Promoting good citizenship

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

[4] Since the above was written a Royal Commission has been appointed in Britain to examine divers questions relating to elections, and is investigating this, among other plans.

Attempts have been made in some places to overcome the indifference of citizens to their duty by fining those who, without sufficient excuse, fail to vote. This plan of Obligatory Voting, as it is called, finds favour in some Swiss cantons and in Belgium, but is too uncongenial to the habits of England or of the United States to be worth considering as a practical measure in either country. Moreover, the neglect to vote is no very serious evil in either country, at least as regards the more important elections. Swiss legislation on the subject is evidence not so much of indifference among the citizens of that country as of the high standard of public duty they are expected to reach.

When we come to the proposals made both here and in England for the reference of proposals to a direct popular vote, we come to a question of real practical importance. I wish that I had time to state to you and to examine the arguments both for and against this mode of legislation, which has been practised for many years in Switzerland with a virtually unanimous approval, and has been applied pretty freely in some of your States. It has taken two forms. One is the so-called Initiative, under which a section of the electors (being a number, or a proportion, prescribed by law) may propose a law upon which the people vote. This is being tried in Switzerland, but so far as I have been able to gather, has not yet proved its utility. The balance of skilled opinion seems to incline against it. The other is called the Referendum, and consists in the submission to popular vote of measures already passed by the legislative body. In this form the reference of laws to the people undoubtedly sharpens the interest of the ordinary citizen in the conduct of public affairs. The Swiss voters, at any rate, take pains to inform themselves on the merits of the measures submitted to them. These are widely and acutely canvassed at public meetings, and in the press. A large vote is usually cast, and all, whether or no they approve the result, agree that it is an intelligent, not a heedless, vote. The Swiss do not seem to think that the power and dignity of the legislature is weakened, as some might expect it to be, when their final voice is thus superseded by that of the people. All I need now ask you to note and remember is that the practice of bringing political issues directly before the people, whatever its drawbacks, does tend to diminish both that indolence and indifference which is pretty common among European voters. It requires every citizen to think for himself and deliver his vote upon all the more important measures, and it also reduces the power of that Party Spirit which everywhere distracts men’s minds from the real merits of the questions before the country. When a law is submitted to the Swiss people for their judgment, their decision nowise affects either the Executive or the Legislature. The law may be rejected by the people, but the officials who drafted the law continue to hold office. The party which brought it in and carried it through the Legislature is not deemed to have been censured or weakened by the fact of its ultimate rejection. That party spirit is less strong in Switzerland than in any other free country (except perhaps Norway) may be largely attributed to this disjunction of the deciding voice in legislation from those governmental organs which every political party seeks to control. The Swiss voter is to-day an exceptionally intelligent and patriotic citizen, fitter to exercise the function of direct legislation than perhaps any other citizen in Europe, and the practice of directly legislating has doubtless helped to train him for the function.

It must, however, be admitted that the circumstances of that little republic and its cantons are too peculiar to make it safe to draw inferences from Swiss experience to large countries like Britain and France, the political life of which is highly centralized. The States of your Union may appear to offer a better field, and the results of the various experiments which some of them (such as Oklahoma) are trying will be watched with interest by Europeans.

In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. How far government ought to include within its functions schemes for increasing national wealth, otherwise than by such means (being means which a government alone can employ because to be effective they must be done on a great scale) as the improving of education, the diffusing of knowledge, the providing means of transportation, the conservation of natural resources, and so forth, may be matter for debate. But at any rate government ought to avoid measures tending to enrich any one person or group of persons at the expense of the citizens generally. Common justice requires that. Accordingly, all contracts should be made on the terms best for the public, and if possible by open bidding. Franchises, if not reserved by the public authority for itself, should be granted only for limited times and so as to secure the interests of the community, whether by way of a rent payable to the city or county treasury or otherwise. Public employees should not be made into a privileged class, to which there is given larger pay than other workers of the same class and capacity receive. All bills promoted by a private person, firm, or company looking to his or their pecuniary advantage ought to be closely scrutinized by some responsible public authority. In England we draw a sharp distinction between such bills and general public legislation, and we submit the former to a quasi-judicial examination by a Parliamentary committee in order to avoid possible jobs or scandals or losses to the public. As respects general legislation, i. e., that which is not in its terms local or personal, it may be difficult or impossible to prevent a law from incidentally benefiting one group or class of men and injuring another. But everything that can be done ought to be done to prevent any set of men from abusing legislation to serve their own interest. If there be truth in what one hears about the groups which in France, Belgium, and Germany have, through political pressure, obtained by law bounties benefiting their industries, or tariffs specially favourable to their own commercial enterprises, the danger that the general taxpayer, or the consumer, may be sacrificed to these private interests, is a real danger. To remove the occasion and the opportunities for the exercise of such pressure, which is likely to be often exerted in a covert way and to warp or pervert the legislator’s mind, is to diminish a temptation and to remove a stumbling block that lies in the path of civic duty. Whether a man be in theory a Protectionist or a Free Trader, whether or not he desires to nationalize public utilities, he must recognize the dangers incident to the passing of laws which influential groups of wealthy men may have a personal interest in promoting or resisting, because they offer a prospect of gain sufficiently large to make it worth while to “get at” legislatures and officials. Such dangers arise in all governments. That which makes them formidable in democracies is the fact that the interest of each individual citizen in protecting himself and the public against the selfish groups may be so small an interest that everybody neglects it, and the groups get their way.

As we have been considering improvements in the machinery of government, this would be a fitting place for a discussion of what you call Primary Election Laws, which are intended both to reduce the power of party organizations and to stimulate the personal zeal of the voter by making it easier for him to influence the selection of a candidate. We have, however, in Europe, nothing corresponding to the Primary Laws of American States, nothing which recognizes a political party as a concrete body, nothing which deals with the mode of selecting candidates; and many of you doubtless know better than I do what has been the effect of these American enactments and whether they have really roused the ordinary citizen to bestir himself and to assert his independence of such party organizations as may have heretofore interfered with it. Europeans do not take kindly to the notion of giving statutory recognition to a Party, and they doubt whether the astuteness of those whom you call “machine politicians” may not succeed in getting hold of the new statutory Primaries as they did of the old ones. Be the merits of the new legislation what they may, one must hope that its existence will not induce the friends of reform to relax their efforts to reduce in other ways the power of political “Machines.”

One obvious expedient to which good citizens may resort for keeping other citizens up to the mark is to be found in the enactment and enforcement of stringent laws against breaches of public trust. I took occasion, in referring to the practices of bribery and treating at elections, to note the wholesome effect of the statute passed in England in 1883 for repressing those offences. Although St. Paul has told us that he who is under grace does not need to be under the law, Christianity has not yet gone far enough to enable any of us to dispense with the moral force law can exert, both directly through the penalties it imposes and indirectly through the type of conduct which it exhorts the community to maintain. Laws may do much to raise and sustain the tone of all the persons engaged in public affairs as officials or as legislators, not only by appealing to their conscience, but by giving them a quick and easy reply to those who seek improper favours from them. A statute may express the best conscience of the whole people and set the standard they approve, even where the practice of most individuals falls short of the standard. If the prosecuting authorities and the courts do their duty unflinchingly, without regard to the social position of the offender, a statute may bring the practice of ordinary men up to the level of that collective conscience of the nation which it embodies.

In every walk of life a class of persons constantly subject to a particular set of temptations is apt to form habits, due to the pressure of those temptations, which are below what the conscience of the better men in the community approves. The aim of legislation, as expressing that best conscience of the whole community, ought to be to correct or extirpate those habits and make each particular class understand that it is not to be excused because it has special temptations and thinks its own sins venial. Even the men who yield to the temptations peculiar to their own class are willing to join in condemning those who yield to some other kind of temptation. Thus the “better conscience” may succeed in screwing up one class after another to a higher level. But the enactment of a law is not enough. It must be strictly enforced. Procedure must be prompt. Juries must be firm. Technicalities must not be suffered to obstruct the march of justice. Sentences must be carried out, else the statute will become, as statutes often have become, a record of aspiration rather than of accomplishment.

To contrive plans by which the interest of the citizen in public affairs shall be aroused and sustained, is far easier than to induce the citizen to use and to go on using, year in and year out, the contrivances and opportunities provided for his benefit. Yet it is from the heart and will of the citizen that all real and lasting improvements must proceed. In the words of the Gospel, it is the inside of the cup and platter that must be made clean. The central problem of civic duty is the ethical problem. Indifference, selfish interests, the excesses of party spirit, will all begin to disappear as civic life is lifted on to a higher plane, and as the number of those who, standing on that higher plane, will apply a strict test to their own conduct and to that of their leaders, realizing and striving to discharge their responsibilities, goes on steadily increasing until they come to form the majority of the people. What we have called “the better conscience” must be grafted on to the “wild stock” of the natural Average Man.

How is this to be done? The difficulty is the same as that which meets the social reformer or the preacher of religion.