In the second lecture, “Private Self-Interest,” Mr. Bryce states the causes which produce a body of citizens who care more about their own advancement than about the welfare of the country. The most important of these causes are tariff issues, appropriations of public money for local interests, governmental contracts, public officeholding,—all representing “the insidious power of money which knows how to play upon the self-interest of voters and legislators, polluting at its source the spring of Civic Duty.”
The third lecture considers party spirit as a hindrance to citizenship. Mr. Bryce acknowledges the practical necessity for parties in the management of popular governments, and also the perplexing difficulties of a party leader who must decide between conscience and party. There is nevertheless but one course open to him: he must follow his conscience; only he must carefully distinguish between conscience and angular independence which is lacking in common sense and in willingness to defer to others in unimportant matters. For the average man the question is a simple one; relieved of the burdens of party leadership, he should follow his intelligence rather than his party. A large number of independent voters secures most effectively the right administration of public business.
The last lecture in the series, “How to Overcome the Obstacles to Good Citizenship,” suggests various means by which a more satisfactory body of citizens may be secured. In method and style this lecture is illustrative of the author’s peculiar strength in exposition.
Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for the lucid organization of a wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness—qualities which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the spirit of the one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals. Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in his Studies in Contemporary Biography. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of the Nation, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous, persuasive English is one of the qualities which has made him in a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide influence.
However helpful Mr. Bryce’s method may be for the student who is attempting to understand and master the technique of successful English, it is the subject-matter which is primarily of importance. It is valuable for the student since it may serve to stimulate the investigation and expression of certain questions connected with the administration of public matters in his own town or city; and it may also suggest the explanation and judgment of measures proposed to secure better government, such as the Referendum. But the essential worth of the material lies in the fact that it is a tonic for relaxed vigilance in public affairs. It would be well to require every citizen of the United States to read in school days The American Commonwealth; one ventures to say that there would be, as a result, a steady advancement in the right understanding and fulfillment of civic duties; but even a limited acquaintance with Mr. Bryce should serve to define in clearer terms the elements of a sane and effective patriotism. And Mr. Bryce’s own life, unfalteringly and resolutely devoted to a just administration of governments, together with its unfailing graciousness in the most trying situations, furnishes an invigorating example of the truly successful statesman.
Ada L. F. Snell.
Promoting Good Citizenship
INDOLENCE
Dr. Samuel Johnson, being once asked how he came to have made a blunder in his famous English Dictionary, is reported to have answered, “Ignorance, Sir, sheer ignorance.” Whoever has grown old enough to look back over the wasted opportunities of life—and we all of us waste more opportunities than we use—will be apt to ascribe most of his blunders to sheer indolence. Sometimes one has omitted to learn what it was needful to learn in order to proceed to action; sometimes one has shrunk from the painful effort required to reflect and decide on one’s course, leaving it to Fortune to settle what Will ought to have settled; sometimes one has, from mere self-indulgent sluggishness, let the happy moment slip.
The difference between men who succeed and men who fail is not so much as we commonly suppose due to differences in intellectual capacity. The difference which counts for most is that between activity and slackness; between the man who, observing alertly and reflecting incessantly, anticipates contingencies before they occur, and the lazy, easy-going, slowly-moving man who is roused with difficulty, will not trouble himself to look ahead, and so being taken unprepared loses or misuses the opportunities that lead to fortune. If it be true that everywhere, though perhaps less here than in European countries, energy is the exception rather than the rule, we need not wonder that men show in the discharge of civic duty the defects which they show in their own affairs. No doubt public affairs demand only a small part of their time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong where public affairs are concerned. The need for activity is not continuously present. A duty shared with many others seems less of a personal duty. If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citizens are as much bound to speak, vote, or act as each one of us is, the sense of obligation becomes to each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when one perceives the neglect of others to do their duty. The need for the good citizen’s action, no doubt, becomes then all the greater. But it is only the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater. The Average Man judges himself by the average standard and does not see why he should take more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive at a result summed up in the terrible dictum, which reveals the basic fault of democracy, “What is Everybody’s business is Nobody’s business.”