A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



99 



that the uneducated masses are only in the right 

 when led by right-minded leaders. 



Mr. R. H. HUTTON— It seems to me that 

 Lord Arthur Russell has somewhat misunderstood 

 Mr. Gladstone's meaning, and has twisted together 

 two quite different questions in his argument. 

 Mr. Gladstone was arguing for the extension of 

 the household franchise to the counties. And 

 when he spoke of " the popular judgment " on 

 great political issues, as superior to the judg- 

 ment of the higher orders, he was comparing 

 the answer which the masses would give to any 

 question raised on such an issue, when submitted 

 to them, with the answer which the higher orders 

 would give to the same question. Mr. Gladstone 

 has never said — and if he had ever said, I, at least, 

 should not agree with him — that the masses can 

 dispense with the teaching of politicians who have 

 much more political and historical knowledge 

 than they themselves have. On the contrary, one 

 of the points of Mr. Gladstone's paper was that 

 the masses of the people show a marked teacha- 

 bleness — a marked willingness to avail themselves 

 of the political knowledge of their more educated 

 leaders. " The nation," said Mr. Gladstone, " has 

 drawn a great, perhaps the greatest, part of its 

 light from the minority placed above ; but has 

 drawn them from a minority of the minority." 

 And again : " I should be the first to assert that 

 while the main propelling force has come from 

 beneath, such a force cannot, in questions of re- 

 construction, be self-directing, and that there has 

 remained for the leisured classes the performance 

 of a service in shaping, guiding, modifying, the 

 great currents of conviction, sympathy, and will, 

 which has been secondary, but yet invaluable." 

 Now this seems to me to dispose entirely of that 

 part of Lord Arthur's argument which is derived 

 from the confessions of Colonel Rossel. I have 

 no doubt that Colonel Rossel's opinion as to the 

 Paris Commune was a great deal sounder than 

 Mr. Frederic Harrison's, and I should be very 

 much surprised to hear that Mr. Gladstone is of a 

 different opinion. But what I understand Mr. 

 Gladstone to maintain, and what I certainly think 

 that the political experience of our own century is 

 enough to prove, is this : that on most great is- 

 sues — issues involving large elements of generous 

 sympathy — the mind of the multitude will respond 

 to the right, and not to the wrong, note struck by 

 those who try to guide popular opinion, while the 

 mind of the classes usually held to be educated 

 will much oftener respond to the wrong note and 

 not to the right. I quite admit that there may 

 be considerable exceptions to this rule ; one pos- 



sible exception, which, in the last century at least, 

 was a very real and actual exception, though I 

 doubt its having been so in this century, Mr. 

 Gladstone has himself indicated where he states 

 that on questions of religious tolerance he is not 

 inclined to assert confidently the same superiority 

 of the popular to the educated judgment ; and I 

 believe that there may be other great subjects on 

 which the masses of special nations are liable to 

 characteristic blunders, to which their educated 

 classes will be much less liable. For instance, I 

 should certainly be reluctant to trust the popular 

 judgment in England for deciding impartially 

 whether, if we had once got to blows, or even to 

 the verge of blows, with another power, England 

 was in the right or wrong. When English blood 

 is up — and it would get up, I fear, without much 

 relation to the justice of the case — the glamour 

 of conflict is apt to be upon us. And other na- 

 tions no doubt are liable to " personal " errors 

 of judgment, of the same or of a different kind. 

 Still I believe it to be notably true that, with a 

 few such exceptions, the popular response on 

 large issues involving broad questions of moral 

 feeling is far more politically trustworthy than 

 the response of the educated classes would be if 

 they alone were to be consulted. And I do not 

 think the reason is far to seek. Every one who 

 has heard a lecture upon sound, has probably 

 seen the experiment which shows how a tuning- 

 fork of a particular length will be set in vibration 

 by mere sympathy, so to say, with the vibrations 

 of a tuning-fork of the same length, whereas a 

 tuning-fork that is longer or shorter will remain 

 quite still — that is, will not be infected by those 

 vibrations at all. In precisely the same manner, 

 as it seems to me, the mind of the average Eng- 

 lishman will be set in vibration by any large and 

 generous sentiment that really makes him feel 

 nearer to the mass of his fellow-countrymen, and 

 will indeed unconsciously gauge whether this is 

 or is not the nature of the sentiment proposed to 

 him, while it too often happens that wealth, re- 

 finement, and education, though they have sharp- 

 ened greatly the perceptions of those subjected 

 to these influences on many sides of their nature, 

 have diminished greatly their sensitiveness to the 

 deeper and wider national and international sym- 

 pathies — have made them, in short, vibrate to the 

 feelings of a class much more quickly than they 

 vibrate to the feelings of a nation. 



Well, that is what seems to me the abstract 

 argument of the matter. But Mr. Gladstone's 

 was an argument from experience ; and to expe- 

 rience let me appeal. And I must say that the 



