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| The State Opening of Parliament. The Queen commands that the MPs attend her in the Chamber of the House of Lords. The Commons have just slammed the door in Black Rod's face. |
“And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie” (H. Belloc)—
When the Humbug Has Broken Down and the Sham Exposed.
Epigraph:
“But the answer to all this [“sort of
hopeless feeling”] is that these growing evils (and they have almost reached
that limit after which the State breaks down) are not inevitable and are
not necessary—save [i.e., except, unless] under an anonymous
system” (Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons and Monarchy, p.
181—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original).
***
“It is [in this context] far more
important for us to see and admit what has happened than to discuss why
it has happened. It is much more important to find out that your rudder
has dropped off in the deep sea than to discover how it
dropped off. Yet it may be of service to mention causes briefly before we
proceed to the chances of the future” (Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons
and Monarchy, p. 115—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original).
In 1920, ten years after Hilaire
Belloc had stepped down from his four maturing years of publicly elected service in the House of
Commons, he published a lucid book-length essay, entitled The House of
Commons and Monarchy. It is a
forthright and equitably proportioned work with a clearly stated thesis; and
the development of Belloc's presented evidence and argumentation will help us
still better understand—even in the
United States—many timely and timeless things of political and moral moment.
For example, the reality of power, especially the formation, sustained moral
authority, and gradual decay of a “new governing class” (39): indeed, a wealthy
Oligarchy that had indispensably become a well-rooted Aristocracy, “after a
sufficient tradition has confirmed them,” (47) even so as to become “a
sacramental thing.”(39) Regrettably then, but truly, Belloc says, “one of the
causes of the decline of Aristocracy” (179) is “the accumulation
of...corruptions.” (179) Thus, Trust is broken; the earlier “general respect”
(47) and “ reverence upon which Aristocracy reposed,” vanish.
For it is so, he says, that:
''The characters [the enduring qualities]
which keep an Aristocratic body in the saddle are easily recognized, though
difficult to define. The first, undoubtedly, is dignity. The second, closely
related to dignity, is a readiness in the individual to sacrifice
himself for the good of the whole. The Aristocratic spirit demands in those
who govern a readiness to suffer personal injury and loss for the sake not only
of the State...but [for the sake] of the Aristocratic quality of the State, and
in particular of the special Aristocratic organism [i.e., the House of
Commons] to which the individual belongs'' (85-86—my emphasis added).
However, when then later speaking
of the growing “ineptitude” (88) of a governing class, and its selfish, even
“ardent passion” to serve “personal safety” (89) rather than the larger Common
Good (Bonum Commune), Belloc, by way of sharp contrast, also says:
''When a governing clique ceases to be
Aristocratic you feel it not only in specific indignities and particular
buffooneries, or petty thefts; you feel it in a sort of insecurity [as well as
an insufficiency]. The frantic efforts to conceal, the silly blushing denials,
the haste to get away with the swag—all of these are the symptoms: and worst of
all is the incapacity for sacrifice'' (88-89—my emphasis added).
Furthermore, in Belloc's words:
Lastly, from two most powerful sources,
the Aristocratic State tends to suffer from Illusion, especially in its
old age—and illusion is the most dangerous of all things. The two
sources whence Illusion insinuates itself into the mood [or “atmosphere”
(82)] of an Aristocratic State are, first, its internal security; and second,
the legendary nature of the moral authority which the governing class
exercises'' (55—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original).
Belloc also came to believe that,
in the House of Commons, there is “a lack of machinery for recuperation” (57)
and, so, “They nourish Illusion to protect their decay” (58—emphasis
added). However, although it is so that “Parliaments must be Oligarchies;” (63)
likewise “it is universally true of oligarchies that they cannot govern unless
they are Aristocratic.” (64) Moreover, an “Aristocratic State demands
Aristocratic Action and Temper both in those who govern and in those who are
governed” (63—my emphasis added). Such must be, in good times, the
reciprocally nourishing culture.
Belloc's main thesis, in the light
of earlier English history (especially since the Regicide of 1649) is, as
follows:
“The House of Commons was formed by, and is essentially part of, an
Aristocratic State. England having ceased to be an Aristocratic State the House
of Commons is ceasing to function” (this clear formulation is repeated three
times at the outset of his argument, i.e., on pages 4, 7, and 9).
For, “the central institution of
that Aristocratic England which the Reformation had made was [and still
is] the House of Commons.” (63—my emphasis added) Speaking of the
mid-seventeenth century in England and the contention between the newly strengthened
vested interests and the Stuart King, he
says:
''The rising quarrel (confused in its
eddies but clear in its main stream)
produced the Civil Wars and the destruction of English kingship. The new
Oligarchy [with the help of the martial Calvinist, Oliver Cromwell] put to
death the last true Monarch in 1649 [Charles I]. His son [Charles II] came back
eleven years later, but only as a salaried official.... But why was all
this? Why should the supplanting after civil war of one form of
government by another, of Monarchy by Oligarchy, have produced so large
an effect and one of such advantage to national greatness and glory?....The
masses grew more dependent, the rich more powerful and even immune; but of the external
growth and wealth and dominion, and all that of which patriotic men are proud,
there can be no doubt'' (37-38—my emphasis added).
Belloc considers his own terse
answer to the question (“And why?”) to be so important to his overarching
argument that he puts his brevity in emphatic italics:
''Essentially because the Oligarchy,
which had thus seated itself firmly in the saddle after the destruction of the
Monarchy, was growing (through the national
sentiment and through the new religion on which that sentiment was based)
into an Aristocracy. That is the point. That is the whole understanding
of modern English history. As an ultimate result of the Reformation the Kings
were broken and replaced by a Governing Class, of which the House of Commons
was the [“sovereign”] organ. But that new governing class was not a mere
clique, not a small minority merely seizing power. Men have never
tolerated such usurpation. They have never allowed an irresponsible few
to rule without moral sanction. It would be an insupportable
rule....What had come, in the place of kingship, was an Aristocratic State,
a State governed by an Oligarchy indeed, but by an Oligarchy which received
the permanent and carefully
preserved respect of its fellow-citizens''(38-39—my bold emphasis added;
italics in the original).
Throughout the later parts of his
book, Belloc shows how and why that indispensable and cherished respect
gradually (and very consequentially) decayed—while emphasizing the stark fact
that it had indeed happened!
In the remainder of this essay, I
propose to give special accent to Hilaire Belloc's articulate insights about general moral
matters, to include the importance of virtuous, as well as vicious (or subtly
degraded), moral character in members of a ruling Elite. For moral character
also has social consequences, and, as Belloc has incisively written “The
statement that Parliaments are, or can be, democratic is a lie; and you
cannot build build upon a lie” (177—my emphasis added). Reform of a long-traditional Governing Class
must come from deeper sources, from within and from without. In any case, it
must be based on reality, on truth presented fully and in its proper
proportions—even though, as Belloc knows well, there are always “critics of too
much truth-telling,” (82) in spite of a “known internal breakdown” (82) of an
“existing organ of government,” (82) such as the House of Commons. For, he had
said: “It is always so when an institution breaks down. The crust survives by a
few years the rotten interior.” (81)
Despite its special strengths, an
Aristocratic State—in Belloc's view—has its own special vulnerabilities:
''An Aristocratic State is less able to
reform itself than any other, and if its essential principle [deserved mutual
respect, and even reverence] grows weak, it has the utmost difficulty in
finding a remedy for its disease.... An Aristocratic State attacked in its
vital principle has no medicinal rules, no formulae upon which to fall back for
its healing. Its diseases [in the face of “civil dissension” and distrustful
disrespect] are profoundly organic, never mechanical; for the whole action [and
“temper”] of an Aristocracy is less conscious and less defined than that of a
Democracy or Monarchy.'' (55)
There is “another element” in this
matter of the “old age” of an Aristocratic State: the factor of “weariness”
(97):
''The weakening of contempt [for moral
baseness, and for coarse and cunning “adventurers and rapscallions” (97)], this
new intimate companionship with financial powers, not only ephemeral but base,
comes in part from fatigue. And this we see in a process everywhere observable:
which is the admixture of apology and impudence.... [For example,] to
find a man or woman of the governing type (they no longer possess the governing
power) apologizing for their frequentation of such and such a [plutocrat's] house,
for their acceptation of such and such an insult, and accompanying the apology
with a phrase which admits their incapacity to stand firm. It is an
attitude of drift and of lassitude in luxury: of a tired need for money.
It is the very contrary of that atmosphere of discipline which all
governing organs, Monarchic, Democratic, or Aristocratic, must maintain
under peril of extinction. Next to this abandonment of principle,
this loss of a stiffening standard round which the governing body could
rally, and to which it could conform, we note [now, indeed, as of 1920] the
disintegration of the governing body. That process has not yet gone very far,
but it is going very fast'' (97-98—my bold emphasis added; italics in the
original).
As to another important quality of
Elites, Belloc piquantly observed that, “at the time when the Aristocratic
spirit was most vigorous,” (99) “we have seen, not only in our own, but in
every other country” that a “ 'Representative' Assembly” itself “does
only work” (98-99) when it is
''A
body slowly renewed, and renewed largely by its own volition;
that is largely co-opting [selecting and recruiting] its own membership as
elder members drop out through age, glut
of loot, fatigue, tedium, disgrace, or pension. But an organism of this
kind, an instrument of government of this kind, a body
comparatively small, in the main permanent, and continuous in action, is
an Oligarchy by every definition of that term'' (68—my bold emphasis
added, italics in the original).
As such an Oligarchy itself develops
slowly into a more “rooted” Aristocracy, “there is an aristocratic way of doing
it and an unaristocratic way of doing it” (87), thus without “undignified
mountebank tricks” (85):
''For instance, it is in the Aristocratic
spirit that a member of the Government caught taking a bribe, or telling a
public lie, should resign: and until quite lately such resignations were
the rule. Another subtle character, and one very little recognized because it
is so difficult to seize (yet its presence is powerfully felt), is the representative
character of the Aristocrat properly so called.... A living Aristocracy is
always very careful to be in communion with, actually mixed with, the mass of
which it is itself the chief. It has an unfailing flair for national
tradition, national custom, and the real national will. It has, therefore, as a
correlative, an active suspicion of mere numerical and mechanical tests [and even mere
financial tests?!] for arriving at that will. To take a practical example: an
English governing class, which in the middle of the nineteenth century had
given up riding horses or playing cricket, would have ceased to govern; but the
extent of the franchise was indifferent to it'' (86-87—my bold emphasis added;
italics in the original).
On the premise that contrast
clarifies the mind, we may see how our Belloc will first have us appreciate the
earlier composite of Aristocratic qualities and dispositions, so as to enhance
his insights about the drab or
monochromatic sequels:
''Under the old order the governing class
maintained a certain hierarchy, and had a regular process of digestion and
support [i.e., of incorporating recruitment and as patrons of a richer
artistic culture]. The best example of this function in the old Aristocratic
organism, the gentry, is its old attitude toward intelligence and creative
power (intelligence and creative power are between them the mark of the
arts).... In an Aristocracy, while it still has its vigour, the
Aristocratic organism recognizes and selects (though itself is not for
the most part creative) true creative power around it. It recognizes
above all proportion and order in creative power. It has an instinct
against chaos in the arts. When what remains of a governing class seeks only
novelty and even absurdity, or, what is worse still, a mere label, in its
appraisal of creative power, it is a proof that the Aristocratic spirit has
declined. The disintegration of the class that should govern is to be seen in
another fashion: the substitution of simple, crude, obvious, and few passions
for a subtle congeries of appetites'' (98-99, 101-102—my bold emphasis added;
italics in the original).
Acutely aware as he is of the
seductively specious, but deeply corrupt, Vitality of Mammon in the Decline of
a State—as some of his richly differentiated essays also confirm, Belloc
exemplifies in this 1920 book what these crude and coarse passions, or isolated
and inordinate desires, actually mean:
Consider the passion for money. The
necessity for wealth, position through wealth, the digestion of new wealth, all
these are indeed native to the governing class of an Aristocracy. But they
are native only as part of a much larger whole. Wealth thus sought in a strong
governing class is subject to many qualifications, the desire is
balanced against many other desires. When the attitude towards wealth becomes
at once a principal thing and an isolated thing it is a proof, and a
cause, of disintegration in a governing class; for instance, when wealth is
divorced from manners, or is accepted or sought for at the expense of a
grave loss of dignity. And what is true of the appetite for wealth is true
of many other things, the appetite for physical enjoyment, the appetite for
change, the appetite for new sensation (an appetite born of fatigue and
accompanying not strength, but weakness)'' (102-103—my bold emphasis added;
italics in the original).
Among “the Governed,” (107) there has also
been “a portentous change” (118), as a result of the Industrial and French
Revolutions:
''These masses [of the Governed] have been
born and have lived their lives utterly divorced from the remnants and even
the tradition of the old Aristocratic organism....The new wealthy classes
which might have imitated the [landed] squires of an older time, and which at
first were largely assimilated into the
governing class, do not live with their workmen. They fled the towns. They
established colonies, as it were,...of luxurious houses [not yet
“gated communities”] standing miles away from the workshops...., and the
proletariat lived, grew, formed (or half formed) its political desires, nourished
its bitterness, apart. No social condition more directly contrary to
that of aristocracy can be imagined. And this is the immediate as
well as the major cause of the phenomenon we are studying. This it is, the
substitution of the new great towns for the old country sides as the
determining body of society which has transformed the political of England and
of the Lowlands of Scotland'' (118-119—my bold emphasis added; italics in
the original).
Belloc, very importantly, then says
that it was “not, indeed, anything material,” but “it was a spirit; the
religion and philosophy of Industrial Capitalism” and “the outward effects of
that religion acted as I have said.” (119) One stark result was that:
''The great mass of the populace was left
with no bands [no bonds] attaching it any longer to the form of the
Aristocratic State....There you have the final condemnation to death of
Aristocracy as a principle in this country, and with it a corresponding
condemnation to death of the House of Commons. Side by side with the loss of
the Aristocratic spirit in those who should have governed there has gone the
loss of any desire for, and even the mere knowledge of, Aristocratic government
in the mass who are governed'' (119—my emphasis added).
Another result of this “binary”
combination is that it “has left the House [of Commons] to-day bereft of
moral authority.” For it is fundamentally true, as the Catholic Church well knows (and as Belloc
himself often elsewhere quotes) that “without authority there is no life”
(“sine auctoritate nulla vita”). Furthermore, says Belloc with a sense
of irreversibility and even a sort of tragic finality:
''Even though the House of Commons were to
become as clean as it is now corrupt, as nice as it is now nasty, as noble as
it is now mean and petty, or as dignified as it is now vulgar and contemptible,
this factor alone, the loss of the popular desire to be ruled by a few, would
be fatal to its continued power. (120)
Even if the House
of Commons “might (in part) revive its moral authority,” (132) “who on earth
believes that such things will ever be done by the authority of the culprits
themselves?” (132) For, though miracles certainly happen, yet the
rarest of all miracles is a moral miracle of this kind. A rotten
institution reforming itself, and not only reforming itself but being aided in
its reformation by all its own corrupt members, servants, parasites, and
masters [or “paymasters”], is a thing that history has never seen. History
has seen plenty of men raised into the air, many walking on the water, and a
few raised from the dead. But it has never seen an institution in the last
stages of decay and still possessing nominal power, using that power to
chastise and to reform itself'' (132-133—my emphasis added).
Without having any utopian
expectations, and knowing well the problems with historic or actual kingship,
Belloc does nevertheless believe that a substantive improvement could be
attained amidst this cumulatively grim state of affairs if a strong,
virtuous, and intimately personal Monarchy were to be restored and again
to control the Money Power, inasmuch as:
''The leading function of the
Monarch is to protect the weak man against the strong, and therefore to prevent
the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, the corruption of the Courts of
Justice and [the corruption] of the
sources of public opinion [ thus, the full range of “the Media”]'' (178—my
emphasis added).
As a counterpoint to this
monarchical preference, Belloc admits that:
''A Democracy also, where it is active
and real, can do all these things. You may see
every one of these functions at work in a Swiss Canton, for instance. There you
may see [legal] tribunals which dread public opinion, judges who are afraid of
giving false judgments, laws which forbid too great an inequality of wealth, and
the absence of any vast or sudden profits acquired through the cunning of one
against the simplicity of many. But where very great numbers are concerned
[as in a “numerous democracy”] all theses functions are atrophied if you
attempt to make them Democratic in their working; and in the absence of an
Aristocratic spirit there is nothing but a Monarch to exercise them [the
essential “functions” of just and equitable Governance]....He [the Monarch] knows
that he is responsible. He cannot shift the burden to some anonymous or
intangible culprit'' (179-180—my emphasis added).
Earlier in the book, Belloc had
especially noted, as one of the potential weaknesses of an Aristocratic country
(even in its commendable vigour) is to see “how strangely deep in such a
country is the worship of powerful men, and how rooted is the
distaste in the masses for the responsibilities of government”
(79—my emphasis). He later adds a complementary reinforcement to his earlier wise
insight:
''Out of citizens who have always been
passive of their nature [especially about the burdensome responsibilities of
governance], and whose passivity was the very cause of Aristocracy among
them, you will never get the Democratic spirit of corporate
initiative, and of what is essential to Democratic institutions, a
permanent, individual interest in public affairs'' (176—my emphasis added).
After then returning to the matter
of monarchy and briefly considering some of the prominent Kings (or Emperors)
of history, our Belloc then tries to imagine any of these men in action today, if
they were to be “placed at the head of the modern State,” (182)—and yet “not
through their [virtuous] character, but [only] through the powers granted
them by the constitutions of their times” (181-182). Asking and happily
(or impishly) answering his own question, he says:
''What do you think would happen to the
corrupt judges, to the politicians who take bribes, to the great trusts that
destroy a man's livelihood, to the secret financiers boasting that they
control the State [“Le pouvoir sur le pouvoir”—in the oft-quoted
words of Jacques Attali]? Their blood would turn to water'' (182—my emphasis
added).
Belloc often accents the danger of
unaccountable finance and its corrupting Oligarchical power, especially to
mislead “the remaining inheritors of the old Aristocratic position” (103) in “their
now irretrievable mixture with international finance and consequent
degradation of blood” (104—my emphasis added). A few pages later, Belloc even
says that, for the governed populace, as of 1920, “the [old] gentry no longer
means anything to them,” (112) and even the idea of “one governing class is no
longer within the vision of the governed” (112)—and “What may be left of such a
class they merge in a general vision of excessive, unjust, and
indeed malignant wealth” (112—my emphasis added). That is to say, they
are seen as if they were all merely detached and frigid Plutocrats or selfishly
Squalid Oligarchs—inaccessible and also
still immune from any just accountability in this world.
Hilaire Belloc always combated “an
anonymous system,” and its evasive diffusion of personal responsibility and
accountability, and he argued, instead, for the return of a Popular Monarchy as
was known in historic Christendom, but now, as is just, in prudent view of
unique modern conditions and technologies.
The House of Commons and Monarchy, by
way of summary, began by showing how Kingship in England was first weakened by
the monarchs themselves, to include Henry VII's sly usurpation of the throne,
and then especially the spiritual and temporal actions of Henry VIII, who more
or less unwittingly helped create a new and powerful Oligarchy which materially
profited from the general loot of the monasteries and monastery lands. That new
landed Oligarchy gradually incorporated the merchant and professional
elements—the lawyers and the financiers, for instance—and that Oligarchical
power increasingly worked to weaken (and have leverage over) the Sovereign
King, culminating in the Regicide of 1649: the execution of the Stuart King,
Charles I. As the new Oligarchy—or somewhat differentiated, and rival,
oligarchies—grew in power and influence, they also became more rooted and
stable and continuous, until the Oligarchy became an Aristocracy and the
Parliament effectively became the Sovereign, Aristocratic House of Commons. The gradual decay of that
House of Commons showed once again the coarser qualities of an Oligarchy, now
also containing various alien elements from the outside, as it were—to include
the leverage and power of “the Money Power” (as Belloc elsewhere calls it): the
Elements and Organs of Finance, to include International Finance—and the
Power of the Public Media of Communications (the Press, as it was then known).
Then came the further (often anonymous) Oligarchic Manipulations of what was
increasingly (but misleadingly) called Democracy—a coarsening and deceptive and
drifting development, for sure, which thereby called out, once again, for a
restoration in principle, and establishment in actuality, of a sound and strong
Personal Monarchy which was attentive to, and finally responsible for, the
whole Bonum Commune—as a good Father would care and sacrifice for the
common good of his whole family, for which he will finally be held strictly
accountable, coram Deo. Before God, in the Final Verdict of Truth—at
least in the Faith of a Catholic. And not only Belloc's. “To whom much has been
given, much will be required; to whom much has been entrusted, more
[even more!] will be required.” (Luke 12:48)
In any case, Belloc saw the humbug
and sham of so much of Modern Democracy, as did the honest French intellectual
historian, François Furet, who also (like Belloc) wrote books on the French
Revolution, one of which contained an important chapter, near the end of his
text, on Augustin Cochin (1876-1916), the young French Catholic historian of
the French Revolution who was killed on the battlefield of World War I. In that
chapter, Furet said with unexpected candor: “Modern Democracy is based on
[depends upon] a hidden oligarchy [“oligarchie cachée”], which is
contrary to its principles, but indispensable to its functioning.” That is to
say, though in even more trenchant words: “Modern Democracy is based
upon a Deception.”
Moreover, since there are always
“civil wars within the Revolution itself,” as the French Catholic
scholar, Leon de Poncins, often noted, François Furet's insight would be
rendered even more perfectly if we put his singular “oligarchie cachée”
into the plural, “oligarchies cachées.” For, there are, indeed, rivalries among the
variously manifold and active oligarchies in their quests for advantage and
power (as was so, historically, between the Girondins and the Jacobins and
their respective Financiers), especially when it is for “Power without Grace” (an acute phrase said more than once by Saint Helena in her candid, cautionary
guidance to her own beset and perplexed - and as yet unbaptised - son, Emperor
Constantine, amidst the deficiencies and delusions of his burdensome Rule, as
so eloquently presented by Evelyn Waugh in his highly differentiated historical
novel, Helena (1950).
When we also recall the title of
this essay, we may now appreciate a further nuance of meaning. To the extent
that Modern Democracy itself is based upon a Deception—indeed a
deliberate deception of rival and often-anonymous oligarchies—it is based
upon a Lie (and the greatest social effect of a Lie is that it breaks
Trust, even the deepest Trust—as in an intimate Perfidy—and that deeply
shattered trust is so hard to rebuild. Even with mercy and grace and
“forgiveness from the heart,” wholehearted forgiveness).
When the Humbug has broken down and
the Sham exposed—whether about Democracy or Oligarchy or Ecclesiastical
Sophistry—we must still remember, in our
sustained and faithful efforts at reconstruction, Hilaire Belloc's own
essential words: “And you cannot build upon a lie.” (177)
“The Moral is, it is forsooth: You
mustn't monkey with the Truth.”
--Finis--
© 2013 Robert D. Hickson
