SPEECHES AND LETTERS ON REFORM; WITH A PREFACE. BY THE RIGHT HON. R. LOWE, M.P. "It is not good to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent and the LONDON: ROBERT JOHN BUSH, 32, CHARING CROSS, S.W. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY DEPOSITED BY THE LIGARY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOCE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION JUN 21 1940 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. PREFACE. No assertion is more frequently met with in the speeches of the supporters of a democratic Reform than this,—that the arguments are all on one side, that the question is an easy one, depending merely on arithmetic, and such as any man possessed of ordinary common sense may decide on the first inspection. To me the question appears very difficult} to treat in a popular, and, at the same time, in a. fair and intelligible way, because it involves not merely the balancing of adverse arguments, but a decision as to what kind of argument should have weight on such a subject. A consideration of the speeches delivered on both sides will show that the arguments in favour of Democracy are mostly metaphysical, resting on considerations prior to, and therefore independent of, experience, appealing to abstract maxims and terms, and treating this peculiarly practical subject as if it were a problem of pure geometry. The arguments against a democratic change, on the other hand, are all drawn, or profess to be drawn, from considerations purely practical. The one side deals in such terms as right, equality, justice; the other, with the working of institutions, with their faults, with their remedies, with the probable influence which such changes will exert. Are both these methods right, and if not both, which of the two? There are, as a great thinker has taught, three ways of treating political subjects:-the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Inductive, or experimental. The doctrine of the divine right of kings is an instance of the first kind of treatment of a political subject; the arguments so much relied on at Reform meetings in favour of extended suffrage, and the writings of James and John Mill, are examples of the second; and discussions of the House of Commons on almost every other subject except Reform, and the arguments against Reform, of the third. It is considered, I believe, by most thinkers that the second of these methods is superior to the first, and the third superior to the first and second-so superior as entirely to supersede them, and to afford the only safe guide in political and in many other branches of speculation. I certainly entertain this opinion. When I find a book or a speech appealing to abstract à priori principles I put it aside in despair, being well aware that I can learn nothing useful from it. Such works only present to us the limited and qualified propositions which experience has established, without their limitations and qualifications, and elevate them into principles by a rash generalization which strips them of whatever truth they originally possessed. Thus the words right and equality have a perfectly clear and defined meaning when applied to the administration of justice under a settled law, but are really without meaning, except as vague and inappropriate metaphors, when applied to the distribution of political power. The proper! answer to a statement, for instance, that all men free. from crime or pauperism have a right to the franchise, is—that this is a question of experience, not of à priori assumption, and that the assertion, whether true or false, is inadmissible in political discussion. But how is this truth to be made evident to a large multitude when we find men from whom better things might have been expected, speaking of those who deny the existence of rights as if they sought to deprive men of something they really possess, instead of to explode a vague and meaningless assumption? The position may be further illustrated by observing, that if the propositions of this nature which we hear were true, they would not lead, as they do, to false conclusions, such as-that men, women, and children, should have the franchise; that this right applies to every race in the world; that this right being prior to and independent of experience cannot be limited by experience, and that it is therefore the duty of |