French & English

What is meant by “justice” in this chapter is the power of suspending judgment until evidence is forthcoming, and then the disposition to decide on the merits of the case unbiassed by prepossessions of any kind. It is one of the rarest, perhaps the very rarest, of intellectual virtues, and hardly ever to be found in times of strife, either between nations or between parties in the same nation.

It would be a proof of ignorance of human nature to expect much of this virtue in contemporary France, a country divided, more than any other in Europe, by political and religious animosity. And, in fact, there is very little intellectual justice in France, the only men who cultivate the virtue being a few thoughtful philosophers who have little influence in the nation. I may mention Guyau as a representative of this small class.[48] He certainly endeavoured to think justly, which is one of several reasons for regretting his premature death. I myself have known two or three Frenchmen in private life who have the same desire to be just.

The English are more favourably situated for the cultivation of this virtue, and, in fact, it is more frequently found amongst them; but the English themselves have entered upon a period of strong political dissension since the Irish question reached an acute stage, and even if that question were settled there are others beyond it which are not less likely to produce great intensity of party hatred. There will not be much justice whilst these dissensions continue. Even so ordinary an occurrence as a simple parliamentary election is now enough to divide the society of an English country town into hostile camps almost as bitter as French parties. What is most to be deplored is that some of the philosophers themselves, who might be expected to keep cool heads, have caught the contagion exactly like ordinary mortals.

Independently of political questions, the commonest cause of injustice in England is to be found in the ideas of class. The class of gentlemen has a tendency to give its sympathy, without question, to gentlemen, and to refuse it to those who are not, in its opinion, of that caste. One of the best examples of this tendency was the unanimity of the English gentry in their sympathy with the slaveholders during the American war of secession, purely on the ground that the slaveholders were a gentlemanly class. In comparison with this important point, the injustice of slavery itself sank into complete insignificance. The same rule of sympathy for gentlemen extends to the continent of Europe, although the gentlemen there are often of a very dubious species. Anybody who would put down French popular aspirations was sure of class sympathy in England. A French republican is simply a Frenchman who desires representative government, that is what he is; but class-antipathy set English gentlefolks against him, though they themselves had been the first to profit by representative institutions in their own country. So with regard to French conflicts between Church and State, the English upper classes always side instinctively with the Church, although they themselves accepted Church property after the great English spoliation, and many of them are still living upon it, some actually in the very walls of the old abbeys, others within sight of their ruins, whilst others, again, appropriate tithes. If a French mayor prohibits a religious procession it is an act of republican tyranny, yet Roman Catholic processions are not permitted in English streets, and the republicans do not carry their distrust of the clergy so far as to make them ineligible for the Chamber of Deputies as they are for the House of Commons. Neither is a French priest compelled to lay aside his ecclesiastical costume except when he goes to England. However, polite English sympathy with the Church of Rome has one incontestable merit; it is at the same time disinterested and unrequited. The Rev. Father du Lac, who took his Jesuit school to Canterbury after the Ferry decrees, and who enjoys British protection, calls Queen Victoria a monstrous anomaly, the anomaly being that royalty and heresy are monstrously combined in the person of Her Majesty.[49]

The sharp separation of classes produces much injustice within the limits of England itself. When an Englishman feels himself authorised to despise his equal in wealth, culture, and wisdom, if he happens to be a dissenter, there is a strong temptation to do so, and we find public writers in England who quietly look down upon all dissenters en bloc as people of low caste and unrefined manners. After all, these wretched dissenters are Englishmen and Englishwomen, which is surely some title to consideration.

I am far from wishing to imply that the English never rise above the region of class prejudices. Many have done so, and these amongst the most distinguished. Shelley did so completely, Byron partially; in our own day several of the most famous poets and thinkers appear to live, intellectually at least, outside of class. My impression is that the French do not get rid of class prejudices so frequently as the English. If they belong either to the real or the false noblesse they think that noblesse oblige in a peculiar sense, that it lays them under an obligation to condemn popular aspirations without a hearing.

It is difficult for the poor in any country to be just, because they so often suffer; still, in France, they are more frequently independent in their judgments than the upper classes, the proof being that they support a greater variety of opinions. You never know how a French peasant will vote till you know him individually, but you may predict to a certainty that a noble will vote against the republican candidate.

Whether, in quieter and more settled times, French parties will be less virulent, must depend upon the effects of experience. The events of the next decade may have either a calming or an exasperating influence. I do not perceive that parties have become more tolerant during the last ten years. The one good sign is, that with all their hatred they have avoided civil war.

Next to the rancour of internal politics, the greatest obstacle to justice is that kind of vulgar patriotism which cannot love its own country without hating its neighbours. This sentiment of hatred is strictly proportionate to the neighbour’s power. The English have no animosity against Swiss republicanism, though it is still more democratic than French. The French had a romantic sympathy with Italy in her weakness, but they detest her in her strength.

Most English and French people are capable of justice towards foreigners who belong to insignificant States, such as the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Swiss, and the Greeks. A few are capable of justice towards citizens of great and powerful States.

Mr. Grant Allen has given an excellent example of this rare kind of justice in saying simply what is true about the French colony of Algeria, and in expressing the desire, in the interests of civilisation, that the beneficent French power might ultimately be permitted to extend itself over Morocco. I remember that when the fate of Gordon at Khartoum was still unsettled, some Frenchmen expressed a hearty desire for his preservation and success. They considered that he represented civilisation against barbarism, and placed themselves on the side of civilisation.

I have occasionally met with French people who tried to be just even to the Germans, and that, of course, is very hard for them, but the great majority are unable to look upon war as a simple game in which the loser pays the penalty. They think of it as a glorious enterprise when they win, and as a cruel inhuman outrage when they are defeated.

It is a part of strict justice to see the defects of one’s own country as plainly as those of another. This is certainly not incompatible with strong affection, as in private life we see very plainly the defects of those whom we love well and faithfully, and for whom we are ready to make the utmost sacrifices. In this way a few Englishmen see clearly the defects of England, but I should say that many more Frenchmen see clearly and justly the defects of France. I have heard severe criticisms of France from English people, but far more telling and formidable criticisms from the French themselves, because they knew the weak points and could criticise in detail. This is especially true with regard to the defects of French administration, apparently so perfect and looking so laboriously after centimes, yet in reality unable to prevent either waste or corruption.

The natural refuge of justice ought to be in the press, but unfortunately, as I have observed elsewhere, justice is not a very convenient or acceptable quality in literature, and least of all in journalism. Its constant tendency is to diminish the display of what people foolishly take for literary force, and to make what might otherwise have been called forcible writing seem dull and commonplace. Now, the French journalist may be wildly inaccurate, he may be wrong in all his statements, and give suppositions in the place of facts, but he cannot afford to be dull, as he addresses readers whose chief peculiarity, as he well knows, is to be inattentive. Wit and exaggeration are the baits by which the French reader is to be caught, but wit is seldom just, and exaggeration never is. There was poor John Brown, the Queen’s domestic, I will not say what the French press made of him, but in the exercise of its Gallic sharpness it got a good way beyond the truth. French writers are rather fond of laughing at the Queen, as English writers have laughed at various foreign sovereigns, and sometimes the laugh is harmless yet based on inaccurate information. For example, M. Philippe Daryl says that after a drawing-room “la reine remonte dans son carosse à six chevaux café-au-lait, de race hanovrienne comme elle, et prend le chemin de Windsor.” This is a French fiction, intended to make the Queen a little ridiculous; the Frenchman is trotting out the cream-coloured horses (they are eight, not six) for the occasion, and despatches them on the road to Windsor. As a matter of fact the Queen travels to Windsor by rail, and usually drives to the Paddington Station behind four bays, so that the whole pleasantry falls rather flat on an English reader. It is a trifle, but it may serve to illustrate the position of a French writer who must be amusing at all costs.

The great writers are in the same position with a difference. They need not amuse; but they are bound to provide a stirring stimulus. Was Victor Hugo a just writer? Was Carlyle? They knew their business, which was to be forcible; but nobody who understood their nature, or their art either, would go to Victor Hugo for a faithful account of the English, or to Carlyle for an exact appreciation of the French. Or shall we turn to Michelet and Ruskin?—both makers of delightful prose, but too much biassed by their own genius to be just. In literature force and brilliance, nay, even mere glassy sparkle or glitter of tinsel, are more effective qualities than the hesitancy that cannot round off a sentence without stopping to inquire whether the praise in it is not too much for the occasion, or the censure undeserved.

Suppose that a just writer were asked to give, in five or six lines, his opinion of the railway system, and its action for good and evil, how would he describe it?

He might say, “The use of railways is to transport merchandise and passengers quickly and cheaply. They favour human intercourse by enabling people to meet in spite of distance, and to exchange letters without delay. They are sometimes, to a limited extent, injurious to beautiful scenery. Railway travelling is sometimes injurious to health; and railway accidents occasionally cause loss of life.”

This is exactly just and true; but it has the fatal defect of being commonplace. It is also quite destitute of sublimity. Now listen to Mr. Ruskin on the same subject.

“They are to me the loathsomest form of devilry now extant, animated and deliberate earthquakes, destructive of all wise social habits and possible natural beauty, carriages of damned souls on the ridges of their own graves.”

These lines have several most valuable literary qualities. They give a shock of surprise, they captivate attention, they entirely avoid the quagmire of the commonplace. They introduce very sublime elements, the Miltonic elements of devilry, earthquakes, and lost spirits. There is, too, a mysterious grandeur about the damned souls who take railway tickets and travel over their own corpses buried in the embankments. But is this account of railways accurate and true? Is it just to the memory of George Stephenson?