From The Fortnightly Review. |of strong national feeling. Still, the idea of PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY. the State as almost a personal being, as a I WAS led lately, in the course of lec- living parent whose welfare should be presturing at the Royal Institution on what I ent to every man's thoughts at every moventured to call Comparative Politics, ment of his life, the feeling which reached into a somewhat full examination, and its height when the personified City of into a still further course of reflexion, as Rome became an object of worship and to the different ideas of the State, as enter- sacrifice, is certainly felt in Modern Eutained in the small commonwealths of old rope in a much lower degree than it was Greece and in the large countries of mod- in Athens or Florence. The difference ern Europe. In what the main difference is, I think, one of the unavoidable differconsists is obvious. In the one case, the ences between large and small states; for State of which a man is a member, and to we must remember that, in contrast to which his public duties are owing, is con- the city-communities of Greece and Italy, ceived as being a city; in the other case the smallest European kingdom must be it is conceived as being a nation or coun- counted as a large state. Of small states try of large extent, whether kingdom or on the ancient or mediæval scale, modern commonwealth matters not. The train of Europe can no longer show any examthought into which that inquiry led made ples. Andorre and San Marino are rathme think whether it was not closely con- er curious survivals of a past state of nected with another which had been for things than practical members of the Eusome time in my mind, but which would ropean body. The smaller Cantons of have been quite unfit for discussion in Switzerland, the few surviving Free Cities what was meant to be a scientific compar- of Germany, still keep much in common ison of various forms of government and with the ancient commonwealths; but their origin. Many things, both great the restrictions of the Federal tie hinder and small, forcibly bring before the mind them from showing forth their political the thought that there is a sense in which life in all its fulness. And Switzerland, we who live in the great kingdoms and as a whole, undoubtedly ranks as a large commonwealths of modern Europe, are state compared with Athens or Sparta. I less patriotic than the citizens of the an- insist on this question of size, because I cient city-communities. There are many feel sure that the difference of which I points in which our political life is far speak has more to do with the size of the more healthy than theirs was; but it cer- state than with the form of its governtainly seems that we have not, as a rule, ment, shutting out, of course, mere anthat living feeling of the State, as some-archy and mere tyranny, as not worthy to thing ever present to our thoughts, as be called forms of government at all. In something demanding of us constant ef- a large state, in our sense, be it of the forts and constant sacrifices, which the size of Denmark or of the size of Russia, loyal citizens of an ancient or mediæval it is impossible that the existence of the commonwealth certainly had. Modern State can be brought home to every man European nations are certainly not lack- as something in which he is personally ing in national feeling, nor are they lack-and daily concerned, in the same way in ing in readiness to do their duty to their which it can in a state composed only of country to the full under the pressure and a single city. The average citizen cannot excitement of actual warfare. The last have the same constant personal knowlgreat war has fully shown this; no one edge of public affairs, the same personal can charge either the French or the Ger- share in them, which he may have in a man army with any failure either in pro- city-commonwealth. Be the constitution fessional courage or in patriotic feeling of a higher kind. The very cry of "nous sommes trahis on every occasion of defeat, utterly unreasonable as it is, and fatal to all energetic action, is itself a sign of the State never so free, the ordinary citizen hears more of a government which is set over him than of a commonwealth of which he forms a part. The natural, the unavoidable, result is a comparative deadness of public feeling. On a great emergency, a war for instance, when the being of the State and his personal duties towards it are strongly brought home to him, the citizen of a large state will be as ready for patriotic action as the citizen of a small state. But he needs to have the existence of the State, and his duties towards it, brought home to him in this special way. He is not, like the citizen of the small commonwealth, brought face to face with them every moment of his life. loved Athens so well that he would give her what he deemed the best form of government at any hazard and at any sacrifice. Traitors of this kind, traitors who en great days of her democracy. But we may be also sure that the number of men who would betray their country for their own gain, the number of men who would seek to win party ends by surrendering or jeoparding the independence of their country, is relatively smaller in a yet higher degree. The patriot and the traitor in truth sprang from the same root; the traitor was perhaps very often a patriot in his own eyes. We must not think that every oligarch who thought to overthrow the democracy, or even every It must, of course, not be forgotten, in oligarch who was ready to purchase the comparing the two systems and their dif-destruction of the democracy at the cost ferent results, that, if we reap the fruits of receiving a Spartan garrison, was in of the worse side of the difference, we his own eyes an enemy of his country. reap the fruits of the good side also. If His argument would rather be that he the patriotism of a small state is ardent and active, it is also apt to be turbulent and aggressive. Men who are ready to give their goods and their lives for their own commonwealth are also apt to forget thus pushed their zeal for a party within that other commonwealths have equal their country to such a pitch as to berights with their own. The ideal Roman, come treason to their country itself, are in whose eyes Rome was so precious that as natural a growth of a small commonhimself and all that he had seemed as wealth as are the patriots of a more nothing when compared with her inter-lightened kind. In a large state party ests, was, from the very same cause, spirit does not run so high; it does not ready to sacrifice truth and justice when- get so easily mixed up with personal enever it seemed that by the sacrifice of mities. And again, in modern times the truth and justice the interests of Rome political parties in any state for the most could be furthered. The vice and the part begin and end within that state. virtue, the heroic sacrifice of self and the Kings have indeed sometimes banded tocontemptuous disregard for the rights of gether to destroy popular rights everyothers, are here so closely connected, the where, and republican propagandists have two spring so directly from the same less commonly preached the overthrow source, that it is hardly possible to draw of kings everywhere; but, as a rule, no the line between them. And, following purely political party in a modern Eurothe law which seems to have decreed that pean state would seek to overthrow its the same soil should be fertile in fruits political rivals by the help of a foreign of opposite kinds, where we find the force. This again is one of the results of most abundant supply of the most ardent the difference between large and small patriotism, we may also look for a cor- states. A political party in a modern responding supply of its opposite. As state may sympathize with the correan ascetic age is commonly also a profli- sponding party in any other state; but it gate age, so, where patriots are thickest seldom happens that their communicaon the ground, we not uncommonly find tions with each other are so easy, or their traitors thickest also. We may be sure objects so exactly the same, that they can that the number of men in England who do much more than sympathize. The would willingly die for their country feeling of nationality, the difference of is putting the case of exposure in war-language and the like, steps in, and a fare out of sight in both cases relative- man feels that he has really more in comly smaller than it was at Athens in the mon with his own countrymen of an op posite political party, than he has with be taken for granted on a great many subforeigners of a party answering to his jects that the individual is to be dearer own. But the oligarchic or the demo- than the State, that public interests, pubcratic party in any Greek city was some- lic feelings, and the like, are to be made thing more than an oligarchic or a demo- of less account than private interests and cratic party in that particular city. It feelings. Except perhaps in such cases as was a branch of a party that was spread betrayal of military duty, it seems to be through all the cities of Greece, and the commonly taken for granted that an ofcitizens of one Greek city were not abso- fence, great or small, against the State, is lute foreigners to one another in the way to be looked on as lighter than an offence that men of different nations in modern of the same kind against an individual. Europe are. It was possible that the Greek Even perhaps in the exception which I who wrought treason against his own city have made, the betrayal of military duty, might flatter himself with the belief that I suspect that in many minds the notion he was working for the common good of of a breach of a man's personal engageHellas. It is hardly possible that any ments, of a stain on his professional man in modern Europe who should try "honour," would come before the simple to bring about a political change in his notion of crime against the State of which own country by the help of a foreign he is a member. It is, I think, certain force could ever persuade himself that he that a crime against the State, simply as was working for the common good of a crime against the State, is not commonEurope. ly felt to be in the same sense a crime, that it is not visited with the same social penalties, as a purely private crime of the same kind. The difference then between small states and great has two sides to it. Each has in some points the advantage of the other. I speak of all this because, in the matter which I have taken in hand, I think that the small states of the old time have the advantage over the great states of our own day. I think that the circumstances of the small commonwealth lead in some respects to a higher and purer tone of political morality; but I am fully aware that this advantage, and the other advantages of a small commonwealth, had to be purchased by great disadvantages the other way. If therefore I point out some things in which I think that we might improve ourselves by the model of a far distant state of things, I would not be understood as striving after, or even as sighing after, a state of things which is beyond our reach, a state of things which, if it were to be had, would most likely not be on the whole any improvement on the state of things in which we find ourselves. My main point then is that, in the large states of modern Europe, the State, and the duty which each citizen owes to the State, is not, perhaps cannot be, constantly present to men's minds in the same way in which it was present to a patriotic citizen of one of the small commonwealths of past times. It seems to Let us take some instances of all kinds, from the smallest up to the greatest. An old Roman held that all private feelings should be sacrificed to public duty of any kind. Lucius Æmilius Paullus celebrated his triumph all the same, although, of the two sons who were left to keep up the succession of his house, one had died a few days before, and the other was seemingly on his death-bed.* In our time a "domestic affliction " is always held to be reason enough to account for the absence of any public man from any kind of public duty. There no doubt are cases where the "domestic affliction " is so real that nothing short of the iron discipline of old Rome could enable a man to discharge public duties while the blow is still fresh upon him, But we hear the same phrase when we may be sure that the "affliction" and the consequent mourning are purely ceremonial. A man is expected to stay away, not only because his own feelings prompt him to stay away, but because conventional rules require him. Not only would the sacri * See the story in Livy, xlv. 40. He had two other sons, but they had been adopted into other families, the younger Scipio for one of them. fice of private feeling to public be looked | hear about "vested interests." In any on as a social indecency; it would be public reform it is taken for granted that looked on as a social indecency if a man the reform is to be left imperfect, if any did not pretend sorrow and consequent incapacity for business, even when none is really felt. Now we may perhaps debate whether the Roman or the English feeling on this matter is the more healthy; but there can be no doubt as to the principles from which the two feelings severally start. The Roman feeling takes for granted that the State should come before everything else in the minds of all its citizens. The modern feeling takes for granted that the domestic relations come first, and that the State must get what it can after the domestic relations have been satisfied. man's private interest would suffer by carrying it out thoroughly. That is to say, in this as in other matters, public interest must give way to private. This worship of vested interests is, I believe, held to be conservative, but it very often is in practice destructive. It often happens that an institution which has become very corrupt might be reformed and might again do good service, if only the particular men who profit by its abuse were turned out, and better men put in their stead. Reformers of almost any age before our own would have preserved the institution, but would have turned out the men who had made it useless or mischievous. The modern fashion is to destroy the institution itself, but to spare those whose faults have brought about its destruction. The sinecurist, the pluralist, the shameless neglecter of all duty, is allowed to keep his ill-gotten gains for life; his vested interests must be tenderly dealt with; but when he dies, the institution which, but for him, might have been reformed is condemned to perish for his fault. Again, everybody will remember how, in the time of the Crimean war, a number of men were allowed to come home from the scene of warfare on the ground of "urgent private business." It would seem indeed that it was only the favoured grandees who were thus highly privileged; we may doubt whether the private business of a drummer-boy, or even that of an ensign without interest, would have been thought urgent enough to allow his public duties to be left behind. But whether the plea was urged in good faith All these ways of looking at things or in bad, the fact that it could be pub- show a very different state of feeling licly urged at all shows a state of feeling with regard to the State from that which which a Roman or a Spartan commander lighted up the patriotism of the citizens would not have understood. Leônidas or of the ancient commonwealths. The Manius Curius would have made short thing to be noticed is the way in which, work of a lochagos or a centurion who in all cases of these kinds, it is taken for talked of urgent private business at granted, as a matter of course, that the Thermopylai or at Beneventum. Justly private interest must prevail over the or unjustly, the public opinion of Sparta public. The thing is never argued about; would have put those noble and gallant it is taken for granted, as an axiom that officers in the same limbo with Aristo- cannot be doubted. If it were proposed dêmos the Trembler. Such public opin- in any case to make vested interests yield ion would have been unjust; it was un- to the common good, the cry of "confisjust in the case of Arisdodêmos. The cation" would at once be raised. The officers who came home were certainly use of the word itself illustrates the state not cowards in the vulgar sense. They of feeling of which I speak. In the diahad proved their animal courage amid lect of Mr. Disraeli and the penny-athe excitement of actual fighting; they liners "confiscation" always means someseem to have disliked the hard, dull, thing wicked. It seems to be high-polite wearing work which followed the fighting. for stealing. But "confiscation" is in But the point is, that "urgent private itself a word purely colourless; it means business" could in any case be allowed the taking of anything for the public as an excuse for forsaking public busi- treasury. When the estates of a felon or ness of any kind. It could have been al- traitor were forfeited to the Crown, and lowed only in a state of society which when a magistrate fines a man for an ashabitually accepts the principle that pri- sault or a trespass, the process in both vate interests should come before public cases is confiscation. The vulgar use of interests. the word is doubtless owing to the love of using a big, vague, Latin-sounding word, instead of a short English word about whose meaning there can be no It is a bold thing to say, but it strikes me that the same feeling lurks under a great deal of the talk which we nowadays doubt. But the misuse could have arisen only in a state of things in which people had learned to look on confiscation to the State as the same thing with unjust seizure by a private person. When Mr. Disraeli and other people, in the Irish Church debates, talked big about "confiscation," the implied sentiment, though most likely they did not know it, was the same as that of one of Mr. Dickens's characters "Rates is a robbery." one smoking is a specially gross and selfish All these cases are instances, in different ways, of the feeling, a feeling all the more important because it is calmly and unconsciously taken for granted, that private interests should come first, and public interests second. Here, I do not hesitate to say, is a wide difference between the point of view of great states and that of small ones. In a small state, no less than in a great one, the citizen may practically put his private interest before the interest of the commonwealth; he may betray the commonwealth, or he may enrich himself at its expense; but if he does so, he is universally understood to be a bad citizen, one who directly tramples on his duties towards the commonwealth of which he is a member. Conduct of this kind may even be quite as common in a small state as in a great one; the difference is that, in the small state, a line of conduct is always held to be contrary to the duties of a citizen which, in a large state, is, in a slightly to them. modified form, taken for granted even by the most respectable men of all parties. We see the same difference of feeling in another form, in the difficulty, to put it broadly, which people nowadays seem to feel in understanding that a crime against the State is any crime at all. This comes out both in the greatest matters and in the smallest, and, as in all such cases, the smallest class of instances are really the most instructive. To many people, the notion of law as law, the doctrine that it is a conscientious duty to obey the law, simply because it is the law, seems to be Take, for something wholly unknown. instance, such a case as that of smoking in any railway carriage under the old rules, or the worse case of smoking in a carriage not set apart for smoking under the new rules. The act of smoking in either case is a distinct breach of the law; for, though it is not directly forbidden by Act of Parliament, yet the bye-law of a company empowered by Parliament to make bye-laws is undoubtedly law within its own range. And the act of smoking in a carriage set apart for those who dislike We see the same feeling at work in other small cases, which involve not only breach of law, but distinct dishonesty to |