VII.—WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES?
After this recital of Liberal deeds, it may fairly be asked, “What are Liberal principles?” and these it is not easy to define off-hand. There are certain general truths which are the commonplaces of both parties, and no serious attempt has yet been made to lay down a system of principles with which none except Liberals can agree. But there are differences that underlie the action of the two parties which are unmistakable, and are worth finding out.
If one were to ask the first half-dozen Liberals he met for a definition of their principles, varying and perhaps vague replies would be received. For in politics, as in other matters that combine speculation with practical action, it is only the few who speculate, while the many are content to act. And even most of those who tried to answer would be apt to reply that Liberal principles could be summed up in the old party watch-word—“Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform,” thus confounding Liberal principles with Liberal aims.
That these aims are well worth striving for has long been an accepted doctrine of the party; but, in trying to gain them, we have to adapt them to circumstances, and are not called upon in every single emergency to push them to their logical extent. Logic, after all, is only a pair of spectacles, not eyesight itself; and attempts to arrange human affairs upon too precise a basis frequently end, as France so often has shown, in failure. We long for peace, but not for peace at any price; we ask for retrenchment, but not an indiscriminate paring down of expenditure for the sake of showing a saving; and we struggle for reform, but not to cut all the branches off the trees on the chance of improving their appearance.
Before, in fact, we have been able to struggle at all for these or any other points in politics, certain principles have had to be acted upon by generations of progressive thinkers, which have developed and strengthened our liberties. It is, perhaps, presumptuous to attempt to lay down in a few words a basis of Liberal principle, but I would submit that that basis may be found in the contention that
All men should be equal before the law;
that, as a consequence,
All should have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of action;