The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 8

_III.--The House of Lords and the House of Commons_

The use of the order of the lords in its dignified capacity is very great. The ma.s.s of men require symbols, and n.o.bility is the symbol of mind. The order also prevents the rule of wealth. The Anglo-Saxon has a natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its own sake; but from the worst form of this our aristocracy preserves us, and the reverence for rank is not so base as the reverence for money, or the still worse idolatry of office. But as the picturesqueness of society diminishes, aristocracy loses the single instrument of its peculiar power.

The House of Lords as an a.s.sembly has always been not the first, but the second. The peers, who are of the most importance, are not the most important in the House of Peers. In theory, the House of Lords is of equal rank with the House of Commons; in practice it is not. The evil of two co-equal houses is obvious. If they disagree, all business is suspended. There ought to be an available decisive authority somewhere.

The sovereign power must be comeatable. The English have made it so by the authority of the crown to create new peers. Before the Reform Act the members of the peerage swayed the House of Commons, and the two houses hardly collided except on questions of privilege. After the Reform Bill the house ceased to be one of the latent directors and palpable alterers.

It was the Duke of Wellington who presided over the change, and from the duke himself we may learn that the use of the House of Lords is not to be a bulwark against revolution. It cannot resist the people if the people are determined. It has not the control of necessary physical force. With a perfect lower house, the second chamber would be of scarcely any value; but beside the actual house, a revising and leisured legislature is extremely useful. The cabinet is so powerful in the commons that it may inflict minor measures on the nation which the nation does not like. The executive is less powerful in the second chamber, which may consequently operate to impede minor instances of parliamentary tyranny.

The House of Lords has the advantage: first, of being possible; secondly, of being independent. It is accessible to no social bribe, and it has leisure. On the other hand, it has defects. In appearance, which is the important thing, it is apathetic. Next, it belongs exclusively to one cla.s.s, that of landowners. This would not so greatly matter if the House of Lords _could_ be of more than common ability, but being an hereditary chamber, it cannot be so. There is only one kind of business in which our aristocracy retain a certain advantage. This is diplomacy.

And aristocracy is, in its nature, better suited to such work. It is trained to the theatrical part of life; it is fit for that if it is fit for anything. Otherwise an aristocracy is inferior in business. These various defects would have been lessened if the House of Lords had not resisted the creation of life peers.

The dignified aspect of the House of Commons is altogether secondary to its efficient use. Its main function is to choose our president. It elects the people whom it likes, and it dismisses whom it dislikes, too.

The premier is to the house what the house is to the nation. He must lead, but he can only lead whither they will follow. Its second function is _expressive_, to express the mind of the English people. Thirdly, it ought to teach the nation. Fourthly, to give information, especially of grievances--not, as in the old days, to the crown, but to the nation.

And, lastly, there is the function of legislation. I do not separate the financial function from the rest of the legislative. In financial affairs it lies under an exceptional disability; it is only the minister who can propose to tax the people, whereas on common subjects any member can propose anything. The reason is that the house is never economical; but the cabinet is forced to be economical, because it has to impose the taxation to meet, the expenditure.

Of all odd forms of government, the oddest really is this government by public meeting. How does it come to be able to govern at all? The principle of parliament is obedience to leaders. Change your leader if you will, but while you have him obey him, otherwise you will not be able to do anything at all. Leaders to-day do not keep their party together by bribes, but they can dissolve. Party organisation is efficient because it is not composed of warm partisans. The way to lead is to affect a studied and illogical moderation.

Nor are the leaders themselves eager to carry party conclusions too far.

When an opposition comes into power, ministers have a difficulty in making good their promises. They are in contact with the facts which immediately acquire an inconvenient reality. But const.i.tuencies are immoderate and partisan. The schemes both of extreme democrats and of philosophers for changing the system of representation would prevent parliamentary government from working at all. Under a system of equal electoral districts and one-man vote, a parliament could not consist of moderate men. Mr. Hare's scheme would make party bands and fetters tighter than ever.

A free government is that which the people subject to it voluntarily choose. If it goes by public opinion, the best opinion which the nation will accept, it is a good government of its kind. Tried by this rule, the House of Commons does its appointing business well. Of the substantial part of its legislative task, the same may be said. Subject to certain exceptions, the mind and policy of parliament possess the common sort of moderation essential to parliamentary government. The exceptions are two. First, it leans too much to the opinions of the landed interest. Also, it gives too little weight to the growing districts of the country, and too much to the stationary. But parliament is not equally successful in elevating public opinion, or in giving expression to grievances.

_IV.--Changes of Ministry_

There is an event which frequently puzzles some people; this is, a change of ministry. All our administrators go out together. Is it wise so to change all our rulers? The practice produces three great evils. It brings in suddenly new and untried persons. Secondly, the man knows that he may have to leave his work in the middle, and very likely never come back to it. Thirdly, a sudden change of ministers may easily cause a mischievous change of policy. A quick succession of chiefs do not learn from each other's experience.

Now, those who wish to remove the choice of ministers from parliament have not adequately considered what a parliament is. When you establish a predominant parliament you give over the rule of the country to a despot who has unlimited time and unlimited vanity. Every public department is liable to attack. It is helpless in parliament if it has no authorised defender. The heads of departments cannot satisfactorily be put up for the defence; but a parliamentary head connected by close ties with the ministry is a protecting machine. Party organisation ensures the provision of such parliamentary heads. The alternative provided in America involves changing not only the head but the whole bureaucracy with each change of government.

This, it may be said, does not prove that this change is a good thing.

It may, however, be proved that some change at any rate is necessary to a permanently perfect administration. If we look at the Prussian bureaucracy, whatever success it may recently have achieved, it certainly does not please the most intelligent persons at home.

Obstinate officials set at defiance the liberal initiations of the government. In conflicts with simple citizens guilty officials are like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with the defenceless. The bureaucrat inevitably cares more for routine than for results. The machinery is regarded as an achieved result instead of as a working instrument. It tends to be the most unimproving and shallow of governments in quality, and to over-government in point of quant.i.ty.

In fact, experience has proved in the case of joint-stock banks and of railways that they are best conducted by an admixture of experts with men of what may be, called business culture. So in a government office the intrusion of an exterior head of the office is really essential to its perfection. As Sir George Lewis said: "It is not the business of a cabinet minister to work his department; his business is to see that it is properly worked."

In short, a presidential government, or a hereditary government are inferior to parliamentary government as administrative selectors. The revolutionary despot may indeed prove better, since his existence depends on his skill in doing so. If the English government is not celebrated for efficiency, that is largely because it attempts to do so much; but it is defective also from our ignorance. Another reason is that in the English const.i.tution the dignified parts, which have an importance of their own, at the same time tend to diminish simple efficiency.

_V.--Checks, Balances, and History_

In every state there must be somewhere a supreme authority on every point. In some states, however, that ultimate power is different upon different points. The Americans, under the mistaken impression that they were imitating the English, made their const.i.tution upon this principle.

The sovereignty rested with the separate states, which have delegated certain powers to the central government. But the division of the sovereignty does not end here. Congress rules the law, but the president rules the administration. Even his legislative veto can be overruled when two-thirds of both houses are unanimous. The administrative power is divided, since on international policy the supreme authority is the senate. Finally, the const.i.tution itself can only be altered by authorities which are outside the const.i.tution. The result is that now, after the civil war, there is no sovereign authority to settle immediate problems.

In England, on the other hand, we have the typical const.i.tution, in which the ultimate power upon all questions is in the hands of the same person. The ultimate authority in the English const.i.tution is a newly-elected House of Commons. Whatever the question on which it decides, a new House of Commons can despotically and finally resolve. No one can doubt the importance of singleness and unity. The excellence in the British const.i.tution is that it has achieved this unity. This is primarily due to the provision which places the choice of the executive in "the people's house." But it could not have been effected without what I may call the "safety valve" and "the regulator." The "safety valve" is the power of creating peers, the "regulator" is the cabinet's power of dissolving. The defects of a popular legislature are: caprice in selection, the sectarianism born of party organisation, which is the necessary check on caprice, and the peculiar prejudices and interests of the particular parliament. Now the caprice of parliament in the choice of a premier is best checked by the premier himself having the power of dissolution. But as a check on sectarianism such an extrinsic power as that of a capable const.i.tutional king is more efficient. For checking the peculiar interests our colonial governors seem almost perfectly qualified. But the intervention of a const.i.tutional monarch is only beneficial if he happens to be an exceptionally wise man. The peculiar interests of a specific parliament are seldom in danger of overriding national interests; hence, on the whole, the advantage of the premier being the real dissolving authority.

The power of creating peers, vested in the premier, serves constantly to modify the character of the second chamber. What we may call the catastrophe creation of peers is different. That the power should reside in the king would again be beneficial only in the case of the exceptional monarch. Taken altogether, we find that hereditary royalty is not essential to parliamentary government. Our conclusion is that though a king with high courage and fine discretion, a king with a genius for the place, is always useful, and at rare moments priceless, yet a common king is of no use at a crisis, while, in the common course of things, he will do nothing, and he need do nothing.

All the rude nations that have attained civilisation seem to begin in a consultative and tentative absolutism. The king has a council of elders whom he consults while he tests popular support in the a.s.sembly of freemen. In England a very strong executive was an imperative necessity.

The a.s.semblies summoned by the English sovereign told him, in effect, how far he might go. Legislation as a positive power was very secondary in those old parliaments; but their negative action was essential. The king could not venture to alter the law until the people had expressed their consent. The Wars of the Roses killed out the old councils. The second period of the const.i.tution continues to the revolution of 1688.

The rule of parliament was then established by the concurrence of the usual supporters of royalty with the usual opponents of it. Yet the mode of exercising that rule has since changed. Even as late as 1810 it was supposed that when the Prince of Wales became Prince Regent he would be able to turn out the ministry.

It is one of our peculiarities that the English people is always antagonistic to the executive. It is their natural impulse to resist authority as something imposed from outside. Hence our tolerance of local authorities as instruments of resistance to tyranny of the central authority.

Our const.i.tution is full of anomalies. Some of them are, no doubt, impeding and mischievous. Half the world believes that the Englishman is born illogical. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe that the English care more even than the French for simplicity; but the const.i.tution is not logical. The complexity we tolerate is that which has grown up. Any new complexity, as such, is detestable to the English mind. Let anyone try to advocate a plan of suffrage reform at all out of the way, and see how many adherents he can collect.

This great political question of the day, the suffrage question, is made exceedingly difficult by this history of ours. We shall find on investigation that so far from an ultra-democratic suffrage giving us a more h.o.m.ogeneous and decided House of Commons it would give us a less h.o.m.ogeneous and more timid house. With us democracy would mean the rule of money and mainly and increasingly of new money working for its own ends.

VOLTAIRE

The Age of Louis XIV

Voltaire's "History of the Age of Louis XIV.," was published when its author (see p. 259), long famous, was the companion of Frederick the Great in Prussia--from 1750 to 1753. Voltaire was in his twentieth year when the Grand Monarque died. Louis XIV. had succeeded his father at the age of five years, in 1643; his nominal reign covered seventy-one years, and throughout the fifty-three years which followed Mazarin's death his declaration "L'etat c'est moi" had been politically and socially a truth. He controlled France with an absolute sway; under him she achieved a European ascendency without parallel save in the days of Napoleon. He sought to make her the dictator of Europe. But for William of Orange, Marlborough, and Eugene, he would have succeeded. Politically he did not achieve his aim; but under him France became the unchallenged leader of literary and artistic culture and taste, the universal criterion.

_I.--France Under Mazarin_

We do not propose to write merely a life of Louis XIV.; our aim is a far wider one. It is to give posterity a picture, not of the actions of a single man, but of the spirit of the men of an age the most enlightened on record. Every period has produced its heroes and its politicians, every people has experienced revolutions; the histories of all are of nearly equal value to those who desire merely to store their memory with facts. But the thinker, and that still rarer person the man of taste, recognises only four epochs in the history of the world--those four fortunate ages in which the arts have been perfected: the great age of the Greeks, the age of Caesar and of Augustus, the age which followed the fall of Constantinople, and the age of Louis XIV.; which last approached perfection more nearly than any of the others.

On the death of Louis XIII., his queen, Anne of Austria, owed her acquisition of the regency to the Parlement of Paris. Anne was obliged to continue the war with Spain, in which the brilliant victories of the young Duc d'Enghein, known to fame as the Great Conde, brought him sudden glory and unprecedented prestige to the arms of France.

But internally the national finances were in a terribly unsatisfactory state. The measures for raising funds adopted by the minister Mazarin were the more unpopular because he was himself an Italian. The Paris Parlement set itself in opposition to the minister; the populace supported it; the resistance was organised by Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as the Cardinal de Retz. The court had to flee from Paris to St.

Germain. Conde was won over by the queen regent; but the n.o.bles, hoping to recover the power which Richelieu had wrenched from them, took the popular side. And their wives and daughters surpa.s.sed them in energy. A very striking contrast to the irresponsible frivolity with which the whole affair was conducted is presented by the grim orderliness with which England had at that very moment carried through the last act in the tragedy of Charles I. In France the factions of the Fronde were controlled by love intrigues.

Conde was victorious. But he was at feud with Mazarin, made himself personally unpopular, and found himself arrested when he might have made himself master of the government. A year later the tables were turned; Mazarin had to fly, and the Fronde released Conde. The civil war was renewed; a war in which no principles were at stake, in which the popular party of yesterday was the unpopular party of to-day; in which there were remarkable military achievements, much bloodshed, and much suffering, and which finally wore itself out in 1653, when Mazarin returned to undisputed power. Louis XIV. was then a boy of fifteen.

Mazarin had achieved a great diplomatic triumph by the peace of Westphalia in 1648; but Spain had remained outside that group of treaties; and, owing to the civil war of the Fronde, Conde's successes against her had been to a great extent made nugatory--and now Conde was a rebel and in command of Spanish troops. But Conde, with a Spanish army, met his match in Turenne with a French army.

At this moment, Christina of Sweden was the only European sovereign who had any personal prestige. But Cromwell's achievements in England now made each of the European statesmen anxious for the English alliance; and Cromwell chose France. The combined arms of France and England were triumphant in Flanders, when Cromwell died; and his death changed the position of England. France was financially exhausted, and Mazarin now desired a satisfactory peace with Spain. The result, was the Treaty of the Pyrenees, by which the young King Louis took a Spanish princess in marriage, an alliance which ultimately led to the succession of a grandson of Louis to the Spanish throne. Immediately afterwards, Louis'

cousin, Charles II., was recalled to the throne of England. This closing achievement of Mazarin had a triumphant aspect; his position in France remained undisputed till his death in the next year (1661). He was a successful minister; whether he was a great statesman is another question. His one real legacy to France was the acquisition of Alsace.

_II.---The French Supremacy in Europe_

On Mazarin's death Louis at once a.s.sumed personal rule. Since the death of Henry the Great, France had been governed by ministers; now she was to be governed by the king--the power exercised by ministers was precisely circ.u.mscribed. Order and vigour were introduced on all sides; the finances were regulated by Colbert, discipline was restored in the army, the creation of a fleet, was begun. In all foreign courts Louis a.s.serted the dignity of France; it was very soon evident that there was no foreign power of whom he need stand in fear. New connections were established with Holland and Portugal. England under Charles II. was of little account.