This worship of the legislature is, in one respect, indeed, less excusable than the fetish-worship to which I have tacitly compared it. The savage has the defence that his fetish is silent -- does not confess its inability. But the civilized man persists in ascribing to this idol made with his own hands, powers which in one way or other it confesses it has not got. I do not mean merely that the debates daily tell us of legislative measures which have done evil instead of good; nor do I mean merely that the thousands of Acts of Parliament which repeal preceding Acts, are so many tacit admissions of failure. Neither do I refer only to such quasi-governmental confessions as that contained in the report of the Poor Law Commissioners, who said that -- "We find, on the one hand, that there is scarcely one statute connected with the administration of public relief which has produced the effect designed by the legislature, and that the majority of them have created new evils, and aggravated those which they were intended to prevent."(21*) I refer rather to confessions made by statesmen, and by State-departments. Here, for example, in a memorial addressed to Mr Gladstone, and adopted by a highly influential meeting held under the chairmanship of the late Lord Lyttelton, I read: --"We, the undersigned, Peers, Members of the House of Commons, Ratepayers, and Inhabitants of the Metropolis, feeling strongly the truth and force of your statement made in the House of Commons, in 1866, that, 'there is still a lamentable and deplorable state of our whole arrangements, with regard to public works -- vacillation, uncertainty, costliness, extravagance, meanness, and all the conflicting vices that could be enumerated, are united in our present system,'" etc., etc.(22*)Here, again, is an example furnished by a recent minute of the Board of Trade (November, 1883), in which it is said that since "the Shipwreck Committee of 1836 scarcely a session has passed without some Act being passed or some step being taken by the legislature or the Government with this object" [prevention of ship-wrecks]; and that "the multiplicity of statutes, which were all consolidated into one Act in 1854, has again become a scandal and a reproach:" each measure being passed because previous ones had failed. And then comes presently the confession that "the loss of life and of ships has been greater since 1876 than it ever was before." Meanwhile, the cost of administration has been raised from *17,000 a year to *73,000 a year.(23*)It is surprising how, spite of better knowledge, the imagination is excited by artificial appliances used in particular ways. We see it all through human history, from the war-paint with which the savage frightens his adversary, down through religious ceremonies and regal processions, to the robes of a Speaker and the wand of an officially dressed usher. Iremember a child who, able to look with tolerable composure on a horrible cadaverous mask while it was held in the hand, ran away shrieking when his father put it on. A kindred change of feeling comes over constituencies when, from boroughs and counties, their members pass to the Legislative Chamber. While before them as candidates, they are, by one or other party, jeered at, lampooned, "heckled," and in all ways treated with utter disrespect. But as soon as they assemble at Westminster, those against whom taunts and invectives, charges of incompetence and folly, had been showered from press and platform, excite unlimited faith. Judging from the prayers made to them, there is nothing which their wisdom and their power cannot compass.
The reply to all this will doubtless be that nothing better than guidance by "collective wisdom" can be had -- that the select men of the nation, led by a re-selected few, bring their best powers, enlightened by all the knowledge of the time, to bear on the matters before them. "What more would you have?" will be the question asked by most.
My answer is that this best knowledge of the time with which legislators are said to come prepared for their duties, is a knowledge of which the greater part is obviously irrelevant, and that they are blameworthy for not seeing what is the relevant knowledge. No amount of the linguistic acquirements by which many of them are distinguished will help their judgments in the least;nor will they be appreciably helped by the literatures these acquirements open to them. Political experiences and speculations coming from small ancient societies, through philosophers who assume that war is the normal state, that slavery is alike needful and just, and that women must remain in perpetual tutelage, can yield them but small aid in judging how Acts of Parliament will work in great nations of modern types. They may ponder on the doings of all the great men by whom, according to the Carlylean theory, society is framed, and they may spend years over those accounts of international conflicts, and treacheries, and intrigues, and treaties, which fill historical works, without being much nearer understanding the how and the why of social structures and actions, and the ways in which laws affect them.
Nor does such information as is picked up at the factory, on 'Change, or in the justice room, go far towards the required preparation.
That which is really needed is a systematic study of natural causation as displayed among human beings socially aggregated.
