It is the clear perception of this circumstance—the subordination of that mass which we commonly designate “the people,” the appeal of a disinherited class, of “the army of workers,” as Lord Morley said, “who make the most painful sacrifices for the continuous nutrition of the social organisation,” which constitutes the decisive factor in shaping the rebel’s mind and course of life. It sometimes happens that a combination of circumstances throws the need of the disinherited into sharp relief, and the ensuing ferment creates the leader ad hoc, as it were. The disintegration of the old feudal bonds in England liberated the social discontent which roused John Ball and made him the inspirer of the Peasants’ Revolt. Dr. Lindsay in his History of the Reformation tells us of the existence of an active and wide-spread evangelical piety in Germany long before the Reformation, and it was the sharp contrast between the spiritual hunger of the people and the barren externality and corruption of mediæval ecclesiasticism, at last brought to a head by Tetzel’s peddling of indulgences, that precipitated Luther’s crisis and with it the Reformation. The crisis in the early development of Kansas undoubtedly marked a stage in John Brown’s development. But whether we may be able or not to trace decisive occasions of this kind in the life of the rebel, the common mark of the rebel mind is a passion for the common people. It has been said of Rousseau that “it was because he had seen the wrongs of the poor not from without but from within, not as a pitying spectator but as one of their own company, that he by and by brought such fire to the attack of the old order and changed the blank practice of the older philosophers into a deadly affair of ball and shell.” Similarly Professor Dowden says of Shelley that “it was the sufferings of the industrious poor that especially claimed his sympathy; and he thought of publishing for them a series of popular songs which should inspire them with heart and hope.”[[23]] Tolstoi, according to Romain Rolland, had for the labouring people a “strange affection, absolutely genuine,” which his repeated disillusionments were powerless to shake. Sometimes, as in the case of Glendower, Mazzini and “nationalist” rebels generally, it is not the case of a disinherited class but of an oppressed nation which shapes the rebel’s course. The great rebel in every case is made by the lure of the disinherited.

[23]. Dowden, Life of Shelley, p. 437. The “Songs and Poems for the Men of England,” were published in 1819, after Shelley’s death.

But it is not only compassion for the disinherited which moves the rebel, but a profound faith in their power to work out their own salvation. The appeal to the people has been of the essence of rebel policy. The Peasants’ Revolt in England was stimulated by John Ball’s doggerel verse, which was specially intended to stir discontent. “Wyclif,” says John Richard Green, “appealed, and the appeal is memorable as the first of such a kind in our history, to England at large. With an amazing industry, he issued tract after tract in the tongue of the people itself.” He wrote “in the rough, clear homely English” of the ploughman and trader of his day. The Tractarians of a later date were only imitating their great Oxford precursor when they went distributing their tracts from door to door. But Wyclif did not confine his popular appeal to tracts. His order of “poor preachers,” “whose coarse sermons and long russet dress moved the laughter of the clergy, formed a priceless organisation for the diffusion of their master’s teaching.” John Brown addressed his propaganda at an early stage to the negro; and it is hardly doubtful that his hopes chiefly centred at last upon a general rising of negroes in support of his campaign. Long before, John Hus had carried his appeal to the Bohemian people, as Arnauld of Port Royal, convicted of Jansenism at the Sorbonne, designed to place his case before the French. Pascal’s Provincial Letters were deliberately composed as an appeal from the ecclesiastics to the public. The great emphasis upon public preaching during the Reformation was derived from this same faith in the efficacy of popular appeal. It is sufficiently well known to need no further remark than the reminder that in this way the rebel has made important contributions to the literary as well as the social and religious history of his people.

The paradox of the rebel, then, is this, that while he has been assailed as a subverter of social order, his own driving force has been a social sense quicker and broader than that of his orthodox contemporaries. He attacked the existing social organisation only to break down walls that hindered fellowship. He heard the call of the disinherited and it became in his heart a call to lead them into that heritage of opportunity of which they were cheated by the cupidity and cunning of the great. He assailed the Bastilles of constituted authority, and battered hoary institutions that people might—at this point or that—come into their own. He sought to fling out wide the frontiers of privilege that the poor and the outcast might come into a world of larger life.

Mr. Wells has recently told us that “from the first dawn of the human story” man has been “pursuing the boundary of his possible community.” But the prime agent of this pursuit has been the dissenter. Dissent has proved itself to be the growing point of society. Yet the dissenter has been stoned and hanged by his contemporaries. Must it ever be so? Is there no conceivable social order in which it shall be unnecessary to treat the moral pioneer as a criminal? As yet we have not achieved it. Our limit hitherto has been a kind of toleration rather grudgingly accorded so long as the dissenter does not disturb us over much. But no society will ever be truly free until it has reached the point not only of frank toleration but of the serious encouragement of dissenting opinion. For dissent is after all only a manifestation of the “elan vitale” of a living society; and it should be greeted with a cheer. A society incapable of dissent or of tolerating it has entered upon its last phase.

III

The problem of dissent, however, goes deeper than the realm of opinion. Dissenting opinion would not trouble Israel so long as it remained pure opinion. The difficulty begins when opinion is translated into action. William James said that a belief always discharges itself in an act; and this supplies us with a convenient working distinction between a belief and an opinion. But this brings us into a region where other forces begin to operate, and particularly that inner constraint to act in obedience to one’s belief which we call conscience. From the days when Plato spoke of his [Greek: daimôn] to ours, the dissenter has always claimed that he acted because he “could do no other.” He submitted to what he believed to be the instance of a moral order from which he could not appeal. His contemporaries either derided his conscience or charged him with hypocrisy; but it is worth some consideration that the contemporary judgment was reversed in almost every case.

It is essential that we should attempt to work out the problem of the relation of conscience to the achievement of liberty in view of the extreme danger which lurks in the recent contemptuous criticism of the conscientious objector. “The duty of obeying conscience at all hazards” (to quote Newman), is valid only so long as we agree with Newman that conscience is “the aboriginal vicar of Christ,” that is to say, that it is the inner embodiment of an irrevocable and infrangible moral order. This does not, of course, imply that every “conscientious objector” interprets the moral order rightly, but simply that it is, as and in so far as he sees it, the moral order for him. His judgment may be fallacious; but what is in question is not so much the soundness of his judgment as the sincerity of his conviction; and we are rather apt to forget that moral sincerity is a greater asset to society than a logical correctitude. It is difficult to see how any one who takes a “religious” view of the world can escape this conviction. Even Lord Morley, who speaks of “the higher expediencies” where a religious believer might speak of an ultimate moral order, reaches the judgment that this is a region in which no man ought to compromise. It is on this account singular that the most drastic criticism of the conscientious objector, both in England and America, has come from ministers of religion; and it is more singular still that this severity of criticism should have chiefly come from ministers of the non-authoritarian churches which were born out of the struggle for the rights of conscience.

When Gladstone challenged English Catholics to say how they would act in the event of a collision between the commands of the Queen and the Pope, the greatest of modern English Catholics took up the gage and gave answer. “It is my rule,” said Newman, “both to obey the one and to obey the other; but that there is no rule in this world without exceptions; and that if either the Pope or the Queen demanded of me an ‘Absolute Obedience,’ he or she would be transgressing the laws of human nature and human society. I give an absolute obedience to neither. Further, if ever this double allegiance pulled me in contrary ways which in this age of the world I think it never will, then I should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all rule and must be decided on its own merits. I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the Bishops and Clergy around me, what my confessor, what my friends whom I revered, and if, after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own judgment and my own conscience.”[[24]] He then goes on to insist upon “the duty of obeying our conscience at all hazards” and supports his view by an appeal to weighty Roman authorities. “Certainly,” he concluded, “if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”[[25]]

[24]. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 69. (New York, 1875.)