A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



299 



A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM.' 1 



IS THE POPULAR JUDGMENT IN POLITICS MORE JUST THAN THAT OF 



THE HIGHER ORDERS? 



W. E. GREG, E. LOWE, W. E. ' GLADSTONE, LOED ARTHUR RUSSELL. 



MR. W. R. GREG.— Mr. Gladstone's proposi- 

 tion, as understood by Lord Arthur Rus- 

 sell, and indeed as originally enunciated by him- 

 self, seemed startling and questionable enough. 

 As it promises to issue from the alembic of this 

 discussion — guarded and mitigated in its terms, 

 limited in its scope, interpreted and exemplified 

 by Mr. Hutton, and modified by the suggestions 

 of more cautious but still sympathetic minds — 

 it seems impossible to deny to it a considerable 

 measure of suggestive, encouraging, and prolific 

 truth, for which it is well worth while to secure 

 a less loose and excessive and a more precise 

 expression. 



Probably it will be found that the essence 

 and sound kernel of the broad proposition we 

 are criticising may be reduced to the following 

 dimensions : that the mass, the populace, the un- 

 educated classes, are in their political views and 

 conclusions more guided by impulse, and less by 

 reflection, than those above them in the social 

 scale ; that they look rather to the larger and 

 more obvious, which are often the more essential, 

 points of a question, than to its minor and modi- 

 fying features ; that their sympathies are, if not 

 always truer, at least prompter, keener, more un- 

 qualified, more imperious, than those of the high- 

 er orders. Nay, we way perhaps go further and 

 recognize that they are as a rule — certainly often 

 — more generous and hearty in those sympathies, 

 especially with the wronged and the oppressed, 

 or those they deem such, and far more to be 

 counted on for obeying these estimable feelings, 

 when once aroused, without regard to selfish in- 

 terests and consequences, than classes who might 

 be expected to take loftier, wider, and more com- 

 plex views. It will follow from these admissions 

 that, in those grand and simple political issues 

 which every now and then come up before a com- 

 munity for solution, into which morals enter more 

 largely than considerations of expediency, and in 

 which the impulses of natural and unperverted 

 men, and usually of aggregated men (that is, of 

 masses), may be trusted for substantial kindliness 

 and justice — in questions where the equitable 

 features lie upon the surface and are written in 



sunbeams, or where the principle involved is so 

 great and clear that the details which obscure 

 and the collateral consequences which complicate 

 may safely be neglected — in those cases, few and 

 rare, yet whose existence cannot be denied, where 

 (to use the noble and convincing expression of 

 Burke) "the heart of youth maybe wiser than 

 the head of age" — it may well be granted, I say, 

 that in issues of this character the "popular" 

 judgment may be sounder than that of classes 

 far better educated and informed, but whose de- 

 cisions are much slower to be reached by virtue 

 of the far wider range of the considerations they 

 have to weigh and search for, and whose vision, 

 we must also allow, is apt to be dulled and de- 

 flected by inescapable but very grave egotistical 

 bearings. 



Further than this I cannot go with Mr. Glad- 

 stone. Several of his representations I cannot 

 recognize as more than partially correct ; and I 

 entirely demur to the large practical conclusions 

 which he and his supporters draw as being, 

 I consider, but loosely connected with their 

 premises. Even in the admissions I have made 

 above I can scarcely conceal from myself that 

 the same facts might have been stated in less 

 flattering language, and perhaps less ungrudg- 

 ingly. I might remark that the masses are apt 

 to be led and governed by their impulses, even 

 when these take the form of vehement passions 

 rather than of generous or kindly emotions. 

 Nor, while recognizing to the full the curious sa- 

 gacity and racy powers of reasoning often very 

 skillfully applied, with which numbers among 

 them arc truly credited by Mr. Harrison, and 

 which, as he justly says, constitute in themselves 

 a political education far more properly deserving 

 of the name than that of the idler ranks who 

 may have passed or graduated at Eton or at 

 Oxford, can I recognize, as a general feature of 

 the working-classes, that freedom from prejudice 

 and power of doing justice to the arguments of 

 their superiors in rank, nor that facility to wel- 

 come instruction and guidance even where they 

 must be conscious of their own ignorance and in- 

 aptitude, in which Mr. Gladstone appears to have 



