Part 1

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RIVERSIDE ESSAYS

EDITED BY ADA L. F. SNELL

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE

Riverside Essays

Edited by Ada L. F. Snell

=THE AMERICAN MIND AND AMERICAN IDEALISM.= By Bliss Perry. 35 cents.

=UNIVERSITY SUBJECTS.= By John Henry Newman. 35 cents.

=STUDIES IN NATURE AND LITERATURE.= By John Burroughs. 35 cents.

=PROMOTING GOOD CITIZENSHIP.= By James Bryce. 35 cents.

_Prices are net, postpaid_ _Other titles in preparation_

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

The Riverside Literature Series

PROMOTING GOOD CITIZENSHIP

BY JAMES BRYCE

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ADA L. F. SNELL

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

R. L. S. 227

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION vii

INDOLENCE 1

HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP 26

The two essays by Mr. James Bryce included in this volume are reprinted by permission of Yale University from Mr. Bryce’s lectures on the Dodge Foundation, published in book form by the Yale University Press under the title of _The Hindrances to Good Citizenship_.

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Bryce has for a long time been a man of international prominence. His wide influence is undoubtedly due to many causes, but it may, in general, be traced to two characteristics: Mr. Bryce is a humanist who sympathetically watches the progress of nations and the guiding of governments; he is also a historian. In his biographical study of John Richard Green he has skillfully analyzed the aptitudes of the historian, and in so doing has pointedly, if unwittingly, described himself. Accuracy, he says,--a desire for the exact truth,--keen observation, sound judgment, imagination, and, following inevitably from these, command of literary exposition, are the powers which a historian needs. Each of these qualities Mr. Bryce himself possesses in large measure. It is his historical power, enabling him to observe and record the significant phases and events of human life, plus his sympathetic interest in its present-day manifestations which explain, in some degree, his singularly eminent position as an authority on matters pertaining to human institutions in various countries.

Mr. Bryce was born in northern Ireland in 1838, of Scotch-Irish parents; and he combines in his nature the stalwart intellectual propensities of the Scot and the artistic attributes of the Celt. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, and later went to Oxford where he won many honors. After finishing his collegiate work he was admitted to the bar and practiced law in London until 1882. At the age of thirty-two he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. Up to this point his life had been almost exclusively that of a student and a scholar; and already at this time he was recognized as a man of remarkable historical ability. The year 1880 marked a change in his life. He presented himself to the workingmen of Tower Hamlets, London, as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Stead tells us that Mr. Bryce, in this first campaign, addressed his open-air audiences somewhat after the manner of a professor lecturing in a classroom; he succeeded, nevertheless, in getting himself elected, and for over twenty-five years thereafter was a member of Parliament. During these years he held various responsible offices having to do with home and foreign administrative work. The practical results of his political influence were advancement in public education, the securing of more extensive parks and open country spaces for the pleasure of the poorer classes, and the furtherance of international peace. In 1907, Mr. Bryce was appointed ambassador to the United States, which office he resigned in 1913 to carry on literary work.

Mr. Bryce’s knowledge is the result not only of university training and experience in public life, but also of varied reading. He has read art, science, history, and has always been an interested student of poetry. In speaking once to Americans of Swinburne, he suddenly paused and asked, “Who are writing your songs and stirring your heart,--or isn’t your heart being stirred? Nothing is more important than that each generation and each land should have its poets. Each oncoming tide of life, each age, requires and needs men of lofty thought who shall dream and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its enthusiasm, through the high authority of the poet and the art of his verse.” How extensively Mr. Bryce has read the poets, both ancient and modern, one perceives from the references and allusions in his _Studies in Contemporary Biography_.

The most important source of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge, the one which has furnished the material for nearly all his books, has been his first-hand observation and study of many countries. When still a young man he wandered alone over Mount Ararat, since the native guides refused to follow him to the unknown wilds of that lonely peak. He visited the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and, as a result of his investigations there, became an advocate of the Bulgarian cause; in fact it was his speeches on the Eastern Question which first made him prominent politically. Mr. Bryce has traveled also in Iceland; he was in Africa just previous to the Boer War; he has been all over South America; and he knows the United States as few Americans know it. He has studied these countries with great faithfulness, observing keenly every phase of the political and social life. An interesting sample of his method of gathering information is found in the chapter on “The Position of Women” in _The American Commonwealth_. When traveling in the West he noticed that all of the women seemed so very well dressed that apparently none could be the wife or daughter of a workingman; but close observation dispelled this illusion. Idling in a bookstore one day in Oregon, he noticed a woman who was asking for a certain magazine. After her departure he asked the salesman who she was, and found that she was the wife of a workman, and the magazine a Paris fashion journal. “This,” says Mr. Bryce, “set me to observing female dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely, and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to the professional and mercantile classes.” Thus no detail, however trivial, escapes him; the pleasant and unpleasant phases of our American life, our manners, clothes, scenery have all been noted and reckoned with in the statement of tendencies and conclusions.

As a parliamentarian Mr. Bryce is said to have been direct, honest, and always illuminating. His ability to command attention was due not to any great oratorical gift, but rather to his scholarly view of any matter under debate. Mr. Justin McCarthy reports that the members of the House who might be dining, smoking, or reading in the rooms assigned for these purposes, would, when the news was passed around that Mr. Bryce was speaking, leave these pleasant diversions, and betake themselves with great speed to the debating chamber. “I have many a time,” he says, “heard Conservative members murmur, in tones not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction at the disturbing information, ‘Bryce is up--I must go in and hear what he has to say.’ ... Everybody knows that when he speaks it is because he has something to say which ought to be spoken and therefore ought to be heard.” Mr. Bryce was able to command attention also because of his reputation as a courageous nonpartisan. He never advocated a measure or policy for mere party reasons or for personal aggrandizement. Not infrequently he has fought bravely with the minority of his own party, and has at times suffered bitter attacks, as when he remained resolutely pro-Boer during the rampant jingoism of the South African War. But however widely political enemies might differ from him, they respected his sincerity and his luminous view of governmental problems. It is further characteristic of Mr. Bryce’s public life that he never, in his desire for the welfare of his own country, lost sight of what is due other nations. In practice as well as in precept he upheld the doctrine that “patriotism consists not in waving a flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”

Mr. Bryce’s books deal, for the most part, with historical subjects and present-day governments. _The Holy Roman Empire_, written when he was only twenty-four years old, is still regarded by able historians as an accurate and authoritative work; and, in the judgment of literary critics, it is written with so much charm of style that it is destined to become an English classic. All of the books which have to do with foreign nations are characterized by a tactful, faithful, and above all a truthful, handling. It was _The American Commonwealth_ which made the citizens of the United States regard Mr. Bryce as a friend of the Republic; but he is not so regarded because he has always stroked the gleaming pinions of the American eagle. Although he does seem to share the hope universally cherished by Americans that we shall, in spite of grave national defects, “win out” in the end, he has nevertheless, in direct and unadorned statements, pointed out our faults. As an example of his characteristic straightforwardness of speech, take the following sentence: “America has little occasion to think of foreign affairs, but some of her domestic difficulties are such as to demand that careful observation and unbroken reflection which neither her executive magistrates, nor her legislatures, nor any leading class among her people now give.” Mr. Bryce has never ceased to insist that America suffers from lack of honest, courageous leadership in dealing with such problems as municipal evils and the insidious influence of “vested interests.” Our heedlessness and indifference to public matters is our national sin, but Mr. Bryce foresees a cure for our defects in the increasing zeal with which the younger generation is assuming the public burden; but how great must be its zeal and how steady its purpose if anything is to be accomplished, one is made poignantly aware by reading the account of the Tammany Ring in _The American Commonwealth_.

When a man of Mr. Bryce’s ability and experience points out definitely the chief obstacles to good citizenship and furthermore indicates the means by which these may be overcome, one may be as sure that he will say something which should be heeded as were the members of the House when he was a parliamentarian. In 1909, Mr. Bryce gave at Yale University a series of lectures which were later published by the Yale University Press under the title _Hindrances to Good Citizenship_. The main obstacles to good citizenship are defined as indolence, private self-interest, and party spirit.

The first lecture, “Indolence,” brings to mind the chapter in _The American Commonwealth_ on “The War Against Bossdom,” with its vigorous concluding words, “In America, as everywhere else in the world, the commonwealth suffers more often from apathy or shortsightedness in the upper classes, who ought to lead, than from ignorance or recklessness in the humbler classes, who generally are ready to follow when wisely led.”

In the second lecture, “Private Self-Interest,” Mr. Bryce states the causes which produce a body of citizens who care more about their own advancement than about the welfare of the country. The most important of these causes are tariff issues, appropriations of public money for local interests, governmental contracts, public officeholding,--all representing “the insidious power of money which knows how to play upon the self-interest of voters and legislators, polluting at its source the spring of Civic Duty.”

The third lecture considers party spirit as a hindrance to citizenship. Mr. Bryce acknowledges the practical necessity for parties in the management of popular governments, and also the perplexing difficulties of a party leader who must decide between conscience and party. There is nevertheless but one course open to him: he must follow his conscience; only he must carefully distinguish between conscience and angular independence which is lacking in common sense and in willingness to defer to others in unimportant matters. For the average man the question is a simple one; relieved of the burdens of party leadership, he should follow his intelligence rather than his party. A large number of independent voters secures most effectively the right administration of public business.

The last lecture in the series, “How to Overcome the Obstacles to Good Citizenship,” suggests various means by which a more satisfactory body of citizens may be secured. In method and style this lecture is illustrative of the author’s peculiar strength in exposition.

Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for the lucid organization of a wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness--qualities which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the spirit of the one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals. Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in his _Studies in Contemporary Biography_. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of the _Nation_, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous, persuasive English is one of the qualities which has made him in a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide influence.

However helpful Mr. Bryce’s method may be for the student who is attempting to understand and master the technique of successful English, it is the subject-matter which is primarily of importance. It is valuable for the student since it may serve to stimulate the investigation and expression of certain questions connected with the administration of public matters in his own town or city; and it may also suggest the explanation and judgment of measures proposed to secure better government, such as the Referendum. But the essential worth of the material lies in the fact that it is a tonic for relaxed vigilance in public affairs. It would be well to require every citizen of the United States to read in school days _The American Commonwealth_; one ventures to say that there would be, as a result, a steady advancement in the right understanding and fulfillment of civic duties; but even a limited acquaintance with Mr. Bryce should serve to define in clearer terms the elements of a sane and effective patriotism. And Mr. Bryce’s own life, unfalteringly and resolutely devoted to a just administration of governments, together with its unfailing graciousness in the most trying situations, furnishes an invigorating example of the truly successful statesman.

ADA L. F. SNELL.

Promoting Good Citizenship

INDOLENCE

Dr. Samuel Johnson, being once asked how he came to have made a blunder in his famous English Dictionary, is reported to have answered, “Ignorance, Sir, sheer ignorance.” Whoever has grown old enough to look back over the wasted opportunities of life--and we all of us waste more opportunities than we use--will be apt to ascribe most of his blunders to sheer indolence. Sometimes one has omitted to learn what it was needful to learn in order to proceed to action; sometimes one has shrunk from the painful effort required to reflect and decide on one’s course, leaving it to Fortune to settle what Will ought to have settled; sometimes one has, from mere self-indulgent sluggishness, let the happy moment slip.

The difference between men who succeed and men who fail is not so much as we commonly suppose due to differences in intellectual capacity. The difference which counts for most is that between activity and slackness; between the man who, observing alertly and reflecting incessantly, anticipates contingencies before they occur, and the lazy, easy-going, slowly-moving man who is roused with difficulty, will not trouble himself to look ahead, and so being taken unprepared loses or misuses the opportunities that lead to fortune. If it be true that everywhere, though perhaps less here than in European countries, energy is the exception rather than the rule, we need not wonder that men show in the discharge of civic duty the defects which they show in their own affairs. No doubt public affairs demand only a small part of their time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong where public affairs are concerned. The need for activity is not continuously present. A duty shared with many others seems less of a personal duty. If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citizens are as much bound to speak, vote, or act as each one of us is, the sense of obligation becomes to each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when one perceives the neglect of others to do their duty. The need for the good citizen’s action, no doubt, becomes then all the greater. But it is only the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater. The Average Man judges himself by the average standard and does not see why he should take more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive at a result summed up in the terrible dictum, which reveals the basic fault of democracy, “What is Everybody’s business is Nobody’s business.”

Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no more need be said. It is a sin that easily besets us all. We might suppose that where public affairs are concerned it would decrease under the influence of education and the press. But several general causes have tended to increase it in our own generation, despite the increasing strength of the appeal which civic duty makes to men who are, or if they cared might be, better informed about public affairs than were their fathers.

The first of these causes is that manners have grown gentler and passions less angry. A chief duty of the good citizen is to be angry when anger is called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in power, to expose his dishonesty, to eject him from office, to brand him with an ignominy which will prevent his returning to any post of trust. In former days indignation flamed higher, and there was little tenderness for offenders. Jehu smote the prophets of Baal. Bad ministers--and no doubt sometimes good ministers also--were in England beheaded on Tower Hill. Everywhere punishment came quicker and was more severe, though to be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the arm of justice is often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with none. This is an illustration of the principle that as righteous indignation is a valuable motive power in politics, the decline in it means a decline either in the standard of virtue or in the standard of zeal, possibly in both.

Another cause may be found in the fact that the enormous growth of modern states has made the share in government of the individual citizen seem infinitesimally small. In an average Greek republic, he was one of from two to ten thousand voters. In England or France to-day he is one of many millions. The chance that his vote will make any difference to the result is so slender that it appears to him negligible. We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our State exerts. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from Davos in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the town of Cambridge in England and back again to deliver his vote against Home Rule at the general election of 1886, though he knew that his own side would have a majority in the constituency. Those who knew applauded, his opponents included, but I fear that few of us followed this shining example of civic virtue.

Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult, duty of a citizen is to fight valiantly for his convictions when he is in a minority. The smaller the minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder is the call of duty to defend one’s opinions. To withstand the “ardor civium prava iubentium”--to face “the multitude hasting to do evil”--this is the note and the test of genuine virtue and courage. Now this is, or seems to be, a more formidable task the vaster the community becomes. It is harder to make your voice heard against the roar of ocean than against the whistling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake.