From The Contemporary Review. THE IMPARTIAL STUDY OF POLITICS.

lution. We cannot prevent or avoid them. But let us, at least, be alive to the dangers that attend them. They act upon our babits of thought. They accustom us to consider public questions in a spirit as unfavorable as possible to the discovery of truth. They produce a kind of epidemic lunacy, such as history sometimes exhibits to us in nations that are on the eve of great disasters.

Some humble efforts, in which I have had a share, have lately been made to grapple with the specific evil of this men

BY PROFESSOR J. R. SEELEY. SINCE Burke vindicated in such a memorable manner the party system in politics, it has taken an extension which probably he never dreamed of. It is a curious speculation what estimate he would have formed of those larger developments of his principle which the nineteenth century has witnessed. For, indeed, there is a great distance between his cautious assertion, that “no men can act with effect who do not act in concert,' "tal disease produced by party spirit. and some modern applications of the doc- These efforts have chiefly proceeded from trine of concerted action. He himself the universities, and have been more or lived to see Girondists united, as he had less connected with the movement of unirecommended, in "Friendship's holy ties," versity extension. The Social and Politiand, from the view he took of the parties cal Educational League, in which such of Revolutionary France, perhaps we may men as Mr. J. K. Stephen, Mr. Fossett conjecture how he would have regarded Lock, and Mr. Howard Hodgkin have those later examples of concerted action taken a leading part, lately held a meeting, which have been effective on a large scale. to which I communicated an address I Some of these we are accustomed to ap-had delivered two years ago to a similar prove, as the Anti-Corn-Law League; oth- society, the Cardiff Association for the ers we disapprove, as the slavery party and Impartial Study of Political Questions. the railway rings of the United States; An imperfect report of this address drew while about others again we are divided from M. Ostrogorski who has lately in opinion, as, for instance, the Parnellite published, in the "Annales de l'Ecole party or the Socialist party. But I doubt Libre des Sciences Politiques," the best if Burke would have approved any of sketch I have ever seen of the history of them. parties in the United States - the remark It is indeed evident enough that he that the reform I advocate ought to be foresaw, even before the French Revolu-"the ceterum censeo of all men who think." tion began, the tremendous potency of I am glad, then, to avail myself of the that engine of party concert. But in the editor's permission to lay the address be quiet English world of those days he was fore the readers of the Contemporary Renot afraid to set it in motion. There ex- view. isted then no deep, incurable differences of principle. Nothing fundamental, either in religion or politics, was attacked. Had tions! he rewritten, thirty years later, his questions of the public well-being — are Thoughts on the Causes of the Present all-important, if an interest in them is Discontent," he would perhaps have laid among Englishmen universal, it might it down that party concert was only bene- seem scarcely necessary for you to found ficial where differences of opinion were a society, or for me to deliver an address, confined to secondary questions, and in behalf of the impartial study of them. would have denounced, with all the elo. For surely all honest, serious study tries quence of his passionate old age, those at least to be impartial. Surely there can party divisions on fundamental principles be no more obvious cause of error than which have the nature of civil war, some-partiality. The judge, when he addresses times even of religious war. For us it is as useless to denounce these things as it is useless to denounce the French Revo

86

The impartial study of political ques-
If political questions - that is,

the jury, warns them against yielding to bias or prejudice; the scientific man in his researches is especially on his guard

against that tendency to a foregone con- ous language used, very uncompromising clusion which spoils all investigation and reduces it to a mockery. Surely there can be no exception to the rule that study should be impartial — surely there cannot be subjects in the study of which partiality is to be recommended or not to be condemned.

courses recommended, you may suppose that you are among strong partisans that is, partial people. But it is not necessarily the case. Opinions formed with perfect impartiality may be strong and uncompromising; the strongest opinions are often the most impartial, even when such opinions are most strongly and passionately expressed. I was surprised, the other day, to hear a friend say of M. Taine's book on the French Revolution that it was evidently partial. He said so because M. Taine has taken a very unfa. vorable view of the Jacobin party, and has spoken of them in very unsparing language. But does this, by itself, prove him to be partial? If so, what are we to do when we have to deal with great crimes and great criminals? Are we not to describe them as they are? Partiality means

Yet somehow this undertaking of yours, that you will study political questions impartially, sounds strange and startling, and you seem to feel it so yourselves. Perhaps what is strange is that politics should be regarded and spoken of as a matter of study at all. Yes! Let us frankly admit that we may naturally be a little startled, a little alarmed, to hear politics classed offhand, as we might class arithmetic or geography, among subjects of study. Politics concern our greatest interests, and therefore excite our warmest feelings; not among studies, not among sciences, a deviation from the truth. When then we class them more naturally among higher things, by the side of religion, honor, morality. To be a politician is to be warm, eager, earnest, devoted; the virtue of a politician is to be staunch and zealous in the cause he attaches himself to; and that sort of cold indifference which seems implied in impartiality appears not only not a duty, but actually a sin, in politics.

the truth is extreme, terrible, monstrous - and this is sometimes the case- .par. tiality would be shown not by strong but by weak language. If the Jacobins really were the monsters M. Taine believes them to have been, it was impartiality, not partiality, to describe them as he has done. Everything depends on the fact, on the evidence. Now my friend put the ques tion of fact entirely on one side. He You do not mean, I am sure, when you inferred the partiality of M. Taine immeundertake to be impartial, that you will diately from the warmth of his language. for the future cease to be earnest and What struck me was that he did not proeager politicians, that you will renounce | fess to have examined the evidence and all strong, clear, sharply cut opinions, or found the charges brought against the even that you will for the future regard the strife of political parties with indifference, as if it no longer concerned you, much less with contempt as if you were raised above it. And yet how can this be? How can you be impartial and partial at the same time? How can you at once maintain the passionless objectivity that befits the student, and the ardor, the unflinching decision, without which a politician is good for nothing?

There is no real difficulty here, and yet there is so much apparent difficulty that it is worth while to dwell for a moment upon the point. By partiality we do not mean strong and decided opinions. Of course, when you hear very unsparing and rancor

Jacobins groundless. He only argued, The picture is extreme, therefore it must be partial. M. Taine writes with strong indignation, therefore we are not to trust him.

Now, I say, indignation, strong feeling, is not necessarily partiality, and therefore strong language is no proof of partiality. Partiality is the sacrifice of truth to a party. In order therefore to convict a writer of partiality, you must show that he was connected with a party at the time when he made his investigation, and that this has prevented him from discerning the facts or estimating them accurately. And yet M. Taine tells us that when he formed his estimate of the French Revo

lution he had no party connection. All the | when they tried to establish an indepen-
passion he now shows has been aroused
in him, so he says, by the study of the
facts, and therefore it cannot have pre-
vented him from studying them properly.
Nor does it now prevent him from seeing
them; on the contrary, he feels it pre-
cisely because he sees them so clearly. Of
course, my friend had a perfect right to
arrive at a different conclusion. But, even
supposing M. Taine to have made a great
mistake about the Jacobin party, he would
not, I think, be fairly chargeable with par-
tiality. For partiality does not merely
mean error or exaggeration, it means spe-
cifically that kind of error or exaggeration
which is produced by judging of things
under a fixed prejudice, under a party
bias.

that

dent political position for themselves. You do not, I suppose, complain of this. You recognize that political activity imposes a certain amount of restraint upon individual opinion. I for my part should go as far as most people in admitting that there must be compromise, that there must be party subordination, that we must sometimes waive a conviction, sometimes stifle a misgiving. Practical life has exigencies which the theorist is slow to admit. It would be so delightful if we could always act simply in accordance with our convictions. But, alas! it happens sometimes - nay, my historical studies lead me to think it most commonly happens men have to act on the spur of the moment, and must act with decision, when This, at any rate, is what you mean when they are tolerably well aware that they you undertake to study politics impar- have no solid opinion. Through the tially. You mean merely that you will greater part of history, it seems to me, consider the facts without bias. You do political action has been a leap in the not undertake that when you have consid- dark. And yet the leap had to be taken. ered them no strong feeling or passion The problem has generally been, not, shall arise in your mind. You will not What is it right to do? but, Granted we begin your studies with a political bias, do not know what is right, yet since we but you do not undertake that your studies must do something, what will it be safest shall not give you a strong political bias. on the whole for us to do? In such cirNay, your object is to acquire a firm po- cumstances the best course of action is but litical creed. And what reason is there to a makeshift, and a rude organization is prethink that this creed, when you have pared to regulate it. We select a leader found it, will not be as sharply cut and in whom we hope we may confide, we rally positive as those old party creeds which round him and surrender our opinions to you refuse to regard as authoritative ? his; he shapes for us a creed to which we There is nothing in the impartiality you resolve to adhere, and which we try to reaim at which is inconsistent with the gard as true enough for practical purposes. strongest feeling or the most decisive ac- And then it becomes a virtue to be loyal tion. to our party; and soon to be too nice about the party creed, to indulge in independent thought or in impartiality-all this begins to seem unpractical, perverse, fatal to party discipline, tending to confusion. Is not this unavoidable? Must we not make the best of it?

In a country like this, where party passion has been so much indulged and has burned so hotly, the opinion, the political creed, of most people has been imposed upon them like the religion in which they were born. They have lived in it as an atmosphere of which they were scarcely conscious, or if they have become aware that questions have another side, that opinions different from their own are tenable and even plausible, they have soon found that it was not so easy for them to change their atmosphere; that they broke ties, disappointed hopes, suffered inconvenience, perhaps incurred serious loss,

But now when such party discipline is maintained for several generations together, the alloy of falsehood that was there from the beginning accumulates, until the quantity of it becomes prodigious. In the end, the heady, drugged liquor that we drink mounts to the brain; the fog of falsehood that settles over us, fed continually by speeches in Parliament,