Viscount James Bryce Bryce

“ But our imaginations are too dull to realize either the grandeur of the State in its splendid opportunities for promoting the welfare of the masses, or the fact that the nobility of the State lies in its being the true child, the true exponent, of the enlightened will of a right-minded and law-abiding people. Absorbed in business or pleasure, we think too little of what our membership25 in a free nation means for the happiness of our poorer fellow-citizens. The eloquent voice of a patriotic reformer sometimes breaks our slumber. ”

“ Free from many of the dangers that surround the States of Europe, you have unequalled opportunities for showing what a high spirit of citizenship—zealous, intelligent, disinterested—may do for the happiness and dignity of a mighty nation, enabling it to become what its founders hoped it might be—a model for other peoples more lately emerged into the sunlight of freedom. ”

“ We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our State exerts. ”

“ Laws may do much to raise and sustain the tone of all the persons engaged in public affairs as officials or as legislators, not only by appealing to their conscience, but by giving them a quick and easy reply to those who seek improper favours from them. A statute may express the best conscience of the whole people and set the standard they approve, even where the practice of most individuals falls short of the standard. ”

“ Nowadays the arm of justice is often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with none. ”

“ Unhappily, with nations as with individuals, there is apt to be a relapse from these loftier moods into the old common ways when selfish interest and trivial pleasures resume their sway. There comes a sort of reaction from the stress of virtue and strenuous high-soaring effort. Everything looks gray and dull. The divine light has died out of the sky. This, too, is an oft-repeated lesson of European history. Yet the reaction and decline are not inevitable. When an individual man has been raised above himself by some spiritual impulse, he is sometimes able to hold the ground he has won. ”

“ But in no form of government is leadership so essential. A multitude without intelligent, responsible leaders whom it respects and follows is a crowd ready to become the prey of any self-seeking knave. ”

“ We may also appeal to every citizen’s sense of dignity and self-respect. We may bid him recollect that he is the heir of rights and privileges which you and our ancestors fought for, and which place him, whatever his birth or fortune, among the rulers of his country. He is unworthy of himself, unmindful of what he owes to the Constitution that has given him these functions, if he does not try to discharge them worthily. ”

“ It is because a great University like this is the place where the imagination of young men may best be quickened by the divine fire, because the sons of a great University are those who may best carry with them into after life the inspiration which history and philosophy and poetry have kindled within its venerable walls, that I have ventured to dwell here on the special duty which those who enjoy these privileges owe to their brethren, partners in the citizenship of a great republic. ”

“ Technicalities must not be suffered to obstruct the march of justice. Sentences must be carried out, else the statute will become, as statutes often have become, a record of aspiration rather than of accomplishment.
To contrive plans by which the interest of the citizen in public affairs shall be aroused and sustained, is far easier than to induce the citizen to use and to go on using, year in and year out, the contrivances and opportunities provided for his benefit. Yet it is from the heart and will of the citizen that all real and lasting improvements must proceed. ”

“ What habits are to the individual man, that, to a nation, are its Traditions. They are the memories of the Past turned into the standards of the Present. High traditions go to form a code of honour, which speaks with authority to the sense of honour. Whoever transgresses that code is felt to be unworthy of the nation, unfit to hold that place in its respect and confidence which the great ones of the days of old have held. ”

“ Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult, duty of a citizen is to fight valiantly for his convictions when he is in a minority. The smaller the minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder is the call of duty to defend one’s opinions. ”

“ Now this is, or seems to be, a more formidable task the vaster the community becomes. It is harder to make your voice heard against the roar of ocean than against the whistling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake. ”

“ But it is only the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater. The Average Man judges himself by the average standard and does not see why he should take more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive at a result summed up in the terrible dictum, which reveals the basic fault of democracy, “What is Everybody’s business is Nobody’s business.”
Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no more need be said. It is a sin that easily besets us all. We might suppose that where public affairs are concerned it would decrease under the influence of education and the press. ”

“ All I need now ask you to note and remember is that the practice of bringing political issues directly before the people, whatever its drawbacks, does tend to diminish both that indolence and indifference which is pretty common among European voters. It requires every citizen to think for himself and deliver his vote upon all the more important measures, and it also reduces the power of that Party Spirit which everywhere distracts men’s minds from the real merits of the questions before the country. ”

“ Although in politics by far the most real and lasting progress may be expected from raising the intelligence and virtue of the citizens, still improvements in the machinery of government must not be undervalued. To take away from bad men the means and opportunities by which they may work evil, to furnish good men with means and opportunities which make it easier for them to prevent or overcome evil, is to render a great service. ”

“ The interest each one of us has as a member of a city or a nation in seeing our fellow-citizens healthy, peaceful, and happy is a greater interest, if it be measured in terms of our own real enjoyment of life, than is that interest, of which we so constantly are reminded, which we have in making the State either wealthy by the development of trade, or formidable to foreign countries by its armaments. ”

“ Seldom has he the leisure, still more seldom the impulse or the patience, to scrutinize these ideas for himself and form his own judgment. He is glad to be relieved of the necessity for thinking, because thinking is hard work. Indolence again! The habit of mind that is formed by hasty reading, and especially by the reading of newspapers and magazines in which the matter, excellent as parts of it often are, is so multifarious that one topic diverts attention from the others, tends to a general dissipation and distraction of thought. ”

“ But the daily round of business and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and public duty fades into the background of life. This dulness of imagination and the mere indolence which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a chief cause of that indifference which chokes the growth of civic duty. ”

“ How far government ought to include within its functions schemes for increasing national wealth, otherwise than by such means (being means which a government alone can employ because to be effective they must be done on a great scale) as the improving of education, the diffusing of knowledge, the providing means of transportation, the conservation of natural resources, and so forth, may be matter for debate. But at any rate government ought to avoid measures tending to enrich any one person or group of persons at the expense of the citizens generally. ”

“ Pride in the glorious foretime of the race and in its heroes sustains in the individual man who is called to public duty, the personal pride which makes him feel that all his affections and all his emotions stand rooted in the sense of honour, which is, for the man and for the nation, the foundation of all virtue. ”

“ You know better than I do how far those who direct the press realize and try to discharge the responsibilities which attach to their power.
The observer who seeks to discern and estimate the forces working for good or evil that mark the spirit and tendencies of an age, finds it easiest to do this by noting the changes which have occurred within his own memory. To-day everyone seems to dwell upon the growth not only of luxury, but of the passion for amusement, and most of those who can look back thirty or forty years find in this growth grounds for discouragement. ”

“ If the prosecuting authorities and the courts do their duty unflinchingly, without regard to the social position of the offender, a statute may bring the practice of ordinary men up to the level of that collective conscience of the nation which it embodies. ”

“ Indifference, selfish interests, the excesses of party spirit, will all begin to disappear as civic life is lifted on to a higher plane, and as the number of those who, standing on that higher plane, will apply a strict test to their own conduct and to that of their leaders, realizing and striving to discharge their responsibilities, goes on steadily increasing until they come to form the majority of the people. ”

“ No doubt public affairs demand only a small part of their time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong where public affairs are concerned. The need for activity is not continuously present. A duty shared with many others seems less of a personal duty. If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citizens are as much bound to speak, vote, or act as each one of us is, the sense of obligation becomes to each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when3 one perceives the neglect of others to do their duty. The need for the good citizen’s action, no doubt, becomes then all the greater. ”

“ If you and we, both here and in Britain, are less active than we should be in this and other forms of civic work, the fault lies in our not caring enough for our country. It is easy to wave a flag, to cheer an eminent statesman, to exult in some achievement by land or sea. ”

“ Broadly speaking, in modern countries ruled by universal suffrage the Average Citizen has not the means of adequately discharging the function which the constitution throws upon him of following, examining, and judging those problems of statesmanship which the ever-growing range of government administration and the ever-increasing complexity of our civilization set before him as a voter to whom issues of policy are submitted. ”

“ The citizens who stand above their fellows in knowledge and mental power ought to set an example, not only by themselves thinking more and thinking harder about public affairs than most of them do, but also by exerting themselves to stimulate and aid their less instructed or more listless neighbours. The voter, it is said, should be independent. Yes. But independence does not mean isolation. He must not commit his personal responsibility to the keeping of another. ”

“ Have we not here a strong motive for securing purity and efficiency in city administration? Is it not the personal interest of every one of us that the city we dwell in should be such as I have sought to describe? ”

“ This development, in itself fraught with laudable means of enjoyment, has had the unforeseen yet natural result of reducing the interest in public affairs among the educated classes, while the ardour with which competitions in physical strength and skill are followed has in like manner diverted the thoughts and attention of the less educated—and indeed, not of them alone but of many also in a class from whom better things might have been expected. ”

“ The will of the electors would be more adequately and exactly expressed, because the minority, or possibly more than one minority, as well as the majority, would have everywhere its representative. The zeal of the electors would be stimulated, because in each district a section of opinion not large enough to have a chance of winning an election, if there were but one member, and accordingly now apathetic, because without hope, would then be roused to organize itself and to take a warmer interest in public affairs. ”

“ Whoever, studying the conditions of modern European democracies, sees the infinite fatalities which popular government in large countries full of rich men and of opportunities for acquiring riches, offers for the perversion of government to private selfish ends, will often feel that those European States which have maintained the highest standard of civic purity have done it in respect of their Traditions. ”

“ The best element in a community cannot afford to let its interests be the sport of self-seekers or rogues. Moreover, the loss by maladministration or robbery, large as it may sometimes be, is a less serious evil than is the damage to public morals. If those who have the manners and speak the language of educated men refuse to enter practical politics, they must cease to complain of a want of refinement in politics. ”