The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-16 00:00:00

CrIZIT OP T 11.4 PUBLIC JOiiiiitiAL%

•The Saturday Review remarks that the uncommonness
of common sense is an old subject of reflection. Its want
is principally shewn in two respects—namely, in undue
neglect of particulars, and in false estimates of particulars.
The first is the amiable weakness of dreamers—of poets,
philosophers, and others who live in the kingdom of ideas ;
who think that it rains legs of r,mutton at regular intervals,
that with so much bread and butter about it must be
impossible to starve, and that if there should ever be a
deficiency of bread it will be no great hardship to fall back
upon toast. The features of this phase are too broad and
too well known to require comment. But the other phase,
where want of common sense is shewn in a false appreciation
of particulars is more subtle and more interesting. It depends
upon a condition or habit of mind entirely different from
that which occasions the first-named phase. It is the
mental or moral condition analogous to that physical
defect which (as Mr. Kinglake would say) men call short
,sight. It is a too great convexity of the cornea of the soul,
causing the beholder to see details, when he looks closely
at them, with almost microscopic acuteness, but prevent-
ing him from studying them at such a distance as to get
the proper light and shade upon them, and so robbing
them of all their true and natural tone and colour, and
quite disabling him from :seeing what part they bear
towards forming the general harmony of the whole. It is,
in fact, a kind of ethical shortsight. No politician was ever
probably more entirely free from the defect of ethical
short sight than the late leader of the Liberal party in the
House of Commons. Thoroughly practical, perfectly well
acquainted with the details of his art, and eminently skilled
in the manipulation of these details ; knowing, like a good
painter, when to water his brush so as to keep the colour
down, and when again to lay it on thick ; ready and able,
moreover, at any moment to stand off from his work
and form a cool opinion of its general effe .t —he
managed matters, if not always to the satisfaction
of Beales, Bradlaugh, Finlen, and Co., if not always
to the satisfaction of the philosophers and their
protege,s, of the young Oxford fanatics or of the emancipated
ladies, at least in such a way as to make our progress sure,
and save us from the dread of a violent reaction, What-
ever may have been his defects, we cannot reckon among
them this of ethical shortsight. He was possessed of a
keen mental vision, which enabled him to master as well as
to study particulars, and prevented his mistaking molehills
for mountains. But his mantle of common sense does not
seem to have fallen upon any hitherto acknowledged leader
of the Liberal party. The party has gained a leader im-
mensely superior to Lord Palmerston in volubility, in the
profusion of profession, in self-assertion, in excitability,
and in grim earnestness ; and yet how is it that practical,
moderate politicians, men who persist in clinging to a
belief in the necessity of common sense, and think ethical
shortsight highly dangerous in a leader, begin to turn to
Mr. Bright with something like a sense of -relief? It is
said that a certain people, famous for their high-stepping
horses, trained them to this lofty action by fixing magnify.
ing glasses over their eyes, so that obstacles on the ground
of very small diameter seemed to the poor animals to have
a diameter of several inches, and thus caused them to
acquire the habit of lifting their feet to a practically un-
necessary height. When next the heaven-born leader of
the Liberal party favours us with a chapter of his Auto-
biography, perhaps he will inform us whether it is from an
analogous process in his early training, or from the natural
defect of ethical shortsight, that he has acquired his cele-
brated high-stepping action.

The Spectator declares that Mr. Gladstone is reproached
by the Standard with being proud and arrogant ; but the
truth is that his greatest political weakness is due to a
very genuine humility, of which he gave us a good example
in his recantation of his misreading of the American
Civil War. If Mr. Gladstone's political humility— or,
rather, perhaps, the ecclesiastical humility from which it
springs—sometimes misleads him in making him distrust
heartily all violent interference with what he conceives to
be the natural course of events, it is in one point of view a
pure gain to political life—we mean in the new simplicity,
the new realism of which it sets the example to statesmen.
There has been hi herto too much of a silly mannerism of
omniscience about statesmen, and a dread of saying
naturally, " Well, I knew no more of this than anybody
else, and, as it turned out, I knew less than some, for I
was certainly wrong," which Mr. Gladstone's naturalness
of manner should tend to do away with. There is a
notion in the world that,great statemen's opinions on poli-
tics are something more than opinions, whether they he
formed on subjects with which they are rea!ly familiar or not.
Mr. Gladstone's manner of saying, both with regard to
the Irish Church and the American War, and many
other matters, " really the public gives me credit for being
much wiser than I am ; I made a great though a very
natural mistake, which I am quite willing to admit,"
should do a great deal to make the public feel its own
responsibility, and that even their greatest statesmen can
never be more than a trifle in advance of themselves. If
the public at large wholly misinterpret and misconceive
great events, depend upon it that most even of the wisest
of our statesmen must do so too. This is a very whole-
some lesson for all of us, and one which statesmen have
usually been too pompous to teach us. They often retract
opinions with great rhetorical flourishes intended to dis-
guise the fact that they have made great blunders, and are
sorry for it. Mr. Gladstone does not do so. He says
quite naturally what he feels—that he possesses no super-
human insight into political affairs, that his admirers are
pleased to give him credit for more than he has, that he
recognises some very great errors that he has made ; and
directly he recognises is willing to admit them. This
alone is a great gain for the truth of politics ; and humility
of this sort, if still somewhat of an ecclesiastical virtue,
is one of which we want a great deal more in political
life.

The London Review thinks that religious Liberals must
be very much perplexed at the present aspect of the
ritualistic difficulty. In alluding to the different con-
structions put upon the acceptation of the Prayer-book, it
says : We may treat the Prayer-book as a mere conve-
nient standard of what itself calls decency, but directly
we enforce it we come into collision with consciences which
find in the Prayer-book as interpreted from the confor-
mity point of view no expression of their most cherished reli-
gious ideas. This is to them intolerable. Are they to
leave the Church, or are they to be accommodated with a
reasonable license of nonconformity within it ? The Privy
Council has decided that at any rate the latter solution
shall not be adopted ; and the Ritualists are considering
whether they shall adopt the former. To this grave issue
has come a controversy which has, till now, been held a
mere unnecessary disturbance of the peace of the Church.
The late Archbishop used to mildly remonstrate with the
ritualists about their embroidery and their incense, just as
a good-natured, heavy father might dilate to his sons upon
the bad taste of loud waistcoats and neck scarfs ; and when
he found that the vestments meant something, he paid
the Ritualists the compliment of infusing a highly eucha-
ristic tone into all his communications with them on the

subject of public worship, betraying the same sort
of reverence for the Lord's Supper which a Protestant,
who does not desire to be offensive in Catholic society,
exhibits for the Virgin Mary. But the Ritualists are not
satisfied with these empty courtesies. They want to
acknowledge in their worship the Real Presence of the
body and blood of the Saviour in the sacramental and
sacrificial elements. The Privy Council refuses them the
liberty of so acknowledging it. Dr. Pusey says : " Never
mind ; we can express our belief in many ways not
amenable to the law, and we must teach the Real Presence
more strenuously than ever." Other High Churchmen
say the same ; and a great meeting of Ritualists resolve
upon a Real Presence propagandism as the only effectual
compensation for the submissions they have to make in
Ritual. But by this they are only postponing an issue
which must come, and which will come very quickly.
May a clergyman profess belief in the Real Presence?
That is the question. Mr. Bennett, of Frome, has pro-
fessed that bel ef, and he is to be prosecuted for it. On the
issue of that trial will turn the secession or the continuance
in the Church of England of a large body of able, devoted,
and, in their present mood at least, not illiberal clergy.
men. What are religious Liberals to hope for at such a
juncture ?

The John Bull considers that one of the earliest ques-
tions to come before the new Parliament will be that of
pauperism, and this because it is a social and moral ques-
tion, as much as an economical one. If pauperism be
really a necessity in a highly-civilised nation ; if it be
really true that " the poor shall never cease out of the
land," then at least it is a nation's duty to see how its
pauperism may be best supported, for it is a maxim not
only of humanity, but of law, that no man must die of
want in England. And yet confessedly pauperism is not
cared for as it ought to be. Our union houses generally
have neither the classification, nor the space, nor the com-
forts, nor " the humanities " which are due to infant,
aged, imbecile, and sick pauperism. Then, again, out-door
relief is administered, particularly when wile-spread and
and chronic pauperism falls on a district, on very harsh
terms and with a grudging hand. Again, there is little
or no distinction made between the real distressed way-
farer and the rascally professional tramp ; all are huddled
indiscriminataly into the sane (lens of straw and fleas or
dingy barracks, resounding with blasphemy and n ,nseous
with dirt. Every attempt at improvement in these
matters, if it inrolre additional cost, is resisted to the
utmost by the local authorities, and at tast grumblingly
accepted. In short, the whole country, while it confesses
the miserable fact of pauperism, is groaning under the
vexatious and well-nigh intolerable burden. Such a state
of things ought no longer to continue ; a reversion should
he made to the old just elastic law ; the strain of injustice
is rapidly becoming intolerable ; the principles of equity
are the true principles of policy ; all classes of the rich
have their share in creating the pauper class, because
pauperism is the debris of an industry evoked to minister
to their luxuries, and continually displaced by their shift-
ing fashions ; all classes of the rich should have their share
in maintaining the pauperism which they have created—
pani ratione, the conveniences and safeguards which are
devised for the whole community, are very unjustly thrown
RI a charge upon its smaller section.