perspective in politics. The man to
whom small things near the eye seem to be big,
becomes what you in America call a Crank. We
have not got the name in England, but we, like all
other nations, have got the thing. He has often hit

100 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CTTIZENSHIP

upon a good idea, but he sees things out of perspective,
attaching such undue importance to his own pet no-
tions as to make '' fads'' of them, and thus to become
an obstacle to real work. St. Paul complimented his
Corinthian converts on their " suffering fools gladly. "
It is hard to suffer cranks gladly, for they are im-
practicable persons, who while they explain their own
views at inordinate length, will seldom try to under-
stand your arguments and are all the more provoking
because their intentions are usually excellent. Yet
they ought to be borne with, for the propensity to
mere imitation is so common, and independence of
thinking is so rare, that much must be pardoned to
those who break the monotony of ordinary opinion.
Moreover, the longer we are in politics, the more do
we realize that our judgment is faUible. Practical
politicians are apt to be too impatient of what seems
unpractical. Some of those so-called cranks for whom
their own contemporaries "had no use," proved in
the end to haVe been the pioneers in great reforms.
Another class of men are sometimes hard to
bear with; I mean those detached and highly
superior critics who censure most of what the
practical man does, but do not step down to help
him. Here especially I notice that such critics

PARTY SPIRIT 101

are found exasperating and called sometimes cyn-
ical, sometimes kid-gloved, and sometimes "goody
goody." But they too have their use and must be
listened to. People who stand out of the dust of
practical poUtics sometimes see things more clearly
than those who are in the middle of the fray. We
should get on worse without the critics, for their
criticisms often strike nearer to the truth than do
those of political opponents, who are thinking only
of scoring a party advantage, and who so overstate
their case that we fail to recognize such truth and
worth as there may be in it.

Hard as it is for a member of a Cabinet or a
Legislature to steer his course aright between an
angular and unpractical independence on the one
hand, and slavish obedience to party on the other,
the difficulty is not very great for that Average
Citizen, who has been all through most in our mind.
For him to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Let
him remember that Party is not an End but a
Means. Let him absolutely refuse to vote for a dis-
honest man, unless perhaps when he knows the other
candidate to be even more dishonest. When he feels
himself at variance with his party on an important
issue, let him consider whether or no it is the leading

102 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

issue of the election. When he feels vexed with
his party for the action they have been taking, let
him ask himself whether his disapproval is given on
general public grounds or in respect of some ground
peculiar to himself as to which he may have a bias
of interest or sentiment. These questions, if not
always easy, are easier to answer than are those
which trouble the leader. If our well-meaning Aver-
age Man realizes the danger of )delding himself up
to party spirit and neglecting the duty of judging
for himself, he need not go far wrong. The advice
which Speaker Reed is reported to have given to a
young friend in Maine, " See which crowd has the
honester men and vote with it," is not bad for local
elections. Such vague general exhortations as " Do
what is right and disregard the consequences," or
" Always stick to your friends," are useless. Every
case must be considered by itself, for there are no
general rules. But common sense and common
honesty will keep him straight.

The Average Citizen who belongs to a party,
but is not the slave of his party, has a most im-
portant function to perform besides that of voting
for his party when he agrees with it. It is to save
his party from itself and the country from the

PARTY SPIRIT 103

tyranny of any one party. I have had occasion
more than once to remark that leadership is
essential to a democracy. Creative ideas and
constructive policies always come from a very
few superior minds. But just as the multitude
need leaders to inspire them and to think for them,
so leaders need the great mass of sensible, well-
intentioned followers to keep them in check. The
most brilliant leaders may be unscrupulous or
domineering. The most earnest leaders may be
eager to go too fast or too far. The leaders and
the more active party workers taken together may
have grown accustomed to care more for their
party than for the country, and to use the party
mainly as a means of keeping office. We have
seen all these things happen in England and France.
When such things do happen, it is for the ordi-
nary citizens who have nothing to gain by party
success, and who keep their heads free from the
fumes of party passion to shift their votes from
one side to the other and so rebuke the errors of
their chiefs and moderate a dominance dangerous
to the public weal. No more than an individual
is a party fit to be trusted with overwhelming
power. In this way they can maintain the equi-

104 THE fflNDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

librium of the government and recall parties and
leaders to a sense of the real objects for which
political organizations exist. Was it not this that
Abraham Lincoln meant when he spoke of the
people as the ultimate force and the reserve of
practical wisdom in the nation? or, when he de-
livered that admirable dictum " You may fool some
of the people all the time and all the people some
of the time, but not all the people all the time"?
Nations may err, as individuals err. Majorities,
so Garlyle and others have said, are just as often
wrong as are minorities. Sometimes a quite small
mipiority turns out to have been right. StiU there
is, in the long run, a wisdom in the whole people
greater than the wisdom of any one man or group.
No leader, no party, no legislature, can ever ruin
a State while the great body of Average Citizens,
the better educated and the less educated taken to-
gether, continue to maintain a high level of public
spirit and practical good sense.

LECTURE IV

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES
TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

In the preceding three lectures the chief hin-
drances to the discharge of civic duty have been
considered. Let us now go on to inquire what
can be done to remove these hindrances by grap-
pling with those faults or weaknesses in the citizen
to which they are due. When symptoms have
been examined, one looks about for remedies.

We have seen that of the three causes assigned,
Indolence, Selfish Personal Interest, and Party
Spirit, the first is the most common, the second
the most noxious, the third the most excusable,
yet also the most subtle, and perhaps the most
likely to affect the class which takes the lead in
politics and is incessantly employed upon its daily
work. Whether the influence of these causes, or of
any of them, is increasing with that more complete
democratization of government which we see going
on in Europe, is a question that cannot yet be

105

106 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

answered. Fifty years may be needed before it
can be answered, for new tendencies both for good
and for evil are constantly emerging and affecting
one another in unpredictable ways.

The remedies that may be applied to any defects in
the working of governments are some of them Me-
chanical, some of them Ethical. By Mechanical reme-
dies I understand those which consist in improving
the structure or the customs and working devices of
government, i.e., the laws and the institutions or polit-
ical methods, by Ethical those which affect the char-
acter and spirit of the people. If you want to get
more work and better work done in any industry,
you may either improve the machinery, or the
implements, by which the work is done, or else im-
prove the strength and skill of the men who run
the machinery and use the tools. In doing the
former, you sometimes do the latter also, for when
the workman has finer tools, he is led on to at-
tempt more difficult work, and thus not only does
his own skill become more perfect, but his interest
in the work is likely to be increased.

Although in politics by far the most real and
lasting progress may be expected from raising the
intelligence and virtue of the citizens, still improve-

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 107

ments in the machinery of government must not
be undervalued. To take away from bad men the
means and opportunities by which they may work
evil, to furnish good men with means and oppor-
tunities which make it easier for them to prevent
or overcome evil, is to render a great service. And
as laws which breathe a high spirit help to educate
the whole community, so does the presence of
opportunities for reform stimulate and invigorate
the best citizens in their efforts after better things.

I will enumerate briefly some of the remedies
that may be classed as Mechanical because they
consist in alterations of institutions or methods.

Two of these need only a few passing words,
because they are so sweeping as to involve the
whole fabric of government, and therefore too
large to be discussed here.

One is propounded by those thinkers whom, to
distinguish them from the persons who announce
themselves as enemies of all society, we may call the
Philosophical Anarchists, thinkers who are entitled
to respectful consideration because their doctrine
represents a protest that needs to be made against
the conception of an all-engulfing State in which
individual initiative and self-guided development

108 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

might be merged and lost. They desire to get rid of
the defects of government by getting rid of govern-
ment itself; that is to say, by leaving men entirely
alone without any coercive control, trusting to their
natural good impulses to restrain them from harm-
ing one another. In such a state of things there
would be no Citizenship, properly so called, but only
the isolation of families, or perhaps of individuals —
for it is not quite clear how far the family is ex-
pected to remain in the Anarchist paradise — an
isolation more or less qualified by brotherly love.
We are so far at present from a prospect of reach-
ing the conditions needed for such an amelioration
that it is enough to note this view and pass on.

A second and diametrically opposite cure for the
evils of existing society comes from those who are
commonly termed Socialists or GoUectivists. It
consists in so widely enlarging the functions of
government as to commit to it not merely all the
work it now performs of defending the country,
maintaining order, enacting laws, and enforcing
justice between man and man, but also the further
work of producing and distributing all commodi-
ties, allotting to each man his proper labour and
proper remuneration, or possibly, instead of giving

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 109

any pecuniary remuneration^ providing each man
with what he needs for life. Under this regime two
of the hindrances to good citizenship would be much
reduced. There ought to be less indifference to
politics when everybody's interest in the man-
agement of public concerns had been immensely
increased by the fact that he found himself depen-
dent on the public officials for every-thing. No-
body could plead that he was occupied by his own
private business, because his private business
would have vanished. So also selfish personal
interest in making gains out of government must
needs disappear when private property itself had
ceased to exist. Whether, however, self-interest
might not still find means of influencing public
administration in ways beneficial to individual
cupidity, and whether personal selfishness might
not be even more dangerous, under such conditions,
in proportion to the extended range and power of
government, — this is another question which can-
not be discussed till some definite scheme for the
allotment of work and of remuneration (if any)
shall have been propounded. Party Spirit would
evidently, in a Collectivistic State, pass into new
forms. It might, however, become more potent

110 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

than ever before. But that again would depend on
the kind of scheme for the reshaping of economic
society that had been adopted.

We may pass from these suggestions for the
extinction, or reconstruction on new lines, of the
existing social and political system to certain minor
devices for improving the structure and methods of
government which have been put forward as likely
to help the citizen to discharge his duties more
efficiently.

One of these is the system of Proportional Rep-
resentation. It is argued that if electoral areas
were created with more than two members each,
and if each elector was either allowed to vote for a
number of candidates less than the number to be
chosen, or was allowed to concentrate all his votes
upon one candidate, or more, according to the
nmnber to be chosen, two good results would follow.
The will of the electors would be more adequately
and exactly expressed, because the minority, or
possibly more than one minority, as well as the
majority, would have everywhere its representative.
The zeal of the electors would be stimulated, be-
cause in each district a section of opinion not large
enough to have a chance of winning an election,

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 111

if there were but one member, and accordingly
now apathetic, because without hope, would then
be roused to organize itself and to take a warmer
interest in public affairs. The Proportional system
is, therefore, advocated as one of those improve-
ments in machinery which would react upon the
people by quickening the pulses of pubUc Ufe.
Some experiments have already been made in this
direction. Those tried in England did not win
general approval and have been dropped. That
which is still in operation in the State of Illinois
has not, if my informants are right, given much
satisfaction. But the plan is said to work well
both in Belgium and in some of the cantons of
Switzerland; so one may hope that further experi-

t

ments will be attempted. It deserves your careful
study, but it is too complicated and opens too many
side issues to be further discussed now and here.^

Attempts have been made in some places to
overcome the indifference of citizens to their duty
by fining those who, without sufficient excuse,
fail to vote. This plan of Obligatory Voting, as it

' Since the above was written a Royal Commission has been
appointed in Britun to examine divers questions relating to
elections, and is investigating this, among other plans.

112 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

is called, finds favour in some Swiss cantons and
in Belgium, but is too uncongenial to the habits
of England or of the United States to be worth
considering as a practical measure in either
country. Moreover, the neglect to vote is no very
serious evil in either country, at least as regards
the more important elections. Swiss legislation on
the subject is evidence not so much of indifference
among the citizens of that country as of the high
standard of public duty they are expected to reach.
When we come to the proposals made both here
and in England for the reference of proposals to
a direct popular vote, we come to a question of
real practical importance. I wish that I had time
to state to you and to examine the arguments
both for and against this mode of legislation, which
has been practised for many years in Switzerland
with a virtually unanimous approval, and has
been applied pretty freely in some of your States.
It has taken two forms. One is the so-called
Initiative, under which a section of the electors
(being a number, or a proportion, prescribed by
law) may propose a law upon which the people
vote. This is being tried in Switzerland, but so
far as I have been able to gather, has not yet

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 113

proved its utility. The balance of skilled opinion
seems to incline against it. The other is called
the Referendum, and consists in the submission
to popular vote of measures already passed by
the legislative body. In this form the reference
of laws to the people undoubtedly sharpens the
interest of the ordinary citizen in the conduct of
pubUc affairs. The Swiss voters, at any rate, take
pains to inform themselves on the merits of the
measures submitted to them. These are widely
and acutely canvassed at public meetings, and in
the press. A large vote is usually cast, and all,
whether or no they approve the result, agree that
it is an intelligent, not a heedless, vote. The Swiss
do not seem to think that the power and dignity
of the legislature is weakened, as some might ex-
pect it to be, when their final voice is thus super-
seded by that of the people. All I need now ask
you to note and remember is that the practice of
bringing political issues directly before the people,
whatever its drawbacks, does tend to diminish
both that indolence and indifference which is
pretty common among European voters. It re-
quires every citizen to think for himself and de-
liver his vote upon all the more important measures,

114 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

and it also reduces the power of that Party Spirit
which everywhere distracts men's minds from the
real merits of the questions before the coimtry.
When a law is submitted to the Swiss people for
their judgment, their decision nowise afiFects either
the Executive or the Legislature. The law may
be rejected by the people, but the oflScials who
drafted the law continue to hold office. The party
which brought it in and carried it through the Legis-
lature is not deemed to have been censured or
weakened by the fact of its ultimate rejection. That
party spirit is less strong in Switzerland than in any
other free country (except perhaps Norway) may be
largely attributed to this disjunction of the deciding
voice in legislation from those governmental organs
which every political party seeks to control. The
Swiss voter is to-day an exceptionally intelligent
and patriotic citizen, fitter to exercise the function
of direct legislation than perhaps any other citizen
in Europe, and the practice of directly legislating has
doubtless helped to train him for the function.
It must, however, be admitted that the circum-
stances of that little republic and its cantons are too
peculiar to make it safe to draw inferences from
Swiss experience to large countries like Britain and

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 115

France, the political life of which is highly central-
ized. The States of your Union may appear to ofiFer
a better field, and the results of the various experi-
ments which some of them (such as Oklahoma) are
trying will be watched with interest by Europeans.

In considering the harm done to civic duty by
selfish personal interests we were led to observe
that the fewer points of contact between govern-
ment and the pecuniary interests of private citi-
zens, the better both for the purity of government
and for the conscience of the private citizen. How
far government ought to include within its fimc-
tions schemes for increasing national wealth,
otherwise than by such means (being means which
a government alone can employ because to be effec-
tive they must be done on a great scale) as the
improving of education, the diffusing of know-
ledge, the providing means of transportation, the
conservation of natural resources, and so forth,
may be matter for debate. But at any rate govern-
ment ought to avoid measures tending to enrich
any one person or group of persons at the expense
of the citizens generally. Common justice re-
quires that. Accordingly, all contracts should be
made on the terms best for the pubUc, and if pos-

116 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

sible by open bidding. Franchises, if not re-
served by the public authority for itself, should be
granted only for limited times and so as to secure
the interests of the community, whether by way of
a rent payable to the city or coimty treasury or
otherwise. Public employees should not be made
into a privileged class, to which there is given larger
pay than other workers of the same class and ca-
pacity receive. All bills promoted by a private
person, firm, or company looking to his or their
pecuniary advantage ought to be closely scrutinized
by some responsible public authority. In Eng-
land we draw a sharp distinction between such
bills and general public legislation, and we submit
the former to a quasi-judicial examination by a
Parliamentary committee in order to avoid possi-
ble jobs or scandals or losses to the public. As
respects general legislation, ^.e., that which is not
in its terms local or personal, it may be difficult
or impossible to prevent a law from incidentally
benefiting one group or class of men and injuring
another. But everjrthing that can be done ought
to be done to prevent any set of men from abusing
legislation to serve their own interest. If there
be truth in what one hears about the groups which

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 117

in France, Belgium, and Germany have, through
political pressure, obtained by law bounties bene-
fiting their industries, or tariffs specially favour-
able to their own commercial enterprises, the danger
that the general tax payer, or the consumer, may
be sacrificed to these private interests, is a real dan-
ger. To remove the occasion and the opportunities
for the exercise of such pressure, which is likely to
be often exerted in a covert way and to warp or
pervert the legislator's mind, is to diminish a temp-
tation and to remove a stumbhng block that lies in
the path of civic duty. Whether a man be in theory
a Protectionist or a Free Trader, whether or not he
desires to nationalize public utilities, he must rec-
ognize the dangers incident to the passing of laws
which influential groups of wealthy men may have
a personal interest in promoting or resisting, because
they offer a prospect of gain sufiiciently large to
make it worth while to ''get at" legislatures and
ofiicials. Such dangers arise in all governments.
That which makes them formidable in democracies is
the fact that the interest of each individual citizen in
protecting himself and the public against the selfish
groups may be so small an interest that everybody
neglects it, and the groups get their way.

118 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

As we have been considering improvements in
the machinery of government, this would be a fitting
place for a discussion of what you call Primary Elec-
tion Laws, which are intended both to reduce the
power of party organizations and to stimulate the per-
sonal zeal of the voter by making it easier for him to
influence the selection of a candidate. We have, how-
ever, in Europe, nothing corresponding to the Primary
Laws of American States, nothing which recognizes a
political party as a concrete body, nothing which deals
with the mode of selecting candidates; and many of
you doubtless know better than I do what has been
the effect of these American enactments and whether
they have really roused the ordinary citizen to bestir
himself and to assert his independence of such party
organizations as may have heretofore interfered with
it. Europeans do not take kindly to the notion of
giving statutory recognition to a Party, and they
doubt whether the astuteness of those whom you
call "machine politicians" may not succeed in get-
ting hold of the new statutory Primaries as they did
of the old ones. Be the merits of the new legisla-
tion what they may, one must hope that its exist-
ence will not induce the friends of reform to relax
their efforts to reduce in other ways the power of
political " Machines."

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 119

One obvious expedient to which good citizens may
resort for keeping other citizens up to the mark is to
be found in the enactment and enforcement of strin-
gent laws against breaches of public trust. I took
occasion, in referring to the practices of bribery
and treating at elections, to note the wholesome
effect of the statute passed in England in 1883 for
repressing those offences. Although St. Paul has
told us that he who is under grace does not need to
be under the law, Christianity has not yet gone
far enough to enable any of us to dispense with the
moral force law can exert, both directly through the
penalties it imposes and indirectly through the
type of conduct which it exhorts the community
to maintain. Laws may do much to raise and sustain
the tone of all the persons engaged in public affairs
as officials or as legislators, not only by appealing
to their conscience, but by giving them a quick
and easy reply to those who seek improper favours
from them. A statute may express the best con-
science of the whole people and set the standard
they approve, even where the practice of most indi-
viduals falls short of the standard. If the prosecut-
ing authorities and the Courts do their duty unflinch-
ingly, without regard to the social position of the

120 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

oflfender, a statute may bring the practice of ordi-
nary men up to the level of that collective con-
science of the nation which it embodies.

In every walk of Ufe a class of persons constantly
subject to a particular set of temptations is apt to
form habitS; due to the pressure of those tempta-
tions, which are below what the conscience of the
better men in the community approves. The aim
of legislation, as expressing that best conscience of
the whole community, ought to be to correct or
extirpate those habits and make each particular
class understand that it is not to be excused be-
cause it has special temptations and thinks its
own sins venial. Even the men who 3deld to the
temptations peculiar to theu- own class are willing to
join in condemning those who yield to some other
kind of temptation. Thus the "better conscience"
may succeed in screwing up one class after another
to a higher level. But the enactment of a law is
not enough. It must be strictly enforced. Procedure
must be prompt. Juries must be firm. Technicali-
ties must not be suffered to obstruct the march of
justice. Sentences must be carried out, else the
statute will become, as statutes often have become, a
record of aspiration rather than of accomplishment.

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 121

To contrive plans by which the interest of the
citizen in public affairs shall be aroused and sus-
tainedy is far easier than to induce the citizen to
use and to go on using, year in and year out, the
contrivances and opportunities provided for his
benefit. Yet it is from the heart and will of the
citizen that all real and lasting improvements must
proceed. In the words of the Gospel, it is the in-
side of the cup and platter that must be made clean.
The central problem of civic duty is the ethical
problem. Indifference, selfish interests, the excesses
of party spirit, wiU aU begin to disappear as civic
life is lifted on to a higher plane, and as the number
of those who, standing on that higher plane, will
apply a strict test to their own conduct and to that
of their leaders, realizing and striving to discharge
their responsibilities, goes on steadily increasing
until they come to form the majority of the people.
What we have called "the better conscience" must
be grafted on to the ''wild stock" of the natural
Average Man.

How is this to be done? The diificulty is the
same as that which meets the social reformer or
the preacher of religion.

One must try to reach the Will through the Soul.

122 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

The most obvious way to begin is through the educa-
tion of those who are to be citizens, moral education
combined with and made the foimdation for instruc-
tion in civic duty. This is a task which the Swiss
alone among European nations seem to have seriously
undertaken. Here in America it has become doubly
important through the recent entrance into your
community of a vast mass of immigrants, most of
them ignorant of our language, still more of them
ignorant, not only of your institutions, but of the
general principles and habits of free government.
Most of them doubtless belong to races of high natu-
ral intelligence, and many of them have the simple
virtues of the peasant. You are providing for all of
them good schools, and their children will soon be-
come Americans in speech and habits, quite patriotic
enough so far as flag-waving goes. But they will
not so soon or so completely acquire your intellec-
tual and moral standard, or imbibe your historical
and religious traditions. There is no fear but what
they will quickly learn to vote. To some Europeans
you seem to have been overconfident in intrusting
them with a power which most of them cannot yet
have learned to use wisely. That however you have
done, and as you hold that it cannot now be un-
done, your task must now be to teach them, if

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 123

you can, to understand your institutions, to think
about the vote they have to give, and to realize
the responsibilities which the suffrage implies as
these were realized by your New England fore-
fathers when they planted free commonwealths
in the wilderness nearly three centuries ago.

Valuable as instruction may be in fitting the
citizen to comprehend and judge upon the issues
which his vote determines, there must also be the
will to apply his knowledge for the public good.
What appeal shall be made to him?

We, — I say "we" because this is our task in
Europe no less than it is yours here — we may
appeal to his enlightened self-interest, making
self-interest so enlightened that it loses its selfish
quality. We can remind him of all the useful
work which governments may accompUsh when
they are conducted by the right men in the right
spirit. Take, for instance, the work to be per-
formed in those cities wherein so large and in-
creasing a part of the population now dwell. How
much remains to be done to make cities healthier,
to secure better dwellings for the poor, to root out
nests of crime, to remove the temptations to intem-
perance and gambling, to bring within the reach of
the poorest all possible facilities both for intellectual

124 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

progress and for enjoying the pleasures of art and
music. How much may we do so to adorn- the city
with parks and public buildings as to make its ex-
ternal aspect instil the sense of beauty into its in-
habitants and give them a fine pride in it I These
are some of the tasks which cannot safely be in-
trusted to a municipality unless its government
is above suspicion, unless men of probity and
capacity are placed in power, unless the whole
community extends its sympathy to the work and
keeps a vigilant eye upon all the officials. Mu-
nicipal governments cannot be encouraged to own
public utilities so long as there is a risk that some-
body may own municipal governments. Have we
not here a strong motive for securing purity and
efficiency in city administration? Is it not the per-
sonal interest of every one of us that the city we
dwell in should be such as I have sought to describe?
Nothing makes more for happiness than to see
others around one happy. The rich residents need
not grudge — nor indeed would your rich residents
grudge, for there is less grumbling among the
rich tax payers here than in Europe — taxation
which they could see was being honestly spent for
the benefit of the city. The interest each one of

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 125

us has as a member of a city or a nation in seeing
our fellow-citizens healthy, peaceful, and happy is
a greater interest, if it be measured in terms of our
own real enjoyment of life, than is that interest, of
which we so constantly are reminded, which we have
in making the State either wealthy by the develop-
ment of trade, or formidable to foreign countries
by its armaments.

We may also appeal to every citizen's sense of
dignity and self-respect. We may bid him recollect
that he is the heir of rights and privileges which
your and our ancestors fought for, and which place
him, whatever his birth or fortune, among the rulers
of his country. He is unworthy of himself, unmind-
ful of what he owes to the Constitution that has
given him these functions, if he does not try to
discharge them worthily. These considerations
are no doubt familiar to us Englishmen and Ameri-
cans, though we may not always feel their force as
deeply as we ought. To the new immigrants of whom
I have already spoken they are unfamiliar; yet to
the best among these also they have sometimes
powerfully appealed. You had, in the last genera-
tion, no more high-minded and patriotic citizen than
the German exile of 1849, the late Mr. Carl Schurz.

126 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

When every motive has been invoked, and every
expedient applied that can stimulate the sense of
civic duty, one never can feel sure that the desired
result will follow. The moral reformer and the
preacher of religion have the same experience.
The ebbs and flows of ethical life are beyond the
reach of scientific prediction. There are times of
awakening, "times of refreshing from the presence
of the Lord/' as your Puritan ancestors said, but
we do not know when they will come nor can we
explain why they come just when they do. Every
man can recall moments in his own life when the
sky seemed to open above him, and when his vision
was so quickened that all things stood transfigured
in a purer and brighter radiance, when duty, and even
toil done for the sake of duty, seemed beautiful and
full of joy.

You remember Wordsworth's lines

" Hence, in a season of fair weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that celestial sea
That brought us hither."

If we survey the wide field of European history,
we shall find that something like this happens
with nations also. They, too, have moments of
exaltation, moments of depression. Their ideals

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 127

rise and fall. They are for a time filled with a
spirit which seeks truth, which loves honour, which
is ready for self-sacrifice; and after a time the
light begins to fade from the hills and this spirit
lingers only among the best souls.

Such a spirit is sometimes evoked by a great
national crisis which thrills all hearts. This
happened to England or at least to a large part of
the people of England, in the seventeenth century.
It happened to Germany in the days of the War
of Liberation, and to Italy when she was striving
to expel the Austrians and the petty princes who
ruled by Austria's help. You here felt it during
the War of Secession. Sometimes, and usually
at one of these crises, a great man stands out who
helps to raise the feeling of his people and inspire
them with his own lofty thoughts and aims. Such
a man was Mazzini, seventy years ago in Italy.
Such were Washington and Lincoln, the former
more by his example than by his words, the latter
by both, yet most by the quiet patience, dignity,
and hopefulness which he showed in the darkest
hours. Nations respond to the appeal which such
a man makes to their best instincts. He typifies
for the moment whatever is highest in them.

128 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Unhappily, with nations as with individuals,
there is apt to be a relapse from these loftier moods
into the old common ways when selfish interest and
trivial pleasures resume their sway. There comes
a sort of reaction from the stress of virtue and
strenuous high soaring effort. Everything looks
gray and dull. The divine light has died out of
the sky. This, too, is an oft-repeated lesson of
European history. Yet the reaction and decline
are not inevitable. When an individual man has
been raised above himself by some spiritual impulse,
he is sometimes able to hold the ground he has won.
His will may have been strengthened. He has
learnt to control the meaner desires. The impulse
that stirred him is not wholly spent, because the
nobler thoughts and acts which it prompted have
become a habit with him. So, too, with a nation.
What habits are to the individual man, that, to
a nation, are its Traditions. They are the memories
of the Past turned into the standards of the Pres-
ent. High traditions go to form a code of honour,
which speaks with authority to the sense of honour.
Whoever transgresses that code is felt to be unworthy
of the nation, unfit to hold that place in its respect
and confidence which the great ones of the days of

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 129

old have held. Pride in the glorious foretime of the
race and in its heroes sustains in the individual
man who is called to public duty, the personal
pride which makes him feel that all his affections
and all his emotions stand rooted in the sense of
honour, which is, for the man and for the nation,
the foundation of all virtue.

We have seen in our own time, in the people of
Japan, a striking example of what the passionate
attachment to a national ideal can do in war to
intensify the sense of duty and self-sacrifice. A
similar example is held up to us by those who have
recorded the earlier annals of Rome. The deep-
est moral they teach is the splendid power which
the love of Rome and the idea of what her chil-
dren owed to her exercised over her great citizens,
enabling them to set shining examples of devotion
to the city which the world has admired ever since.
Each example evoked later examples in later gen-
erations, till at last in a changed community, its
upper class demoralized by wealth and power even
more than it was torn by discord, its lower classes
corrupted by the upper and looking on their suf-
frage as a means of gain, the ancient traditions
died out. Whoever, studying the conditions of

130 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

modern European democracies; sees the infinite
facilities which popular government in large coun-
tries full of rich men and of opportunities for
acquiring riches, offers for the perversion of gov-
ernment to private selfish ends, will often feel that
those European states which have maintained the
highest standard of civic purity have done it in
respect of their Traditions. Were these to be weak-
ened, the fabric might crumble into dust.

Every new generation as it comes up can make
the traditions which it finds better or worse. If
its imagination is touched and its emotions stirred
by all that is finest in the history of its country,
it learns to live up to the ideals set before it, and
thus it strengthens the best standards of conduct
it has inherited and prolongs the reverence felt
for them.

The responsibility for forming ideals and fixing
standards does not belong to statesmen alone.
It belongs, and now perhaps more largely than
ever before, to the intellectual leaders of the nation,
and especially to those who address the people in
the Universities and through the press. Teachers,
writers, journalists, are forming the mind of modern
nations to an extent previously unknown. Here

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 131

they have opportunities such as have existed never
before, nor in any other country, for tr3dng to in-
spire the nation with a love of truth and honour,
with a sense of the high obligations of citizenship,
and especially of those who hold public office.

Of the power which the daily press exerts upon
the thought and the tastes of the people through
the matter it scatters among them, and of the
grave import of the choice it has always and every-
where to make between the serious treatment of
public issues and that cheap cynicism which so
many readers find amusing, there is no need to
speak here. You know better than I do how far
those who direct the press realize and try to dis-
charge the responsibilities which attach to their
power.

The observer who seeks to discern and estimate
the forces working for good or evil that mark the
spirit and tendencies of an age, finds it easiest
to do this by noting the changes which have
occurred within his own memory. To-day every-
one seems to dwell upon the growth not only of
luxury, but of the passion for amusement, and
most of those who can look back thirty or forty
years find in this growth grounds for discourage-

132 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP

ment. I deny neither the fact nor the significance
of the auguries that it suggests. But let us also
note a hopeful sign manifest during the last twenty
years both here and in England. It is the diflfusion
among the educated and richer classes of a warmer
feeling of sympathy and a stronger feeling of re-
sponsibility for the less fortunate sections of the
community. There is more of a sense of brother-
hood, more of a desire to help, more of a discontent
with those arrangements of society which press
hardly on the common man than there was forty
years ago. This altruistic spirit which is now every-
where visible in the field of private philanthropic
work, seems likely to spread into the field of civic
action also, and may there become a new motive
power. It has already become a more eflicient
force in legislation than it ever was before. We
may well hope that it will draw more and more of
those who love and seek to help their fellow-men
into that legislative and administrative work whose
opportunities for grappling with economic and
social problems become every day greater.

Here in America I am told in nearly every city
I visit that the young men are more and more
caring for and bestirring themselves to discharge

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES 133

their civic duties. That is the best news one can
hear. Surely no country makes so clear a call
upon her citizens to work for her as yours doeis.
Think of the wide-spreading results which good
solid work produces on so vast a community, where
everything achieved for good in one place is quickly
known and may be quickly imitated in another.
Think of the advantages for the development of
the highest civilization which the boundless re-
sources of your territory provide. Think of that
principle of the Sovereignty of the People which
you have carried further than it was ever carried
before and which requires and inspires and, indeed,
compels you to endeavour to make the whole
people fit to bear a weight and discharge a task
such as no other multitude of men ever yet under-
took. Think of the sense of fraternity, also with-
out precedent in any other great nation, which
binds all Americans together and makes it easier
here than elsewhere for each citizen to meet every
other citizen as an equal upon a common ground.
One who, coming from the Old World, remem-
bers the greater difficulties the Old World has to
face, rejoices to think how much, with all these
advantages, the youth of America, such youth as

134 THE HINDRANCES TO GOOD aTIZENSHIP

I see here to-night in this venerable University,
may accomplish for the future of your country.
Nature has done her best to provide a foundation
whereon the fabric of an enlightened and steadily
advancing civilization may be reared. It is for
you to build upon that foundation. Free from
many of the dangers that surround the states of
Europe, you have unequalled opportunities for
showing what a high spirit of citizenship — zealous,
intelligent, disinterested — may do for the happi-
ness and dignity of a mighty nation, enabling it to
become what its founders hoped it might be — a
model for other peoples more lately emerged into
the simlight of freedom.

INDEX

Anarchists, philosophical, doo-
trine of, 107, 108.

Anarchy, the result of inde-
pendence carried to excess, 6.

Anger, righteous, 22; valuable
motive power in politics, 23.

Appropriations for public works,
51; effect on voting, 51.

Athletics, extreme interest in,
lessens interest in politics, 26.

Australia, athletics excite more
interest than politics, 26;
government employees influ-
enced elections, 53.

Average citizen, description of,
17-19; advice to, 101-103.

Belgium, laws against non-
voters, 28; proportional rep-
resentation in, 111; obligar
tory voting in, 112.

Blanc, Louis, advocate of popu-
lar government, 14.

Borough Councils of London, 82.

Bribery, 47; former leniency in
England regarding, 47; legis-
lation against, and its improv-
ing effect, 47; not practised
in Scotland, 48.

Burke, Edmund, on party, 77.

Carlyle on majorities and minor-
ities, 104.

Citizenship, requisites of, 7, 10.

Civic capacity, 7.

Cleveland, Grover, a purifier of
politics, 60.

Collectivists, 108-110.

Conscience, a requisite of good
citizenship, 7, 10; compara-
tive rarity of, 8; in voting,
92; a vital thing in politics,
99, 120.

Contracts, government, may
affect legislation, 53; check
against, 53, 115.

County Council of London, 82.

Cranks in politics, 99; some-
times useful for reform, 100.

Despotism the result of exces-
sive obedience, 6.

Dicey, A. V., Law and Opinionf
44.

Direct popular legislation, suc-
cessful in Switzerland, 112-
114; advocated for England
and the United States, 112;
practised in some of the
States, 112, 115.

Duties and rights of citizens, 9.

Eight Hours law, benefit of, 61.

England and the United States,
similarity of political phe-
nomena in, 4, 5.

Fighting, a citizen's duty, 26,

27.
Franchises, motive power in

self-interest, 52; remedial

suggestion, 116.
Free government. See Popular

Government.

135

136

INDEX

Qovemment employees, influ-
ence elections, 53-55, 57, 58;
prohibitive remedy, 55 ;
status in European countries,
58.

Hugo, Victor, advocate of
popular government, 14.

Immigration, effect on political
conditions, 122.

Income tax, graduated, 49;
adopted in some cantons of
Switzerland, 49.

Independence an underlying
principle of popular govern-
ment, 6, 7.

Individual freedom, 43.

Indolence, a imiversal sin, 22;
tendency to increase, and its
causes, 22-26; checks civic
growth, 42; a more wide-
spread evil than self-interest,
66.

Intelligence, a requisite of good
citizenship, 7, 10; easily ac-
quired, 8.

Ireland bettered by British
legislation, 70.

Italy, proportional representa-
tion in, 29.

Japan, efforts toward represent-
ative government, 15; incen-
tive of traditions, 129.

Jefferson, Thomas, his faith in
the people, 13.

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, cited, 20.

Lamartine, Alphonse de, advo-
cate of popular government,
14.

Leadership essential in a de-
mocracy, 40.

Legion of Honour a prominent

factor in French local poli-
tics, 59. 60.

Legislation, moral force exerted
by, 119; altruistic spirit in,
132. See also Direct Legis-
lation.

Lincoln, famous sajring of, 104 ;
a tsrpe of the highest in man,
127.

Lowe, Kobert, on party spirit,
76.

Mazzini, Giuseppe, Italian pa-
triot, 14, 127.

Melbourne, Lord, on party sup-
port, 93.

Money, power of, a widespread
evil, 66; publicity a weapon
against, 68.

Mutual help, 36.

Newspapers as guides to politi-
cal thought, 37, 38, 131.

Obedience an underl3dng prin-
ciple of popular government,
6, 7.

Obligatory voting not practical,
proposal for United States,
112.

Oklahoma, direct legislation in,
115.

Orange Free State, purity of
politics in, 69.

Partisanship, Greek law to
enforce, 27.

Party, a motive force in politics,
75; Edmimd Burke on, 77;
in the abstract and concrete,
78; how formed, 79; a prac-
tical necessity, 80; selecting
candidates, 81; influence on
voting, 87-90; the basis of
English politics in practice,
90; justifiable desertion of,

INDEX

137

08; not an end but a means,
101.

Party spirit, condemned by
philosophers and historians,
75; praised by practical poli-
ticians, 76, 98; nature and
component elements of, 84;
supreme in elections, 84;
perversion of, 85, 86; domi-
nates the Average Man, 87,
95; controls municipal elec-
tions, 96; not necessarily
sordid, 97; not strong in
Switzerland and Norway, 114.

Patriotism, lack of true, 41, 42.

Perfectionist doctrine, 10, 12.

Persia, efforts toward . repre-
sentotive government, 15.

Philip of Macedon on the power
of money, 67.

Plato on political strife, 71.

Political struggles, nature of, 69,
74.

Politics, athletic sports in com-
petition with, 26; newspapers
as guides in, 37; vast im-
provement in United States,
60; debasing power of money
in, 65-68; local politics and
elections, 95; the ''crank''
in, 99, 100; remedial sug-
gestions for, 106-110, 115-
117; effect of immigration on,
122; benefits of purer politics,
123-125; influence of tradi-
tion on, 130.

Popular government, underly-
ing principles, 5-7; condi-
tions for its success, 7; ideal
conceptions of, 10-12; not a
sovereign remedy, 12; foimd-
ers of American, 13; Euro-
pean advocates of, 13, 14; in
practice and in theory, 14r-
16; not up to expectations,
15; evils of, and their cause.

15, 16; the average citizen
the pivot of, 17; responsible
leadership essential in, 40,
103; tendency to widen
range of action, 44; self-
interest a prominent factor in,
46; debasement of politics in,
65-67; danger of the Power
of Money in, 65-68; party
spirit a motive power in,
76.

Primary election laws distinc-
tively American, 118.

Prohibition law, why opposed,
61.

Proportional representation, 110,
111.

Protective tariff, self-interest
as tending to affect, 62.

Public office, neglect of edu-
cated men to serve in, 29-32;
a cause of bad politics, 32.

Reading habit, 38; not con-
ducive to thought, 38.

Reed, Thomas B., advice on
voting, 102.

Referendum, in practice in
Switzerland, 113.

Rich and poor, political strife
between, 71-74.

Rights and duties of citizens,
8, 9.

Roosevelt a purifier of politics,
60.

Russia, efforts toward repre-
sentative government, 15.

School teachers classed as gov-
ernment employees in some
coimtries, 57, 59.

Schurz, Carl, 125.

Scotland, no bribery in, 48.

Self-control, a requisite of good
citizenship, 7; may be ac-
quired, 8.

138

INDEX

Self-interest, an ancient and
universal danger in politics,
45; an effect of widened
State action, 45; voting af-
fected by, 45; bribery a
form of, 47; effect of taxa-
tion on, 48; granting of
franchises a prominent fac-
tor in, 52; government em-
ployees controlled by, 53-
55, 57, 58; proportion of citi-
zens influenced by, 61, 63;
public interest subordinate
to, 62; energy of, 64.

Sidgwick, Professor Henry, an
example of civic virtue, 24.

Socialists or Collectivists, doc-
trine of, 108-110.

Succession tax in England,
49.

Switzerland, superior quality
of democracy of, 16, 69, 112,
114, 122; laws against non-
voters, 28; income tax in, 49;
proportional representation
in, 111 ; obligatory voting in,
112; direct legislation in,
112-114.

Tariff, 49; as affecting self-
interest, 50.

Taxation a motive power in
self-interest, 48.

Thucydides on party spirit, 76.

Traditions as capable of incit-
ing dvic purity, 130.

Turkey, efforts toward rep-
resentative government, 15.

Voting, laws against neglect of,
28, 111; lack of thought in,
33; importance of education
in, 34, 39; affected by self-
interest, 45; by the tariff, 50;
by appropriation for public
works, 51; by franchises, 52;
by government contracts, 52;
by government employees,
55-56, 57, 58; by various
professions and industries,
55 f 56; influence of party on,
87-90, 93; subservient to
national welfare, 91 ; Speaker
Reed's advice on, 102; not
to be given overwhelming
power, 103; effect of immi-
gration on, 122.