II
But certain changes, like the increased cost of living, are going on everywhere. The fact seems to be that all over the civilized world there is a noticeable falling-off in good manners in public discussion. It is useless for one country to point the finger of scorn at another, or to assume an air of injured politeness. It is more conducive to good understanding to join in a general confession of sin. We are all miserable offenders, and there is little to choose between us. The conventionalities which bind society together are like the patent glue we see advertised on the streets. A plate has been broken and then joined together. The strength of the adhesive substance is shown by the way it holds up a stone of considerable weight attached to it. The plate thus mended holds together admirably till it is put in hot water.
I have no doubt but that a conservative Chinese gentleman would tell you that since the Republic came in there has been a sad falling-off in the observance of the rules of propriety as laid down by Confucius. The Conservative newspapers of England bewail the fact that there has been a lamentable change since the present Government came in. The arch offender is "that political Mahdi, Lloyd George, whose false prophecies have made deluded dervishes of hosts of British workmen, and who has corrupted the manners of Parliament itself."
This wicked Mahdi, by his appeals to the passions of the populace, has destroyed the old English reverence for Law.
I do not know what may be the cause, but the American visitor does notice that the English attitude towards the laws of the realm is not so devout as he had been led to expect. We have from our earliest youth been taught to believe that the law-abidingness of the Englishman was innate and impeccable. It was not that, like the good man of whom the Psalmist speaks, he meditated on the law day and night. He didn't need to. Decent respect for the law was in his blood. He simply could not help conforming to it.
And this impression is confirmed by the things which the tourist goes to see. The stately mansions embowered in green and guarded by immemorial oaks are accepted as symbolic of an ordered life. The multitudinous rooks suggest security which comes from triumphant legality. No irresponsible person shoots them. When one enters a cathedral close he feels that he is in a land that frowns on the crudity of change. Here everything is a "thousand years the same." And how decent is the demeanor of a verger!
When the pilgrim from Kansas arrives at an ancient English inn he feels that he must be on his good behavior. Boots in his green apron is a lesson to him. He is not like a Western hotel bell-boy on the way to becoming something else. He knows his place. Everybody, he imagines, in this country knows his place, and there is no unseemly crowding and pushing. And what stronger proof can there be that this is a land where law is reverenced than the demeanor of a London policeman. There is no truculence about him, no show of physical force. He is so mild-eyed and soft of speech that one feels that he has been shielded from rude contact with the world. He represents the Law in a land where law is sacred. He is instinctively obeyed. He has but to wave his hand and traffic stops.
When the traveler is told that in the vicinity of the House of Commons traffic is stopped to allow a Member to cross the street, his admiration increases. Fancy a Congressman being treated with such respect! But the argument which, on the whole, makes the deepest impression is the deferential manners of the tradesmen with their habit of saying, "Thank you," apropos of nothing at all. It seems an indication of perpetual gratitude over the fact that things are as they are.
But when one comes to listen to the talk of the day one is surprised to find a surprising lack of docility. I doubt whether the Englishman has the veneration for the abstract idea of Law which is common among Americans. Indeed, he is accustomed to treat most abstractions with scant courtesy. There is nothing quite corresponding to the average American's feeling about a decision of the Supreme Court. The Law has spoken, let all the land keep silent. It seems like treason to criticize it, like anarchy to defy it.
Tennyson's words about "reverence for the laws ourselves have made" needs to be interpreted by English history. It is a peculiar kind of reverence and has many limitations. A good deal depends on what is meant by "ourselves." An act of Parliament does not at once become an object of reverence by the members of the opposition party. It was not, they feel, made by them, it was made by a Government which was violently opposed to them and which was bent on ruining the country.
It is only after a sufficient time has elapsed to allow for the partisan origin to be forgotten, and for it to become assimilated to the habits of thought and manner of life of the people that it is deeply respected. The English reverence is not for statute law, but for the common law which is the slow accretion of ages. A new enactment is treated like the new boy at school. He must submit to a period of severe hazing before he is given a place of any honor.
To the American when an act of Congress has been declared constitutional, a decent respect for the opinion of mankind seems to suggest that verbal criticism should cease. The council of perfection is that the law should be obeyed till such time as it can be repealed or explained away. If it should become a dead letter, propriety would demand that no evil should be spoken of it. Since the days of Andrew Jackson the word "nullification" has had an ugly and dangerous sound.
But to the Englishman this attitude seems somewhat superstitious. The period of opposition to a measure is not ended when it has passed Parliament and received the royal assent. The question is whether it will receive the assent of the people. Can it get itself obeyed? If it can, then its future is assured for many generations. But it must pass through an exciting period of probation.
If it is a matter that arouses much feeling the British way is for some one to disobey and take the consequences. Passive resistance—with such active measures as may make the life of the enforcers of the law a burden to them—is a recognized method of political and religious propagandism.
In periods when the national life has run most swiftly this kind of resistance to what has been considered the tyranny of lawmakers has always been notable. Emerson's "the chambers of the great are jails" was literally true of the England of the seventeenth century. Every one who made any pretension to moral leadership was intent on going to jail in behalf of some principle or another.
John Bunyan goes to jail rather than attend the parish church, George Fox goes to jail rather than take off his hat in the presence of the magistrate. Why should he do so when there was no Scripture for it? When it was said that the Scripture had nothing to say about hats, he was ready with his triumphant reference to Daniel III, 21, where it is said that the three Hebrew children wore "their coats, their hosen, their hats and their other garments" in the fiery furnace. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and kept them on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishman take his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace? Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledge any king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign. Non-juring bishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment of Parliament as to who should be king in England. Puritans and Covenanters of the more logical sort refused to accept toleration unless it were offered on their own terms. They had been a "persecuted remnant" and they proposed to remain such or know the reason why.
Beneath his crust of conformity the Briton has an admiration for these recalcitrant individuals who will neither bow the knee to Baal nor to his betters. He likes a man who is a law unto himself. Though he has little enthusiasm for the abstract "rights of man," he is a great believer in "the liberty of prophesying." The prophet is not without honor, even while he is being stoned.
Just at this time things are moving almost as rapidly as they did in the seventeenth century. There is the same clash of opinion and violence of party spirit. All sorts of non-conformities struggle for a hearing. One is reminded of that most stirring period, which is so delightful to read about, and which must have been so trying for quiet people to live through.
A host of earnest and wide-awake persons are engaged in the task of doing what they are told not to do. Their enthusiasm takes the form of resistance to some statute made or proposed.
The conscientious women who throw stones through shop windows, and lay violent hands on cabinet ministers, do so, avowedly, to bring certain laws into disrepute. They go on hunger-strikes, not in order to be released from prison, but in order to be treated as political prisoners. They insist that their methods should be recognized as acts of legitimate warfare. They may be extreme in their actions, but they are not alone in their theory.
The Insurance Law, by which all workers whose wages are below a certain sum are compulsorily insured against sickness and the losses that follow it, is just going into effect. Its provisions are necessarily complicated, and its administration must at first be difficult. The Insurance-Law Resisters are organized to nullify the act. Its enormities are held up before all eyes, and it is flouted in every possible way. According to this law, a lady is compelled to pay three-pence a week toward the insurance fund for each servant in her employ. Will she pay that three-pence? No! Though twenty acts of Parliament should declare that it must be done, she will resist. As for keeping accounts, and putting stamps in a book, she will do nothing of the kind. What is it about a stamp act that arouses such fierceness of resistance?
High-born ladies declare that they would rather go to jail than obey such a law. At a meeting at Albert Hall the Resisters were addressed by a duchess who was "supported by a man-servant." What can a mere Act of Parliament do when confronted by such a combination as that? Passive resistance takes on heroic proportions when a duchess and a man-servant confront the Law with haughty immobility.
In the mean time, Mr. Tom Mann goes to jail, amid the applause of organized labor, for advising the British soldier not to obey orders when he is commanded to fire on British working-men.
Mr. Tom Mann is a labor agitator, while Mr. Bonar Law is the leader of the Conservative party; but when it comes to legislation which he does not like, Mr. Bonar Law's language is fully as incendiary. He is not content with opposing the Irish Home Rule Bill: he gives notice that when it has become a law the opposition will be continued in a more serious form. The passage of the bill, he declares, will be the signal for civil war. Ulster will fight. Parliament may pass the Home Rule Bill, but when it does so its troubles will have just begun. Where will it find the troops to coerce the province?
One of the most distinguished Unionist Members of Parliament, addressing a great meeting at Belfast says, "You are sometimes asked whether you propose to resist the English army? I reply that even if this Government had the wickedness (which, on the whole, I believe), it is wholly lacking in the nerve required to give an order which in my deliberate judgment would shatter for years the civilization of these islands." If the Government does not have the nerve to employ its troops, "It will be for the moon-lighters and the cattle-maimers to conquer Ulster themselves, and it will be for you to show whether you are worse men, or your enemies better men, than the forefathers of you both. But I note with satisfaction that you are preparing yourselves by the practice of exercises, and by the submission to discipline, for the struggle which is not unlikely to test your determination. The Nationalists are determined to rule you. You are determined not to be ruled. A collision of wills so sharp may well defy the resources of a peaceful solution.... On this we are agreed, that the crisis has called into existence one of those supreme issues of conscience amid which the ordinary landmarks of permissible resistance to technical law are submerged."
When one goes to the Church to escape from these sharp antagonisms, he is confronted with huge placards giving notice of meetings to protest against "The Robbery of God." The robber in this case is the Government, which proposes to disendow, as well as disestablish, the Church in Wales. Noble lords denounce the outrage. Mr. Lloyd George replies by reminding their lordships that their landed estates were, before the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, Church property. If they wish to make restitution of the spoil which their ancestors took, well and good. But let them not talk about the robbery of God, while their hands are "dripping with the fat of sacrilege."
The retort is effective, but it does not make Mr. Lloyd George beloved by the people to whom it is addressed. Twitting on facts has always been considered unmannerly.