But there is one obvious difference between the governors and the governed. In the action of the former there is an assertion of authority—an underlying assumption of a power to improve matters by regulating them. In the governed there is no such assumption of moral superiority; the governed are there whether they like it or no; and the laws which condition their lives are laid upon them by a power beyond themselves, even when—under a representative system—they have secured some minute voice in regard to their shaping.
The governors, therefore, by their assumption of an ability to improve matters, are in a fiduciary position to the rest of the community—the onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them and not upon the people. It is their duty to pacify the governed; it is not the duty of the governed to pacify them; and if they fail in the work of pacification, which is their main raison d’être, they, and not the community, have to meet the charge of functional incompetence.
Government is a function; being governed is not a function. Humanity in all stages of civilization or of savagery has fallen subject to government without being asked to show any certificate of its fitness to be governed. It is therefore, the governors who have to prove themselves fit—not the governed; and if a penal code be found, or declared, necessary to enable the governors to secure peace and order, then (if your system be just and equal) the penal code should be applicable in at least equal severity to the governors who impose it, when instead of producing contentment, it produces unrest and disorder. Liability to impeachment and condemnation under laws of an equal stringency would be, I think, a very wholesome corrective to the legislative action of M.P.’s voting coercive measures which only result in failure. I fancy that under such conditions there would have been, for instance, a far smaller majority for the “Cat and Mouse Act,” the futility of which soon became so ridiculously apparent. Imprisonment with compulsory starvation, followed by release upon a medical certificate, and then by a fresh term of imprisonment would have been a most enlightening form of vacation for certain members of Parliament. And until we have secured in this country a much more equal adjustment of the relations between governors and governed, some such corrective for vindictive legislation is certainly needed.
It is not a sufficient equivalent, or safeguard to popular liberty, to be able merely to dismiss from office a Minister of the Crown who has by his administrative blunders brought citizens to death and property to destruction, or who has sedulously manufactured criminals out of a class whose will is to be law-abiding. He, if anybody, deserves punishment; and Parliaments (backed by whatever majority) which, through maintaining political inequalities, produce such results, are under the same condemnation. The onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them; and if, commissioned to secure peace and order, they produce only unrest and disorder, then the proof is against them.
Listen to these remarkable words by so great a supporter of constitutional authority as Edmund Burke:
“Nations,” he says, “are not primarily ruled by laws, still less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same methods and on the same principles by which an individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors—by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it. I mean—when public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted: not when government is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the multitude, in which sometimes one and sometimes the other is uppermost, in which they alternately yield and prevail in a series of contemptible victories and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought, therefore, to be the first study of the statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.”
And further on he says:
“In all disputes between them (the governed) and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed that there has been something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error and not their crime. But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design as well as by mistake.... And if this presumption in favour of the subject against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation; because it is more easy to change an administration than to reform a people.”
There, then, is a great authority, Edmund Burke, maintaining that governments are more liable to wilful error than those whom they govern—and the main value of majority rule is that it tends to bring the presumption round to the side of government, by making the voice of government also the voice of the people. I do not think the claims of majority rule can be put on any higher footing than that—that if the government is really expressive of a governed majority (and not merely of a majority to whom the constitution has accorded licence and privilege above its fellows) then the favourable presumption in any conflict comes round to the side of government.
But if government claims its sanction from a majority, then we must enquire further into the composition and character of that majority; and yet further whether the mandate of that majority is the output of its conscience or merely of its self-interest; we must watch its workings, and see what really brings it to the poll—its moral sense, its pleasure in motor-cars, or its inclination (based on a national love of sport) to select and to back the winner.