Ploughshare and Pruning-hook/Lecture 5
THE RIGHTS OF MAJORITIES
(1912)
IN every age some fetich of government has been set up designed to delude the governed, and to induce a blind rather than an intellectual acceptance of authority.
To set up in government some point over which you must not argue, is always very convenient to those who govern; and so you will note, throughout the world's history, that the manipulators of government have always tried to impose some incontrovertible proposition as the basis on which their authority shall rest; and then, having done so, to get the strings of it into their own hands, and work it to their own convenience.
In the present day "majority rule" is the pretended fetich; a majority whose qualification is almost automatic, whose registration is all done for it by the party agents, and whose free and independent vote is brought up to the polling-booth very largely by the bribe of a free ride in a motor-car.
Scores of elections, that is to say, are turned by the indifferent voter, and on this sort of cookery recipe the moral products of majority rule are served up to us as "a dish fit for a king," and as giving moral sanction to government. And whatever indigestion comes to us as the result of our swallowing it whole we are to sit down under. If the majority has decided, the matter (we are told) is beyond argument.
That is the fetich, the superstition on which, in theory, government rests to-day.
In other times there were other fetiches, quite as respectable. "The King can do no wrong," was one of them. And we have had staged before our eyes, in due order, the divine right—or the divine sanction; it is all the same—of Kings, of Property, of Inheritance, of Slavery, and of War.
All these have been maintained as necessities of government—infallible doctrines, based on Scripture and the will of God.
Some of them present rather a battered front to-day. The fetich which has taken their place is the "Right of Majorities."
We do not exactly say "Majorities can do no wrong." But we do incline to say (often for the sake of a quiet life, and for no better reason) "Majorities must be allowed to do as they please." And that means in effect—those must be allowed to do as they please who can pull the wires by which majorities are manipulated.
I need hardly remind you that to-day the wire-pullers are the statesmen, the leaders of party, who have secured more and more the control of the party-machine, and with it the control of the education of the electorate.
Having secured this control, they let loose upon you the astonishing doctrine that, if you have numbers, there you have your right cut and dried; that if you have not numbers your right (politically speaking) does not exist.
Now every student of history knows that in the past majorities, more especially manipulated majorities—or their counterpart force majeure—have done great crimes.
But we do not to-day maintain that those majorities had a "right" to sack cities, to violate women, to massacre, to exterminate, and to bring others into subjection. The most we say is that these happenings are an extreme, and, under some circumstances, an inevitable expression of certain bad elements in human nature. Is it not, then, perfectly absurd to imagine that under internal and domestic conditions all such bad elements have departed from majorities; and that a consensus of vice, of self-indulgence, of unfairness, of a desire for domination, may not spread through very large sections of the community, even through whole peoples where the opportunity so to indulge is accorded—especially if it be accorded by law or embodied as a State doctrine?
Clearly, therefore, there must be some limitation or check imposed upon the so-called "rights" of majorities; and some of them may be limitations which those majorities would not choose for themselves, but will, all the same, submit to without revolt if they are properly rubbed home! One of the essential conditions for majority rule (if it is to carry with it any moral sanction at all) is that it must be ready to submit to the same conditions which it imposes upon others; and that it must not set up qualification, or prohibition from qualification, without any liability of that prohibition falling upon itself. It must make the liability fairly equal.
The specious excuse and justification for government by majority, as put forward by the materialists, is that, latent, within it, lies the physical force of the nation. (I may say, in passing, that the physical force of the nation lies latent in every form of government which secures the assent of the governed; and only ceases to be latent when some of it gets on to its hind-legs and insists on another form of government; and to be effective, that "some of it" need not always be a majority.)
But it is no use talking of physical force being the basis and the moral justification of majority rule—it is no use invoking the physical force argument—unless your majority is also prepared to go to the trouble of exercising it and paying the price for exercising it. And the main phenomenon of our present form of government by majority is that the majority won't take any trouble at all; that, taken in the bulk, they care very little, and won't put themselves to inconvenience—certainly won't risk physical discomfort and pain—unless government has very seriously incommoded them by damaging or by neglecting their interests.
If the physical force basis is to be your full sanction of government—if that is really your argument—then that basis, that sanction, is possessed equally by king or despot, so long as he has his organisation at his command. There are his numbers, obeying him just as, with us, M.P.'s, 700 strong, obey the party-whips, often against their principles, but from no physical compulsion whatever.
What the preachers of physical force seem to ignore in arguing about the basis of government, is the aim of government. What, in the minds and consciences of those who believe in government, is government aiming for? Is its aim only to keep order or to be just? Does it seek to repress humanity to the utmost extent, or to develop it? To wrap its talents in a napkin, or to make it spiritually a ruler of cities?
What is humanity out for? To what is it evolving? What has been its impulse, its motive force in pressing for, and in extracting from reluctant authorities Representative Government, with its accompanying symbol—the voice of the majority?
It has been seeking humane government—in the belief, surely, that the nearer you get to really humane government the more will unrest and revolt and crime cease; and, by the consequent reduction of the police and of the forces of repression now needed, repay the State a hundred-fold for the liberties it has established. And majority rule is merely a device to get nearer to humane government, to open up the mind of man to his own humane possibilities, and to develop his trust in others by reposing trust in him. The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify.
Now this brings us to the relative duties of those who govern and of those who are governed; and, whereas, fundamentally their duty is the same, in one important respect it differs. In each case, broadly and fundamentally, their duty is toward their neighbour—to do to him as they would he should do unto them. That axiom, rightly carried out, covers all the law and the prophets, being greater than either; nay, if it were rightly and universally carried out, the law and the prophets might safely be shelved. Law merely exists as an expedient, because men have not yet learned thoroughly to do, or even to wish to do, their duty toward their neighbour; and as law is an imperfect thing, only existing because of, and only applicable to, imperfect conditions, the law and its upholders are not, and never can be, a perfect expression of that duty which is mutually owed by all. Law is only an expedient for averting greater evils which might, and probably would, take place without it in our present very imperfect stage of human development.
But there is one obvious difference between the governors and the governed. In the action of the former there is an assertion of authority—an underlying assumption of a power to improve matters by regulating them. In the governed there is no such assumption of moral superiority; the governed are there whether they like it or no; and the laws which condition their lives are laid upon them by a power beyond themselves, even when—under a representative system—they have secured some minute voice in regard to their shaping.
The governors, therefore, by their assumption of an ability to improve matters, are in a fiduciary position to the rest of the community—the onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them and not upon the people. It is their duty to pacify the governed; it is not the duty of the governed to pacify them; and if they fail in the work of pacification, which is their main raison d'être, they, and not the community, have to meet the charge of functional incompetence.
Government is a function; being governed is not a function. Humanity in all stages of civilization or of savagery has fallen subject to government without being asked to show any certificate of its fitness to be governed. It is therefore, the governors who have to prove themselves fit—not the governed; and if a penal code be found, or declared, necessary to enable the governors to secure peace and order, then (if your system be just and equal) the penal code should be applicable in at least equal severity to the governors who impose it, when instead of producing contentment, it produces unrest and disorder. Liability to impeachment and condemnation under laws of an equal stringency would be, I think, a very wholesome corrective to the legislative action of M.P.'s voting coercive measures which only result in failure. I fancy that under such conditions there would have been, for instance, a far smaller majority for the "Cat and Mouse Act," the futility of which soon became so ridiculously apparent. Imprisonment with compulsory starvation, followed by release upon a medical certificate, and then by a fresh term of imprisonment would have been a most enlightening form of vacation for certain members of Parliament. And until we have secured in this country a much more equal adjustment of the relations between governors and governed, some such corrective for vindictive legislation is certainly needed.
It is not a sufficient equivalent, or safeguard to popular liberty, to be able merely to dismiss from office a Minister of the Crown who has by his administrative blunders brought citizens to death and property to destruction, or who has sedulously manufactured criminals out of a class whose will is to be law-abiding. He, if anybody, deserves punishment; and Parliaments (backed by whatever majority) which, through maintaining political inequalities, produce such results, are under the same condemnation. The onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them; and if, commissioned to secure peace and order, they produce only unrest and disorder, then the proof is against them.
Listen to these remarkable words by so great a supporter of constitutional authority as Edmund Burke:
"Nations," he says, "are not primarily ruled by laws, still less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same methods and on the same principles by which an individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors—by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it. I mean—when public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted: not when government is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the multitude, in which sometimes one and sometimes the other is uppermost, in which they alternately yield and prevail in a series of contemptible victories and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought, therefore, to be the first study of the statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn."
And further on he says:
"In all disputes between them (the governed) and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed that there has been something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error and not their crime. But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design as well as by mistake. . . . And if this presumption in favour of the subject against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation; because it is more easy to change an administration than to reform a people."
There, then, is a great authority, Edmund Burke, maintaining that governments are more liable to wilful error than those whom they govern—and the main value of majority rule is that it tends to bring the presumption round to the side of government, by making the voice of government also the voice of the people. I do not think the claims of majority rule can be put on any higher footing than that—that if the government is really expressive of a governed majority (and not merely of a majority to whom the constitution has accorded licence and privilege above its fellows) then the favourable presumption in any conflict comes round to the side of government.
But if government claims its sanction from a majority, then we must enquire further into the composition and character of that majority; and yet further whether the mandate of that majority is the output of its conscience or merely of its self-interest; we must watch its workings, and see what really brings it to the poll—its moral sense, its pleasure in motor-cars, or its inclination (based on a national love of sport) to select and to back the winner.
At whose bidding to-day, and for what motive, are we really being governed? Our duty toward government can never be greater than toward that voice of sanction on which it rests. And short of a voice of the whole people conscientiously uttered, and so conditioned as to be really free and equal, I do not see whence an entire sanction of government is to come—though you may have (under such and such circumstances) a large increase of presumption in its favour.
But obviously there are degrees. We in England clearly recognise that. We have recognised it in our own history; we recognise it in looking abroad upon other countries. And we rather approve—most of us—of revolution against a Russian or a German government which has refused so to aim that the people shall be in some sort their own governors.
Similarly, in this country, the sanction may be imperfect—we may have secured the form but not the substance. If so—if the form is so manipulated as to be virtually of no effect—the moral sanction is by so much lessened. Universal franchise—on the unattainable qualification, let us say, of standing on one leg for a fortnight, would be a mockery deserving of instant revolt. And there is some mockery in setting up any qualification of which a willing and painstaking citizen cannot avail himself—or herself. Perhaps there is also some mockery—some cheapening of citizenship—in setting up a qualification which requires no willingness and no pains.
The moral sanction of government, therefore, is ever fluctuant and variable—conditioned always by the sincere relationship of theory to practice, of form to fact. No amount of form or theory, however just in appearance, or legal in fact, will condone unjust government. And as we would wish to be condemned and punished were we so to impose on others—so must we act towards any government which seeks to impose on us by substituting form for substance. If its moral sanction is imperfect it cannot claim perfect obedience.
Now if there is not a full and honest wish among those who govern to do as they would be done by—claiming no advantage or privilege for themselves, and not attempting to keep in order one section of the community rather than another by framing laws which penalise this section rather than that—if there is not this honest wish, there will all the more be an attempt on the part of the governing section to give to its government in form that virtue which it lacks in practice,—to say to objectors: "See how safeguarded on all hands are your interests, how perfectly you are represented, how obviously you are the masters of the situation, and we only the servants." And the nearer the governed are to an intellectual awakening and apprehension of their true condition, the more elaborate and plausible will be the pretence that the real ultimate power rests—not there in the hands of the governors, but here in the hands of the governed. And best of all—because most deceptive of all—will be the device which does actually put the means of reforming or of overthrowing government into the hands of the governed, while so nullifying the application of those means that the fair form, so fruitful in seeming, shall be in reality an empty husk.
Now, if it be true—as from history I have contended—that the moral sanction of government is variable, and depends on honest conditions and relations, obviously it is not the mere plausible form which shall decide whether this or that government be deserving of obedience or not. That form which is established by law must bring forth fruit to the satisfaction of the governed—producing, as proof of its claim, peaceful conditions and general content. If it fail to do this then it must be suspected, enquired into, and, if need be, disowned.
But it must breed something more than the acquiescence of a majority. The contentment, or at least the acquiescence of minorities is one of the signs of good government. For while it takes little to make minorities critical, it takes much to make them revolt—if for no other reason than that the chances are against them. And it is not in human nature to face so heavy odds except for some grave cause.
Consider first, then, in any given case, "Are those in the minority seeking to keep or filch liberty from you, or only to obtain such liberty as is already yours? Are they seeking to set up equality of condition or inequality? Are they pressing for privilege or only for common ground?"
And if the answer to such questions be that they seek only a like liberty upon common ground and equality with yourselves—then, I care not how large the majority against them—you must open or make available to them that same standing which you claim as your due; and on whatever basis of public service or private worth you have obtained your right,—that means, that test, that qualification must be open also to them, else your majority rule is nothing more than brute force, a despotism extended from the embodiment of one or of a few to an embodiment of 10, 15, or 20,000,000. But if you sanction that and make it your base, then, to be logical, you must sanction also (at least as a test) the employment of force by a minority to make its position untenable. And remember, that if among a minority some ten per cent. are willing to die, as against only some one or two per cent. in a majority, that minority is likely to win, and all your numbers will be vain.
That fact puts no undue or dangerous power into the hands of minorities. Consent, on a just basis, can be obtained to government whose acts are little to the liking of individual minds or of minorities. But if, after long trial of expedient, persuasion, or coercion, consent cannot be obtained, then the weight of evidence (based on the unfailing document of human nature) has shifted against government; and it rests more with the government than with the rebel to prove that its claims are just.
When governments establish inequalities affecting the lives and liberties of any, however few, I see no sanction whatsoever in majorities. One runaway slave had not to wait upon a majority of his fellow-slaves in order to establish his right to escape from slavery—still less upon a majority of the nation which owned him. If he could find a path along which to escape, that was the highroad appointed for him by God from of old; and if he died in the attempt his grave was still a monument to Liberty. Not the will of a million could destroy the right of that one. And though I admit that a society which sanctions slavery must treat as a murderer the slave who kills in his effort to escape,—nevertheless, by posterity, and in a society which has repudiated slavery, that act will be very differently regarded; and so long as the man's aim when he committed that legal offence was freedom, we, who have repudiated slavery, look upon him not as a murderer but as a fighter in a just cause.
We are in a society to-day which tolerates and even sanctions things which to-morrow will be regarded as slavery is regarded now. While society thus chooses to establish evil it is driven in self-defence to treat those who rebel as criminals. But posterity will not so think of them; and the greater the forces of the majority which stood against them when they struck—the more will it admire and reverence, and approve. Surely a startling commentary on the "rights" of majorities: approval of the minority in an inverse proportion to its size!
Now, you might have a State almost equally divided into what were, broadly speaking, opposed interests; under certain circumstances, for instance, (circumstances which have actually occurred in the past) manufacturing and agricultural interests might be opposed. If, then, you accepted majority rule as a blind dogma, those two interests would have the right alternately to prey upon and to bleed each other, according to the fortunes of the polls—and they might do it by putting forward legislative programmes which would bribe the electoral wobblers first to this side and then to that. Where, on such a device does moral right come in? Was ever anything so ludicrous as a doctrine?
As a doctrine of right, majority rule has but doubtful ground to stand on. As an expedient, for practical use under sound conditions, there is much to be said for it. But when once you recognise it as a mere working expedient, then its workings must be watched, proved, and sometimes corrected and checked—by a minority.
Majority rule is only tolerable when it has the equal rights of man and woman firmly fixed as its goal; and it is as tending to the establishment of that doctrine that majority rule is acceptable (with some caution and reservations) to our progressive sense of citizenship.
In the great historic moments of upheaval which have brought it about, it has consciously or subconsciously been an attempt to get rid of the bad principle of dominance over others. It expresses the hope, or it embodies the probability, that a majority will be so broadly made up of all sorts and conditions—of the whole chemical composition of human society, that is to say—that in a government prompted and directed by a majority there will be no dominance of one section over another section: that they will, in the long run (or, if efficiently checked, in the short run) correct each other, strike a balance, and prevent the rigid and continuous existence in the body politic of any subjected section.
But if a majority could so sort its materials as to select for rigid and permanent subjection one section of the community, then the reason for its existence, and the grounds for its moral sanction would be gone.
If, then, two-thirds or three-quarters of the community can secure a greater apparent measure of comfort for themselves by forcing the remaining one-third, or one-quarter, to wait upon them and minister to their needs, the actual size of that dominant majority confers upon it no moral right whatever. There would, indeed, be more semblance of right, or at least more tenable ground, if a minority could so impose on a majority; because in that case the power of imposition would arise not from mere brute force so much as from superior ability; and a minority which can manipulate to its purpose the bulk material of a community has shown better ground for the rule of others (not very good ground, I admit) than the mere weight of numbers can supply. Weight of numbers as a ground for dominating others gives you no moral or efficient basis at all. Weight of capacity does give you an efficient basis, if not a moral one.
Now, if your two-thirds majority is extracting comfort on unequal and compulsory terms from the remaining one-third, you surely cannot deny the right of the remaining one-third so to diminish the comfort thus compulsorily extracted as to bring it to vanishing point, or to make it even a minus quantity. And the bigger the majority which is thus extracting sustenance from the minority, and exploiting it to its own ends, the more you will admire the minority if it rises in revolt, and makes the imposed and one-sided bargain unprofitable to the majority. And should the contention be carried to extremes (as it will be if both sides are sufficiently resolved) then the majority will have to exterminate the minority, and (if it wishes to continue government on the same lines) will have to extract for exploitation a new minority from its own body—give up one of its own ribs to servitude—and so become a diminished people in its perpetuation of a bad system.
Now, these considerations of moral right are irrespective of numbers. It may be the bounden duty of one man to resist the will of hundreds, or thousands, or millions. Indeed, every religious system admits, and history gives clear evidence, that that is so. A man must obey his conscience; that is his one ultimate guide. That statement expresses what one may call the atomic theory of human society. It suggests, at first sight, an impossible splitting to pieces of all systems of law and order; but it is not so in reality, because—and this is the really wonderful thing and the spiritual root of the whole matter—conscience is the most infectious and convincing force in life. In a community there is really a far greater agreement of conscience than of desire or of opinion. A conscientious resister may, of course, be mistaken; but if he is prepared to go on resisting, making sacrifice, and enduring suffering for his scruples—that process is the least fallible as a test, and the most converting in its tendency of all the processes of propaganda that the human mind can conceive; and by recognizing the moral right of the individual to put himself to that test before the eyes of his fellow citizens, and so at the same time to test their consciences in the matter, you are not really encouraging a course which leads to disunion and anarchy, but a course which, on the whole, will best bring about a general consensus of opinion. A community which recognises the moral worth of such tests of its own and of the individual conscience, will be far less likely to arouse such demonstrations of revolt than one which altogether ignores and despises them; for the simple reason that such a community will be better based in its duty toward its neighbour; it will wish each man to do that which it would claim the right to do itself in a like case, if faced by a superior power backed by greater numbers than its own.
If I know that my conscientious resistance will be respectfully considered (though not made easy or cheap to me), that my test of other consciences may be tried and may be adjudged to fail—I shall not be more inclined to enter into conflict with so considerate a majority, but less; for it is not open-minded justice but close-minded injustice which arouses opposition and rebellion.
But while human nature makes it safe, in the main, that men and women will not in any appreciable numbers submit themselves voluntarily to continuous discomfort, deprivation, loss of liberty and ease, except for a just cause or a high motive worth looking into, considering, and making allowances for: human nature does not make it safe that those in authority will not be overbearing and unjust, unless they too are liable to a like test.
And here again we come to consider the duty of the law and of law-makers to individuals.
The law should be prepared wherever its fallibility stands proved—where, for instance, it has done hurt and damage to innocency by its operations—at least to make full reparation. It is not an honourable position, for that which holds fiduciary together with compulsory powers, to say to one whom it has falsely imprisoned or unjustly charged—"You, on the whole, benefit by government, and, therefore, must yourself bear this hurt of government which has fallen upon you." The State or the community which permits such individual hardship to result from its imposition of a fallible code is not just in its government or dutiful to its neighbour. And if it so acts, it undermines in the governed their sense of its moral sanction. The State cannot so do hurt to its citizens and retain an unimpaired claim on their allegiance; nor can it with any moral decency claim reparation from its enemies abroad, if it does not make full reparation for its own miscarriages of justice at home.
"One," it is sometimes argued, "must suffer for the general good." But the general good is not so served. In this connection general good only means "general cheapness." The State, and not the citizen, must pay the price of its presumption—or it must look for an altered mind in every citizen whom it so afflicts from its position of immunity. Nay, it may be well that its supposed immunity should occasionally be disproved by a determined and self-sacrificing citizen, entirely for the general good, and the State forced to pay in extra upkeep for the bad condition of its laws.
The careless self-allowance of majorities in wrong done to minorities, or even to individuals, is not to the general good; and one could rather wish to a State that its minorities should be alert and pugnacious, than its majorities self-satisfied and indifferent on the score of mere numbers.
Numbers, uncorrected by conscience and uncontrolled by penalties, may be the cheapest, nastiest and most unscrupulous form of tyranny. The indifference or acquiescence of hundreds to conditions by which they themselves are not consciously affected cannot have the same moral weight as the discontent of one or of a few who are so affected. That is a consideration which must always qualify the "rights" of majorities. In such circumstances the sanction of mere numbers is not sufficient.
Are minorities, then, always to have their way? By no means. We know that they cannot.
Countless minorities in our political controversies have contended, have failed, and have acquiesced in their failure. Time has tested them, and has measured the depth of their grievance by the scale of human nature.
But other minorities, which have persistently refused to acquiesce have won. Time has tested them also; and human nature, not numbers, has in the long run proved their case.
Medical science tells us that there is in the human eye a blind spot, by the existence of which alone we are enabled to see. If that blind spot were absent the eye would be without focus.
In human nature (however much we hold by the principle of ordered government) there is a point of revolt which standardises the relations of the individual to government. It cannot be brought into play by mere artifice or calculation, except for brief spells; but when naturally aroused it lasts.
It is that point of revolt, latent at all times in a freedom-loving people, but only aroused by unjust conditions—it is the existence of that point of revolt in human nature which secures good government.
Minorities, if determined, can make unjust government an economic extravagance, and can indicate to majorities (with some trouble and cost to themselves) the limitation of their rights.
The sleeping partner of good government is the spirit of revolt.
To-day we have not good government; and that is why the sleeping partner is awake.