COMPARATIVE STUPIDITY OF POLITICIANS. 165 



ity of Nature and the watchfulness of human enemies, canuot afford 

 to take things easily. Action is forced upon them ; they must either 

 succeed or conspicuously fail. In politics, usually, the state of things 

 is entirely different. The demand is rarely made for heroic measures; 

 the prudence which is taught is that rather which shuns difficulty and 

 dreads failure, than that blending of caution and audacity which finds 

 in the way of seeming danger the true path of safety. The educa- 

 tion of practice in parliamentary politics is, therefore, for the most 

 part, an education in the arts of inaction, evasion, and delay. The 

 blame of doing nothing is usually less than the blame of doing amiss. 

 A great writer, whose instinctive sagacity was often wiser than the 

 elaborated reflections of more painful thinkers, embodied the char- 

 acteristic weakness of political training in England when he made 

 " How not to do it " the aim of our statesmen. Lord Melbourne's 

 " Can't you leave it alone ? " gave expression to the same paralysis of 

 action in excessive caution and prudence. Politics of this sort will 

 attract feeble minds and characters, or will enfeeble those naturally 

 stronger. The oratory which they foster will be that of mystification, 

 amusement, and excitement. Acquaintance with political philosophy 

 or economic science will be felt to be wholly superfluous. Even that 

 empirical knowledge of his age and country, and of the assembly in 

 and through which he rules, which are essential to every practical 

 statesman, will be little more than the charlatan's or demagogue's ac- 

 quaintance with the foibles and passions of popular sentiment and 

 opinion. The admiral who boasted that he brought his ships home 

 uninjured from seas in which he had not encountered the enemy, and 

 the Frenchman whose achievement it was to have kept himself alive 

 during the French Revolution, represent the prevalent aims of modern 

 statesmanship. A ministry exists to keep itself in existence ; if the 

 ship, without going anywhere or doing anything, can be kept afloat, 

 that is held to be all that can be required. This faineant policy does 

 not require any high range of intellect. Men of the first order will 

 seek careers which afford ampler scope to capacity. If they betake 

 themselves to public life, which affords them no opportunity of great 

 public work, there is danger of their devoting their energies to their 

 own private and personal ends ; or, merely to establish a character 

 for " honesty " will often prove enough to repose on. A picture, a 

 statue, or a poem, does not receive additional value from the fact that 

 its author is a very pleasant and straightforward sort of fellow ; but 

 " honest Jack Althorp's " statesmanship rested entirely on this basis 

 of character; and a late parliamentary leader has been commended 

 on the ground that " there is not the making of a lie in him." A 

 career in which character may be a substitute for capacity must, from 

 the nature of the case, be pursued on a lower intellectual level than 

 those in which intelligence and cultivation and general or special 

 knowledge are absolutely essential. 



