Leslie Stephen

“ To try to regulate the finer relations of life by law, or even by public opinion, is 'like trying to pull an eyelash out of a man's eye with a pair of tongs: they may pull out the eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash.' [137] But it is not the end, but the means that are objectionable. Fitzjames does not object in principle even to sumptuary laws. He can never, he says, look at a lace machine, and think of all the toil and ingenuity wasted, with patience. ”

“ If to have taken advantage of such opportunities be the true test of success, whatever opinions may be held of you by others, and to whatever account they may turn your labours, Fitzjames may be called eminently successful. It often appears to me, indeed, that a man does good less by his writings or by the mark which he may make upon public affairs than by simply being himself. The impression made upon his contemporaries by a man of strong and noble character is something which cannot be precisely estimated, but which we often feel to be invaluable. ”

“ The career of a great conqueror, a great legislator, a man who in any capacity has moulded the doctrines of the race, had a charm for his imagination which he could not find in the pleasant idlers, who beguile our leisure by singing songs and telling stories.
Men who affect the religions of mankind belong rather to the active than the contemplative class. Nobody could estimate more highly the importance of philosophical speculations upon the great problems of life. To write a book which should effectively present his own answer to those problems was his permanent ambition. ”

“ To appeal, then, to the conscience on behalf of the very doctrine which has been destroyed by the revolt of our moral feelings is obviously impossible. Newman, when he notices that the modern world rejects the sacrifice theory, explains it by saying that the conscience of the modern world has decayed. But it is a mere playing fast and loose with logic when you deny the authority of the court to which you appeal as soon as it decides against you. To Fitzjames, at any rate, who regarded these doctrines as radically immoral, the argument could have no application. ”

“ The little body of Englishmen who have to rule a country, comparable in size and population to the whole of Europe without Russia, seem to him to combine the attributes of a parish vestry and an imperial government. The whole civil service of India, he observes, has fewer members than there are boys at one or two of our public schools. Imagine the Eton and Harrow boys grown up to middle age; suppose them to be scattered over France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and England; governing the whole population, and yet knowing all about each other with the old schoolboy intimacy. ”

“ Ambition, reports Fitzjames, is the incentive to 'all manly virtues'; and conquest an essential factor in the building up of all nations. We should be proud, not ashamed, to be the successors of Clive and Warren Hastings and their like. They and we are joint architects of the bridge by which India has passed from being a land of cruel wars, ghastly superstitions, and wasting plague and famine, to be at least a land of peace, order, and vast possibilities. The supports of the bridge are force and justice. Force without justice was the old scourge of India ”

“ Shall we endeavour to govern on native principles and by native agency? To this theory, which has attracted many friends, he replies, No; first, because Indian ideas about government are wrong; they are proved to be wrong by experience, which shows that they led to anarchy and demoralisation; and, secondly, because they have produced men and institutions unfit for government. If, therefore, we tried to rule by Oriental methods and agents, we should either make ourselves responsible for their oppressions, or we should have to keep them in order, and that is to rule by law. ”

“ Fitzjames insists, in agreement with Bentham, and especially with James Mill, that the criminal law is concerned with 'intentions,' not with 'motives.' All manner of ambiguities result from neglecting this consideration. The question for the lawyer is, did the prisoner mean to kill?—not, what were his motives for killing? The motives may, in a sense, have been good; as, for example, when a persecutor acts from a sincere desire to save souls. But the motive makes no difference to the sufferer. I am burnt equally, whether I am burnt from the best of motives or the worst. ”

“ Mill and he were agreed upon one point. A great evil, perhaps the one great evil of the day, as Fitzjames constantly said, is the prevalence of a narrow and mean type of character; the decay of energy; the excessive devotion to a petty ideal of personal comfort; and the systematic attempt to turn our eyes away from the dark side of the world. A smug, placid, contemptible optimism is creeping like a blight over the face of society, and suppressing all the grander aspirations of more energetic times. ”

“ The greatest merit, perhaps, of the English system is the attitude naturally assumed by the judge. No one, says Fitzjames, 'can fail to be touched' when he sees an eminent lawyer 'bending the whole force of his mind to understand the confused, bewildered, wearisome, and half-articulate mixture of question and statement which some wretched clown pours out in the agony of his terror and confusion.' The latitude allowed in such cases is highly honourable. ”

“ We have, then, no choice but to rule by law and to frame laws upon European principles. Here, it is necessary to guard against misunderstandings which have given rise to the charge of over-legislation. 'European principles' mean those principles which have been shown by our experience to be essential to peace, order, wealth, and progress in arts and sciences. 'No one,' says Fitzjames, 'can feel more strongly than I do the madness of the smallest unnecessary interference with the social habits and religious opinions of the country. ”

“ No one could be blind to Froude's great personal charm whenever he chose to exert it; but many people had the feeling that it was not easy to be on such terms as to know the real man. There were certain outworks of reserve and shyness to be surmounted, and they indicated keen sensibilities which might be unintentionally shocked. But to such a character there is often a great charm in the plain, downright ways of a masculine friend, who speaks what he thinks without reserve and without any covert intention. Froude and Fitzjames, in any case, became warmly attached ”

“ Society must be indissoluble; and to be indissoluble must recognise a single ultimate authority in all disputes. Peace and order mean subordination and discipline, and the only liberty possible is the liberty which presupposes such 'coercion.' The theory becomes harsh if by 'coercion' we mean simply 'physical force' or the fear of pain. A doctrine which made the hangman the ultimate source of all authority would certainly show brutality. But nothing could be farther from Fitzjames's intention than to sanction such a theory. ”

“ Is this a logical argument, or an appeal from argument to feeling? Is it not, as Fitzjames thinks, a roundabout way of saying, 'I believe in this system because it suits my tastes and feelings, and because I consider truth unattainable'? If so, persuasion is substituted for reasoning: and the force of persuasion depends upon the constitution of the person to be persuaded. Now the arguments, if they be called arguments, which Newman could address to Fitzjames upon this topic were obviously inapplicable. The dogmas, says Newman, are congenial to the conscience. ”

“ Mill seemed to him not so much cold-blooded as bloodless, wanting in the fire and force of the full-grown male animal, and comparable to a superlatively crammed senior wrangler, whose body has been stunted by his brains. Fitzjames could only make a real friend of a man in whom he could recognise the capacity for masculine emotions as well as logical acuteness, and rightly or wrongly Mill appeared to him to be too much of a calculating machine and too little of a human being. ”

“ All metaphysical verbiage, says Fitzjames, whether Coleridge's or Ward's, is an attempt to convert ignorance into superior kind of knowledge, by 'shaking up hard words in a bag.' Since all our knowledge is relative to our faculties, it is all liable to error. All our words for other than material objects are metaphors, liable to be misunderstood—a proposition which he confirms from Horne Tooke's nominalism. All our knowledge, again, supposes memory which is fallible. All our anticipations assume the 'uniformity of nature,' which cannot be proved. ”

“ Baseless as the 'discretion' theory may be, it has a strong unavowed influence. And yet it is the very specific difference of our rule that it is rule by law and not despotism. Englishmen could have no desire simply to set up a new despotism differing from the old only in being administered by Englishmen instead of natives. The moral difference is unmistakable. Decisive government by law gives the only real security for life or property, and is the indispensable condition for the growth of wealth. Nor is a compromise more possible between law and despotism than between straight and crooked. ”

“ It is surely wiser and more manly to walk silently by the shore of that silent sea, than to boast with puerile exultation over the little sand castles which we have employed our short leisure in building up. Life can never be matter of exultation, nor can the progress of arts and sciences ever fill the heart of a man who has a heart to be filled.' The value of all human labours is that of schoolboys' lessons, 'worth nothing at all except as a task and a discipline.' Life and death are greater and older than steam engines and cotton mills. ”

“ In private letters, moreover, he does not think it necessary to insist upon the fact, which he would have fully admitted, that the great object of criticism is always the critic himself. A man who says that he can't see, generally proves that he is blind, not that there is no light. If only for this reason, I would not quote phrases which would sound unduly crude or even arrogant when taken as absolute judgments, instead of being, as they often are, confessions of indifference in the form of condemnations. When a great writer really appeals to him, he shows no want of enthusiasm. ”

“ Fitzjames delivered an elaborate judgment to show that upon the accepted precedents of law, he was not guilty, inasmuch as the original act of taking was innocent.
Another aspect of justice, upon which Fitzjames dwells in his books, was represented in his practice. A judge, according to him, is not simply a logic machine working out intellectual problems, but is the organ of the moral indignation of mankind. When, after a studiously fair inquiry, a man had been proved to be a scoundrel, he became the proper object of wrath and of the punishment by which such wrath is gratified. ”

“ Smith could discourse upon nothing without showing his powers, and he would have been a singular instance in the House of Commons of a man respected at once for scholarship and for profound scientific knowledge, and yet a chosen mouthpiece of the political sentiments of the most cultivated constituency in the country. The recognition of his genius was no doubt due in great part to the singular urbanity which made him the pride and delight of all Oxford common rooms. ”

“ If we will not allow a man to gather his friends, arm them with bludgeons, and march out to settle a boundary dispute with a neighbouring village, we must settle the boundary ourselves, and we must settle it by distinct rules—that is, we must enforce laws. Peace and law go together, as violence and elastic custom go together. Now we must keep the peace, and, therefore, we must rule by law. ”

“ We do not know the truth of these doctrines; we only know that they are probably true, and that probability is and must be enough for us; we must not torture our guesses into a sham appearance of infallible reasoning, nor call them self-evident because we cannot prove them, nor try to transfer the case from the court of reason to the court of sentiment or emotion. ”

“ In fact, I think, Dickens took the view natural to the popular mind, which always embodies a grievance in a concrete image of a wicked and contemptible oppressor intending all the evils which result from his office. A more interesting and appropriate topic for art of a serious kind would be the problem presented by a body of men of the highest ability and integrity who are yet doomed to work a cumbrous and inadequate system. But the popular reformer, to whom everything seems easy and obvious, explains all abuses by attributing them to the deliberate intention of particular fools and knaves. ”

“ Fitzjames, with much fuller knowledge and longer experience, adheres substantially to his previous opinion. He has not, of course, the old-fashioned worship for the 'palladium of our liberties'; jurors could be 'blind and cruel' under Charles II., and as severe as the severest judge under George III. They are not more likely to do justice than a single judge. But the supreme advantages of placing the judge in his proper position as mediator and adviser, and of taking the public into confidence as to the perfect impartiality of the proceedings, outweigh all objections. ”

“ When Newman has to do with the existence of the Greek Church, he admits it to be inconsistent with his theory, but discovers it to be a 'difficulty' instead of an 'objection.' That is to say that an argument which you cannot answer is to be dismissed on pretence of being only a 'difficulty,' as nonsense is to be admitted under the name of a 'mystery.' If you argued in that way in a court of justice, and, because you had decided a case one way, refused to admit evidence for the other view, what would be the value of your decision? ”