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Title: Passive Resistance
Author: Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw [
More Titles by Hearnshaw]
I. THE NEW PERIL
For a long time past there has existed in this country a sort of smouldering rebellion known as passive resistance. It is difficult to say when it had its origin; but probably it could be traced back to the Reformation. For it is merely a veiled manifestation of that anarchic individualism and that morbid conscientiousness--the extremes of qualities admirable in moderation--which first became formidable in England on the break-up of mediæval Christendom. In recent times it has displayed itself in many new forms, and on an increasingly large scale, until now, in this great crisis of our fate, it has grown to be a serious menace to the national unity, and a grave danger to the very existence of the State. We have in our midst at the present day--to mention only the leading specimens--Ritualists who refuse to obey judgments of the Privy Council, or to heed injunctions issued by bishops appointed by the Crown; Anti-Vivisectionists who resist regulations regarded as essential by the health authorities; Undenominationalists who decline to pay rates necessary to maintain the system of education established by law; Christian Scientists whose criminal neglect in the case of dangerous diseases not only renders them guilty of homicide, but also imperils the welfare of the whole community; Suffragists who defy all law comprehensively, on the ground that the legislature from which it emanates is not constituted as they think it ought to be; Trade Unionists who combine to stultify any Act of Parliament which conflicts with the rules of their own organizations; and finally, a No-Conscription Fellowship whose members expressly "deny the right of Government to say, 'You shall bear arms,'" and threaten to "oppose every effort to introduce compulsory military service into Great Britain."[42] Here is a pretty collection of aliens from the commonwealth! It contains examples of almost every variety of anti-social eccentricity. So diverse and conflicting are the types of passive resistance represented that there is only one thing that can be predicated of all the members of all the groups, and it is this--that they are rebels.
FOOTNOTE:
[42] No-Conscription Manifesto printed in full in the Morning Post, May 31st, 1915.
II. PASSIVE RESISTANCE AS REBELLION
The essential preliminary to any useful discussion of passive resistance is the clear recognition of the fact that it is rebellion, and nothing less. To say, or admit, this is not necessarily to condemn it; for there are few persons to-day, I suppose, who would contend that rebellion is never justifiable. All it asserts is that passive resistance has to be judged by the same measures and according to the same standards as any other kind of revolt against constituted political authority. It is all the more needful to make this plain because some of the milder but more muddled among the resisters try to shut their eyes to the fact that they are rebels. They claim to be sheep and not goats. They call themselves Socialists; they profess an abnormal loyalty to the idea of the State; they protest their devotion to the Great Society; they ask to be allowed to make all sorts of sacrifices to the community; they announce their willingness to do anything--except the one thing which the Government requires them to do. The exception is fatal to their claim. "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." The State does not and cannot submit the validity of its enactments to the private judgment of its subjects. It expresses and enforces the general will, and it dare not leave to the choice, or even to the conscience, of the individual an option as to which of its commands shall be obeyed, and which not. To do so would be to loose the bands of society, to bring to an end the reign of law, and to plunge the community once again into that primal chaos of anarchy from which in the beginning it painfully emerged. The State demands, and must necessarily demand, implicit obedience. From the loyal it receives it. Those from whom it does not receive it are rebels, no matter how conscientious they may be, how lofty their moral elevation, how sublimely passive their resistance. So far as their disobedience extends they are the enemies of organized society, disrupters of the commonwealth, subverters of government, the allies and confederates of criminals and anarchists. It is worth noting, moreover, how easily their passive resistance develops into more active forms of rebellion. Not for long was the Suffragist content to remain merely defensive in revolt; soon she emerged with whips for Cabinet Ministers, hammers for windows, and bombs for churches. Resistant Trade Unionists rapidly and generally slide into sabotage and personal violence. The No-Conscriptionists of Ireland threaten through Mr. Byrne, M.P., for Dublin, that "if Conscription is forced on Ireland, it will be resisted by drilled and armed forces"[43]--a delightfully Hibernian type of anti-militarism, which, nevertheless, throws a lurid light on the real meaning of the movement. It is seen to be rebellion, open, naked and unashamed.
FOOTNOTE:
[43] See Times, November 22nd, 1915.
III. THE RIGHT OF REBELLION
Passive resistance, then, is rebellion; but, as has already been admitted, it is not on that account necessarily unjustifiable. An established government may be so hopelessly iniquitous that it ought to be overthrown; an organized society may be so irremediably corrupt that it merits disruption; duly enacted laws may, when judged by moral standards, be so flagrantly unjust as to demand the resistance of all good men. There is no need to labour the point: actual examples crowd upon the mind. Who would condemn the revolt of the Greeks against Turkish rule? Who would contend that the degenerate society of the later Bourbon monarchy did not deserve dissolution? Who would maintain that John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell had no moral warrant for their resistance to Charles I, or their successors to James II. We may freely allow that in these cases, and in many similar ones, there existed on ethical grounds a right, or more strictly a communal duty, to rebel. Few would now proclaim with Filmer the divine right of any government to exact obedience quite irrespective of the wishes or the interests of its subjects. Still fewer would agree with Hobbes that an original contract precludes for ever all opposition to sovereign political authority. The ground on which political obligation is asserted has been shifted. The State is recognized as "an institution for the promotion of the common good," and it is admitted that if it ceases to promote the common good the obligation to obey it is transformed into an obligation to reform it, or even to
Shatter it to bits--and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire.
But, viewed thus, the right of rebellion assumes an aspect of awful responsibility, perhaps the most tremendous within the sphere of politics that the mind can conceive. For rebellion means the breaking-up of the existing order, the throwing of institutions into the melting-pot, the letting loose of incalculable forces of discord and destruction, the suspension of law, the return to chaos, in the hope that out of the welter a new and better cosmos--one more fitted to promote the common good--may be evolved. Every rebel, or prospective rebel, whether of the passive or the active type, ought to ponder well the logical consequences of his revolt against authority, ought to consider the inevitable results that would flow from the general adoption of the principles which he professes, ought to decide whether or not he really desires to overthrow the polity under which he lives, ought to ask if he and his fellows are able to face with any serious hope of success the colossal task of constructing a new society on the ruins of the old. Now the historic rebels to whom I have referred above by way of example--the Greek Nationalists, the French Revolutionists, the English Puritans and Whigs--did not hesitate to acknowledge the nature of their acts, and were not unprepared to face their consequences. They did not deceive themselves, or attempt to deceive others, by false professions of loyalty. The Greeks proclaimed their undying hostility to the Turks, fought them, shook off their yoke, and erected a national kingdom on the ruins of Turkish tyranny. The French Revolutionists openly declared war upon the old regime, eradicated it by means of the guillotine, and established a republic where it had been. Similarly the English Puritans repudiated allegiance to Charles I, brought him to the block, and instituted the Commonwealth in his place; while the Whigs drove out James II and set up the constitutional monarchy of William and Mary. One can respect heroic rebels of these types. They were honest and open; they attacked great abuses; they took great risks, and they achieved notable results. Very different are our modern rebels. They profess with nauseating unction loyalty to the State whose dominion they are undermining; they claim to be exceptionally virtuous members of the Society whose unity they are destroying; above all they continue to demand with insolent effrontery the protection of the very law and the very courts whose authority they are denying and defying. They can be freed from the charge of the most revolting hypocrisy only on the plea that "they know not what they do."
IV. REBELLION AGAINST A DEMOCRACY
It is granted, then, that rebellion may sometimes be not only a justifiable act, but also a bounden public duty. Three examples have been given which perhaps may be allowed to have illustrated and confirmed this view. It will be noted, however, that in each of the cases cited the revolt was that of an oppressed community against a government in which it had no part or lot, and over which it had no constitutional control. Rebellion against a democracy on the part of members of that democracy stands on a widely different footing. It is treachery as well as insurrection. One can, indeed, conceive circumstances which would justify it; but they would be rare and exceptional, and that for two reasons. First, in a democracy constitutional means are provided for the alteration of law and even for the remodelling of the form of government. Secondly, if a democratic government is undermined by disobedience, discredited by successful defiance, destroyed by treasonable betrayal on the part of its own professed supporters, there is nothing to take its place; the community is bound either to drift into anarchy, or to revert to some sort of tyranny. Let us consider these two points in turn. (1) The essence of democracy is government according to the will of the majority. This almost necessarily implies government in opposition to the will of one or more minorities. But democratic minorities have a remedy--and it is the peculiar virtue of democracy to provide it. It is this: by means of argument, persuasion, and appeal; by press agitation and platform campaign; through organization and combination, to convert themselves into a majority. The whole of our English political system, the very existence of our democratic constitution, depends upon the recognition and acceptance of this rule of the game. If the will of the majority is not to be regarded as authoritative, measures for reform of the franchise, extension of the suffrage, and adjustment of the electoral machine have no rational meaning at all. They are merely vanity and vexation of spirit. What matter who makes the laws, or what laws are made, if laws are not to be implicitly obeyed? Our extremists want to have it both ways: they want to enforce law with majestic severity as "the Will of the People," when they are in a majority; but they also want to defy law with conscientious obstinacy as a violation of personal freedom when they are in a minority. Some members of "The Union of Democratic Control" are also members of the "No-Conscription Fellowship"! Could inconsistency or muddle-headedness go further? Those who wish to rule as part of a majority must be prepared to be overruled as part of a minority. If minorities, instead of employing the constitutional machinery placed at their disposal to secure the repeal of obnoxious laws, are going to resist and rebel whenever the majority does something of which they strongly disapprove, there is an end of democratic government altogether, and a reversion to the state of nature. T. H. Green in his Principles of Political Obligation puts the case clearly and well. He asks this very question, What shall an individual do when he is faced by a command of a democratic government which he believes to be wrong? He replies: "In a country like ours with a popular government and settled methods of enacting and repealing laws, the answer of common sense is simple and sufficient. He should do all he can by legal methods to get the command cancelled, but till it is cancelled, he should conform to it. The common good must suffer more from resistance to a law or to the ordinance of a legal authority than from the individual's conformity to the particular law or ordinance that is bad, until its repeal can be obtained."[44] Here we have the true ground of the duty of obedience. The antagonistic principle of passive resistance provides a charter for criminals and anarchists.
(2) The second point needs little enlargement. It is clear from many examples in both ancient and modern history that if a monarchy is overthrown an aristocracy can take its place, and that if an aristocracy is dispossessed of power, room is made for a democracy. But what do our rebels against democracy propose to substitute for the sovereign will of the majority, if they succeed by resistance in reducing it to impotence? Possibly they hope that their own exalted will may prevail. Let them not flatter themselves by any such vain dream. Even assuming what is improbable, viz., that they remain united among themselves, can they suppose that their example of successful revolt will remain without imitators, or that their anti-social doctrines will never be applied again? If they will not render obedience when they are in a minority, who will obey them even if they have a majority behind them? Government will cease; the reign of order will be at an end; Society will be dissolved amid "red ruin and the breaking-up of laws."
FOOTNOTE:
[44] Green. Principles of Political Obligation, p. 111. Cf. Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 243.
V. THE DUTY OF THE STATE
The case seems clear. Passive resistance is rebellion, and it is entirely inconsistent with loyalty to any form of government. In relation to democratic government it is, moreover, on the part of members of the democracy, treachery of a peculiarly heinous type, since it is a betrayal of the sovereign community by those within its own ranks. If the sovereign community does (as it easily may) by the vote of its majority make enactments which seem to any one of its subjects to be morally wrong, that subject has two legitimate courses open to him. He may either obey under protest, and meantime use all lawful influence at his disposal to convince the majority of the error of their ways, and convert them to his way of thinking; or he may withdraw from the community and its territories altogether, and go to some other part of the wide world where the obnoxious enactment is not in force. What he may not do, is to remain within the community, enjoy all the advantages of its ordered life, exercise its franchises, receive the protection of its forces, claim the securities of its courts and the liberties of its constitution, and at the same time refuse to render it obedience.
If in his misguided perversity he adopts this last-named course, the duty of the State is plain. It is to call him to submission, or to withdraw its protection from him. The person who will not recognize the State's sovereignty, has no claim upon the services of the State. The first essential of a government is that it should govern. It should, of course, exercise the utmost care in issuing commands to avoid as far as possible the giving of offence to tender consciences; but when once its deliberate commands are issued, and so long as they remain unrepealed, it should enforce them with calm but inexorable determination. Nothing is more fatal to the very foundations of political society, than the spectacle of a government that can be defied with impunity.[45] That demoralizing spectacle has been seen far too often during recent years, and at the moment when the war broke out it had led us to the verge of national disaster. The war has brought us into closer touch with realities than we had been for many a long year before, and it has taught us how ruinous it is in fatuous complacency to "wait and see" whither disorder, disloyalty, and disobedience will conduct us. If, however, there are still in our midst ministers who tremble before rebellion, and do not know how to act in the presence of organized passive resistance, let me commend to them the worthy example of Edward I, who in 1296 was faced by a general refusal on the part of the clergy to pay taxes. He simply excluded them from the protection of the laws, and closed his courts to their pleas. A few weeks of well-merited outlawry brought to an end their ill-advised experiment in passive resistance.
FOOTNOTE:
[45] Maine (Popular Government, p. 64) emphasizes this point. "If," he says, "any government should be tempted to neglect, even for a moment, its function of compelling obedience to law--if a Democracy, for example, were to allow a portion of the multitude of which it consists to set some law at defiance which it happens to dislike--it would be guilty of a crime which hardly any other virtue could redeem, and which century upon century might fail to repair."
[The end]
Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw's essay: Passive Resistance
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