Part 7

There, then, is a great authority, Edmund Burke, maintaining that governments are more liable to wilful error than those whom they govern--and the main value of majority rule is that it tends to bring the presumption round to the side of government, by making the voice of government also the voice of the people. I do not think the claims of majority rule can be put on any higher footing than that--that if the government is really expressive of a governed majority (and not merely of a majority to whom the constitution has accorded licence and privilege above its fellows) then the favourable presumption in any conflict comes round to the side of government.

But if government claims its sanction from a majority, then we must enquire further into the composition and character of that majority; and yet further whether the mandate of that majority is the output of its conscience or merely of its self-interest; we must watch its workings, and see what really brings it to the poll--its moral sense, its pleasure in motor-cars, or its inclination (based on a national love of sport) to select and to back the winner.

At whose bidding to-day, and for what motive, are we really being governed? Our duty toward government can never be greater than toward that voice of sanction on which it rests. And short of a voice of the whole people conscientiously uttered, and so conditioned as to be really free and equal, I do not see whence an entire sanction of government is to come--though you may have (under such and such circumstances) a large increase of presumption in its favour.

But obviously there are degrees. We in England clearly recognise that. We have recognised it in our own history; we recognise it in looking abroad upon other countries. And we rather approve--most of us--of revolution against a Russian or a German government which has refused so to aim that the people shall be in some sort their own governors.

Similarly, in this country, the sanction may be imperfect--we may have secured the form but not the substance. If so--if the form is so manipulated as to be virtually of no effect--the moral sanction is by so much lessened. Universal franchise--on the unattainable qualification, let us say, of standing on one leg for a fortnight, would be a mockery deserving of instant revolt. And there is some mockery in setting up any qualification of which a willing and painstaking citizen cannot avail himself--or herself. Perhaps there is also some mockery--some cheapening of citizenship--in setting up a qualification which requires no willingness and no pains.

The moral sanction of government, therefore, is ever fluctuant and variable--conditioned always by the sincere relationship of theory to practice, of form to fact. No amount of form or theory, however just in appearance, or legal in fact, will condone unjust government. And as we would wish to be condemned and punished were we so to impose on others--so must we act towards any government which seeks to impose on us by substituting form for substance. If its moral sanction is imperfect it cannot claim perfect obedience.

Now if there is not a full and honest wish among those who govern to do as they would be done by--claiming no advantage or privilege for themselves, and not attempting to keep in order one section of the community rather than another by framing laws which penalise this section rather than that--if there is not this honest wish, there will all the more be an attempt on the part of the governing section to give to its government in form that virtue which it lacks in practice,--to say to objectors: “See how safeguarded on all hands are your interests, how perfectly you are represented, how obviously you are the masters of the situation, and we only the servants.” And the nearer the governed are to an intellectual awakening and apprehension of their true condition, the more elaborate and plausible will be the pretence that the real ultimate power rests--not there in the hands of the governors, but here in the hands of the governed. And best of all--because most deceptive of all--will be the device which does actually put the means of reforming or of overthrowing government into the hands of the governed, while so nullifying the application of those means that the fair form, so fruitful in seeming, shall be in reality an empty husk.

Now, if it be true--as from history I have contended--that the moral sanction of government is variable, and depends on honest conditions and relations, obviously it is not the mere plausible form which shall decide whether this or that government be deserving of obedience or not. That form which is established by law must bring forth fruit to the satisfaction of the governed--producing, as proof of its claim, peaceful conditions and general content. If it fail to do this then it must be suspected, enquired into, and, if need be, disowned.

But it must breed something more than the acquiescence of a majority. The contentment, or at least the acquiescence of minorities is one of the signs of good government. For while it takes little to make minorities critical, it takes much to make them revolt--if for no other reason than that the chances are against them. And it is not in human nature to face so heavy odds except for some grave cause.

Consider first, then, in any given case, “Are those in the minority seeking to keep or filch liberty from you, or only to obtain such liberty as is already yours? Are they seeking to set up equality of condition or inequality? Are they pressing for privilege or only for common ground?”

And if the answer to such questions be that they seek only a like liberty upon common ground and equality with yourselves--then, I care not how large the majority against them--you must open or make available to them that same standing which you claim as your due; and on whatever basis of public service or private worth you have obtained your right,--that means, that test, that qualification must be open also to them, else your majority rule is nothing more than brute force, a despotism extended from the embodiment of one or of a few to an embodiment of 10, 15, or 20,000,000. But if you sanction that and make it your base, then, to be logical, you must sanction also (at least as a test) the employment of force by a minority to make its position untenable. And remember, that if among a minority some ten per cent. are willing to die, as against only some one or two per cent. in a majority, that minority is likely to win, and all your numbers will be vain.

That fact puts no undue or dangerous power into the hands of minorities. Consent, on a just basis, can be obtained to government whose acts are little to the liking of individual minds or of minorities. But if, after long trial of expedient, persuasion, or coercion, consent cannot be obtained, then the weight of evidence (based on the unfailing document of human nature) has shifted against government; and it rests more with the government than with the rebel to prove that its claims are just.

When governments establish inequalities affecting the lives and liberties of any, however few, I see no sanction whatsoever in majorities. One runaway slave had not to wait upon a majority of his fellow-slaves in order to establish his right to escape from slavery--still less upon a majority of the nation which owned him. If he could find a path along which to escape, that was the highroad appointed for him by God from of old; and if he died in the attempt his grave was still a monument to Liberty. Not the will of a million could destroy the right of that one. And though I admit that a society which sanctions slavery must treat as a murderer the slave who kills in his effort to escape,--nevertheless, by posterity, and in a society which has repudiated slavery, that act will be very differently regarded; and so long as the man’s aim when he committed that legal offence was freedom, we, who have repudiated slavery, look upon him not as a murderer but as a fighter in a just cause.

We are in a society to-day which tolerates and even sanctions things which to-morrow will be regarded as slavery is regarded now. While society thus chooses to establish evil it is driven in self-defence to treat those who rebel as criminals. But posterity will not so think of them; and the greater the forces of the majority which stood against them when they struck--the more will it admire and reverence, and approve. Surely a startling commentary on the “rights” of majorities: approval of the minority in an inverse proportion to its size!

Now, you might have a State almost equally divided into what were, broadly speaking, opposed interests; under certain circumstances, for instance, (circumstances which have actually occurred in the past) manufacturing and agricultural interests might be opposed. If, then, you accepted majority rule as a blind dogma, those two interests would have the right alternately to prey upon and to bleed each other, according to the fortunes of the polls--and they might do it by putting forward legislative programmes which would bribe the electoral wobblers first to this side and then to that. Where, on such a device does moral right come in? Was ever anything so ludicrous as a doctrine?

As a doctrine of right, majority rule has but doubtful ground to stand on. As an expedient, for practical use under sound conditions, there is much to be said for it. But when once you recognise it as a mere working expedient, then its workings must be watched, proved, and sometimes corrected and checked--by a minority.

Majority rule is only tolerable when it has the equal rights of man and woman firmly fixed as its goal; and it is as tending to the establishment of that doctrine that majority rule is acceptable (with some caution and reservations) to our progressive sense of citizenship.

In the great historic moments of upheaval which have brought it about, it has consciously or subconsciously been an attempt to get rid of the bad principle of dominance over others. It expresses the hope, or it embodies the probability, that a majority will be so broadly made up of all sorts and conditions--of the whole chemical composition of human society, that is to say--that in a government prompted and directed by a majority there will be no dominance of one section over another section: that they will, in the long run (or, if efficiently checked, in the short run) correct each other, strike a balance, and prevent the rigid and continuous existence in the body politic of any subjected section.

But if a majority could so sort its materials as to select for rigid and permanent subjection one section of the community, then the reason for its existence, and the grounds for its moral sanction would be gone.

If, then, two-thirds or three-quarters of the community can secure a greater apparent measure of comfort for themselves by forcing the remaining one-third, or one-quarter, to wait upon them and minister to their needs, the actual size of that dominant majority confers upon it no moral right whatever. There would, indeed, be more semblance of right, or at least more tenable ground, if a minority could so impose on a majority; because in that case the power of imposition would arise not from mere brute force so much as from superior ability; and a minority which can manipulate to its purpose the bulk material of a community has shown better ground for the rule of others (not very good ground, I admit) than the mere weight of numbers can supply. Weight of numbers as a ground for dominating others gives you no moral or efficient basis at all. Weight of capacity does give you an efficient basis, if not a moral one.

Now, if your two-thirds majority is extracting comfort on unequal and compulsory terms from the remaining one-third, you surely cannot deny the right of the remaining one-third so to diminish the comfort thus compulsorily extracted as to bring it to vanishing point, or to make it even a minus quantity. And the bigger the majority which is thus extracting sustenance from the minority, and exploiting it to its own ends, the more you will admire the minority if it rises in revolt, and makes the imposed and one-sided bargain unprofitable to the majority. And should the contention be carried to extremes (as it will be if both sides are sufficiently resolved) then the majority will have to exterminate the minority, and (if it wishes to continue government on the same lines) will have to extract for exploitation a new minority from its own body--give up one of its own ribs to servitude--and so become a diminished people in its perpetuation of a bad system.

Now, these considerations of moral right are irrespective of numbers. It may be the bounden duty of one man to resist the will of hundreds, or thousands, or millions. Indeed, every religious system admits, and history gives clear evidence, that that is so. A man must obey his conscience; that is his one ultimate guide. That statement expresses what one may call the atomic theory of human society. It suggests, at first sight, an impossible splitting to pieces of all systems of law and order; but it is not so in reality, because--and this is the really wonderful thing and the spiritual root of the whole matter--conscience is the most infectious and convincing force in life. In a community there is really a far greater agreement of conscience than of desire or of opinion. A conscientious resister may, of course, be mistaken; but if he is prepared to go on resisting, making sacrifice, and enduring suffering for his scruples--that process is the least fallible as a test, and the most converting in its tendency of all the processes of propaganda that the human mind can conceive; and by recognizing the moral right of the individual to put himself to that test before the eyes of his fellow citizens, and so at the same time to test their consciences in the matter, you are not really encouraging a course which leads to disunion and anarchy, but a course which, on the whole, will best bring about a general consensus of opinion. A community which recognises the moral worth of such tests of its own and of the individual conscience, will be far less likely to arouse such demonstrations of revolt than one which altogether ignores and despises them; for the simple reason that such a community will be better based in its duty toward its neighbour; it will wish each man to do that which it would claim the right to do itself in a like case, if faced by a superior power backed by greater numbers than its own.

If I know that my conscientious resistance will be respectfully considered (though not made easy or cheap to me), that my test of other consciences may be tried and may be adjudged to fail--I shall not be more inclined to enter into conflict with so considerate a majority, but less; for it is not open-minded justice but close-minded injustice which arouses opposition and rebellion.

But while human nature makes it safe, in the main, that men and women will not in any appreciable numbers submit themselves voluntarily to continuous discomfort, deprivation, loss of liberty and ease, except for a just cause or a high motive worth looking into, considering, and making allowances for: human nature does not make it safe that those in authority will not be overbearing and unjust, unless they too are liable to a like test.

And here again we come to consider the duty of the law and of law-makers to individuals.

The law should be prepared wherever its fallibility stands proved--where, for instance, it has done hurt and damage to innocency by its operations--at least to make full reparation. It is not an honourable position, for that which holds fiduciary together with compulsory powers, to say to one whom it has falsely imprisoned or unjustly charged--“You, on the whole, benefit by government, and, therefore, must yourself bear this hurt of government which has fallen upon you.” The State or the community which permits such individual hardship to result from its imposition of a fallible code is not just in its government or dutiful to its neighbour. And if it so acts, it undermines in the governed their sense of its moral sanction. The State cannot so do hurt to its citizens and retain an unimpaired claim on their allegiance; nor can it with any moral decency claim reparation from its enemies abroad, if it does not make full reparation for its own miscarriages of justice at home.

“One,” it is sometimes argued, “must suffer for the general good.” But the general good is not so served. In this connection general good only means “general cheapness.” The State, and not the citizen, must pay the price of its presumption--or it must look for an altered mind in every citizen whom it so afflicts from its position of immunity. Nay, it may be well that its supposed immunity should occasionally be disproved by a determined and self-sacrificing citizen, entirely for the general good, and the State forced to pay in extra upkeep for the bad condition of its laws.

The careless self-allowance of majorities in wrong done to minorities, or even to individuals, is not to the general good; and one could rather wish to a State that its minorities should be alert and pugnacious, than its majorities self-satisfied and indifferent on the score of mere numbers.

Numbers, uncorrected by conscience and uncontrolled by penalties, may be the cheapest, nastiest and most unscrupulous form of tyranny. The indifference or acquiescence of hundreds to conditions by which they themselves are not consciously affected cannot have the same moral weight as the discontent of one or of a few who are so affected. That is a consideration which must always qualify the “rights” of majorities. In such circumstances the sanction of mere numbers is not sufficient.

Are minorities, then, always to have their way? By no means. We know that they cannot.

Countless minorities in our political controversies have contended, have failed, and have acquiesced in their failure. Time has tested them, and has measured the depth of their grievance by the scale of human nature.

But other minorities, which have persistently refused to acquiesce have won. Time has tested them also; and human nature, not numbers, has in the long run proved their case.

Medical science tells us that there is in the human eye a blind spot, by the existence of which alone we are enabled to see. If that blind spot were absent the eye would be without focus.

In human nature (however much we hold by the principle of ordered government) there is a point of revolt which standardises the relations of the individual to government. It cannot be brought into play by mere artifice or calculation, except for brief spells; but when naturally aroused it lasts.

It is that point of revolt, latent at all times in a freedom-loving people, but only aroused by unjust conditions--it is the existence of that point of revolt in human nature which secures good government.

Minorities, if determined, can make unjust government an economic extravagance, and can indicate to majorities (with some trouble and cost to themselves) the limitation of their rights.

The sleeping partner of good government is the spirit of revolt.

To-day we have not good government; and that is why the sleeping partner is awake.

DISCREDITABLE CONDUCT

(1915)

Discreditable conduct, according to its right derivation, is conduct provocative of disbelief. It is that kind of conduct which makes us doubt the professions of its agents, because it is practically inconsistent with the things that they preach.

Many things are done in this world which are very reprehensible, vindictive, cruel, narrow-minded--I might go through a whole catalogue of the vices; but they are not therefore “discreditable.” A man who has gone about the world expressing his undying hatred for another man, and then ends by killing him, has done nothing discreditable from his own standard. He has not made you believe less in his professions, but more; for he actually did mean what he said, and has become by his act a creditable witness to the faith that was in him--the dark gospel of hatred. But if, while nourishing a personal hatred, he was at the same time laying it down as the duty of all men to love their enemies, then we have not to wait for the murder in order to look upon him as a tainted and a discredited witness. It is not so much the blood upon his hands as the hatred within his heart which has discredited him as a preacher to others.

Or, put the case otherwise; without pretending to such a counsel of perfection as that he can love his enemies, a man may yet assert that human life is sacred, and that he has no right to take the life of his fellow. Having done so he begins to set up exceptions: “Though I may not do it at my own,” he says, “I may do it at the bidding of others.” And this not by orders that he is compelled into on pain of death or torture (when he might plead a natural human infirmity as his excuse for wrongdoing) but by voluntary enlistment in an army, or by voluntary acceptance of the post of public hangman, or of a judgeship, or of service upon a jury in cases involving the death-penalty.

Now, it may be very commendable to take human life at the bidding of others; but it is not consistent with the unqualified statement that “all human life is sacred.” The one proposition--it is not my concern here to defend or attack either of them--becomes discredited by the other. The advocate of the judicial extinction of life under the institution of capital punishment, or of wholesale extinction under the institution of war--if he wishes to be heard as a credible witness, and to avoid the imputation of discreditable conduct when he gives a hand to it--must reshape his statement something after this manner: “Human life is so important a thing that one man must not take it on his own responsibility; but Society may.” And then he will have to make up his mind what he means by Society, and why he thinks Society is more to be trusted than himself. And if he finds himself in a community which permits or even inculcates moral evils which he individually cannot tolerate, then he must puzzle out for himself why he will trust such a community with the power to kill, when he sees it make so vile and miserable a misuse of the power to keep alive--or to keep from life in any form that is worth having--so many millions of his fellow-creatures. And he will find presently that his assertion that human life is sacred must--if it is to mean anything--extend from the comparatively easy and simple problem of the death-penalty to those far greater problems, which lie all around him, of the cruel life-penalties tolerated or exacted by Society.

So before long what he will find himself up against is this--the necessity of being a creditable or a discreditable witness to the value of Society itself--of that thing to whose apron-strings he has tied his conscience. For you cannot assert that it is right for Society to unmake human life unless you also assert that Society is making human life in a form that is worth having, in a form, too, that would be imperilled were its power of judicial murder to be taken from it.

But the point of departure I have wished to bring you to is this: man did not begin to doubt his own moral right to kill other men until there entered into his being an idea of something better able than himself to judge, to control, and to provide. And so long as he believed in that idea as protective of a morality superior to his own, and productive of the fruits of life in better quality, he could without discredit put into its hands powers which he dared not himself exercise.