Part 18

You will, gentlemen, when you go forth from these learned precincts and enter upon the actual business of life--you will have in the course of your lives to help to maintain and to build that Empire. You may think that it may be in a small and insignificant manner, not more than the coral insect within the coral reef. But recollect that the insect is essential to the reef; and it is not for any man of himself to measure what his direct utility may be to his country. I will tell you why you must in your way exercise those functions. The British Empire is not a centralized empire. It does not, as other empires, hinge on a single autocrat or even on a single Parliament, but it is a vast collection of communities spread all over the world, many with their own legislatures, but all with their own governments, and, therefore, resting, in a degree which is known in no other state of which history has record, on the intelligence and the character of the individuals who compose it. Some empires have rested on armies, and some on constitutions. It is the boast of the British Empire that it rests on men. For that reason it is that I speak to you to-night as men who are to have your share in the work of the Empire, small or great, humble or proud. That is--unless you go absolutely downwards--your irresistible and irrevocable function. Now, it is quite true that your share in that work may not be official, but even then I would ask, why not? There never was in the history of Great Britain, or, I suspect, of the world, so great a call as now upon the energies and intelligence of men for the public service, and that call, as you, sir, know, is increasing daily. Within Great Britain in my own memory the change in that respect has been very remarkable. What was called the governing class--and which is to some extent the governing class still--when I was a boy had very simple public functions in comparison with those which devolve upon the present race. They went into Parliament as a rule, and they had Quarter Sessions. But Parliament in those days was a very different business from what it is now, and Quarter Sessions--were Quarter Sessions. The burden of Parliament has now indefinitely and almost hopelessly increased, as you, sir, I doubt not, would be willing to depose on oath, if necessary. That takes up for these islands some five hundred and seventy more or less trained intelligences. Then there is the House of Lords, which takes up some--I am not sure of the figures--some five or six hundred more. I do not wish to claim that the House of Lords takes up the whole time of its members; I merely wish to point out that that, again, takes a part of the time, at any rate, of some five or six hundred more of our governing class. Then there is a new institution--the London County Council. That is a body whose work is not less absorbing than that of the House of Commons. It lasts much longer; it is much more continuous, and though not nearly so obtrusive, it is quite as arduous. Well, that consists of a small body of a hundred and thirty-eight members, who must all, who should all, be highly qualified for the function of governing a nation which is not smaller than many self-governing kingdoms. Then there are the great municipalities--great and small. These, no doubt, have to some extent always existed, but not in their present form. A new spirit has been breathed into these somewhat dry bones. The functions of a municipality are sought by men of the highest intelligence; they are not merely sought by men of the highest intelligence, but absorb a very great proportion of the time of these men. They are changed altogether in spirit and in extent. And it is notable now to remark how many men in business plead as a just excuse from entering either the House of Commons or municipal work that they cannot spare the time from the necessary prosecution of their business which would enable them to join in those absorbing avocations. The municipalities of to-day--I know not how many men whose time they absorb, but they are very different from the municipalities of my boyhood, and I suspect that if a Town Councillor of forty or fifty years ago were to present himself in a Town Council of to-day, he would regard their work with astonishment, and they perhaps might look at him with some surprise. Then there are County Councils, District Councils, Parish Councils--all bodies new within the last few years--not all of them absorbing the whole time of their members, but requiring, at any rate, the services of many trained intelligences to keep their work in proper order, and without arrears. Then there are the Government Departments, which swallow up more and more men, and pass them on very often to higher employments. Their work is indefinitely and incalculably increasing. I will give you one symptom. The Foreign Office this year has obtained one new Under-Secretary; and the addition of an Under-Secretary is a cry of distress indeed. Well, the Colonial Office, I see from the papers, is also about to demand an Under-Secretary, and what that means of increase in the subordinate departments is more than I can rightly calculate. But in truth, gentlemen, the whole matter is typified in the constitution of the Cabinet. The present Cabinet requires nineteen men to do what was done by half-a-dozen in the days of Mr. Pitt.

Why do I quote these figures? I quote them to show the enormous drain that the State makes on our intelligent population, besides the drain that it makes both for military and naval purposes. Napoleon was said to drain his population for his warlike purposes. We may be said, if not to drain, at least to skim ours very frequently for the purpose of administration. Now what I have been telling you relates to Great Britain alone. There is, besides, Ireland. Well, I am not going to touch on Ireland. In the first place, it is a different system of administration, and one with which I am not so conversant; and, in the second place, this is at present a harmonious meeting, and I have discovered that there is no topic so likely to terminate the harmony of a meeting as that of the administration or the government of Ireland. I pass beyond that. Outside Great Britain and Ireland there is an enormous drain on our population for administrative purposes. There is India, which takes so many of our young men and trains them so incomparably for every sort of administrative work. There is Egypt, which, is, of course, on a different footing, but which is also very large in her requirements. There is Africa,--not self-governing Africa, but the rest of our Africa,--with its territories, its spheres of influence, and so on, all requiring men to mould them into shape, not necessarily men belonging to the Civil Service or men of formula, but muscular Christians, who are ready to turn their hands to anything. Then, besides that and beyond that there are the outer Britains, if I may so call them, the great common-wealths outside these Islands which own the British Crown--whether Crown Colonies, in which case they require administrators, or self-governing Colonies, in which case they require the whole appurtenance of Parliament, Courts of Law, Ministers, and so forth. Then, outside that again, there are our Diplomatic and Consular services. Well, I do not suppose there ever was in the history of the World half the demand that there is at this hour within the British Empire for young men of ability and skill and training to help to mould that Empire into shape. Never were there so many paths of distinction open within that Empire; while to those who would share in that task of empire-building, and who would do it, not with the hope of amassing much riches, but in a high missionary spirit, never was there such an opportunity as opens at the present moment.

Of course, the base of all this tremendous work of Government is our unparalleled Civil Service. Our Civil Service is our glory and our pride. It is the admiration of all foreigners who see it, but it is, and I think I can appeal to you, sir--it is much more the admiration of those who as political Ministers are called upon to witness its working from within. They constitute the wheels and the springs on which moves the great Juggernaut Car of the State, and if these were once to get out of order, it would be an evil day indeed for Great Britain. But I confess, in my day dreams I have sometimes wished to add to them one other department. I have sometimes wished that there was a department entirely devoted to training young men for the task of administration--men who would afterwards be ready to go anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice--be ready to go out and administer Uganda, for example, at a week’s notice, ready to go and report anywhere on maladministration with the skill of an expert, able to investigate any subject and report upon it, not in the sense of Royal Commissions, but in a summary and a business-like manner. I should like them, as I say, to go at a word from their superior to any part of the Empire, and be able to do anything, as the militant orders of monasticism used to do--and do now, for aught I know--at the command of their superiors; to be, in fact, a sort of general staff of the Empire. I believe if that could be done it would be an incalculable gain; though I know it is a dream. But then I also know that it is not a bad thing sometimes to dream dreams. Of course, to some extent this function is performed by the Treasury. The Treasury, from its necessary contact with all the other Departments, owing to its being alone able to furnish them with that financial staff of life without which they could not get on, a staff of life which could only be obtained from the Treasury--not always with a smile--does furnish to the other Departments men who are competent to do most things, and to undertake most duties. But that, unfortunately, has been already discovered. Already men have been constantly taken from the Treasury, and if that process be continued much longer that Department will, I fear, be left in what I believe is scientifically called an anæmic condition. Well, gentlemen, I admit that this is a digression as well as a dream, but my point is this, that there never was so great a demand as now for trained intelligence and trained character in our public service, and I should like to think that we of the Associated Societies will bear our part in it.

Most of you, I suppose, have already chosen the professions that you mean to pursue, and I should by no means wish to see, as the result of what I have said, a general exodus from Edinburgh to the somewhat forbidding portals of the Civil Service examiners. That is not my object, but I venture to point out that official duty is only a very small part of public duty, and that public work is by no means incompatible with other professions and other callings. I do not suppose I need remind you that Walter Scott was a sheriff, and that Robert Burns was an exciseman. But how often have I seen professional men clutch at an opportunity of serving their country, whether on a commission or on a committee, or something of that kind--clutch at it though knowing that it will involve a great waste of time, and therefore a great loss of money--clutch at it as an honor which they cannot sufficiently prize. And I confess, when I see the enormous abilities that are given to our Civil Service and to our public service, either for no remuneration at all, or for remuneration incalculably smaller than the same abilities would have earned in any other calling or profession, I am inclined to think that the public spirit in this country was never higher nor brighter than it is at present. Let me tell you two curious stories which happened within my experience or knowledge with regard to this anxiety to serve the public. A friend of mine who had a high post in the Civil Service was asked, not so very long ago, to undertake some task which was peculiarly congenial to him, and for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he refused it without hesitation, and he gave as his reason this. He said, “When I was appointed to my present post at a very ample remuneration I knew nothing of the work, and it was some years before I could learn the work, to do it to my satisfaction. Now I have learned it, I am in a position in some way to repay the State for what it has done for me, and I shall not leave my post till I feel I have in some degree discharged that debt.” Well, now, a much longer time ago, before I can remember, there was one of the greatest and the wealthiest, and at the same time one of the most dissipated of the English nobility, who, after a life spent, as I say, in a very frivolous manner, was suddenly seized and bitten with the anxiety to occupy some public post under his government, and do some public work; and he applied to the Minister of the day for some quite subordinate post, as he wished to do something to redeem his life. Well, the post was refused, and his life was unredeemed. I give that to you as a specimen, not so uncommon as it may seem, of the anxiety of men, who had not done much in their youth, as they approached middle life to be of some use to their country before they die. And, after all, gentlemen, we are bound to remember this--that we owe something to our country besides rates and taxes. Other countries have compulsory military service. We are released from that; and if only on that consideration I think that we should be prepared to do something for the country which has done so much for us. And even if there is no public work ready to your hand, there are innumerable ways in which we can serve our country, however humbly and however indirectly. I only mention in passing the Volunteer movement. But there are social methods, literary methods, ay, and even athletic methods, because I am one of those who believe that one of the subordinate methods of welding the Empire together, and even of welding the English-speaking races together, is by those Inter-Colonial athletic contests, and athletic contests with the United States, which are developing so much in these days. But what I want to impress upon you is this, that if you keep before you the high motive of serving your country, it will ennoble the humblest acts that you do for her. The man who breaks stones on the road, after all, is serving his country in some way. He is making her roads better for her commerce and her traffic. And if a man asks himself sincerely and constantly the question--“What can I do, in however small a way, to serve my country?”--he will not be long in finding an answer.

Now, I will tell you what I consider the irreducible minimum of this service--the irreducible minimum. It is that you should keep a close and vigilant eye on public and municipal affairs; that you should form intelligent opinions upon them; that you should give help to the men who seem to you worthy of help, and oppose the men whom you think worthy of opposition and condemnation. That I believe to be the irreducible minimum of the debt of a British citizen to his country, and I believe it to be very important to the country. There is no such bad sign in a country as political abstention. I do not want you all to be militant politicians; I do not want it for your sake, or for the country’s sake. But an intelligent interest does not mean a militant interest, though it, at any rate, means the reversal of apathy. We are told that there is a good deal of political apathy in these days. I do not know whether that is so or not, because I have no means of judging. But if there is political apathy, I think the cause of it is not far to seek. Our forefathers, with their defective news agencies or channels, were able to concentrate their mind on one particular subject at a time, and give it all their energy and all their zeal. For example, for some twenty years they were locked in that great war with Napoleon and the French Revolution, which absorbed all their energies, and when that war ceased there came an era of great single questions, on which they were able to concentrate all their attention. But now that is all changed. The telegraph brings you into communication with every quarter of the globe. Every day brings you news of some exciting character from every quarter of the universe, and under this constant and varying pressure the intelligence of men is apt to be dazed, and blunted, and dulled. And yet we know that when, as now, the attention of the country is concentrated on a single point, there is as little apathy as need be.

But I should not appeal even on these grounds to you, gentlemen, if I did not hold a somewhat higher and broader conception of the Empire than seems to be held in many quarters. If I regarded the Empire simply as a means of painting so much of the world red, or as an emporium for trade, I should not ask you to work for it. The land hunger is apt to become land fever, and land fever is apt to breed land indigestion, while trade, however important and desirable in itself, can never be the sole foundation of an empire. Empires founded on trade alone must irresistibly crumble. But the Empire that is sacred to me is sacred for this reason, that I believe it to be the noblest example yet known to mankind of free, adaptable, just government. If that was only your or my opinion it might perhaps be not very well worth having, but it derives singular confirmation from outside. When a community is in distress or under oppression, it always looks first to Great Britain; while in cases which are quite unsuspected, I think, by Great Britain at large, and which are, as a rule, only known to Ministers, they constantly express the wish in some form or other to be united to our country, and to enjoy our government. And, on the other hand, for the most part, in those territories which, for one reason or another, we have at various times ceded, we may, I think, in almost every case see signs of deterioration, and signs of regret on the part of the inhabitants for what they have lost. I ask you, then, gentlemen, to keep this motive before you of public duty and public service, for the sake of the Empire, and also on your own account. You will find it, I believe, the most ennobling human motive that can guide your actions. And while you will help the country by observing it, you will also help yourselves. Life in itself is but a poor thing at best; it consists of only two certain parts, the beginning and the end--the birth and the grave. Between those two points lies the whole area of human choice and human opportunity. You may embellish and consecrate it if you will, or you may let it lie stagnant and dead. But if you choose the better part, I believe that nothing will give your life so high a complexion as to study to do something for your country. And with that inspiration I would ask you to blend some memory of this Edinburgh so sacred and so beautiful to us, not, perhaps, the Edinburgh of Cockburn or Jeffrey or Brougham, but an Edinburgh yet full of noble men and wise teachers, that you will bear away some kindling memory of this old grey city, which, though it be not the capital of the Empire, is yet, in the sense of the sacrifices that it has made, and the generations of men that it has given to the Empire, in the truest, the largest, and the highest sense an Imperial City.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

NOTE 1, p. 10.--The allusion is to the preliminary proceedings of the trial--in which some days were devoted to legal fencing about witnesses and challenged jurors.

NOTE 2, p. 12.--The gentleman thus elegantly arraigned was William Saurin (1757?-1839). Saurin was sprung from a French Huguenot family settled in Ireland. He was a lawyer of considerable ability, but one who had not risen rapidly. He seems to have been a fairly honest, bigoted Protestant; moreover, the duties he was called to perform during his long term (1807–1822) as Attorney-General were such as to bring him almost officially into sharp friction with the Catholic population. Consequently he was cordially hated by them. He was openly charged with using his position to repress Catholic agitation; and, later than this trial, it was publicly known that he had written to Lord Norbury, urging that as a Judge on circuit he should attempt to influence grand juries in favor of the Government. These are grounds palpable enough for a basis to O’Connell’s accusations; but these were the ethics of the time. After a perusal of this speech, it will not surprise the reader to learn that before the Magee trial was over O’Connell had gone so far as to threaten the Attorney-General with personal violence.

NOTE 3, p. 21.--The Catholic Committee of Dublin was an organization for the purpose, so to speak, of agitation by resolution. These resolutions were framed and passed at meetings. The influences thus set in motion O’Connell had tried to enlarge and make more national in their scope by adding to the Committee members from other parts of the country than Dublin. Now the Convention Act of 1793 had made representation by delegation, such as was here contemplated, illegal; and the Government was quick to avail itself of the statute. There was much trouble, and of course the question was had to the courts, where, in the test-case of Dr. Sheridan, O’Connell and the Committee lost. Chief-Justice Downes declared (1811) that the proposed reorganization of the Committee fell under the provisions of the Act. Thenceforward all agitation permissible was to be conducted by a non-delegated Catholic Board. In view of these facts O’Connell’s statement in the text cannot be accepted literally. Perhaps it may be called _rhetorically_ true.

NOTE 4, p. 29.--His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Lennox--fourth of that title, and descendant of Charles II. by the French mistress, La Kerouaille--was a personage more picturesque than the majority of the great in name who fill the pages of “Burke’s Peerage.” Throughout, his life (1764–1819) was romantically different from that of the average nobleman. As a youth he was a notable duelist, and in 1789 had an encounter with the Duke of York wherein half-royal blood came near to shedding royal. So impetuous a temperament obviously led the Duke to the profession of arms, in which he attained some prominence. The Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland was his during the period 1807–1813; and in these years he had for chief secretary the then plain Colonel Wellesley. He left Ireland for the wars; and thus it was that on the eve of Waterloo the Duke and Duchess of Richmond gave at Brussels the historic ball before the battle--an event which has permanently linked the name of Richmond with history. For chance, doubly gracious, commemorated the occasion in the famous verses of Byron, and the enduring prose of “Vanity Fair.” The next day the Duke was glad to serve on the battlefield under his former secretary. The end of this nobleman was no less striking than his life. Removed to Canada, he died a pitiful death of hydrophobia, induced by a fox-bite.

NOTE 5, p. 65.--Here the speaker is at some pains to press first the charge of inconsistency against the Attorney-General: he then goes on to consider the cases of Walter Cox, a Protestant and publisher of the _Irish Magazine_, and of the author of a book called “The Statement of the Penal Laws,” both imprisoned for libel.

NOTE 6, p. 100.--A short excursus on the manner of selecting juries. The ingenious rhetorical device which follows in this selection, after the break, should be noted. The parallelism between Ireland and Portugal is carried as far as it could well go: and argument by persuasion has seldom been more effectively attempted.

NOTE 7, p. 106.--A Portuguese coin, of gold, and valued at eight dollars. So called from the medallion on it of King John.