Friends in Council Part 7

Milverton. And mine; but the doubt, if it has ever been more than mere petulance, has not had much practical weight with me. Look how the business of the world is managed. There are a few people who think out things, and a few who execute. The former are not to be secured by any device. They are gifts. The latter may be well chosen, have often been well chosen, under other forms of government than the representative one. I believe that the favourites of kings have been a superior race of men. Even a fool does not choose a fool for a favourite. He knows better than that: he must have something to lean against. But between the thinkers and the doers (if, indeed, we ought to make such a distinction), WHAT A NUMBER OF USEFUL LINKS THERE ARE IN A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT on account of the much larger number of people admitted into some share of government. What general cultivation must come from that, and what security! Of course, everything has its wrong side; and from this number of people let in there comes declamation and claptrap and mob-service, which is much the same thing as courtiership was in other times. But then, to make the comparison a fair one, you must take the wrong side of any other form of government that has been devised.

Dunsford. Well, but so much power centring in the lower house of Parliament, and the getting into Parliament being a thing which is not very inviting to the kind of people one would most like to see there, do you not think that the ablest men are kept away?

Milverton. Yes; but if you make your governing body a unit or a ten, or any small number, how is this power, unless it is Argus- eyed, and myriad-minded, and right-minded too, to choose the right men any better than they are found now? The great danger, as it appears to me, of representative government is lest it should slide down from representative government to delegate government. In my opinion, the welfare of England, in great measure, depends upon what takes place at the hustings. If, in the majority of instances, there were abject conduct there, electors and elected would be alike debased; upright public men could not be expected to arise from such beginnings; and thoughtful persons would begin to consider whether some other form of government could not forthwith be made out.

Ellesmere. I have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings has no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him. How such a fellow would have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited for hours in a Buckingham's antechamber, only to catch the faintest beam of reflected light from royalty.

But I declare we have been just like schoolboys talking about forms of government and so on.

"For forms of government let fools contest, That which is WORST administered is best,"--

that is, representative government.

Milverton. I should not like either of you to fancy, from what I have been saying about representative government, that I do not see the dangers and the evils of it. In fact, it is a frequent thought with me of what importance the House of Lords is at present, and of how much greater importance it might be made. If there were Peers for life, and official members of the House of Commons, it would, I think, meet most of your objections, Dunsford.

Dunsford. I suppose I am becoming a little rusty and disposed to grumble, as I grow old; but there is a good deal in modern government which seems to me very rude and absurd. There comes a clamour, partly reasonable; power is deaf to it, overlooks it, says there is no such thing; then great clamour; after a time, power welcomes that, takes it to its arms, says that now it is loud it is very wise, wishes it had always been clamour itself.

Ellesmere. How many acres do you farm, Dunsford? How spiteful you are!

Dunsford. I am not thinking of Corn Laws alone, as you fancy, Master Ellesmere. But to go to other things. I quite agree, Milverton, with what you were saying just now about the business of the world being carried on by few, and the thinking few being in the nature of gifts to the world, not elicited by King or Kaiser.

Milverton. The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places.

Ellesmere. Not a bad metaphor, but untrue. Aristotle, Bacon--

Milverton. Well, I believe it would be much wiser to say, that we cannot lay down rules about the highest work; either when it is done, where it will be done, or how it can be made to be done. It is too immaterial for our measurement; for the highest part even of the mere business of the world is in dealing with ideas. It is very amusing to observe the misconceptions of men on these points. They call for what is outward--can understand that, can praise it.

Fussiness and the forms of activity in all ages get great praise.

Imagine an active, bustling little praetor under Augustus, how he probably pointed out Horace to his sons as a moony kind of man, whose ways were much to be avoided, and told them it was a weakness in Augustus to like such idle men about him instead of men of business.

Ellesmere. Or fancy a bustling Glasgow merchant of Adam Smith's day watching him. How little would the merchant have dreamt what a number of vessels were to be floated away by the ink in the Professor's inkstand; and what crashing of axes, and clearing of forests in distant lands, the noise of his pen upon the paper portended.

Milverton. It is not only the effect of the still-working man that the busy man cannot antic.i.p.ate, but neither can he comprehend the present labour. If Horace had told my praetor that

"Abstinuit Venere et vino, sudavit et alsit,"

"What, to write a few lines!" would his praetorship have cried out.

"Why, I can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in Rome does more business."

Dunsford. All of it only goes to show how little we know of each other, and how tolerant we ought to be of others' efforts.

Milverton. The trials that there must be every day without any incident that even the most minute household chronicler could set down: the labours without show or noise!

Ellesmere. The deep things that there are which, with unthinking people, pa.s.s for shallow things, merely because they are clear as well as deep. My fable of the other day, for instance--which instead of producing any moral effect upon you two, only seemed to make you both inclined to giggle.

Milverton. I am so glad you reminded me of that. I, too, fired with a n.o.ble emulation, have invented a fable since we last met which I want you to hear. I a.s.sure you I did not mean to laugh at yours: it was only that it came rather unexpectedly upon me. You are not exactly the person from whom one should expect fables.

Dunsford. Now for the fable.

Milverton. There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and terrible to man, to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o'-the-wisps, and shadows of grim objects, told fearfully their doings and preferred their claims, none prevailing. But when evening came on, a thin mist curled up, derisively, amidst the a.s.semblage, and said, "I gather round a man going to his own home over paths made by his daily footsteps; and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child. The lights meant to a.s.sist him, then betray. You find him wandering, or need the aid of other Terrors to subdue him. I am, alone, confusion to him." And all the a.s.semblage bowed before the mist, and made it king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when it is not doing evil, it may be often seen to this day.

Dunsford. Well, I like that fable: only I am not quite clear about the meaning.

Ellesmere. You had no doubt about mine.

Dunsford. Is the mist calumny, Milverton?

Ellesmere. No, prejudice, I am sure.

Dunsford. Familiarity with the things around us, obscuring knowledge?

Milverton. I would rather not explain. Each of you make your own fable of it.

Dunsford. Well, if ever I make a fable, it shall be one of the old- fashioned sort, with animals for the speakers, and a good easy moral.

Ellesmere. Not a thing requiring the notes of seven German metaphysicians. I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them. It is turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity.

CHAPTER VII.

We met as usual at our old spot on the lawn for our next reading. I forget what took place before reading, except that Ellesmere was very jocose about our reading "Fiction" in-doors, and the following "November Essay," as he called it, "under a jovial sun, and with the power of getting up and walking away from each other to any extent."

ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS.

The "Iliad" for war; the "Odyssey" for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say, that pa.s.sions may rage round a tea-table, which would not have misbecome men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.

We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and disgusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and, indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon earth. The various relations of life, which bring people together, cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them. It is no harm, however, to endeavour to see whether there are any methods which may make these relations in the least degree more harmonious now.

In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be a.s.sured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy. Sometimes men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say, "Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?"

Many of the rules for people living together in peace follow from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that they are not we.

Another rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.

Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people, when he said, "Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail of a domestic day." But the application should be much more general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good temper.

If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society.

Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism.

It would be like living between the gla.s.ses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. "Had I been consulted," "Had you listened to me," "But you always will," and such short sc.r.a.ps of sentences may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect.

Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy.

Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your a.s.sociates, but not less courteously than you do to strangers.

Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give, and especially must not expect contrary things. It is something arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite); but still we become familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our a.s.sociates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking rooms with light blazing in them, and we conclude involuntarily how happy the inmates must be.