Part 14

And when the news came that the Duke had been shot at and wounded on their own shores, every one in a strange way seemed to take it to heart, to be struck with shame and dismay, as though he himself were in part guilty of the crime. The terror of having to bear, as a body, the guilt of one wretched man excited them almost beyond belief. At Hobart Town—distant as Tasmania is from the scene of the occurrence (I quote from a hurriedly written letter just received)—

‘A meeting was convened within an hour of the arrival of the news by telegraph; it was attended by every class and sect in the community. The large town hall could not contain the assemblage; they therefore gathered outside. The first proceeding, before any resolution, was to call for the substitution of the Union flag for the municipal one. Then, regardless of order, but with the order inspired by a common sentiment, the vast crowd struck up the National Anthem. The effect drew tears from many eyes—the _effect_ in part, the _earnestness_ with which, under the circumstances, the Anthem was given forth by those who joined in it, melted them into weakness. And a second time in the course of the proceedings the same _irregularity_ was indulged in, without its being possible for any one to say that anything irregular was done—the ordinary and decorous modes of expressing popular feeling were insufficient to give utterance to that by which all were _possessed_. We burned with loyalty to the Crown and country, intensified by shame and indignation that the act of one bad man had made it necessary that we should wipe away reproach or suspicion from us. I am not guilty of exaggeration when I tell you that the news of what had been done by O’Farrell made many persons _ill_ amongst us.... I dwell upon this subject, for to this moment it, more than any other public one, agitates the minds of the people—but having done so for this simple reason, let me ask you, as a recent visitant, to do something in our vindication. We are English—that is, national—in our sentiments, and not as the result of calculation, but simply because we have not ceased to be and to feel as Englishmen. Our Tasmanianism is an accident of no more qualifying influence upon our feelings in what relates to the honour and integrity of the mother country, than the circumstance might have of being Kentish men.’

Strange words these, to come, as they do, not from a hot-headed boy, but from a cool, experienced politician, a reader of solid books, a grave paterfamilias, a hater of public meetings, who, when the Duke was in Hobart Town, was ready to escape into the country, rather than face the fuss and bustle and (to him) annoyance of festivities and ‘functions.’ And column after column of the Australian papers tell the same story. I do not believe, since the news of Waterloo came to England, that any body of Englishmen have been heated to so intense and so unanimous a pitch of enthusiasm. Nor would it be possible to name any such manifestation more unmixed with selfishness. For ostentatious loyalty there are no rewards or honours in Australia, whatever there may be for ostentatious democracy. I am no believer in the _Vox populi vox Dei_ doctrine. But surely such an outburst as this is a phenomenon at least worthy of patient examination. What is to be said of the discernment or of the charity of a writer who can dismiss it with a passing sneer as ‘the starved appetite for rank’?

How ‘An Australian Cynic’ can say that there is ‘not a tittle of evidence that a single colonist of New South Wales, native or immigrant, has ever harboured a thought of treason’ I am at a loss to conceive. I know little or nothing of what has been going on lately in New South Wales. But it is not a year since a Roman Catholic chaplain of one of the convict establishments had to be dismissed for preaching Fenianism to the prisoners; to say nothing of the original statement made by O’Farrell himself, which it is as difficult to disprove as to prove. I doubt if the absurdities and extravagances of the Treason-Felony Act are worth the pains ‘An Australian Cynic’ has taken to criticize them. The Judges are not likely to allow the Act to be enforced in an improper manner. Its intention is obvious enough, and the blunders will probably prove to be harmless surplusage. Nobody expects much legislative wisdom from a House constituted as the Lower House of New South Wales is. Nor is the Upper House likely to be much better, since it consists, not of members chosen by a superior constituency, like the Victorian Upper House, but of nominees ostensibly of the Governor, but in reality of successive administrations. Nor ought we at home to be too ready to ridicule their legislation, when we recollect that it is we who are responsible for their Constitution. It was we who at a time of transition and excitement in Australia allowed our Parliament and Ministers to pitchfork out to New South Wales a rash, ill-considered scheme, from which, in the opinion of many, the colony has been suffering ever since.

‘An Australian Cynic’ complains of the newspapers and the public at Sydney for not being more interested about a murder of five people which has been committed in the interior. Does he mean to imply that the police are supine in the matter, and need stimulus, or that the existing law is inadequate to meet the case? If not, why ought such a topic to be enlarged upon? Ought all bloodshed to provoke an amount of discussion exactly in proportion to the number of lives lost? Murder, unfortunately, is too old and too common a crime not to have been provided against as far as it is possible to do so. Fenianism, when it assumes the form of a conspiracy for the wholesale assassination of the most prominent persons in the State, is a new crime and requires new precautions. I suppose there must be a sense (since so many hold to the dogma) in which all men may be said to be equal, though I must confess I never could discover any—never yet having seen such a phenomenon as even two men who could in any sense of the word be called equal. But the common sense of all communities acknowledges that the lives of some persons are (to take the lowest ground) infinitely more valuable to the State than those of others, and when for this reason exposed to special danger they require to be specially protected.

Political assassination is a new crime in England in our days. But if we go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth, we may be reminded of conspiracies not unlike the worst manifestations of Fenianism, which were met by our ancestors in a spirit not altogether unlike that which has just been shown by their descendants in Australia.

XVII.

LOYALTY AND CYNICISM.

* * * * *

Personally I do plead guilty to holding the belief or doctrine to hold which you call ‘veiled cynicism.’ But I beg you will not suppose that I am asserting that the late demonstration of the Australians necessarily implied that _they_ hold it, or that their loyalty as a people was not wider and more comprehensive than any particular phase of it which may specially present itself to me or to any one person. In the following remarks I shall speak only in my own defence, and try to lift my ‘veil,’ so that it may be seen whether what is behind is, or is not, cynicism.

I accept the definition of cynicism which you give in your first paragraph. But I will add another, and a strictly etymological one. A cynic is a man who treats a deep-seated reasonable belief, or a fair argument, in a dog-like manner, as if it were a mere dog’s howl; one who vouchsafes only a kick or an imprecation to what he ought to listen to with patience, and answer (if he disagrees) with argument. A sham belief and an utterly worthless argument _ought_ to get only kicks and imprecations; to treat them otherwise would be priggishness. It is a critic’s business and difficulty to discover the right path between these two pitfalls. With all respect to the _Spectator_, I venture to express my opinion that not only in its recent article on the New South Wales Treason-Felony Act, but again and again in speaking of matters pertaining to the Crown and its relation to the people, it has fallen into the pitfall of cynicism, and (unwittingly, of course) written what has jarred painfully on the convictions of not a few amongst its readers.

To define these convictions adequately in general terms is almost impossible. I do not know how to do so without entering upon theological questions too deep for me, and which I would rather have avoided. I do not know how better to express my own conviction than by saying that I do in a very real sense believe in the ‘divine right of kings;’ not of course in the sense of the High Church party of the seventeenth century; more nearly, perhaps, in that of the eminently national and protestant party, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century relied upon the doctrine as the truest and strongest bulwark against Rome and Spain. I believe in the institution of hereditary monarchy as a divine idea, imparted to mankind, and answering to true and healthy instincts implanted in them—like in kind, if differing in degree, to the institution of a priesthood or clergy. Nations may reject it if they please. In so doing they are simply rejecting a proffered blessing, just as all of us are rejecting blessings every day. The non-juring Bishops and their followers brought discredit on the doctrine by their unphilosophical perversion of it. They forgot that a dynasty, like an individual Church, may become so degraded by the unworthiness of its members as to receive its condemnation, as did the dynasties of Saul and of Ahab.

The history of Europe from the middle ages to the present time teems with instances of intense attachment to hereditary, or quasi-hereditary, monarchy, often breaking out in the strangest and most unaccountable way, and in the teeth of the bitterest tyranny. For instance, it would be hard, even in the thirteenth century, to find a monarch who had inflicted more suffering and bloodshed on his subjects than Frederick Barbarossa inflicted on the Lombards. He was of a different race, too, and spoke a different language. Yet when his power had been broken under the walls of Alessandria, and he found himself face to face with a mass of enemies from whom escape was impossible, and whom to attack was certain defeat, he could calmly pitch his camp in the presence of their armed hosts, in the confidence (which the event justified) that in spite of all they would still acknowledge him as their Sovereign, and that his life and liberty were safe in their hands.[17]

What is more remarkable in the death scenes of all the religious and political martyrs or sufferers, from Sir Thomas More to Sir Walter Raleigh, staunch as they were to the end each to his religious creed, than the eagerness with which they repelled as an insult every imputation of disloyalty to the Throne? And yet at least two out of the five Sovereigns who reigned were as despicable as a Sovereign can be. How incredible to us seems the picture of the House of Commons, in the succeeding reign, with many of its members _in tears_ of shame, that the Throne, and they with it, should be so degraded by its occupant!

One hears of speeches so absorbing or exciting that men hold their breath to listen. I used to think this was only a figure of speech; but it happened to me once, and once only, to find it a literal fact. The Bishop of New Zealand was preaching at St. Mary’s (Cambridge), which was crammed with undergraduates. The subject was the Queen’s supremacy. He described shortly and tersely the ‘shaking of the nations,’ the abject condition, danger, or dethronement of the Sovereigns of Europe in 1848. But when he came to our own Queen, and her tranquil security in the midst of the storm, he used no words of his own; he simply quoted the text, ‘He took a little child, and set her in the midst.’ It was then that for, perhaps, ten seconds every hearer held his breath. The silence was, from its intensity, more startling, less capable of being forgotten, than any sound I ever heard.

Now, I do not mean to say that the Lombards, on the occasion referred to, acted like patterns of magnanimous loyalty. I am not quite sure that they were not, considering all the circumstances, rather fools for their pains. Nor do I mean to say that the extraordinary effect of the Bishop’s words was due _solely_ to the intrinsic truth and value of the idea suggested, or to the eagerness with which his hearers’ instincts went out to meet it, and not in part to the perfect rhetoric in which it was clothed. But I say that there is a vein of gold in the substratum of all these incidents, and of hundreds of similar ones, which refuses to float away upon any such superficial explanation—a metal the taking away of which would leave poor humanity sadly impoverished.

Doubtless an hereditary Sovereign is not the only possible object of loyalty. There may be loyalty to a President, to a ‘House,’ even, I suppose, to a shadowy, ever-changing idea such as a Constitution. Mr. Carlyle has taught us, to a greater extent than we can well estimate, how to choose our heroes. But does he not fall short of entirely satisfying us, because his conception of a hero is indissolubly bound up with mere force of will and power of mind? Like Mr. Carlyle’s heroes, the Presidents of Republics and the leaders of great parties are of necessity men of iron will, muscular intellect, and, it may safely be added, invincible digestions. Why should we narrow our field of choice and contract our storehouse of types of rulers within this small class? Why should we honour a man for his natural ability any more than we honoured Tom Sayers or Lola Montez for their strength and beauty? Does not the Bishop’s quotation suggest a deliverance from this perplexity? May not our heroes be sometimes chosen for us? In the long lists of the Sovereigns of past times have we not a St. Louis as well as a Francis I., an Edward VI. as well as a Henry V., a Margaret of Navarre as well as a Maria Theresa, an Elizabeth of Hungary as well as an Elizabeth of England? Can even these few types be found amongst Presidents of Republics, or could they be selected and enthroned by any form of suffrage, universal or other?

Therefore it is (as it seems to me) that hereditary sovereignty naturally commends itself to men’s truest and deepest instincts as supplying and enlisting more true types of humanity, as more readily suggesting the idea of perfect humanity and a perfect ruler, as more symbolic of human-divine government, than any other kind of rule. The remembrance of sovereigns at once bad and feeble soon slips out of history. The memory of the good, were they strong or feeble, remains a rich ever-accumulating treasure to humanity, adding type to type, building up in all reverent minds an ever loftier ideal of government, which is not the less precious for being so imperfectly realized.

A mere leader, however great, whether priest, poet, or politician, represents his own type, his own class, or his own party. Homage to him can seldom, if ever, be unanimous; it is ever on the brink of degenerating into party-spirit and sectarianism. A Sovereign represents the strong and the weak, the great and the insignificant, the man with one talent and the man with seven, the traditions of the past and the ideas of the present. A Sovereign is the only possible representative of the _whole_ nation. I may be wrong, but I think that the Australians, consciously or unconsciously, found this to be true.

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

FOOTNOTES

[1] Carlyle’s _Frederick the Great_.

[2] This excludes 7 members returned without a contest, and makes a total of 56 Ministerialists and 21 Opposition members, the 78th being (I presume) the Speaker and reckoned neutral. The figures are from the Melbourne _Argus_, February 1868.

[3] See _Prophets and Kings_, p. 11. By the Rev. F. D. Maurice.

[4] See a remarkable pamphlet called _The Mercantile Commander, his Difficulties and Grievances_. Philip and Son, 32 Fleet Street.

[5] _Our Daily Food._ By James Caird.

[6] As an instance of this it may be mentioned that cheese, which in March 1868 was selling at fourteenpence a pound, was in December of the same year selling at fivepence halfpenny.

[7] _Colonial Policy of Lord J. Russell_, vol. ii. p. 4.

[8] I regret to say that accounts lately received (February 1869) represent the depressed state of the colony as worse than ever, the prospects of the coming harvest, owing to continued drought, being in some districts very bad. It is with still greater regret that I learn that there is a popular outcry for constructing a railway across the island from Hobart Town to Launceston, which it is supposed will be a panacea for all depression and stagnation of trade. That the short railway now in course of construction from Launceston to the western districts will bring advantages adequate to the outlay, even though it may not pay a profit in itself, there is every reason to hope, for it will open communication with a magnificent new agricultural district. But the country between Hobart Town and Launceston is in general not specially fertile; it has for many years past been traversed by an exceptionally excellent road, over which one daily coach each way is for the greater part of the year more than sufficient for the passenger traffic. There is no prospect of any considerable interchange of commodities between the two towns, as each is sufficiently supplied with food from its own district, and each has a harbour for the introduction of imports and shipping of exports. The distance is about 120 miles, with much difference of level and consequent engineering difficulties. The loans and taxation necessary for its construction will be a grievous additional burden on the colony, which it is very ill able to bear. These considerations are so obvious to every one that the popularity of the scheme must be attributed in a great measure to sheer recklessness on the part of many of those who advocate it—and indeed it is said that this has been in some quarters admitted. The money borrowed in England will doubtless improve trade for a year or two till it is all spent, and what follows is to be left to the chapter of accidents. Great and praiseworthy efforts have been made by the present administration to pare down the expenditure of the colony to a level with the revenue—which it was considered impossible to increase by additional taxation—and it is to be hoped they will not embark without due consideration on so dangerous a scheme, and imperil the credit of the colony which they have done so much to sustain.

[9] January 1867.

[10] _Sydney Morning Herald_, October 9, 1867.

[11] _Sydney Morning Herald_, August 28, 1867, copied from the _Wagga Wagga Express_ of August 24. ‘Blue Cap’ has since been taken, and his gang broken up. Thunderbolt (November 1868) still continues his career.

[12] October 1, 1867.

[13] From _Hobart Town Mercury_, January 21, 1868, copied from the _Sydney Morning Herald_.

[14] See Mr. Wentworth’s speech at the dinner to Sir John Young, reported in the _Times_ in June 1868.

[15] See _Argus_ of July 26, 1855.

[16] See Lord Grey’s _Colonial Policy of the Administration of Lord J. Russell_, vol. ii. p. 18. The average annual number of convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land, from 1840 to 1845, was no less than 3,527 annually (see p. 5).

[17] Sismondi, _Ital. Rep._ vol. ii. ch. xi. p. 212.

————————————— End of Book —————————————

Transcriber’s Note (continued)

Punctuation errors have been corrected. Inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, capitalisation, and hyphenation are as they appear in the original publication except where noted below:

Page 6 – “preventible” changed to “preventable” (from preventable causes:)

Page 19 – “market-gardeners” changed to “market gardeners” (as market gardeners)

Page 30 – “is is” changed to “it is” (it is hard to)

Page 78 – “ascendency” changed to “ascendancy” (maintaining an ascendancy)

Page 89 – “road-side” changed to “roadside” (by the roadside)

Page 155 – “mouth” changed to “month” (once a month)

Page 205 – “politican” changed to “politician” (or politician)