A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



107 



that of all the vilest elements in the community 

 outside its pale. The cultivated intelligence of 

 the country must try to make the next decade 

 better by appealing to those classes which, being 

 brought more in contact with the sterner realities 

 of life, are more inclined to seriousness than the 

 " roses and the nightingales " of " society ; " and 

 it is doing so to an extent which makes one hope 

 that the present period of political and moral 

 slack-water will not be of any very long duration. 



Mr. FREDERIC HARRISON.— The first of 

 these papers has somewhat mixed up questions 

 which it is convenient, I think, to keep distinct. 

 Mr. Hutton and Mr. Grant Duff have to a great 

 extent disentangled them for us. When they 

 have been completely analyzed, there will remain 

 little matter for discussion, and, perhaps, little 

 ground of difference. For my part, I entirely 

 agree with the argument of Mr. Grant Duff. I 

 think with him that all good influences come 

 from the "minority of the minority;" and in- 

 deed I agree with the final conclusion of Lord 

 Arthur Russell, that " the uneducated masses are 

 only in the right when led by right-minded 

 leaders." But does any one deny this? To 

 find some one to maintain the contrary, our in- 

 defatigable editor will have to ransack the Con- 

 tinental clubs for believers in the gospel of 

 Rousseau or the evangel of Karl Marx. It is 

 pure inadvertence which suggests that I have 

 ever given countenance to such a doctrine. Lord 

 Arthur Russell undertook to discuss a practical 

 matter of English politics. But he seems deter- 

 mined to view it by the lurid light of the Red 

 Spectre abroad. 



I understand Lord Arthur's argument to be 

 this : Mr. Gladstone, he says, was mistaken in 

 saying that " the popular judgment on political 

 questions is often more just than that of the 

 higher orders." On the contrary, the popular 

 judgment is less just. Workmen are incapable 

 of being cabinet ministers, and wherever they 

 have tried they have failed. Ignorant men can- 

 not form sound opinions without leaders, and 

 they will usually choose bad leaders. Whenever 

 they are in the right, it is because they have had 

 right-minded leaders. The cultivated classes are 

 right-minded : therefore they ought to lead. 



By all means ; but is this quite a sequitur ? 

 Are not our problems getting a little " clubbed ? " 

 Are we using our terms in one and the same 

 sense ? Distinguo : distinguamtis. Mr. Glad- 

 stone's argument turned on extending the fran- 

 chise. He said that the opinion of the people 

 was more often on the right side than that of 



the rich few. Is that the same thing as saying 

 that ignorant men ought to be made cabinet min- 

 isters? What is there even distantly in com- 

 mon between the opinion that the public judg- 

 ment on broad questions is usually healthy, and 

 the opinion that an illiterate collier should be 

 sent to the Foreign Office? Mr. Gladstone ar- 

 gued for the first ; he said not a word that bears 

 on the second. 



And did Mr. Gladstone say that the people 

 would be in the right when not led by right- 

 minded leaders ? Did any responsible man in 

 our country ever say this ? Lord Arthur explains 

 that, whenever the popular judgment has been 

 right, it is due to their political leaders. Exact- 

 ly so ; but surely Mr. Gladstone does not expect 

 the people to form right judgments in the absence 

 of political leaders, zvithout that political educa- 

 tion through the press and meetings, to which 

 Lord Arthur says all their sound conclusions are 

 exclusively due. Of course right judgment is 

 due to education. Political education is the es- 

 sence of the matter. It is on this that all popu- 

 lar statesmen rely. No one in this country be- 

 lieves that a crowd of ignorant men evolve un- 

 erring wisdom. What we assert is that the best 

 of the laboring-class already have a good deal of 

 political education, and are very apt to receive 

 more. 



Besides, are we not using our terms in rather 

 a double sense? What do we mean when we 

 talk of " education," " ignorance," " right-minded 

 leaders," " cultured class," and the like ? Political 

 education is a totally different thing from literary 

 education ; and the Eton Latin grammar goes 

 almost no way toward it. Many workmen, even 

 many country laborers, have attained to a very 

 considerable political education by means of con- 

 stant political discussions, careful reading of 

 newspapers, and experience in managing their 

 own affairs. For all political purposes the best 

 of this class have a better practical training in 

 affairs, and even in matters of state, than many a 

 country curate, or club dandy, or even a sporting 

 member of Parliament. Why mass them alto- 

 gether as the ignorant classes ? and why mass all 

 those who have the manners of the drawing- 

 room as the cultivated classes ? Many working- 

 men are ignorant in every sense of the word ; 

 but many of them, who would write what we call 

 an " ignorant " letter, who talk ungrammatically, 

 and never heard of Mr. Ruskin, are really trained 

 politicians. On the other side, a part of the cul- 

 tivated classes, or the people who have been to 

 a public school and are in the society of their 



