Chapter I.

Introductory.

In these sentences Sir Harry Vane, the noblest of English men and Republicans, lays bare the tap-root of that thrice-accursed tree of Oligarchy, whose baleful shadow has blighted the lives of so many generations of his countrymen. His pregnant words, penned more than two centuries ago, are true now as then. "The cause"—the Republican cause—the cause of the People against privilege—has yet to be won. Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Plutocracy (the latest development of "private and selfish interest") still, alas! find England the happiest of happy hunting grounds. Sir Harry wrote in the past tense, believing that the serpent of aristocracy had been killed by the Revolution when in sooth it had hardly been scotched. Oliver Cromwell by force and fraud restored "one-man government" in his own person; and to the monarch by the sword not unnaturally again succeeded the monarch by divine right. The nation returned with enthusiasm to its more ancient chains.

Shall it always be so? Shall it never cease to be the reproach of Englishmen that they dearly love a lord?—that they prefer the status of subjects to that of citizens?—that they are incapable of rising to the full stature of freemen? Amid the saturnalia of the Restoration, Sir Harry Vane, under the shadow of the scaffold, uttered this prophecy:—"There hath been a battle fought with garments rolled in blood, in which Thou, God, didst own thy servants, though these nations have been thought unworthy any longer to enjoy the fruits of that deliverance. Thou hast therefore another day of decision to come."

Why does Sir Harry's prophecy still await fulfilment? When shall that other day of decision come—as come it must? Why are Englishmen so tolerant of private and selfish interests—so slow to base their institutions on the only sure foundation—the absolute Sovereignty of the People?

The causes are multiple, but one stands out. The reaction against the Protectorate of Cromwell was singularly severe, leaving an indelible impression on the national mind, that to escape from the frying-pan of hereditary monarchy into the fire of military dictatorship is a highly questionable gain. Hence, largely, the despicable spirit of compromise that has animated the domestic policy of English statesmen ever since.

Still "the cause" was not dead. In 1688 it would have reasserted itself, to the sweeping away of all royal and aristocratic "bars and impediments," but taught by experience, the Aristocracy substituted cunning and deception for the weapons of steel that had failed them so conspicuously on the fields of Naseby and Marston Moor. They had recourse to a make-believe rosewater Revolution of their own, by which they changed the dynasty, and, according to Mr. Bright, who never spoke more truly, enthroned themselves. The so-called "Revolution Houses" took the place of the King. Once firmly in the saddle, they effectually strangled freedom at home by embarking the nation in the most criminal enterprises against liberty abroad. The French wars, which dried up every source of income except rent, may be said to have been waged for the preservation of primogeniture and entail, which Pitt—the Bottomless Pitt as some discriminating per page 5 son called him—and his accomplices apprehended might be unfavourably influenced by the immortal principles of '89.

In time, the deluded people awoke to some sense of their folly. They wrung from the governing caste the Reform Bill of 1832, and it was not long before the People's Charter, that unique embodiment of democratic aspiration, was formulated and demanded, not without menace. In the Charter, the masses, with a correct instinct, recognised that they had found a master-key that would unlock every door in the mighty fortress of privilege. The Oligarchy were not less discerning. They cast about for instruments with which to crush so formidable an assault on their supremacy, and strange to say, Richard Cobden and John Bright came forward as the "saviours of society." With the relatively small reform of free trade in grain the great reform of parliamentary democratization was knocked on the head. A single end was achieved to the sacrifice of the means to many not less important ends. The small reform as usual killed the great one. The Oligarchy was saved once more, and to-day its power is unbroken. Mr. Bright, the tribune of the people, was able to rise with enthusiasm to the middle-class idea of free trade; the national idea of the complete enfranchisement of the people was less within the range of his sympathies. Had it been otherwise—had he and Mr. Cobden, with truer political perspective, postponed the repeal of the Corn-laws to the triumph of the Charter, how different the course of events!

Since then we have had the Reform Bill of '67. Generally speaking, it extended the suffrage without materially increasing the influence of the Commons in what is facetiously called the Commons' House of Parliament. Howbeit, are we not indebted to it for the political existence of that virile museum-closing, Ireland-coercing champion of Democracy, Mr. Henry Broadhurst? With such a net result, what well-instructed elector will have the hardihood to maintain that our reform agitations have been altogether in vain?

Has our Radical-Liberal or Liberal-Radical Ministry of all the talents and of all the virtues, with the Grand Old Man at its head, inaugurated a democratic millennium? I trow not. Open the Hansards of the present Parliament, and you will hardly be able, with a microscope, to discover one measure of real national benefit. Page after page testifies to the anxiety of the vaunted Liberal majority to arrest patriots on suspicion; to expel from the House by "superior force" hon. members trying really to represent their constituents; to violate domicile by day and by night; to abolish trial by jury; to expel aliens; to re-establish the Norman curfew; to suppress freedom of the press and of the platform; to gag Parliament; to appropriate national funds for the payment of impossible rents; illegally to extrude a solitary confessing infidel; to incarcerate a crazy German refugee; to fire defenceless Alexandria in order to gratify Hebrew bondholders and rapacious officials; to give huge money grants and patents of nobility to the chief directors of the revolting work; to build royal yachts at shameless cost; to alienate national land for an old song; and to collect for creditors their bad debts through the agency of national officials; these are so far among the chief achievements of "the most Liberal Administration of the century."

The career of the present Ministry ought to teach the democrats of England several salutary lessons. Imprimis: Put not your trust in princes, be they Grand Old Men or Grand Young Men. When one says, "Lo! here I have found the political Messiah in the person of Mr. Gladstone;" or another, "Lo! there I have discovered him in the great caucus-compeller of Birmingham;" let the report be peremptorily discredited. There are no political Messiahs. Great men, like strong liquors, should always be partaken of in small quantities. The Greeks, who ostracised their mighty ones, were not such fools as they have been accounted. The Athenian elector who objected to Aristides because he was so often called the Just, was animated by a correct instinct. The reason is plain The best and the ablest of political page 7 leaders are fallible; and when they fall the cause which they represent but too frequently falls with them by reason of the blind idolatry of their devotees. Take, for example, the most iniquitous war of modern times—the Egyptian. It was blessed by upright Mr. Guinness Rogers, by upright Mr. R. W. Dale, and by the Quakers, simply because it was waged by the infallible Prime Minister. "They are a happy thing, great men and great officers," Sir John Eliot told a timid House, "if they be good, and one of the greatest blessings of the land; but power converted into evil is the greatest curse that can befall it. The greater the delinquent the greater the delict."

It is the firm grasp of well-defined principles of action that can alone really serve individuals or communities in the long run. Men who mistake a Pitt, a Peel, a Palmerston, or a Gladstone for a principle are but in the infancy of political thought. Whatever they may allege, they have not attained to the stature of free men. They are meet subjects for Personal Government.

Another lesson of the day, and that hardly of less moment to democrats: there are not really two parties in the State. There is but one great party, that of privilege, divided into two factions, labelled Whig and Tory, or Liberal and Conservative. Both do much the same things in office. The mimic warfare which they wage with each other no shrewd observer takes seriously. It is merely a pleasant game, of which the stakes are the spoils of office and patronage. It is only when the elector spectators show some symptoms of doubting their sincerity that the combatants show a little neat. An "organised hypocrisy" is but a mild description of an English Government, whether Liberal or Conservative The Liberal and the Conservative are the two thieves between whom the People are evermore crucified. Your root-and-branch Republican to-day ransacks the royal pantry for subject-matter of censure; to-morrow, with Cabinet office within his grasp, he publicly renounces the "scatter-brain principles" of his hot academic youth, and hastens to Windsor to beslobber the royal fist. Long live expediency! Long live self-interest!

Has, then, the whole race of political heroes, of which Sir Harry Vane was the type, perished from off English soil? page 8 Has "that brave faith" of his which, without an effort, nerved him to face the scaffold and the block, really "lived in vain?" Is that "other day of decision" never to come to the long-suffering English people? It cannot be. Its advent is equally desirable and inevitable.

"Have ye chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from his worn sandals shake the dust against our land?
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong
And albeit she wander outcast, now I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful angels to enshield her from all wrong!"