While thus giving our attention to the more purely political questions as they arise, Liberals must never forget that the poor we always have with us. Ours is a gospel of hope for the oppressed; it must equally be a gospel of hope for the hard-working. We want our working men to be civil, not servile; our working women to use courtesy, and not a curtsey. We wish to see the end of a system by which a bow is rewarded with a blanket and a curtsey with coal. The man who too frequently bends his back is likely to become permanently affected with a stoop, and the old order of hat-touching, bowing, and scraping must disappear. We do not deny that it is right that men should respect others, but it is often forgotten that it is equally right that they should respect themselves.
In dealing with things social, as well as things political, we must always remember that it is flesh and blood with which in the result we have to deal. Some thinkers ignore sentiment, do not believe in kindness, and treat men like machines, forgetting that even machines require oil. It is not for philosophers with homes and armchairs and a settled income to ask whether life is worth living; that question is for the poor and the lowly and the down-trodden, to whom the struggle for existence is not a matter for theorizing or moral-drawing, but is a never-ending, heart-breaking, soul-destroying reality.
So, if Liberalism is to live, it must be liberal in fact as well as in name. A Liberal who talks of equal rights on the platform and swears at his servants at home, who waxes wroth against a national oppressor and treats those poorer than himself like serfs, is as little deserving of respect as a Liberal policy which solely considers the externals of either liberty or life. A programme based upon such a policy must fail, and deserves to fail; and if we are to have a platform at all, it must be one upon which the rich man and the son of toil can stand side by side.
XXXVIII.—HOW IS THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME TO BE ATTAINED?
It is natural to ask how, when the Liberal programme has been framed, it is to be attained. Measures no more come with wishing than winds with whistling; and if our principles are to be put into practice, it will only be by our joining those of similar mind.
Not every politician, even if his ideas be sound, is a practical man. The disposition to insist that no bread is better than half a loaf is one that commends itself to me neither in business nor in daily life, but it is one upon which many a man of Liberal leanings acts, to the detriment of the principles he professes to hold dear. Insistence upon the one point to the exclusion of the ninety-nine, and readiness to join enemies who disagree on the whole hundred rather than friends who disagree on only the one, are qualities unpleasantly prominent in many otherwise worthy men. It cannot too often be urged that politics, like business or married life, can only be carried on by occasional give-and-take. The partner who persists in always having his own way; the husband who is ever asserting authority over his wife; and the politician who will never yield an iota to his friends—all are alike objectionable, and deserve no particle of consideration from those around them.
A spurious independence is another hindrance in the path of progress. Faith without works is occasionally worth commendation in public life; but one must be certain that the faith is genuine, and for most political “independence,” that cannot be claimed. Diseased vanity, disappointed ambition, and deliberate place-hunting have more to do with that kind of thing than devotion to principle. “The fact is that individualism is very often a mere cloak for selfishness; it is the name with which pedants justify the pragmatic intolerance which will not yield one jot of personal claim or unsatisfied vanity to secure the triumph of the noblest cause and the highest principles.” When Mr. Chamberlain wrote those words he was undoubtedly right.