“There was no possibility of going wrong,” he said to me with curious zeal, “not a shadow of danger! It would be difficult for you to understand now how easily the system worked!” And here he sighed profoundly. “And why on earth,” he continued, “men should have destroyed such an instrument when they had it is more than I can understand. There it was in every country in Europe; there were elections; all the men voted. And mind you, the elections were not so very far apart. Most people living at one election could remember the last, so there was no time for abuses to spring up.... Well, everybody voted. If a man wanted one thing he voted one way, and if he wanted another thing he voted the other way. The people for whom he voted would then meet, and with a sense of duty which I cannot exaggerate they would work month after month exactly to reproduce the will of those who had appointed them. It was a great time!”
“Yet,” said I, “even so there must have been occasional divergences between what these people did and what the nation wanted.”
“I see what you mean,” he said, musing, “you mean that all the devotion in the world, the purest of motives and the most devoted sense of duty, could not keep the elected always in contact with the electors. You are right. But you must remember that in every country there was a machinery, with regard to the most important measures at least, which could throw the matter before the electors to be re-decided. I can remember no important occasion upon which the machinery was not brought into use.”
“But, after all, the value of the decisions of the electorate you are describing,” said I, continuing to humour him, “would depend upon the information which the electorate had received as well as upon their judgment.”
“As for their judgment,” he said, a little shortly, “it is not for our time to criticize theirs. Human judgment is not infallible, but I can well remember how in every nation of Europe it was the fixed conviction of the citizens that judgment was their chief characteristic, and especially judgment in national affairs. I cannot believe that so universal an attitude of the mind could have arisen had it not been justified. But as for information, they had the Press ... a free Press!” Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed memories affect him.
I was willing to lead him on, because this kind of illness is best met by sympathy, and also because I was not uninterested to discover how his own trade had affected him.
“You would hardly understand it,” he said sadly; “what you hear from me is nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those great houses with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as clear, from every hidden corner of the world, digested by master brains into the most lucid and terse presentment of it possible, and then whirled out on great wheels to be distributed by the thousand and the hundred thousand, to the hungry intelligence of Europe. There was nothing escaped it—nothing. In every capital were crowds of men dispatched from the other capitals of our civilization, moving with ease in the wealthiest houses, and exquisitely in touch with the most delicate phases of national life everywhere. And these men were such experts in selection that a picture of Europe as a whole was presented every morning to each particular part of Europe; and nowhere was this more successfully accomplished than in my own beloved town of London.”
“It must have been useful,” I said, “not only for the political purposes you describe, but also for investors. Indeed, I should imagine that the two things ran together.”
“You are right,” he said with interest, “the wide knowledge which even the poorest of the people possessed upon foreign affairs, through the action of the Press, was, further, of the utmost and most beneficent effect in teaching even the smallest proprietor what he need do with his capital. A discovery of metallic ore—especially of gold—a new invention, anything which might require development, was at once presented in its most exact aspect to the reader.”
“It was probably upon that account,” said I, “that property was so equally distributed, and that so general a prosperity reigned as you have often described to me.”