The principal scene of this comedy lies,of course,in the House of Commons;it is there,besides,that the details of this new evolution (if it proceed)will fall to be decided;so that the state of Parliament is not only diagnostic of the present but fatefully prophetic of the future.Well,we all know what Parliament is,and we are all ashamed of it.We may pardon it some faults,indeed,on the ground of Irish obstruction -a bitter trial,which it supports with notable good humour.But the excuse is merely local;it cannot apply to similar bodies in America and France;and what are we to say of these?President Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one;a glance at almost any paper will convince us of the weakness of the other.Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land;and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it,as to an oracle of justice,the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled,and ask it,like a new Messiah,to take upon itself our frailties and play for us the part that should be played by our own virtues.For that,in few words,is the case.We cannot trust ourselves to behave with decency;we cannot trust our consciences;and the remedy proposed is to elect a round number of our neighbours,pretty much at random,and say to these:'Be ye our conscience;make laws so wise,and continue from year to year to administer them so wisely,that they shall save us from ourselves and make us righteous and happy,world without end.Amen.'And who can look twice at the British Parliament and then seriously bring it such a task?I am not advancing this as an argument against Socialism:once again,nothing is further from my mind.There are great truths in Socialism,or no one,not even Mr.Hyndman,would be found to hold it;and if it came,and did one-tenth part of what it offers,I for one should make it welcome.But if it is to come,we may as well have some notion of what it will be like;and the first thing to grasp is that our new polity will be designed and administered (to put it courteously)with something short of inspiration.It will be made,or will grow,in a human parliament;and the one thing that will not very hugely change is human nature.The Anarchists think otherwise,from which it is only plain that they have not carried to the study of history the lamp of human sympathy.
Given,then,our new polity,with its new waggon-load of laws,what headmarks must we look for in the life?We chafe a good deal at that excellent thing,the income-tax,because it brings into our affairs the prying fingers,and exposes us to the tart words,of the official.The official,in all degrees,is already something of a terror to many of us.Iwould not willingly have to do with even a police-constable in any other spirit than that of kindness.I still remember in my dreams the eye-glass of a certain ATTACHE at a certain embassy -an eyeglass that was a standing indignity to all on whom it looked;and my next most disagreeable remembrance is of a bracing,Republican postman in the city of San Francisco.I lived in that city among working folk,and what my neighbours accepted at the postman's hands -nay,what Itook from him myself -it is still distasteful to recall.
The bourgeois,residing in the upper parts of society,has but few opportunities of tasting this peculiar bowl;but about the income-tax,as I have said,or perhaps about a patent,or in the halls of an embassy at the hands of my friend of the eye-glass,he occasionally sets his lips to it;and he may thus imagine (if he has that faculty of imagination,without which most faculties are void)how it tastes to his poorer neighbours,who must drain it to the dregs.In every contact with authority,with their employer,with the police,with the School Board officer,in the hospital,or in the workhouse,they have equally the occasion to appreciate the light-hearted civility of the man in office;and as an experimentalist in several out-of-the-way provinces of life,I may say it has but to be felt to be appreciated.Well,this golden age of which we are speaking will be the golden age of officials.In all our concerns it will be their beloved duty to meddle,with what tact,with what obliging words,analogy will aid us to imagine.It is likely these gentlemen will be periodically elected;they will therefore have their turn of being underneath,which does not always sweeten men's conditions.The laws they will have to administer will be no clearer than those we know to-day,and the body which is to regulate their administration no wiser than the British Parliament.So that upon all hands we may look for a form of servitude most galling to the blood -servitude to many and changing masters,and for all the slights that accompany the rule of jack-in-office.And if the Socialistic programme be carried out with the least fulness,we shall have lost a thing,in most respects not much to be regretted,but as a moderator of oppression,a thing nearly invaluable -the newspaper.For the independent journal is a creature of capital and competition;it stands and falls with millionaires and railway bonds and all the abuses and glories of to-day;and as soon as the State has fairly taken its bent to authority and philanthropy,and laid the least touch on private property,the days of the independent journal are numbered.State railways may be good things and so may State bakeries;but a State newspaper will never be a very trenchant critic of the State officials.