The Mirrors of Downing Street Part 11

CONCLUSION

_"While the advances made by objective science and its industrial applications are palpable and undeniable all around us, it is a matter of doubt and dispute if our social and moral advance towards happiness and virtue has been great or any."_--MARK PATTISON.

After all, a nation gets the politics that it deserves. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. If the tone of public life is a low one it is because the tone of society is not a high one. The remedy, then, is not "Sack the lot," but rather, "Repent, lest a worse thing befall thee."

It seems to me that a beginning in moral and social reformation might be made if aristocracy could be encouraged to affirm its ancient rights by the performance of its inherent duties.

We are a nation without standards, kept in health rather by memories which are fading than by examples which are compelling. We still march to the dying music of great traditions but there is no captain of civilization at the head of our ranks. We have indeed almost ceased to be an army marching with confidence towards the enemy, and have become a mob breaking impatiently loose from the discipline and ideals of our past.

Aristocracy, it must be boldly said, has played traitor to England. It has ceased to lead, and not because it has been thrust from its rightful place by the rude hand of democracy, but because it has deliberately preferred the company of the vulgar. No one has pulled it down, it has itself descended. It has lost its respect for learning, it has grown careless of manners, it has abandoned faith in its duty, it is conscious of no solemn obligations, it takes no interest in art, it is indifferent to science, it is sick of effort, it has surrendered gladly and gratefully to the materialism of plutocracy.

If it could have lost itself in plutocracy the harm would not have been so great; but it still remains for the mult.i.tude a true aristocracy, and looking up to that aristocracy for its standards--an aristocracy whose private life is now public property--the mult.i.tude has become materialistic, throwing Puritanism to the dogs, and pushing as heartily forward to the trough as any full-fed glutton in the middle or the upper ranks of life.

The standards set by the privileged cla.s.ses at this time are the same standards as ruled in France before the Revolution. There is no example of modesty, earnestness, restraint, thrift, duty, or culture. Everything is sensual and ostentatious, and shamefacedly sensual and ostentatious.

It is time for the best people in aristocracy to set their faces against this wanton and destructive spirit. It is time a halt was called to luxury and profligacy; time that the door was shut in the face of invading vulgarity. Creation has not agonized in b.l.o.o.d.y sweat through countless ages of suffering and achievement that those who possess the highest opportunities for doing good should pervert those opportunities into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content with the egoism of the social b.u.t.terfly. The very blood of dead humanity cries out for a higher creature.

Aristocracy, one sees, is too apt to regard itself as the spoilt child of material fortune, instead of humbly and with a sense of deepest responsibility accepting the heavy duties of moral leadership imposed upon it by the labours of evolution.

It is to be hoped that the children of the present generation of aristocracy may grow up with no taste for the betting ring, the card room, and the night club, or, at any rate, that a certain number of them may find their highest happiness in knowledge and wisdom rather than in amateur theatricals and fancy-dress b.a.l.l.s. The human mind, after all, cannot find rest in triviality, and after so long a period of the most sordid and vulgar self-indulgence it is reasonable to hope that our aristocracy may experience a reaction.

If men would ask themselves, before they rush out to seek her, What is Pleasure? and consult the past history of humanity as well as their own senses and inclinations they could hardly fail, except in the case of the most degenerate, to discover that the highest happiness is not of the nursery or the kitchen, but rather of the living spirit.

Observation of nature, love of beautiful things, delight in n.o.ble literature, grat.i.tude for the highest forms of wit and humour, sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men, reverence for the majesty of the universe, kindness to all, love of children, and devotion to the home, these operations of the human spirit bring peace to the heart of man and continue their ministrations to his happiness with an increasing power of joy as his personality enlarges itself to receive the highest revelations of Life.

Something far greater than she is now doing might be done by the Church to restore the sanctions which once ruled human conduct and gave a living force to public opinion. Religion in these days is obviously too complaisant. To watch the Church in the world is to be reminded of a poor relation from the provinces sitting silent and overawed in the gilded drawing-room of a parvenu. There is no sound of confidence in her voice. She whines for the world's notice instead of denouncing its very obvious sins. She is too much in this world, and too little in the other. She is too careful not to offend Dives, and too self-conscious to be seen openly in the company of Lazarus. It is impossible not to think that a coa.r.s.e world has shaken her faith in Christian virtue. She clings to her traditions and her doctrines, but she has lost the vigorous faith in spiritual life which gave beauty to those traditions and has ceased to set that example of entire self-sacrifice which rendered her doctrines less difficult of interpretation by the instructed. She has ceased to preach, even with the dying embers of conviction, that a man may gain the whole world and yet lose his soul alive.

A responsibility hardly to be exceeded by that of aristocracy rests upon the leaders of Labour. Every voice raised to encourage the economic delusions of Socialism is a voice on the side of vulgarity and irreligion. Most of the leaders of Labour know perfectly well that economic Socialism is impossible, but by not saying so with honest courage they commit a grave sin, a sin not only against society but against G.o.d. For democracy in England, once the most sensible and kind-hearted democracy in Europe, is placing its faith more and more in the power of wages to buy happiness, turning away with more and more impatience from the divine truth that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.

It is a grievous thing to corrupt the mind of the simple. Democracy in England has been the chief representative of veritable Englishness up to these days. It was never Latinized or Frenchified. The cottage garden refused to follow the bad example of the "carpet-bedder." The poor have always been racy of the soil. They have laughed at the absurdities of fashion and seen through the pretensions of wealth. They have believed in heartiness and cheerfulness. All their proverbs spring out of a keen sense of virtue. All their games are of a manly character. To materialize this glorious people, to commercialize and mammonize it, to make it think of economics instead of life, to make it bitter, discontented, and tyrannous, this is to strike at the very heart of England.

But though the leaders of Labour are guilty of this corruption, there is no doubt that the ugliness of spirit in democracy is the reflection of the ugly life led by the privileged cla.s.ses. There is no reproach for this democracy when it looks upward. It sees nothing but the reckless and useless display of wealth, nothing in the full sunshine of prosperity but a Baccha.n.a.lian horde of irresponsible sensualists, nothing there but a ramp of unashamed hedonism, and a hedonism of the lowest order.

Democracy, nursing what it deems to be its economic wrongs, and not unnaturally regarding the wealthy cla.s.ses with bitter anger, has yet to learn that capital was largely the creation of the Puritan character, and that the prosperity of these British Islands was laid in no small measure by the thrift and temperance of those who lived simply because they thought deeply. Capital, without which Labour could have done little, is not a contrivance of the noisy rich, but the deliberate creation of virtuous men. Capital, now regarded as an enemy, was once the visible best friend of Labour.

Where is there now among the possessing cla.s.ses an example even of simplicity in dress, modesty in behaviour, temperance in conduct, and thrift in living? As for any higher example--an example of wisdom, duty, self-sacrifice, and moral earnestness--it is nowhere visible in our national life to those who look upward.

Until we recover this ancient spirit our politics must continue their descent to the abyss, and democracy will listen to the corrupting delusions of the economic Socialist.

We need the Puritan element in our characters, the h.e.l.lenic element in our minds, and the Christian element in our souls. We must set a higher value on moral qualities, on intellectual qualities, and on Christian qualities. We must learn to see, not gloomily and heavily, but with joy and thanksgiving, that our world is set in the midst of an infinite universe, that it has a purpose in the scheme of things, that we are all members one of another, and that there is no grandeur of character, mind, or soul which can ever be worthy of creation's purpose.

Less flippancy in the world would lead to more seriousness, more seriousness would lead to greater intelligence, and greater intelligence would lead to n.o.bler living.

"The cure for us," said George Sand, "is far more simple than we will believe. All the better natures amongst us see it and feel it. It is a good direction given by ourselves to our hearts and consciences."

Let each man ask himself, Is my direction worthy of man's past and hopeful for his future?

THE END.