How perfect the description! How exactly in those eight words Euripides draws the picture of the ocean; the long grey heaving swell, the darker steel-grey on the shadowed slope of the surface waves, and the foam on their breaking crests. Our thoughts flow back as we gaze to the times long ago, when the earth belonged to other races as it now belongs to us. The ocean is the same as it was. Their eyes saw it as we see it:
Time writes no wrinkle on that azure brow.
Nor is the ocean alone the same. Human nature is still vexed with the same problems, mocked with the same hopes, wandering after the same illusions. The sea affected the Greeks as it affects us, and was equally dear to them. It was a Greek who said, 'The sea washes off all the ills of men;' the 'stainless one' as Æschylus called it—the eternally pure. On long voyages I take Greeks as my best companions. I had Plato with me on my way home from the West Indies. He lived and wrote in an age like ours, when religion had become a debatable subject on which every one had his opinion, and democracy was master of the civilised world, and the Mediterranean states were running wild after liberty, preparatory to the bursting of the bubble. Looking out on such a world Plato left thoughts behind him the very language of which is as full of application to our own larger world as if it was written yesterday. It throws light on small things as well as large, and interprets alike the condition of the islands which I had left, the condition of England, the condition of all civilised countries in this modern epoch.
The chief characteristic of this age, as it was the chief characteristic of Plato's, is the struggle for what we call the 'rights of man.' In other times the thing insisted on was that men should do what was 'right' as something due to a higher authority. Now the demand is for what is called their 'rights' as something due to themselves, and among these rights is a right to liberty; liberty meaning the utmost possible freedom of every man consistent with the freedom of others, and the abolition of every kind of authority of one man over another. It is with this view that we have introduced popular suffrage, that we give everyone a vote, or aim at giving it, as the highest political perfection.
We turn to Plato and we find: 'In a healthy community there ought to be some authority over every single man and woman. No person—not one—ought to act on his or her judgment alone even in the smallest trifle. The soldier on a campaign obeys his commander in little things as well as great. The safety of the army requires it. But it is in peace as it is in war, and there is no difference. Every person should be trained from childhood to rule and to be ruled. So only can the life of man, and the life of all creatures dependent on him, be delivered from anarchy.'
It is worth while to observe how diametrically opposite to our notions on this subject were the notions of a man of the finest intellect, with the fullest opportunities of observation, and every one of whose estimates of things was confirmed by the event. Such a discipline as he recommends never existed in any community of men except perhaps among the religious orders in the enthusiasm of their first institution, nor would a society be long tolerable in which it was tried. Communities, however, have existed where people have thought more of their obligations than of their 'rights,' more of the welfare of their country, or of the success of a cause to which they have devoted themselves, than of their personal pleasure or interest—have preferred the wise leading of superior men to their own wills and wishes. Nay, perhaps no community has ever continued long, or has made a mark in the world of serious significance, where society has not been graduated in degrees, and there have not been deeper and stronger bands of coherence than the fluctuating votes of majorities.
Times are changed we are told. We live in a new era, when public opinion is king, and no other rule is possible; public opinion, as expressed in the press and on the platform, and by the deliberately chosen representatives of the people. Every question can be discussed and argued, all sides of it can be heard, and the nation makes up its mind. The collective judgment of all is wiser than the wisest single man—securus judicat orbis.
Give the public time, and I believe this to be true; general opinion does in the long run form a right estimate of most persons and of most things. As surely its immediate impulses are almost invariably in directions which it afterwards regrets and repudiates, and therefore constitutions which have no surer basis than the popular judgment, as it shifts from year to year or parliament to parliament, are built on foundations looser than sand.
In concluding this book I have a few more words to say on the subject, so ardently canvassed, of Imperial federation. It seems so easy. You have only to form a new parliament in which the colonies shall be represented according to numbers, while each colony will retain its own for its own local purposes. Local administration is demanded everywhere; England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, can each have theirs, and the vexed question of Home Rule can be disposed of in the reconstruction of the whole. A central parliament can then be formed in which the parts can all be represented in proportion to their number; and a cabinet can be selected out of this for the management of Imperial concerns. Nothing more is necessary; the thing will be done.
So in a hundred forms, but all on the same principle, schemes of Imperial union have fallen under my eye. I should myself judge from experience of what democratically elected parliaments are growing into, that at the first session of such a body the satellites would fly off into space, shattered perhaps themselves in the process. We have parliaments enough already, and if no better device can be found than by adding another to the number, the rash spirit of innovation has not yet gone far enough to fling our ancient constitution into the crucible on so wild a chance.