nobody, or only some small fraction, feels the degree of interest in the gen. eral affairs of the State necessary to the formation of a public opinion, the electors will seldom make any use of the right of suffrage but to serve their private interest, or the interest of their locality, or of some one with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents. The class who, in this state of public feeling, gain the command of the representative body, for the most part use it solely as a means of seeking their fortune. If the executive is weak, the country is distracted by mere struggles for place; if strong, it makes itself despotic, at the cheap price of appeasing the representatives, or such of them as are capable of giving trouble, by a share of the spoil; and the only fruit produced by national representation is, that in addition to those who really govern, there is an assembly quartered on the public, and no abuse in which a portion of the assembly are interested is at all likely to be removed.

And

A people are no less unfitted for representative government by extreme passiveness and ready submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character and circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke would be made heavier on them by the The National Review.

contrivance which prima facie might be expected to lighten it.

To sum up. The Turkish Revolution was a movement effectively organized against the real tyranny of a corrupt and vindictive ruler by the leaders of a highly centralized military Power; its objects were, not to destroy the social structure of the dominant race, but to solidify its power and to conciliate or divide the non-Turkish elements in the State. To this extent, it was a Revolution justified by necessity and, to some extent, by its results. The Chinese Revolution has grown out of the accidental success of an insignificant local rebellion, precipitated by the moral and physical helplessness of rulers who had lost all capacity for ruling. Destitute of all constructive genius, without authoritative leaders or permanent elements of cohesion, the Chinese Republic has been suddenly conferred upon a people that neither wants nor understands representative government. Under such conditions, it would seem as if only a miracle, in the shape of a strong leader endowed with extraordinary political wisdom-a Chinese Charlemagne or Peter the Great-can save the nation from complete disorganization and disruption.

J. O. P. Bland.

The critical treatment of the Art of Controversy simply as an art has been curiously neglected. I suppose the reason is that it is the very aim of the controversialist to distract attention from his art and concentrate it on his object. The silly phrase "Art for Art's sake" (which is either the tamest of truisms or an extravagant absurdity) can hardly be applied by the most audacious to the art of controversy in the sense that some have attempted to

Contro

apply it to the plastic arts. versy is not conducted for controversy's sake; it is conducted for truth's sake, or at least victory's sake. Even those who think that Raphael painted his Madonnas "for Art's sake" and not for the Mother of God's sake, even those who will maintain that Velasquez in painting Phillip II-or for that matter Whistler himself in painting Carlyle-cared nothing for the personalities of their subjects, and re

garded them only as arrangements, will hardly go so far as to say that Swift did not care whether "Wood's Halfpence" were withdrawn or that Strafford did not care whether his head was cut off. Yet who will deny the title of the Drapier Letters or of Strafford's speech on his impeachment to be considered masterpieces of art?

Yet controversy, like any other art, can be considered from the purely artistic standpoint and its technical quality analyzed without reference to the rightness or wrongness of its aim. This is the obvious truism on which the æsthetic sophistry was reared. A good shot is a good shot, and if you are a technical judge of shooting you will judge impartially of the technical excellence of a shot whether it is fired by a patriot at his country's enemies or by a murderer at his wealthy uncle. It is hardly necessary to add that this does not mean-as the protagonists of the Unmorality of Art seem to suppose -that it does not matter whether you shoot your country's enemies or your wealthy uncle.

The object of controversy is, of course, to impress a certain conviction upon the minds of your readers or hearers. Yet all writing that seeks this end is not necessarily controversy. Many great didactic writers were indifferent to the art of controversy, or when they attempted it failed conspicuously. Carlyle was such a man; so was Ruskin. These great men preached-and preached most powerfully-but they preached to congregations. They did not debate with others; if ever either of them attempted to do so he failed lamentably. Exposition and the moving of men by rhetoric was the direction of their genius, not controversy. Carlyle was a greater man than Macaulay and has influenced the age far more profoundly, but had he engaged in controversy with Macaulay he would have been badly

mauled. Many will say-though I certainly should not-that Ruskin was a greater man than Huxley, but no one can think that Ruskin could have stood up to Huxley for ten minutes. The lamentable fate of poor Kingsley over the Apologia business may stand as a permanent warning to the eloquent, persuasive, imaginative, enthusiastic preacher not to allow himself to get within range of the guns of a genuine controversialist.

An analogy might be drawn between the relations of controversy to pure didactics and the relation of war to politics. The ultimate object of controversy is to produce conviction, as the ultimate object of war is to produce a political effect-to impose the will of one community on another. But in each case there is an immediate object without which the ultimate object cannot be achieved; and this object is the elimination of the opposing army or the opposing controversialist. To render the position of a controversial opponent untenable, to force him into self-contradiction or into withdrawal and to leave on the mind of a balanced reader the impression that his particular line of objection has ceased to exist-this is what the controversialist aims at: his success in this is the measure of his technical skill.

The three nineteenth-century names which I have already mentioned, as those of controversial experts, may well serve to illustrate the difference in effectiveness of various controversial methods. For each had his own special technique, which should be studied by those who wish to know how controversial victories are won, as carefully as the campaigns of great commanders are studied by men who wish to be proficient in military strategy.

The case of Macaulay is the more interesting, because it illustrates very well the distinction which I have

drawn between the immediate and the ultimate end of controversy. In the ultimate end Macaulay, of course, fails. He does not convince us, even if he convinced his contemporaries, that that curious Whig version of history and politics which he preached so picturesquely is valid. Events have gone against him: his political creed has become incredible. But it is a gross injustice to allow that to blind us to the fact that he showed extraordinary genius as a controversialist in maintaining it. Nay, the very fact that he was so often in the wrong throws his ability as a controversialist into the higher relief. Take, for example, his attack upon Southey's Colloquies on Society. On the main points at issue, the evil effect of the industrial system upon the poor, the urgent necessity of a strong national government to control the anarchy of plutocratic commercialism, the need of a common religion if a community is to be happy and secure, Southey was certainly in the right and Macaulay as certainly in the wrong. that in the actual battle Macaulay is the victor and Southey the vanquished. To deny this because Southey's view has been found ultimately more true to the needs of men would be as absurd as to deny the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo because France is not now ruled by the Bourbons.

But it is not less certain

If we try to examine the special quality of Macaulay's effectiveness in controversy we shall find, I think, that it consists very largely in the cumulative effect of a rapid repetition of blows, delivered successively at the same point and each a little stronger and heavier than the last. These things can best be illustrated by quotation, and I will take first a passage, not especially controversial, but illustrating the literary method which this process involves. It is all the better in that, like all that Macaulay wrote on

matters outside the purview of an English Whig, it is full of insular crudities, and quite misses the real point of view of those he is criticizing. It is from his essay on Mirabeau, and it is concerned with monarchical France before the Revolution and with Fénelon's importance as a figure therein.

The fundamental principles of Fénelon's political morality, the tests by which he judged of institutions and of men, were absolutely new to his countrymen. He had taught them indeed, with the happiest effect, to his royal pupil. But how incomprehensible they were to most people we learn from Saint Simon. That amusing writer tells us, as a thing almost incredible, that the Duke of Burgundy declared it to be his opinion that kings existed for the good of the people, and not the people for the good of the kings. Saint Simon is delighted with the benevolence of this saying; but startled by its novelty and terrified by its boldness. Indeed, he distinctly says that it was not safe to repeat the sentiment in the court of Lewis. Saint Simon was, of all the members of that court, the least courtly. He was as nearly an oppositionist as any man of his time. His disposition was proud, bitter and cynical. In religion he was a Jansenist; in politics, a less hearty royalist than most of his neighbors. His opinions and his temper had preserved him from the illusions which the demeanor of Lewis produced on others. He neither loved nor respected the King. Yet even this man-one of the most liberal men in France-was struck dumb with astonishment at hearing the fundamental axiom of all government propounded-an axiom which, in our time, nobody in England or France would dispute-which the stoutest Tory takes for granted as much as the fiercest Radical, and concerning which the Carlist would agree with the most republican deputy of the "extreme left." No person will do justice to Fénelon, who does not constantly keep in mind that Telemachus was written in an age and nation in which bold and independent thinkers stared to hear

away, throwing after it, as one throws a stone, the derisive anger of the last sentence.

That is the method of Macaulay.

Huxley brought to the art of controversy a much bigger brain than Macaulay's and an infinitely wider outlook. Yet his method is Macaulay'sthough with a difference that will be presently noted. It is not difficult to pick out passages from all his controversial essays, passages which in everything but the literary style (which of course is far more lucid and restrained) resemble the passages that I have quoted from Macaulay. For example, in the essay called "The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science" he quotes a religious commentator who from a calculation of the lives of the various early patriarchs draws the conclusion that "the account which Moses gives of the Temptation and the Fall passed through no more than four hands between him and Adam." Here is Huxley's comment

If "the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ" is to stand or fall with the belief in the sudden transmutation of the chemical components of a woman's body into sodium chloride, or on the "admitted reality" of Jonah's ejection, safe and sound, on the shores of the Levant, after three days' seajourney in the stomach of a gigantic marine animal, what possible pretext can there be for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs? Who that has swallowed the camel of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at such an historical gnat-nay, midge-as the supposition that the mother of Moses was told the story of the Flood by Jacob; who had it straight from Shem; who was on friendly terms with Methuselah; who knew Adam quite well?

In another essay, where he is quoting (with approval) Newman's argument that the miracles of the Church are as easy to believe as those of

Scripture, the death of Arius after the Bishop's prayers to "take him away," is mentioned at first simply as "the death of Arius," then as his death "in the midst of his deadly, if prayerful, enemies," and finally, as "the miraculous slaying of the man who fell short of the Athanasian power of affirming contradictions." This is in the very

manner of Macaulay in his best combative form.

Yet an immense gulf separates Huxley from Macaulay, and that gulf is due less to a difference of method than to the difference between the moral and intellectual make-up. Huxley ardently loved and desired the truth

simply because it was the truth. This love and hunger for truth for truth's sake was not only not among Macaulay's many admirable qualities, but was almost in so many words repudiated by him. The latter part of his essay on Bacon is practically a plea for not caring about truth unless it happens to be of immediate use to mankind. The effect of this difference upon their methods is very noticeable. Macaulay is fighting only for immediate victory. He looks for the weak point in his opponent's argument and hammers at it. He does not care very much if a hundred strong points remain unanswered. For his aim is simply to defeat his enemy, and he knows that the effect of defeat is produced if only on one point the opposing pleader is entirely routed. So again he is not much concerned if the counter-theory he sets up is weak and untenable. If you look at his reply to Gladstone, for instance, you will feel at once the contrast between the keenness with which he fastens on and demolishes the weak elements of Gladstone's theory and the easily assailable structure of the counter-theory which he attempts to erect in its place.

Very different is the method of Huxley in controversy (by a curious coin