THE COMING SLAVERY. 73l 



quoting a passage from a play, " All men, even shopkeepers and cob- 

 blers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has passed his whole 

 life without official rank seems to be not a human being." * 



These various influences, working from above downward, meet 

 with an increasing response of expectations and solicitations proceed- 

 ing from below upward. The hard-worked and overburdened who 

 form the great majority, and still more the incapables perpetually 

 helped, who are ever led to look for more help, are ready supporters 

 of schemes which promise them this or the other benefit by state 

 agency, and ready believers of those who tell them that such benefits 

 can be given and ought to be given. They listen with eager faith to 

 all builders of political air-castles, from Oxford graduates down to 

 Irish irreconcilables, and every additional tax-supported appliance for 

 their welfare raises hopes of further ones. Indeed, the more numer- 

 ous public instrumentalities become, the more is there generated in 

 citizens the notion that everything is to be done for them, and nothing 

 by them. Each generation is made less familiar with the attainment 

 of desired ends by individual actions or private combinations, and 

 more familiar with the attainment of them by governmental agencies ; 

 until, eventually, governmental agencies come to be thought of as the 

 only available agencies. This result was well shown in the recent 

 Trades-Unions Congress at Paris. The English delegates, reporting 

 to their constituents, said that, between themselves and their foreign 

 colleagues, " the point of difference was the extent to which the state 

 should be asked to protect labor " : reference being thus made to the 

 fact, conspicuous in the reports of the proceedings, that the French 

 delegates always invoked governmental power as the only means of 

 satisfying their wishes. 



The diffusion of education has worked, and will work still more, in 

 the same direction. "We must educate our masters," is the well- 

 known saying of a Liberal who opposed the last extension of the fran- 

 chise. Yes, if the education were worthy to be so called, and were 

 relevant to the political enlightenment needed, much might be hoped 

 from it. But knowing rules of syntax, being able to add up correctly, 

 having geographical information, and a memory stocked with the dates 

 of kings' accessions and generals' victories, no more imply fitness to 

 form political conclusions than acquirement of skill in drawing implies 

 expertness in telegraphing, or than ability to play cricket implies pro- 

 ficiency on the violin. " Surely," rejoins some one, " facility in read- 

 ing opens the way to political knowledge." Doubtless ; but will the 

 way be followed ? Table-talk proves that nine out of ten people read 

 what amuses them or interests them rather than what instructs them, 

 and that the last thing they read is something which tells them dis- 

 agreeable truths or dispels groundless hopes. That popular education 



* u 



Russia," i, 422. 



