Promoting good citizenship

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

Another form of civic apathy is the reluctance to undertake civic functions. In England this is not discoverable in any want of candidates for Parliament. They abound, though sometimes the fittest men prefer ease or business success to public life. But seats upon local authorities and especially upon municipal councils and district councils, seldom attract the best ability of the local community. In English and Scottish cities the leading commercial, financial, and professional men do not often appear as candidates, leaving the work to persons who are not indeed incompetent, being usually intelligent business men, but whose education and talents are sometimes below the level of the functions which these bodies discharge. No great harm has followed, because our city councillors are almost always honest. Local public opinion is vigilant and exacting, so a high standard of probity is maintained. But municipalities have latterly embarked on so many kinds of new work, and the revenues of the greater cities have so grown, that not merely business capacity and experience, but a large grasp of economic principles is required. This is no less true here in America, yet I gather that here it is found even more difficult than in Europe to secure the presence of able administrators in city councils.

A man engaged in a large business who takes up municipal work may doubtless find that he is making a pecuniary sacrifice. But if he has already an income sufficient for his comfort, may it not be his best way of serving his fellow-men?

Many such men do serve as governors or trustees of educational or other public institutions which make nearly as great a demand on their time as the membership of a public body would. Others, in Europe, if less frequently here, give to amusement much more of their leisure than the needs of recreation and health require. This is often due rather to thoughtlessness than to a conscious indifference to the call of duty.

Some of your political reformers have dwelt on the difficulties which party organizations, specially powerful in the United States, place in the way of educated and public-spirited men seeking to enter politics. There may be truth in this as regards the lower districts of the larger cities, but one can scarcely think it generally true even of the cities. More frequently it is alleged that the work of local politics is disagreeable, bringing a man into contact with vulgar people and exposing him to misrepresentation and abuse.

This is an excuse for abstention which ought never to be heard in a democratic country. If politics are anywhere vulgar, they ought not to be suffered to remain vulgar, as they will remain if the better educated citizens keep aloof. They involve the highest interests of the nation or the city. The way in which they are handled is a lesson to the people either in honesty or in knavery. The best element in a community cannot afford to let its interests be the sport of self-seekers or rogues. Moreover, the loss by maladministration or robbery, large as it may sometimes be, is a less serious evil than is the damage to public morals. If those who have the manners and speak the language of educated men refuse to enter practical politics, they must cease to complain of a want of refinement in politics. In reality, good manners are the best way in which to meet rudeness; and he who is too thin-skinned to disregard abuse confesses his own want of manliness. The mass of the people, even those who are neither educated nor fastidious, know honesty when they see it, and discount such abuse. When a man is firm and upright, nothing better braces him up and fits him to serve his country than to be attacked on the platform or in the press for faults he has not committed. It puts him on his mettle. It toughens his fibre. It gives him self-control and teaches him how to do right in the way which is least exposed to misrepresentation. It nerves his courage for the far more difficult trials which come when friends as well as opponents censure him because honour and obedience to his conscience have required him to take an unpopular line and speak unwelcome truths. A little persecution for righteousness’ sake is a wholesome thing.

The deficient sense of civic duty, though most frequently noted in the form of a neglect to vote, is really more general and serious in the neglect to think. Were it possible to have statistics to show what percentage of those who vote reflect upon the vote they have to give, there would in no country be found a large percentage. Yet what is the worth of a vote except as the expression of a considered opinion? The act of marking a ballot is nothing unless the mark carries with it a judgment, the preference of a good candidate to a bad one, the approval of one policy offered the people, the rejection of another. The citizen owes it to the community to inform himself about the questions submitted for his decision, and weigh the arguments on each side; or if the issue be one rather of persons than of policies, to learn all he can regarding the merits of the candidates offered to his choice.

How many voters really trouble themselves to do this? One in five? One in ten? One in twenty?

It may be asked, How can they do it? What means have they of studying public questions and reaching just conclusions? If the means are wanting, can we blame them if they do not think? If they feel they do not understand, can we blame them if they do not vote? In every free country the suffrage is now so wide that the great majority of the voters have to labour for their daily bread. In most European countries many are imperfectly educated. In the rural districts they read with difficulty, see either no newspaper or one which helps them but little, lead isolated lives in which there are scanty opportunities for learning what passes, so that the best they can do seems to be to ask advice from the priest, or the village schoolmaster, or take advice from their landlord or their employer. In the northern parts of the United States and also in Canada, the native population has indeed received a fair instruction, and reads newspapers; but the mass of voters is swelled by a crowd of recent immigrants, most of whom cannot read English and know nothing of your institutions.

Broadly speaking, in modern countries ruled by universal suffrage the Average Citizen has not the means of adequately discharging the function which the constitution throws upon him of following, examining, and judging those problems of statesmanship which the ever-growing range of government administration and the ever-increasing complexity of our civilization set before him as a voter to whom issues of policy are submitted.

As things stand, he votes, when he votes, not from knowledge, but as his party or his favourite newspaper bids him, or according to his predilection for some particular leader. Unless it be held that every man has a natural and indefeasible right to a share in the government of the country in which he resides, the ground for giving that share would seem to be the competence of the recipient and the belief that his sharing will promote the general welfare. So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country.[2] The facts contradict this assumption.