privileges, are together too powerful for any government to attack except in detail or by a sidewind. Not long since, you will remember, Mr. Gladstone threw out a much-needed warning to the Corporation of London. The whole bevy of Bumbledom went into hysterics. The Tory party sounded the trumpet. An ancient and honourable corporation was in danger. On the sacred persons of Gog and Magog impious hands might be laid. The Lord Mayor of London asked all the mayors in England to dinner. The chaplain said grace. Over turtle-soup and venison, chasséed with champagne, they soothed their outraged spirits, they encouraged each other to believe that institutions so antique, so essential to the existence of the commonwealth, should never die they pledged themselves to a new solemn League and Covenant in their defence. The oath was, or is, to be confirmed by a second dinner to be given by all the other mayors to the Lord Mayor of London. Even Mr. Gladstone, facing such a phalanx of embodied beef and dignity, equally intent on vindicating their corporate rights and cor

poral privileges, flinched before them at the Mansion House, and generalised upon the dignity of local independence.

XXIII.

TENDENCY OF KNAVES AND FOOLS ΤΟ

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

of knaves

to muni

govern

I do not profess to know what your experi- Tendency ence is in America, but in England we find and fools that stupidity and knavery have a perilous cipal tendency to aggregate and crystallise about ment. municipal institutions. It would seem as if an ingenuous public recognised town-corporations and local boards as a substitute for respectable gaols and idiot asylums. Nay, what asylum could take them all in? Parochus is deaf, Parochus is blind, Parochus is stupid, Parochus is perverse: Parochus is niggardly when he ought to be generous, and free when he ought to be close: Parochus sometimes pockets the people's money, uses the people's workmen, takes commissions from the people's tradesmen, forgets the

people's health, neglects the people's business. If the cur is caught in the act of stealing a leg of mutton, he yelps when he is kicked for it, but he goes on eating the meat.

The fatal

results of

of the duties of citizenship.

XXIV.

THE FATAL RESULTS OF NEGLIGENCE OF
THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP.

To a new community one cannot point a negligence better moral than from the state of municipal administration in England. There are few evils so injurious to the body politic as administrative corruption existing through the negligence of citizens to perform their duties, whether of selection or representation. It is indeed one of the clearest evidences of rottenness in a people's condition. For it is with a nation as with a man; sacrifice is the secret of greatness. He who would win a name, a position, an estate, builds these up on self-denial. From blood and tears comes triumph the cross wins the crown. Away then I say, from among a free people, with

the craven to whom political and municipal affairs are things of mere curiosity, or the avaricious knave who while he accepts a nation's protection declines to repay it with a citizen's devoir.

It is the inaction of the best citizens which disturbs in all free countries the play of free government. Government can only afford to be free, and a people can only deserve to be free, when citizens generally assume the common burden of working for its good. People cry out against the tyranny of majorities. High-stepping Tories cry out against it in the state, schismatics cry out against it in every free church. I dare say the man who suffers from the tyranny of majorities—that is, the man whose interests are not coincident with those of the public, finds it quite as hard to give way to a majority as it would be to yield to a pope or a kaiser. But after all (it is a mere truism to say it!) is it not a different thing to be one of a community, and have a voice either for or against what the majority desires, and to be one of a community every member of

Abstinence of

which is bound to submit silently to the dictation of one person? Really, when we come to sift this outcry about the tyranny of majorities, we find it simply comes to this :

The abstinence of influential minorities. influential In a free state, were all the citizens to be

minorities.

equally patriotic in their interest, labour, and sacrifice for the political purity and perfection of government, the tyranny of majorities would scarcely be a bugbear. But as a matter of course, if half the people are indifferent, the other half will take advantage of it if the best decline the work, the worst will accept it. And I have often noticed that the men who most decry the tyranny of majorities are those who keep themselves free of the sacrifices, toils, and responsibilities of political and municipal affairs.

You know too well, as we in England have learned to our cost, the effects of this indifference. It is the common peril of democracies. Government, local or national, is apt to become the prey of state harpies. You find at length that, not the fittest man