Politics. IS PUBLIC AGITATION ESSENTIAL TO THE ATTAINMENT OF POLITICAL REFORM? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-III. "Each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought, "And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, Moved in the chambers of the blood." Tennyson. POLITICAL Reform is essentially a subject for public agitation. It cannot be known that reform is desired without public meetings and orations, assemblies and petitions. The press-representation which "Trevelyn" proffers as sufficient for non-ten pound householders is quite absurd. The press, as a general rule, requires to provide what will sell. Newspapers are established and kept up, not for the good of the public, but for behoof of the proprietors. It would not do to take the circulation of any newspaper as an index of its political power, influence, or value. Neither would it be quite the thing to make each newspaper reader the sharer in a sort of vote, which would be the result of adopting the circulation of any newspaper, as a test of the public opinion of a particular period. To take the mere opinions enunciated in the several newspapers, and reckon them up pro and con against each other, would be an equally inaccurate way of getting at the notions of the people on reform. The editors are either the mouthpieces of parties, or they strive to gain a knowledge of the leanings of their set, and blow their wind into the sails in that direction. Representation by newspaper really will not do, friend "Trevelyn," it will not do! Is "Trevelyn" prepared to show that editors of newspapers-if endowed, by some curious custom of society, with representative powers and honours-would be less fickle, less amenable to "lamb "-like seductions, less prone to the use of means which might give them a "lift into importance," than those whom he stigmatises as demagogues because they are public agitators? What good measure has been secured solely by newspaper representation? Can they be noted down and their dates given, as those resulting from public agitation can be? No chapter in British history would be nobler, if properly written, than that chapter which would record the triumphs of public agitation. The voice of the agitator has seldom been lifted up in public for simony, nepotism, oppression, jobbery, or company-farming; it is in private that these things are carried on. When the agitator appeals to the public, he must have a cause capable of being commended to the conscience, and of being used to stir and awaken the enthusiasm of the heart. He must have, in short, a good cause, sound argument, and a judiciously laid scheme. The beneficiality of public agitation is certain. It excites controversy, sets all the powers of conservatism on their defence, causes opponents to be cautious, and inclines them to keep all things square. Even when it fails in the attainment of its professed object it does good; for it makes the advocates of things as they are endeavour to keep them free from flagrant faults, and so advances the cause of good government and sound progress. If it gains its point, then the watchfulness of its antagonists is excited to keep it as low in its success as possible. Agitation is a sign of life, and especially of intellectual life. Public agitation is a sign that the people are on the upward move, are not contented to dwell in sluggardly supineness, but are anxious to make some changes which promise to effect good. Quiescence is not a political virtue; it is a wrong to the present and the future. It is the duty of every age to make the way of the world's going on smoother for that which is to come; as that which preceded it exerted itself to make the best of its day, that the future might enjoy that which they could not attain. Not to attempt to repay to posterity the good we got from the past is not folly only, but crime. Public agitation for political reform is a protest against the abuses of statecraft, and a testimony that statesmen are under the eye of the people. There cannot be a doubt that it is good for them to feel that the eyes of the nation are upon them, that they must walk warily; that they must, as the observed of all observers, attend to the requirements of duty, honour, and patriotism. This is secured by the sense that public agitation will bring to light the failings and faults of those who neglect their duty or abuse their privileges. There is thus a mutual action and reaction for mutual benefit in public agitation. In agitation statesmen find a check on self-seeking, and a constant criticism on their conduct and motives; while statesmen find in agitation the opinions and general drift of the desires of the public, and secure all the advantages of a thorough acquaintance with the aims and intents of the various classes of society, without the odium or expense of the spy system. Public agitation makes private conspiracy impolitic, if not impossible. It is better for the country to have a publicly agitated Chartism than a hidden, smouldering, treacherous conspiracy like Fenianism. On these grounds I think that political agitation is essential to the attainment of political reform-not only in regard to the Government, but also the people. Both need reform. The Government need to be less given to class legislation; the people require to be less ignorant on political matters. The sneers of "Trevelyn" at Chartism, the Peace Society, financial reformers, &c., are very much misplaced: grant even that they failed in their aim, have they not excited an intelligent and thoughtful interest in the questions they concern? The principles of government, the evils of class legislation, the need for an impartial consideration of the claims of labour, the nature of parliamentary representation, the conditions of true political progress, and the comparative merits of centralized and municipal administrations, are much better understood now than before Chartism agitated the public mind and raised the questions of the people's rights. The public agitation of Chartism has undoubtedly greatly tended to the bringing about of that frame of mind through which lords and labourers may be brought to work together for good, on the same platform and in the same committee, with humiliation to neither and advantage to both. The peace movement has not brought about a warless millennium, and has not managed to get the swords of Europe turned into reapinghooks, except of the worst description, being used by the harvesters of death. But is it not a fact that the whole mind of Europe is more sensitive upon the nature of peace and war, and more critical of the justifications of war, than before the people began to reflect upon the evils of war, only when they had war taxes to pay. One has only to look at the most casual paragraph relative to war to find how changed the tone of international feeling is since the days of the Anglo-Germanic leagues against France, in which the First Empire was destroyed. Here public agitation has most thoroughly shown itself to be essential to the political reform. And here we can now turn "Trevelyn's" press argument against himself; for if public agitation is not essential to reform, wherefore is it that the myriads of papers of all kinds and classes are circulated in this country? Are they not nearly all organs for public agitation? and do they not almost every one aim at bringing about political reform of one sort or other either a reform in favour of conservatism, by a cessation of outcry for changes in the state, or a reform in the radical sense, meaning a change in the balance of parties in the state? The essentialness of public agitation to bring about reform is very clearly proved by the course of the financial reform associations. They secured the repeal of many obnoxious taxes and the modification of others, and if they did not entirely prevent a waste of the public money, they at least helped to moderate the waste and to insist on economy of the public revenue. The financial reformers, in fact, brought about that very state of things by public agitation, which "Trevelyn" uses as an argument why public agitation should cease-they procured the abolition of the stamp and paper duties, and made the almost universal sale and circulation of newspapers a possibility in the country. If "Trevelyn's" argument is good for anything at all, it is good for proving that it is of the utmost importance to have keen and active public agitation, that political reforms may be brought about with advantage to the public and safety to the state. "Nostrat" evidently thinks he has made " a hit, a hit, a very palpable hit," by saying that political reform must be settled by the Legislature, as if anybody had ever thought of denying that. Who has ever advocated public agitation as a means of settling political reform? Agitation is initiated by leading thinkers, carried on by enthusiasts, prompts the Legislature to settle the affair by making that law which was only desire before that time. Would the Legislature by doing so abandon their high office, as "Nostrat" affirms ? If so, there has never yet been a parliament in this country which is not chargeable with having abandoned its high office; for every one has more or less been induced to pass laws in accordance with the mind of the people, known to them and proved to be desirous of the passage of such a law by public agitation. What history will afford proof of the assertions of "Nostrat about the Reform Bill (199)? Neither Molesworth nor Russell nor Brougham would agree with him, I think; and Roebuck_would certainly oppose his idea of the passing of the Reform Bill without public agitation. Indeed, what public man can assert that public agitation is not essential to political reform ? W. R. Y. NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-III. AGITATION excites hostility and provokes retaliation, and so prejudices the end in view. Agitation is not argument; is seldom even the result of sentiment. The multitudes, so variously estimated, attending public meetings, &c., are brought together by very many accidental considerations-often by some quite different from sympathy with the movement being made. But even were the whole of the tens of thousands who attend these meetings entirely devoted to the accomplishment of the particular political reforms agitated for, that would only heighten the evil, not prove the advantageousness, still less the essentiality, of public agitation. Public agitation appeals to the passions. Its very name bears witness against it. Agitation is not calm, deliberate, and impartial inquiry and thoughtful consideration; it is hot, excited, emotional, and unintellectual. The very eloquence which is employed in public agitation has been compelled to get a new name to itself, and this has been brought from the land which has attempted to make public agitation profitable in attaining political reform. "Bunkum" had no equivalent in our tongue till we began to Americanize our institutions, and to look for political reform from public agitation. Agitation necessitates oratory addressed to the passions-mob oratory. This always delights in exaggeration, inflammatory repre sentations, and overdrawn pictures of the evils under which men live, and the good which would accrue to them from the reform of the Legislature. Such speeches are essentially misleading; and as they are in general addressed to those who have no means of correcting these erroneous statements or assertions by accurate information, they are often fatally misleading, even when they are not intentionally false. Just as a painter requires to bring together into one landscape elements which in nature are found disconnected, and to represent them as one, and as seen at once; just as a poet conjoins his feeling to that of the appearances of nature or of life, and makes a compound of them, which seems to be one; so must the orator mass and group his facts and figures so as to produce an effect. He speaks in every public agitation, not to utter truth, but to stir, to rouse, to excite, sometimes to enrage. Any one who remembers the Chartist movement knows that this is true. Even the speeches of the British tribune, John Bright, are chargeable with that fatal defect of exaggeration; and he, being the leader—and being, moreover, liable to severer criticism in the press and in the House of Commons,-has greater reason for caution than inferior men. If it is necessary for even Mr. Bright to overstep the severe limits of truth and logic in the great outbursts of his genuine eloquence, what must weaker advocates be forced to do to produce an effective oration? Compare the orations of Ernest Jones or Edmond Beales with those of Bright or of Gladstone, and it will be seen at once that exaggeration is the great power wielded by orators to produce public agitation. Compare Richard Weaver with the Archbishop of York; compare Gough and Dr. Lees; compare Spurgeon with Hinton, and you will see the same thingthat exaggeration is essential to the production of rousing oratory. Public agitation does not depend either on conviction or persuasion; it depends on the production of a whirling, confusing sensation of something to be done, that something else may be attained. Hence the foolish infatuation of crowds that have been exposed to the excitement of the mob orators' harangues. Political reform is an affair of great moment and of grave importance. It ought, therefore, to be gone about carefully, considerately. It requires deliberation, forethought, consultation. All the interests of society demand representation before it can be thoroughly discussed. It is therefore beyond all other things that which can be least beneficially debated amidst agitation and excitement. An insane clamour is easily raised. People are prone to forget, or let slip out of their mind, "How small a part of all that men endure A change of law can cause, or even cure." Just reform is best brought about by calm discussion, through the press, in Parliament, in congresses on social science, and in meetings of delegates from the various classes of society. Public agitation, by setting people by the ears, diminishes the chances of |
