FullReads

But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as that of all English Governments must) in not seeming too strong; which is allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing the minimum? Of course, a Government is morally bound to keep itself in existence; for is it not bound to believe that it can govern the country better than any other knot of men? But its only chance of self-preservation is to know, with Hesiod’s wise man, “how much better the half is than the whole,” and to throw over many a measure which it would like to carry, for the sake of saving the few which it can carry.

An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the forty or fifty members of the House of Commons who are crotchety enough or dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority; and they, with the vast majority of the House, are becoming more and more the delegates of that very class which is most opposed to Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to express his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect the local interests of his constituents. And the great majority of those constituents are small houseowners–the poorer portion of the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like a sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the Government to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do too much, and that it shall not compel his constituents to do anything at all.

No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such toward a matter which involves the lives of thousands yearly, some educated men should be crying that Representative institutions are on their trial, and should sigh for a strong despotism.

There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one hopes that people will see the answer for themselves, and that the infection of Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will be stopped by common sense and honest observation of facts.

A despotism doubtless could carry out Sanitary Reform: but doubtless, also, it would not.

A despot in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his tenure is. His motto must be, “Let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we die;” and, therefore, the first objects of his rule will be, private luxury and a standing army; while if he engage in public works, for the sake of keeping the populace quiet, they will be certain not to be such as will embroil him with the middle classes, while they will win him no additional favour with the masses, utterly unaware of their necessity. Would the masses of Paris have thanked Louis Napoleon the more if, instead of completing the Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All arguments to the contrary are utterly fallacious, which are drawn from ancient despotisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or other; and for this simple reason, that they had no middle class. If they did work well (which is a question) it was just because they had no middle class–that class, which in a free State is the very life of a nation, and yet which, in a despotism, is sure to be the root of its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis Napoleon has done, a strong middle class already existing, must treat it as he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its basest propensities, seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may make it his. For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and were a despot to govern England tomorrow, we should see that the man who was shrewd enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd enough to know that he could scarcely commit a more suicidal act than, by some despotic measure of Sanitary Reform, to excite the ill-will of all the most covetous, the most stupid, and the most stubborn men in every town of England.