Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: Ten Lectures on Social Subjects

by Laurence Housman

Our politicians tell us that they rely upon the voice of the people, yet often they employ the political machine which they control, for the express purpose of evading it. A few years ago a Liberal statesman was appointed to Cabinet-rank, and had in consequence to go to his constituency for re-election. He belonged to the party which makes a particular boast of its trust in the popular verdict. But in order to make his election more safe—before his appointment became public property—he communicated to his party agent his ministerial knowledge of the coming event so that the date of the bye-election could be calculated. And the agent proceeded to book up all the public halls in the constituency over the period indicated. Then, in order that the scandal might not become too flagrant he generously released a proportion of his bookings to his Conservative opponent, but refused to release any at all to his Labour opponent; and on those nicely arranged conditions he fought his election—and got beaten.

Now that was surely discreditable conduct, for here was a statesman who, while ostensibly appealing to the voice of the people was doing his level best behind the scenes to deny to it a full and a free opportunity of expression. Yet the whole political world was in so discreditable a condition that there were actually people who thought then—and perhaps still think to-day—that that budding politician was unfairly and hardly treated when he was thereafter pursued from constituency to constituency by his cheated opponent, and successfully prevented from re-entering Parliament even to this day. Probably in other branches of life he was an upright and honourable man, but politics had affected him, as religion or social ambition has affected others, and made him a discreditable witness to the faith which he professed.

Now when you have great organisations and great institutions thus discrediting themselves by conniving at the double-dealings of those whom they would place or keep in authority—you cannot expect the honestly critical observer to continue to place their judgment above his own, or to believe (when some difficult moral problem presents itself) that there is safety for his own soul in relying upon their solution of it.

The sanction of the popular verdict in a community which is true to its professions is very great and should not lightly be set aside. But the sanction of a community or of an organisation which is false to its professions is nil. And it is in the face of such conditions (to which Society and religion always tend to revert so long as their claim is to hold power on any basis of inequality or privilege) that the individual conscience is bound to assert itself and become a resistant irrespective of the weight of numbers against it. And so, in any State where it can be said with truth that the average ethical standard for individual conduct is better than the legal standard, the duty of individual resistance to evil law begins to arise. “Bad laws,” said a wise magistrate, “have to be broken before they can be mended.” And to be broken with good effect they must be broken not by the criminal classes but by the martyrs and the reformers. It is not without significance that every great moral change in history has been brought about by lawbreakers and by resistance to authority.

When the English Nonconformists of two or three centuries ago were fighting governments and breaking laws, they were doing so in defence of a determination to hold doctrines often of a ridiculous kind and productive of a very narrow and bigoted form of religious teaching—a form which, had it obtained the upper hand and secured a general allegiance, might have done the State harm and not good. But, however egregious and even pernicious their doctrine, the justice (and even the value) of the principle for which they contended was not affected thereby. The life of the spirit must take its chance in contact with the life material, and Society must have faith that all true and vital principles will (given a free field and no favour) hold their own against whatever opponents. That is the true faith to which Society is called to-day—but which it certainly does not follow—especially not in war time.

We talk a great deal about liberty, democratic principle, and government by majority; but if those ideals have any real meaning, they mean that—given free trade in ideas and in propaganda on all ethical and moral questions—you have got to trust your community to choose what it thinks good. And to refuse to the general community the means of deciding for itself by the utmost freedom of discussion, is—in a State based on these principles—the most discreditable conduct imaginable.

But of what worth, you may ask, is this moral sanction of a majority? I am not myself greatly enamoured of majority rule in the sense of a majority exercising compulsion on a minority. Compulsion by a majority I should often think it a duty to resist. But to the testimony of a majority that refrained from compulsion I should attach the greatest possible weight. There you would get a public opinion which by its own self-restraint and scrupulous moderation of conduct would be of the highest moral value. For Society fearlessly to admit the full and open advocacy of that which it disapproves is the finest proof I can imagine of its moral stability, and of its faith in the social principles it lives by.

Broadly speaking—with the exception I have already referred to—that view is now admitted in matters of religion; you may hold and you may advocate what religious principles you like. But you are not so free to hold and advocate social and ethical principles. The veto of Society has shifted, and you are far less likely to incur opprobrium and ostracism to-day if you advocate polytheism than if you advocate polygamy or pacifism. And the reason for this, I take to be, that the religion of modern Society is no longer doctrinal but ethical; and so our tendency is to inhibit new ethical teaching though we would not for a moment countenance the inhibition of new doctrinal teaching.

That is our temptation, and I think that in the coming decade there will be a great fight about it; we are not so prepared as we ought to be to allow a free criticism of those social institutions on which our ideas of moral conduct are based, even when they cover (as at present constituted) a vast amount of double-dealing.