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Title: Promoting good citizenship

Author: Viscount James Bryce Bryce

Release date: July 11, 2022 [eBook #68493]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Houghton Mifflin Company

Credits: Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROMOTING GOOD CITIZENSHIP ***





Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_;
boldface text is enclosed in =equals signs=.




  RIVERSIDE ESSAYS

  EDITED BY
  ADA L. F. SNELL

  ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
  MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE




Riverside Essays

Edited by Ada L. F. Snell


  =THE AMERICAN MIND AND AMERICAN IDEALISM.= By Bliss Perry. 35
     cents.

  =UNIVERSITY SUBJECTS.= By John Henry Newman. 35 cents.

  =STUDIES IN NATURE AND LITERATURE.= By John Burroughs. 35 cents.

  =PROMOTING GOOD CITIZENSHIP.= By James Bryce. 35 cents.

  _Prices are net, postpaid_
  _Other titles in preparation_

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  BOSTON      NEW YORK      CHICAGO




  The Riverside Literature Series

  PROMOTING
  GOOD CITIZENSHIP

  BY
  JAMES BRYCE

  [Illustration]


  BOSTON      NEW YORK      CHICAGO
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  The Riverside Press Cambridge




  COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ADA L. F. SNELL

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  R. L. S. 227


  The Riverside Press
  CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
  U . S . A




CONTENTS


  INTRODUCTION      vii

  INDOLENCE      1

  HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD
  CITIZENSHIP      26

    The two essays by Mr. James Bryce included in this volume are
    reprinted by permission of Yale University from Mr. Bryce’s
    lectures on the Dodge Foundation, published in book form by the
    Yale University Press under the title of _The Hindrances to Good
    Citizenship_.




INTRODUCTION


Mr. Bryce has for a long time been a man of international prominence.
His wide influence is undoubtedly due to many causes, but it may, in
general, be traced to two characteristics: Mr. Bryce is a humanist
who sympathetically watches the progress of nations and the guiding
of governments; he is also a historian. In his biographical study of
John Richard Green he has skillfully analyzed the aptitudes of the
historian, and in so doing has pointedly, if unwittingly, described
himself. Accuracy, he says,--a desire for the exact truth,--keen
observation, sound judgment, imagination, and, following inevitably
from these, command of literary exposition, are the powers which a
historian needs. Each of these qualities Mr. Bryce himself possesses
in large measure. It is his historical power, enabling him to observe
and record the significant phases and events of human life, plus his
sympathetic interest in its present-day manifestations which explain,
in some degree, his singularly eminent position as an authority on
matters pertaining to human institutions in various countries.

Mr. Bryce was born in northern Ireland in 1838, of Scotch-Irish
parents; and he combines in his nature the stalwart intellectual
propensities of the Scot and the artistic attributes of the Celt. He
was educated at the University of Glasgow, and later went to Oxford
where he won many honors. After finishing his collegiate work he was
admitted to the bar and practiced law in London until 1882. At the
age of thirty-two he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at
Oxford. Up to this point his life had been almost exclusively that of
a student and a scholar; and already at this time he was recognized as
a man of remarkable historical ability. The year 1880 marked a change
in his life. He presented himself to the workingmen of Tower Hamlets,
London, as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Stead
tells us that Mr. Bryce, in this first campaign, addressed his open-air
audiences somewhat after the manner of a professor lecturing in a
classroom; he succeeded, nevertheless, in getting himself elected,
and for over twenty-five years thereafter was a member of Parliament.
During these years he held various responsible offices having to do
with home and foreign administrative work. The practical results of his
political influence were advancement in public education, the securing
of more extensive parks and open country spaces for the pleasure of the
poorer classes, and the furtherance of international peace. In 1907,
Mr. Bryce was appointed ambassador to the United States, which office
he resigned in 1913 to carry on literary work.

Mr. Bryce’s knowledge is the result not only of university training and
experience in public life, but also of varied reading. He has read art,
science, history, and has always been an interested student of poetry.
In speaking once to Americans of Swinburne, he suddenly paused and
asked, “Who are writing your songs and stirring your heart,--or isn’t
your heart being stirred? Nothing is more important than that each
generation and each land should have its poets. Each oncoming tide of
life, each age, requires and needs men of lofty thought who shall dream
and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its
ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its
enthusiasm, through the high authority of the poet and the art of his
verse.” How extensively Mr. Bryce has read the poets, both ancient and
modern, one perceives from the references and allusions in his _Studies
in Contemporary Biography_.

The most important source of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge, the one which
has furnished the material for nearly all his books, has been his
first-hand observation and study of many countries. When still a
young man he wandered alone over Mount Ararat, since the native
guides refused to follow him to the unknown wilds of that lonely
peak. He visited the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and, as a result of his
investigations there, became an advocate of the Bulgarian cause; in
fact it was his speeches on the Eastern Question which first made him
prominent politically. Mr. Bryce has traveled also in Iceland; he was
in Africa just previous to the Boer War; he has been all over South
America; and he knows the United States as few Americans know it. He
has studied these countries with great faithfulness, observing keenly
every phase of the political and social life. An interesting sample of
his method of gathering information is found in the chapter on “The
Position of Women” in _The American Commonwealth_. When traveling in
the West he noticed that all of the women seemed so very well dressed
that apparently none could be the wife or daughter of a workingman;
but close observation dispelled this illusion. Idling in a bookstore
one day in Oregon, he noticed a woman who was asking for a certain
magazine. After her departure he asked the salesman who she was, and
found that she was the wife of a workman, and the magazine a Paris
fashion journal. “This,” says Mr. Bryce, “set me to observing female
dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the
women in these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very
closely, and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies
belonging to the professional and mercantile classes.” Thus no detail,
however trivial, escapes him; the pleasant and unpleasant phases of
our American life, our manners, clothes, scenery have all been noted
and reckoned with in the statement of tendencies and conclusions.

As a parliamentarian Mr. Bryce is said to have been direct, honest,
and always illuminating. His ability to command attention was due not
to any great oratorical gift, but rather to his scholarly view of any
matter under debate. Mr. Justin McCarthy reports that the members
of the House who might be dining, smoking, or reading in the rooms
assigned for these purposes, would, when the news was passed around
that Mr. Bryce was speaking, leave these pleasant diversions, and
betake themselves with great speed to the debating chamber. “I have
many a time,” he says, “heard Conservative members murmur, in tones
not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction at the disturbing
information, ‘Bryce is up--I must go in and hear what he has to say.’
... Everybody knows that when he speaks it is because he has something
to say which ought to be spoken and therefore ought to be heard.” Mr.
Bryce was able to command attention also because of his reputation as
a courageous nonpartisan. He never advocated a measure or policy for
mere party reasons or for personal aggrandizement. Not infrequently
he has fought bravely with the minority of his own party, and has at
times suffered bitter attacks, as when he remained resolutely pro-Boer
during the rampant jingoism of the South African War. But however
widely political enemies might differ from him, they respected his
sincerity and his luminous view of governmental problems. It is further
characteristic of Mr. Bryce’s public life that he never, in his desire
for the welfare of his own country, lost sight of what is due other
nations. In practice as well as in precept he upheld the doctrine that
“patriotism consists not in waving a flag, but in striving that our
country shall be righteous as well as strong.”

Mr. Bryce’s books deal, for the most part, with historical subjects and
present-day governments. _The Holy Roman Empire_, written when he was
only twenty-four years old, is still regarded by able historians as
an accurate and authoritative work; and, in the judgment of literary
critics, it is written with so much charm of style that it is destined
to become an English classic. All of the books which have to do with
foreign nations are characterized by a tactful, faithful, and above all
a truthful, handling. It was _The American Commonwealth_ which made
the citizens of the United States regard Mr. Bryce as a friend of the
Republic; but he is not so regarded because he has always stroked the
gleaming pinions of the American eagle. Although he does seem to share
the hope universally cherished by Americans that we shall, in spite
of grave national defects, “win out” in the end, he has nevertheless,
in direct and unadorned statements, pointed out our faults. As an
example of his characteristic straightforwardness of speech, take the
following sentence: “America has little occasion to think of foreign
affairs, but some of her domestic difficulties are such as to demand
that careful observation and unbroken reflection which neither her
executive magistrates, nor her legislatures, nor any leading class
among her people now give.” Mr. Bryce has never ceased to insist that
America suffers from lack of honest, courageous leadership in dealing
with such problems as municipal evils and the insidious influence of
“vested interests.” Our heedlessness and indifference to public matters
is our national sin, but Mr. Bryce foresees a cure for our defects
in the increasing zeal with which the younger generation is assuming
the public burden; but how great must be its zeal and how steady its
purpose if anything is to be accomplished, one is made poignantly
aware by reading the account of the Tammany Ring in _The American
Commonwealth_.

When a man of Mr. Bryce’s ability and experience points out definitely
the chief obstacles to good citizenship and furthermore indicates
the means by which these may be overcome, one may be as sure that he
will say something which should be heeded as were the members of the
House when he was a parliamentarian. In 1909, Mr. Bryce gave at Yale
University a series of lectures which were later published by the Yale
University Press under the title _Hindrances to Good Citizenship_. The
main obstacles to good citizenship are defined as indolence, private
self-interest, and party spirit.

The first lecture, “Indolence,” brings to mind the chapter in _The
American Commonwealth_ on “The War Against Bossdom,” with its vigorous
concluding words, “In America, as everywhere else in the world, the
commonwealth suffers more often from apathy or shortsightedness in the
upper classes, who ought to lead, than from ignorance or recklessness
in the humbler classes, who generally are ready to follow when wisely
led.”

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.”

Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no more need be said.
It is a sin that easily besets us all. We might suppose that where
public affairs are concerned it would decrease under the influence of
education and the press. But several general causes have tended to
increase it in our own generation, despite the increasing strength of
the appeal which civic duty makes to men who are, or if they cared
might be, better informed about public affairs than were their fathers.

The first of these causes is that manners have grown gentler and
passions less angry. A chief duty of the good citizen is to be angry
when anger is called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to
attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in power, to expose his
dishonesty, to eject him from office, to brand him with an ignominy
which will prevent his returning to any post of trust. In former
days indignation flamed higher, and there was little tenderness for
offenders. Jehu smote the prophets of Baal. Bad ministers--and no
doubt sometimes good ministers also--were in England beheaded on Tower
Hill. Everywhere punishment came quicker and was more severe, though
to be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the arm of justice is
often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of
punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards
with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials
and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of
the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when
a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be
forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with
none. This is an illustration of the principle that as righteous
indignation is a valuable motive power in politics, the decline in it
means a decline either in the standard of virtue or in the standard of
zeal, possibly in both.

Another cause may be found in the fact that the enormous growth of
modern states has made the share in government of the individual
citizen seem infinitesimally small. In an average Greek republic,
he was one of from two to ten thousand voters. In England or France
to-day he is one of many millions. The chance that his vote will make
any difference to the result is so slender that it appears to him
negligible. We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free
government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of
receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the
citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not
happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it
has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own
share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our
State exerts. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from
Davos in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the town of Cambridge
in England and back again to deliver his vote against Home Rule at the
general election of 1886, though he knew that his own side would have a
majority in the constituency. Those who knew applauded, his opponents
included, but I fear that few of us followed this shining example of
civic virtue.

Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult, duty of a citizen
is to fight valiantly for his convictions when he is in a minority.
The smaller the minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more
violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder is the call of
duty to defend one’s opinions. To withstand the “ardor civium prava
iubentium”--to face “the multitude hasting to do evil”--this is the
note and the test of genuine virtue and courage. Now this is, or seems
to be, a more formidable task the vaster the community becomes. It is
harder to make your voice heard against the roar of ocean than against
the whistling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake.

Lastly, there has been within the last century a great accession to our
knowledge of nature, a more widely diffused and developed interest in
literature and art as well as in science. This development, in itself
fraught with laudable means of enjoyment, has had the unforeseen yet
natural result of reducing the interest in public affairs among the
educated classes, while the ardour with which competitions in physical
strength and skill are followed has in like manner diverted the
thoughts and attention of the less educated--and indeed, not of them
alone but of many also in a class from whom better things might have
been expected. Politics, in fact, have nowadays to strive against more
rival subjects attracting men’s eyes and minds than they had before
scientific discovery and art, and above all, athletic sports, came to
fill newspapers and magazines.

But so far from being less important than they were, politics are
growing in every country more important the wider the sphere of
governmental action becomes. Nevertheless, even in England, which is
perhaps slightly less addicted to this new passion for looking on at
and reading about athletic competitions than are North America and
Australia, a cricket or football match or a horse-race seems, if one
may judge by the eager throngs that snatch the evening newspapers, to
excite more interest in the middle as well as in the richer and in the
upper section of the poorer classes than does any political event.

How to overcome these adverse tendencies is a question which I reserve
till the last of these lectures. Meantime, let us look at some of the
forms in which indifference to the obligations of citizenship reveals
itself.

The first duty of the citizen used to be to fight, and to fight
not merely against foes from another State, but against those also
who, within his own State, were trying to overturn the Constitution
or resist the laws. It is a duty still incumbent on us all, though
the existence of soldiers and a police force calls us to it less
frequently. The omission to take up arms in a civil strife was a grave
offence in the republics of antiquity, where revolutions were frequent,
as they are to-day in some of the states of Latin America. When
respectable people stayed at home instead of taking sword and spear to
drive out the adherents of an adventurer trying to make himself Tyrant,
they gave the adventurer his chance: and in any case their abstention
tended to prolong a civil war which would end sooner when it was seen
which way the bulk of the people inclined. There was accordingly a
law in some of the Greek republics that every citizen must take one
side or the other in an insurrection. If he did not, he was liable
to punishment. I have not heard of any one being indicted in England
or the United States for failing to discharge his legal duty to join
in the hue and cry after a thief, or to rally to the sheriff when he
calls upon the _posse comitatus_ to support him in maintaining law and
order. But possibly an indictment would still lie; and in England we
have within recent times enrolled bodies of special constables from the
civil population to aid in maintaining public tranquillity.

More peaceful times have substituted for the duty of fighting the
duty of voting. But even in small communities the latter duty has
been often neglected. In Athens the magistrates used to send round
the Scythian bowmen, who acted as their police, to scour the streets
with a rope coloured with vermilion, and drag towards the Pnyx (the
place of assembly), citizens who preferred to lounge or to mind what
they called their own business, as if ruling the State was not their
business. So in modern Switzerland some cantons have enacted laws
fining those who, without reasonable excuse, neglect to vote.[1] This
is the more remarkable because the Swiss have a good record in the
matter of voting, better, I think, than any other European people. Such
a law witnesses not to exceptional negligence but to an exceptionally
high standard of duty. In Britain we sometimes bring to the polls at a
parliamentary election eighty, or even more than eighty, per cent of
our registered electors, which is pretty good when it is remembered
that the register may have been made up eleven months earlier, so
that many electors are sure to have moved elsewhere. At elections for
local authorities a much smaller proportion vote; and I fancy, though
I have no figures at hand, that in France, Belgium, and still more
in Italy the percentage voting at all sorts of elections is less than
in Switzerland or in Britain. The number who vote does not perfectly
measure the personal sense of duty among electors, because an efficient
party organization may, like the Scythian bowmen, sweep voters who
do not care but who can be either driven to the polls or paid to go.
Unless it is money that takes the voters there, it is well that they
should go; for it helps to form the habit.

    [1] This example has, I believe, been followed in Belgium.

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.

    [2] It may no doubt be argued that even if he is not competent,
        it is better he should be within than without the voting
        class. But this was not the ground generally taken by those
        who brought in universal suffrage.

Does this mean that widely extended suffrage is a failure, and that the
Average Man is not a competent citizen in a democracy?

This question brings us to reflect on another branch of civic duty not
yet mentioned. Besides the civic duties already described of Fighting,
Voting, and Thinking, there is another duty. It is the duty of Mutual
Help, the duty incumbent on those who possess, through their knowledge
and intelligence, the capacity of Instruction and Persuasion to advise
and to guide their less competent fellow-citizens. No sensible man
ought ever to have supposed that under such conditions as large modern
communities present, the bulk of the citizens could vote wisely from
their own private knowledge and intelligence. Even in small cities,
such as was Sicyon in the days of Aratus, or Boston in the days of
James Otis, the Average Man needed the help of his more educated and
wiser neighbours. While communities remained small, it was easy to
get this help. But now the swift and vast growth of states and cities
has changed everything. Private talk counts for less when the richer
citizens dwell apart from the poorer; their opportunities of meeting
are fewer, and there is less friendliness, if also less dependence, in
the relation of the employed to the employer. Public meetings do not
give nearly all that the Average Man needs, not to add that being got
together to present one set of facts and arguments and deliberately
to ignore the other, they do not put him in a fair position to judge.
Besides, the men who most need instruction are usually those who least
come to meetings to receive it.

To fill this void the newspapers have arisen,--organs purporting to
supply the materials required for the formation of political opinion.
Whatever the services of the newspaper in other respects, it has the
inevitable defect of superseding, with most of those who read it, the
exercise of independent thought. The newspaper--I speak generally, for
there are some brilliant exceptions--is, in Europe even more than here,
almost always partisan in its views, often partisan in its selection
of facts or at least in its way of stating them. Presenting one side
of a case, addressing chiefly those who are already adherents of that
side, putting a colour on the events it reports,--it serves up to the
reader ideas, perhaps only mere phrases or catchwords, which confirm
him in his prepossessions, and by its daily iteration makes him take
them for truths. Seldom has he the leisure, still more seldom the
impulse or the patience, to scrutinize these ideas for himself and
form his own judgment. He is glad to be relieved of the necessity for
thinking, because thinking is hard work. Indolence again! The habit of
mind that is formed by hasty reading, and especially by the reading of
newspapers and magazines in which the matter, excellent as parts of it
often are, is so multifarious that one topic diverts attention from the
others, tends to a general dissipation and distraction of thought. It
is a habit which tells upon us all and makes continuous reflection and
a critical or logical treatment of the subjects deserving reflection
more irksome to us in the full sunlight of to-day than it was to those
whom we call our benighted ancestors.

This is only one form of that supersession of the practice of thinking
by the vice commonly called “the reading habit” which is profoundly
affecting the intellectual life of our time. Yet as steady thinking
was never really common even among the educated, the difference from
earlier days is not so correctly described by saying that people think
less than formerly, as by noting that while people read more, and
while far more people read, the ratio of thinking to reading does not
increase either in the individual or in the mass, and may possibly be
decreasing. Intelligence and independence of thought have not grown in
proportion to the diffusion of knowledge. The number of persons who
both read and vote is in England and France more than twenty times as
great as it was seventy years ago. The percentage of those who reflect
before they vote has not kept pace either with popular education or
with the extension of the suffrage.

The persons who constitute that percentage are, and must for the
reasons already given continue for some time to be, only a fraction,
in some countries a small fraction, of the voting population. But the
fraction might be made much larger than it is. The citizens who stand
above their fellows in knowledge and mental power ought to set an
example, not only by themselves thinking more and thinking harder about
public affairs than most of them do, but also by exerting themselves to
stimulate and aid their less instructed or more listless neighbours.
The voter, it is said, should be independent. Yes. But independence
does not mean isolation. He must not commit his personal responsibility
to the keeping of another. Yes. But personal responsibility does not
mean the vain conceit of knowledge and judgment where knowledge is
wanting and judgment is untrained.

Just as his religion throws upon every Christian the duty of loving
his neighbour and giving practical expression to his love by helping
his neighbour, succouring him in the hour of need, trying to rescue
him from sin, seeking to guide his steps into the way of peace, so
civic duty requires each of us to raise the level of citizenship not
merely by ourselves voting and bearing a share in political agitation,
but by trying to diffuse among our fellow-citizens whose opportunities
have been less favourable, the knowledge and the fairness of mind and
the habit of grappling with political questions which a democratic
government must demand even from the Average Man. Democracy, they say,
is based on Equality. But in no form of government is leadership so
essential. A multitude without intelligent, responsible leaders whom
it respects and follows is a crowd ready to become the prey of any
self-seeking knave. Nor is it true that because men value equality they
reject eminence. They are always glad to be led if some one, eschewing
pretension and condescension, speaking to them with respect, but also
with that authority which knowledge and capacity imply, will point
out the path and give them the lead for which they are looking. To do
this has now, in our great cities, become more difficult than it used
to be, because men of different classes and different occupations do
not know one another as well as they once did, and economic conflicts
have made workingmen suspicious. But there are those in our English and
Scottish cities who do it successfully, and I have never heard that
it is resented. It is largely a matter of tact, and of knowing how to
express that genuine sense of human fellowship which is commoner in the
richer class than the constraint and shyness that are supposed to beset
Englishmen sometimes allow to appear.

If you and we, both here and in Britain, are less active than we should
be in this and other forms of civic work, the fault lies in our not
caring enough for our country. It is easy to wave a flag, to cheer
an eminent statesman, to exult in some achievement by land or sea.
But our imaginations are too dull to realize either the grandeur of
the State in its splendid opportunities for promoting the welfare of
the masses, or the fact that the nobility of the State lies in its
being the true child, the true exponent, of the enlightened will of a
right-minded and law-abiding people. Absorbed in business or pleasure,
we think too little of what our membership in a free nation means for
the happiness of our poorer fellow-citizens. The eloquent voice of a
patriotic reformer sometimes breaks our slumber. But the daily round
of business and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and public duty
fades into the background of life. This dulness of imagination and the
mere indolence which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a chief
cause of that indifference which chokes the growth of civic duty. It is
because a great University like this is the place where the imagination
of young men may best be quickened by the divine fire, because the
sons of a great University are those who may best carry with them into
after life the inspiration which history and philosophy and poetry have
kindled within its venerable walls, that I have ventured to dwell here
on the special duty which those who enjoy these privileges owe to their
brethren, partners in the citizenship of a great republic.




HOW TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES TO GOOD CITIZENSHIP


In the preceding three lectures[3] the chief hindrances to the
discharge of civic duty have been considered. Let us now go on to
inquire what can be done to remove these hindrances by grappling with
those faults or weaknesses in the citizen to which they are due. When
symptoms have been examined, one looks about for remedies.

    [3] The two lectures reprinted in this volume are the first
        and last of a series of four given by Mr. Bryce at Yale
        University.

We have seen that of the three causes assigned, Indolence, Selfish
Personal Interest, and Party Spirit, the first is the most common, the
second the most noxious, the third the most excusable, yet also the
most subtle, and perhaps the most likely to affect the class which
takes the lead in politics and is incessantly employed upon its daily
work. Whether the influence of these causes, or of any of them, is
increasing with that more complete democratization of government which
we see going on in Europe, is a question that cannot yet be answered.
Fifty years may be needed before it can be answered, for new tendencies
both for good and for evil are constantly emerging and affecting one
another in unpredictable ways.

The remedies that may be applied to any defects in the working of
governments are some of them Mechanical, some of them Ethical. By
Mechanical remedies I understand those which consist in improving the
structure or the customs and working devices of government, i. e.,
the laws and the institutions or political methods, by Ethical those
which affect the character and spirit of the people. If you want to
get more work and better work done in any industry, you may either
improve the machinery, or the implements, by which the work is done, or
else improve the strength and skill of the men who run the machinery
and use the tools. In doing the former, you sometimes do the latter
also, for when the workman has finer tools, he is led on to attempt
more difficult work, and thus not only does his own skill become more
perfect, but his interest in the work is likely to be increased.

Although in politics by far the most real and lasting progress may be
expected from raising the intelligence and virtue of the citizens,
still improvements in the machinery of government must not be
undervalued. To take away from bad men the means and opportunities
by which they may work evil, to furnish good men with means and
opportunities which make it easier for them to prevent or overcome
evil, is to render a great service. And as laws which breathe a high
spirit help to educate the whole community, so does the presence of
opportunities for reform stimulate and invigorate the best citizens in
their efforts after better things.

I will enumerate briefly some of the remedies that may be classed as
Mechanical because they consist in alterations of institutions or
methods.

Two of these need only a few passing words, because they are so
sweeping as to involve the whole fabric of government, and therefore
too large to be discussed here.

One is propounded by those thinkers whom, to distinguish them from the
persons who announce themselves as enemies of all society, we may call
the Philosophical Anarchists, thinkers who are entitled to respectful
consideration because their doctrine represents a protest that needs
to be made against the conception of an all-engulfing State in which
individual initiative and self-guided development might be merged and
lost. They desire to get rid of the defects of government by getting
rid of government itself; that is to say, by leaving men entirely
alone without any coercive control, trusting to their natural good
impulses to restrain them from harming one another. In such a state
of things there would be no Citizenship, properly so called, but only
the isolation of families, or perhaps of individuals--for it is not
quite clear how far the family is expected to remain in the Anarchist
paradise--an isolation more or less qualified by brotherly love. We are
so far at present from a prospect of reaching the conditions needed for
such an amelioration that it is enough to note this view and pass on.

A second and diametrically opposite cure for the evils of existing
society comes from those who are commonly termed Socialists or
Collectivists. It consists in so widely enlarging the functions of
government as to commit to it not merely all the work it now performs
of defending the country, maintaining order, enacting laws, and
enforcing justice between man and man, but also the further work of
producing and distributing all commodities, allotting to each man his
proper labour and proper remuneration, or possibly, instead of giving
any pecuniary remuneration, providing each man with what he needs for
life. Under this régime two of the hindrances to good citizenship would
be much reduced. There ought to be less indifference to politics when
everybody’s interest in the management of public concerns had been
immensely increased by the fact that he found himself dependent on
the public officials for everything. Nobody could plead that he was
occupied by his own private business, because his private business
would have vanished. So also selfish personal interest in making gains
out of government must needs disappear when private property itself
had ceased to exist. Whether, however, self-interest might not still
find means of influencing public administration in ways beneficial to
individual cupidity, and whether personal selfishness might not be even
more dangerous, under such conditions, in proportion to the extended
range and power of government,--this is another question which cannot
be discussed till some definite scheme for the allotment of work and of
remuneration (if any) shall have been propounded. Party Spirit would
evidently, in a Collectivistic State, pass into new forms. It might,
however, become more potent than ever before. But that again would
depend on the kind of scheme for the reshaping of economic society that
had been adopted.

We may pass from these suggestions for the extinction, or
reconstruction on new lines, of the existing social and political
system to certain minor devices for improving the structure and methods
of government which have been put forward as likely to help the citizen
to discharge his duties more efficiently.

One of these is the system of Proportional Representation. It is argued
that if electoral areas were created with more than two members
each, and if each elector was either allowed to vote for a number
of candidates less than the number to be chosen, or was allowed to
concentrate all his votes upon one candidate, or more, according to the
number to be chosen, two good results would follow. The will of the
electors would be more adequately and exactly expressed, because the
minority, or possibly more than one minority, as well as the majority,
would have everywhere its representative. The zeal of the electors
would be stimulated, because in each district a section of opinion not
large enough to have a chance of winning an election, if there were
but one member, and accordingly now apathetic, because without hope,
would then be roused to organize itself and to take a warmer interest
in public affairs. The Proportional system is, therefore, advocated
as one of those improvements in machinery which would react upon the
people by quickening the pulses of public life. Some experiments have
already been made in this direction. Those tried in England did not
win general approval and have been dropped. That which is still in
operation in the State of Illinois has not, if my informants are right,
given much satisfaction. But the plan is said to work well both in
Belgium and in some of the cantons of Switzerland; so one may hope that
further experiments will be attempted. It deserves your careful study,
but it is too complicated and opens too many side issues to be further
discussed now and here.[4]

    [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.

One must try to reach the Will through the Soul. The most obvious way
to begin is through the education of those who are to be citizens,
moral education combined with and made the foundation for instruction
in civic duty. This is a task which the Swiss alone among European
nations seem to have seriously undertaken. Here in America it has
become doubly important through the recent entrance into your
community of a vast mass of immigrants, most of them ignorant of our
language, still more of them ignorant, not only of your institutions,
but of the general principles and habits of free government. Most of
them doubtless belong to races of high natural intelligence, and many
of them have the simple virtues of the peasant. You are providing
for all of them good schools, and their children will soon become
Americans in speech and habits, quite patriotic enough so far as
flag-waving goes. But they will not so soon or so completely acquire
your intellectual and moral standard, or imbibe your historical and
religious traditions. There is no fear but what they will quickly learn
to vote. To some Europeans you seem to have been overconfident in
intrusting them with a power which most of them cannot yet have learned
to use wisely. That however you have done, and as you hold that it
cannot now be undone, your task must now be to teach them, if you can,
to understand your institutions, to think about the vote they have to
give, and to realize the responsibilities which the suffrage implies
as these were realized by your New England forefathers when they
planted free commonwealths in the wilderness nearly three centuries ago.

Valuable as instruction may be in fitting the citizen to comprehend and
judge upon the issues which his vote determines, there must also be the
will to apply his knowledge for the public good. What appeal shall be
made to him?

We--I say “we” because this is our task in Europe no less than it is
yours here--we may appeal to his enlightened self-interest, making
self-interest so enlightened that it loses its selfish quality. We can
remind him of all the useful work which governments may accomplish when
they are conducted by the right men in the right spirit. Take, for
instance, the work to be performed in those cities wherein so large and
increasing a part of the population now dwell. How much remains to be
done to make cities healthier, to secure better dwellings for the poor,
to root out nests of crime, to remove the temptations to intemperance
and gambling, to bring within the reach of the poorest all possible
facilities both for intellectual progress and for enjoying the
pleasures of art and music! How much may we do so to adorn the city
with parks and public buildings as to make its external aspect instil
the sense of beauty into its inhabitants and give them a fine pride
in it! These are some of the tasks which cannot safely be intrusted
to a municipality unless its government is above suspicion, unless
men of probity and capacity are placed in power, unless the whole
community extends its sympathy to the work and keeps a vigilant eye
upon all the officials. Municipal governments cannot be encouraged to
own public utilities so long as there is a risk that somebody may own
municipal governments. Have we not here a strong motive for securing
purity and efficiency in city administration? Is it not the personal
interest of every one of us that the city we dwell in should be such
as I have sought to describe? Nothing makes more for happiness than to
see others around one happy. The rich residents need not grudge--nor
indeed would your rich residents grudge, for there is less grumbling
among the rich tax payers here than in Europe--taxation which they
could see was being honestly spent for the benefit of the city. The
interest each one of us has as a member of a city or a nation in seeing
our fellow-citizens healthy, peaceful, and happy is a greater interest,
if it be measured in terms of our own real enjoyment of life, than is
that interest, of which we so constantly are reminded, which we have
in making the State either wealthy by the development of trade, or
formidable to foreign countries by its armaments.

We may also appeal to every citizen’s sense of dignity and
self-respect. We may bid him recollect that he is the heir of rights
and privileges which you and our ancestors fought for, and which
place him, whatever his birth or fortune, among the rulers of his
country. He is unworthy of himself, unmindful of what he owes to the
Constitution that has given him these functions, if he does not try to
discharge them worthily. These considerations are no doubt familiar to
us Englishmen and Americans, though we may not always feel their force
as deeply as we ought. To the new immigrants of whom I have already
spoken they are unfamiliar; yet to the best among these also they have
sometimes powerfully appealed. You had, in the last generation, no more
high-minded and patriotic citizen than the German exile of 1849, the
late Mr. Carl Schurz.

When every motive has been invoked, and every expedient applied that
can stimulate the sense of civic duty, one never can feel sure that
the desired result will follow. The moral reformer and the preacher
of religion have the same experience. The ebbs and flows of ethical
life are beyond the reach of scientific prediction. There are times
of awakening, “times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord,” as
your Puritan ancestors said, but we do not know when they will come nor
can we explain why they come just when they do. Every man can recall
moments in his own life when the sky seemed to open above him, and when
his vision was so quickened that all things stood transfigured in a
purer and brighter radiance, when duty, and even toil done for the sake
of duty, seemed beautiful and full of joy.

You remember Wordsworth’s lines--

     “Hence, in a season of fair weather,
      Though inland far we be,
      Our souls have sight of that celestial sea
      That brought us hither.”

If we survey the wide field of European history, we shall find that
something like this happens with nations also. They, too, have moments
of exaltation, moments of depression. Their ideals rise and fall. They
are for a time filled with a spirit which seeks truth, which loves
honour, which is ready for self-sacrifice; and after a time the light
begins to fade from the hills and this spirit lingers only among the
best souls.

Such a spirit is sometimes evoked by a great national crisis which
thrills all hearts. This happened to England or at least to a large
part of the people of England, in the seventeenth century. It happened
to Germany in the days of the War of Liberation, and to Italy when
she was striving to expel the Austrians and the petty princes who
ruled by Austria’s help. You here felt it during the War of Secession.
Sometimes, and usually at one of these crises, a great man stands out
who helps to raise the feeling of his people and inspire them with his
own lofty thoughts and aims. Such a man was Mazzini, seventy years
ago in Italy. Such were Washington and Lincoln, the former more by his
example than by his words, the latter by both, yet most by the quiet
patience, dignity, and hopefulness which he showed in the darkest
hours. Nations respond to the appeal which such a man makes to their
best instincts. He typifies for the moment whatever is highest in them.

Unhappily, with nations as with individuals, there is apt to be a
relapse from these loftier moods into the old common ways when selfish
interest and trivial pleasures resume their sway. There comes a sort
of reaction from the stress of virtue and strenuous high-soaring
effort. Everything looks gray and dull. The divine light has died out
of the sky. This, too, is an oft-repeated lesson of European history.
Yet the reaction and decline are not inevitable. When an individual
man has been raised above himself by some spiritual impulse, he is
sometimes able to hold the ground he has won. His will may have been
strengthened. He has learnt to control the meaner desires. The impulse
that stirred him is not wholly spent, because the nobler thoughts and
acts which it prompted have become a habit with him. So, too, with
a nation. What habits are to the individual man, that, to a nation,
are its Traditions. They are the memories of the Past turned into
the standards of the Present. High traditions go to form a code of
honour, which speaks with authority to the sense of honour. Whoever
transgresses that code is felt to be unworthy of the nation, unfit to
hold that place in its respect and confidence which the great ones
of the days of old have held. Pride in the glorious foretime of the
race and in its heroes sustains in the individual man who is called
to public duty, the personal pride which makes him feel that all his
affections and all his emotions stand rooted in the sense of honour,
which is, for the man and for the nation, the foundation of all virtue.

We have seen in our own time, in the people of Japan, a striking
example of what the passionate attachment to a national ideal can do
in war to intensify the sense of duty and self-sacrifice. A similar
example is held up to us by those who have recorded the earlier annals
of Rome. The deepest moral they teach is the splendid power which the
love of Rome and the idea of what her children owed to her exercised
over her great citizens, enabling them to set shining examples of
devotion to the city which the world has admired ever since. Each
example evoked later examples in later generations, till at last in
a changed community, its upper class demoralized by wealth and power
even more than it was torn by discord, its lower classes corrupted
by the upper and looking on their suffrage as a means of gain, the
ancient traditions died out. Whoever, studying the conditions of modern
European democracies, sees the infinite fatalities which popular
government in large countries full of rich men and of opportunities for
acquiring riches, offers for the perversion of government to private
selfish ends, will often feel that those European States which have
maintained the highest standard of civic purity have done it in respect
of their Traditions. Were these to be weakened, the fabric might
crumble into dust.

Every new generation as it comes up can make the traditions which it
finds better or worse. If its imagination is touched and its emotions
stirred by all that is finest in the history of its country, it learns
to live up to the ideals set before it, and thus it strengthens the
best standards of conduct it has inherited and prolongs the reverence
felt for them.

The responsibility for forming ideals and fixing standards does not
belong to statesmen alone. It belongs, and now perhaps more largely
than ever before, to the intellectual leaders of the nation, and
especially to those who address the people in the universities and
through the press. Teachers, writers, journalists, are forming the
mind of modern nations to an extent previously unknown. Here they
have opportunities such as have existed never before, nor in any
other country, for trying to inspire the nation with a love of truth
and honour, with a sense of the high obligations of citizenship, and
especially of those who hold public office.

Of the power which the daily press exerts upon the thought and the
tastes of the people through the matter it scatters among them, and
of the grave import of the choice it has always and everywhere to make
between the serious treatment of public issues and that cheap cynicism
which so many readers find amusing, there is no need to speak here. You
know better than I do how far those who direct the press realize and
try to discharge the responsibilities which attach to their power.

The observer who seeks to discern and estimate the forces working for
good or evil that mark the spirit and tendencies of an age, finds it
easiest to do this by noting the changes which have occurred within
his own memory. To-day everyone seems to dwell upon the growth not
only of luxury, but of the passion for amusement, and most of those
who can look back thirty or forty years find in this growth grounds
for discouragement. I deny neither the fact nor the significance of
the auguries that it suggests. But let us also note a hopeful sign
manifest during the last twenty years both here and in England. It
is the diffusion among the educated and richer classes of a warmer
feeling of sympathy and a stronger feeling of responsibility for the
less fortunate sections of the community. There is more of a sense
of brotherhood, more of a desire to help, more of a discontent with
those arrangements of society which press hardly on the common man
than there was forty years ago. This altruistic spirit which is now
everywhere visible in the field of private philanthropic work, seems
likely to spread into the field of civic action also, and may there
become a new motive power. It has already become a more efficient force
in legislation than it ever was before. We may well hope that it will
draw more and more of those who love and seek to help their fellow-men
into that legislative and administrative work whose opportunities for
grappling with economic and social problems become every day greater.

Here in America I am told in nearly every city I visit that the young
men are more and more caring for and bestirring themselves to discharge
their civic duties. That is the best news one can hear. Surely no
country makes so clear a call upon her citizens to work for her as
yours does. Think of the wide-spreading results which good solid work
produces on so vast a community, where everything achieved for good
in one place is quickly known and may be quickly imitated in another.
Think of the advantages for the development of the highest civilization
which the boundless resources of your territory provide. Think of that
principle of the Sovereignty of the People which you have carried
further than it was ever carried before and which requires and inspires
and, indeed, compels you to endeavour to make the whole people fit to
bear a weight and discharge a task such as no other multitude of men
ever yet undertook. Think of the sense of fraternity, also without
precedent in any other great nation, which binds all Americans together
and makes it easier here than elsewhere for each citizen to meet every
other citizen as an equal upon a common ground. One who, coming from
the Old World, remembers the greater difficulties the Old World has
to face, rejoices to think how much, with all these advantages, the
youth of America, such youth as I see here to-night in this venerable
university, may accomplish for the future of your country. Nature
has done her best to provide a foundation whereon the fabric of an
enlightened and steadily advancing civilization may be reared. It is
for you to build upon that foundation. Free from many of the dangers
that surround the States of Europe, you have unequalled opportunities
for showing what a high spirit of citizenship--zealous, intelligent,
disinterested--may do for the happiness and dignity of a mighty nation,
enabling it to become what its founders hoped it might be--a model for
other peoples more lately emerged into the sunlight of freedom.




Transcriber’s Note


Page 48: “Americans” was printed as “Ameritans”, and changed here,
presuming it was a typographical error.




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