The Portland daily press., 1881-02-01
Society a Fool.


One cause of the decline in the political in
iuence of society is that it is so frequently. al
most constantly wrong. London society for
the last 20 years has been as il-informed as Syd-
ney Smith said consols always were. Not only
has it never understood which side ought
to win, that being, of course, matter of opinion;
but it has never comprehended which side
would win, though that is dependent upon as
certainable facts. Not only, for example, did
society sympathize with the South in the
American civil war, which is Ineligible, the
South fighting for an institution which is the
logical outcome and perfection Of the system
of privilege, but it persistently believed the
South would win. The most staring facts,
such as that the losses of the North were every
month made up by immigration, never i'm
pressed it; and when the South was, in fact,
beaten, and Sherman began his great marth
through territory empty of armed defenders,
society declared that he had "gone into space"
and that the South would soon be triumphant.
When in 1866, Prussia, the country of the
Professor and the drill-sergeant, declared war
upon Austria, the country of the aristocrat-
where tile plebeian premiers daughter at the
Hofburg found no partner for the dance, till
the emperor, pitying her isolation, asked her
himself-society believed up to the eve of
Sadowa in an Austrian victory. How could 50
pleasant and gentlemanly a people be beaten
by so unpleasant and sergeantlike race?
In 1869, it firmly believed that the Irish church
could not be overthrown, for had not Mr.. Dis
raeli accepted the new suffrage? In 1870, it
Aszs~ II e.
new triumph for .C9sarism. In 1874 it was
seized with spasm of joyful surprise
at the electoral victory of the tories. In
1877, it firmly believed that the "brave
Turk" would drive out the Russian, that
the ''cowardly Ronmanian" would new
er fight, and that the "heroic Osman"
would never surrender Plevna and in 1880, up
to the very day of the elections, it refused to
credit the possibility of tory humiliation-and
had it been etiquette, would have illuminated
prematurely as the Carlton club is said to
have done. Not three weeks before the cleo
ton, one of the most influential men in En-
gland, who had made it his business for months
to study opinion In London, and who avowedly
decided by what he heard in a singularly wide
range of society, told the writer that "liberal-
ism was dead," and that Sin his lifetime the
party would never return to power" The re-
suit suggests that he was incompetent to Judge,
but he was not; he was only deceived by his
confidence in the opinion of the immense ma
jo-ity of the well-placed persons he met.
Society as a corporation entirely agreed in the
opinion he expressed. The body of It, untaught
by experience, unable to learn, as incapable of
forgetting, IS, we believe, making a similar
blunder now. When startled into itself, the
national temperament, which is serious, mani
tests itself even in society; but till startled it
loves its ease, and part of its ease is the abb
sence of any compulsion to think hard. Time
to trough it, mentally, when the necessity
arrives. If society were wholly frivolous in
its topics that would not signify, for no one
would accept its opinion; but that is not the
case. 1t is the popularity of this country that
politics interest everybody, society included,
and we have therefore the inconvenience-so
horribly trying to able iournalists-that grave
matters are studied and Settled" in the easy
method suited only to frivolities. There is no
contempt for great subj ,cts, and no avoidance
of them, only refusal to think them out
when thinking involves either painful effort,
or the acceptance as data of disagreeable
truths. Perhaps there will be an improvement
by and by, but as yet society has not even ac-
cepted the most fundamental and disagreeable
truth of all, namely, that since 1867 the govern
ing classes no longer govern: and of course, ON
English politics, its opinion, failing that da-
tum, can never be correct 1t will always be
exclaiming, in angry establishment, as it did
after the elections, "Who ever would have
thought it?"