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Typos — p. 51: maintainance [= maintenance] - p. 48 - VI Phantom Life-Belts My fourth chapter may be thought to have ended on a note of too fulsome praise of Lord Acton. But when I described him as the greatest figure in the Sieges Allee of Liberalism this was not mere irony. For if Liberalism marks the zenith of political wisdom, Acton deserves every syllable of my praise.         In one sentence he summarised Europe's experience of one thousand years of so called "aristocratic" rule and, as Dr. David Thomson says, "struck the authentic note of the democratic approach to politics." (The Democratic Ideal in France and England, Chap. I). The opportunity to state a principle that would have shed urgently needed light on the millennium in question was both timely and propitious, and the fact that he missed it and lent his authority to a misunderstanding of the issue, is seriously to be deplored. — Not that any wiser pronouncement could have halted the Movement. But at least its philosophy would have been shaken; for Mill, one of its leading defenders, was already wavering.         The crying need at the time when he finished his treatises on Liberty and Representative Government (circa 1860), was an authoritative denial of the popular belief that power inevitably spelt irresponsible tyranny. Acton's sweeping generalisation thus had a taint of vulgarity, of which even Rousseau was free; for did he not advocate Aristocracy?         Does the generalisation perhaps indicate a strain of vulgarity in Acton himself? He was certainly a mongrel, and the Dictionary of National Biography, usually courteous, says he was "of mingled race." A vulgar spirit certainly hovered over English thought and sentiment throughout the nineteenth century, and it has gone from strength to strength in our time. How else does one explain the fact that Macaulay could, without tarnishing his good name, speak of Charles I as most undoubtedly "a scholar and a gentleman" although "he was - p. 49 - false"? (Edinburgh Rev. Dec. 1831) and that less than a century later Maurice Woods could also without risk to his reputation, speak of the Royal Martyr's son as being "at once a great rogue and a great gentleman"? (A History of the Tory Party, p. 34). What are we to think of a public whose notion of a gentleman and of a great gentleman was compatible with roguery and falsity? These may seem but paltry examples, but they are significant.         Can we believe that Acton with all his historical erudition and wide knowledge of his fellow men, knew of no ruler, no individual of high rank, ancient or modern, who was immune to the corrupting influence of power? Or was his remark subjective, the outcome of introspection? For if I, of a generation later than his, can recall at least one public figure and one unknown gentlemen — the Rev. John Scott Lidgett and my first chief in the Army, a Scot named Major Ayrton — whom 1 would cheerfully have entrusted with absolute power, can Acton have been less fortunate?         But it is the Liberal's fatal heritage, bequeathed by Western Man's most unhappy experience, to have lost all faith in a ruler class and to have become convinced that if safety and justice are to be secured on earth, two formidable evils must for ever be eschewed — what Bentham in his day was to describe as the two "Sinister Interests: the Monarchical and the Aristocratic." Overlooking (among other things) the fact that men of virtue, wisdom and honour never pullulate in any society; that it is easier to find a minority than a majority of good men and true, and consequently that on the score of probability alone, if is more feasible to aim at a good government by the few than by the multitude, the Liberal sought his alternative to aristocratic rule in a system which presupposed, not merely the possibility, but the actual reality of whole populations providentially endowed with qualities which are known to be rare, if not exceptional.         To the credit of the masses be it said that it took some time, despite all the indefatigable efforts of agitators among the intelligentsia, to convince them that there could be any workable alternative to the traditional and aristocratic form of rulership. Prompted by their inveterate aversion from meddling with national affairs, to which allusion has already been made, and by the instinctive conservatism of all living creatures which - p. 50 - makes them prefer the "devil they know"; actuated, moreover, by a saner estimate of human nature than that cherished by the Liberal dreamers about them, the masses would have been ready to put up with bad government ad infinitum; for if conditions became intolerable, had nor Thomas Aquinas taught them that they might always resort to rebellion, without necessarily improvising newfangled ruling systems? Could the fantastic proposal to inaugurate self-rule be seriously meant?         It was at this stage in the evolution of the idea of Popular Government in the West, that a searching scrutiny of the causes of failure and degradation in aristocratic rule was called for and might have been most fruitful. For unless mankind could believe in human equality (and we have seen that no one in his heart really believed in any such sorry rubbish), in which case it mattered little who ruled whom, the problem of government could hardly be solved by the mere transference of all power from the old élite to the multitude. It was a matter of having to mend what had broken down, of eliminating what had been amiss with the former ruling class and their notion of their privileges and obligations. For the operative factor in every Right, above all the Right to Rule, is its corresponding Duty. If, therefore, the Duty of the rulers had been grossly neglected, the task of Reform consisted in devising and imposing checks and counter-checks which would tend to maintain a high standard of performance in the ruling élite, and in discovering what conditions had to be observed if a competent and worthy breed (souche) of rulers was to be reared. Any other course, however powerfully it might seem to have been indicated by dubious Graeco-Roman precedents, constituted a leap in the dark, a pessimistic clutching at phantom life-belts and untried makeshifts, which could inspire hope only in deluded idealists, however well-meaning they might be.         In the sequel we shall see that the task of Reform as here described was to prove both practicable and salutary in other spheres of social life, so that there is nothing romantic or far-fetched in suggesting that it could have been undertaken by those who were faced with the problem of reconstituting a villain-proof system of aristocratic rule. And had the reformers not most unfortunately overlooked the fact that rulership is not merely a matter of administration, of executive functions connected with the nation's relations with other countries, its - p. 51 - armed forces, its maintainance of Law and Order, and the control of the public finances, but also and most essentially a matter of establishing a desirable way of life in the community, of setting the Tone of the people's sentiments and aims, and of instituting standards of propriety, decency, good manners and good taste among them — had the reformers. I say, not made the mistake of supposing that an élite could be dispensed with in Government, this oversight would probably never have been committed. It was the belief that national Government was equivalent to managing a business, running a successful General Store, and organising public services, that lent more than three-quarters of its cogency to the argument for Democracy; and the cry that did not fail to go up late in the nineteenth century and was enthusiastically taken up by men like Horatio Bottomley — I refer to the cry for a Government of Business Men — is evidence of how vulgarly limited the idea of Government was in the Liberal confraternity.         A constructive and fruitful reform or rulership could, however, only have emanated from above. It was bootless to expect the desired model of a regenerated and well-disciplined cliff to come from the class of the ruled. What could they know about the matter?         It was, however, Europe's tragic ill-luck never to receive from its whilom ruling class any such scheme of reform as is here suggested; and, as I shall show in the sequel, it was actually left to Liberal thinkers of the twentieth century to propose not only the restoration of the élite for the government of these islands, but also the necessary measures that would need to be adopted for the production of such a class. Meanwhile, however, the failure of the powerful classes to regenerate their ranks and chasten their behaviour meant only dial the record of ignominy was indefinitely prolonged.         Consequently, in due course, there arose an ever increasing agitation in favour of popular government.         What, at bottom, did this alternative mean? For we must remember that until the quack reformers of the Liberal School began to make considerable headway with their programme of democratic control, civilised humanity had come to see in the traditional form of government by a ruler class, a natural phenomenon not unlike the motions of the planets and the phases of the moon. When therefore, by degrees, the startling doctrine - p. 52 - that aristocratic rule was not a Natural Law, began to be learnt by the masses, a commotion ensued similar to that which would result to-day if men were given the means of controlling the weather.         Instantly, every Tom, Dick and Harry would insist on serving his own best interests by ordering Rain, Sunshine or Wind. Factions would form to induce one sort of climate or the other, and the conflict of meteorological policies would lead to chaos if not catastrophe. Finally, the Common Man gazing distractedly on the national landscape, would see nothing but rocking tree-tops, crashing branches, and standing crops devastated by contrary winds.         Let no one suppose that this imagined outcome of Weather Control differs much from the consequences of Popular Government. In both cases the result cannot help being chiefly — Wind.

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