Mugwumps and Their Forbears

— The late Regius Professor of History at Oxford has left to the world as a parting legacy his brilliant lectures on Erasmus. In these he has given a picture of one who may be called the ideal member of that rare order of which I write. That order has been designated by various names, more or less derogatory, —time-servers, Laodiceans, trimmers, Adullamites, and, more lately, by the epithet “ mugwump,” which, having a local usage in Connecticut, traceable to Eliot’s Indian Bible (wherein, by the way, it stood for something entirely different), has become a part of our political speech. Those to whom it is applied form a class, never a large one, of persons who possess the power of seeing fairly the opposite sides of a question, and who lack the barnacle faculty of sticking tight to whatever one is attached, whether it be the steadfast rock or the restless keel. Either conservative or progressive, party men are the rule, “ mugwumps ” the exception. But the mugwump is not to be confounded with the Vicar of Bray class, nor yet with the “ third party ” adventurer who makes his profit by holding the balance of power, though he may resemble both. When the mugwump wavers, it is to desert the winning for the losing side. If he creates a party, he presently steps out of it to criticise. Cleanness of hands and clearness of head are his virtues, and these often go with a squeamish niceness which uses the sunshine of good fortune to discover the spots which in days of cloud are invisible.

The reason for the smallness of this class is not far to seek. The judicial talent — that is, the power of accurate maintaining of mental equipoise — is won by slow degrees. Men of action require present certainties or preponderant probabilities, and have no time to waste in examination. It is often noticed that when a lawyer of eminence is raised to the bench, his first year at nisi prius is apt to stir the wrath of the bar. He cannot at once lay off the advocate’s habit of identifying himself with the side to which he inclines. He decides justly enough, as a rule ; but the piece of evidence or the line of argument which moves him stands to him in his notes for his brief, and instead of charging his jury he labors for their verdict as if he held a retainer from Doe or Roe. It is only after a few reversals in banco, and the purgatorial fire which counsel so deftly and politely apply to their legal masters, that the ermine emerges from the silk gown.

The mugwump is a product of modern civilization. He is not to be found in the history of the Grecian states any more than in that which nearly resembles it, the history of the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. There was a triple influence at work which prevented the chances of his arising. Each Greek commonwealth felt the inextinguishable jealousy of its rivals. Sometimes in concert with this, and sometimes in opposition to it, was the ever-moving struggle between aristocracy and democracy. Over all was the broad bond of Hellenic nationality, which was felt when the little peninsula between the Adriatic and the Ægean seas was threatened by foreign foes. A Greek was swayed now by one and now by another of these forces, and was never sure which would be the prevailing one. The statesman who attempted to take a middle place between contending factions found himself forced into alliance with one or the other of these outside influences.

When authentic Roman history is reached, the day of political principles has passed. In the time of Julius Cæsar, in the days of the triumvirates, and under the Empire, the only real question was one of personal leadership. A Roman followed Cæsar or Pompey, Antony or Octavius, as the chief in a great civil strife, either from attachment to the man or from self-interest in his triumph. It was a simple calculation of the odds of success. It is impossible to read a page of Sallust or Cicero without seeing how the personal element predominated. All the high-flown declamation about the res augusta Romœ meant only the Rome which should belong to my party, and not to your party. When, after the fall of the Latin Empire, the huge imbroglio of feudal Europe arose, the same personal instinct was uppermost. It was of the essence of feudality that a man should remain true to the chief to whom he owed immediate fealty. Upward through various gradations everybody was supposed to belong to somebody else, till the two topmost over-lordships of pope and kaiser, in church and state, were reached. To fall off from one rule was to come under its rival.

It might seem as if, in the Wars of the Roses, a political principle was involved, but that was the mere pretext under which the great houses of York and Lancaster struggled for the crown. The real motives by which Warwick was swayed from side to side were the fortunes of the Nevilles, and his personal friendships or antipathies toward Henry or Edward.

The Reformation offered the first opportunity for the divided and balancing mind to find its place. Erasmus is the foremost representative of a position in which many found themselves. Though he remained faithful to the ideal Church into which he was born by baptism, and from which he received the orders of the priesthood, he never ceased to fight the actual Church. Its doctrines, its organization, its rites, its crimes, and its follies he never apologized for or ceased to attack. He seems to have clung to his nominal allegiance chiefly for the chartered liberty it gave him of saying more effectively what he thought fit. Of the two real adversaries, the Romish clergy, the monks especially, who resisted all reform, and the root-and-branch Lutherans, he was equally the foe. Both parties tried in vain to secure his great powers in their own exclusive service. He loved ease and literary leisure as only one of his high abilities and delicate temperament could love these, and yet to the last he refused the positions which could fetter his freedom of utterance. He shrank from peril, but less from personal timidity than from his conviction that persecution settled nothing. He was equally unwilling to burn or to be burnt, because he felt that this was the most illogical and ineffectual way of refuting an opponent.

One must come down a century to meet with the next great illustrator of this topic, Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, whom the present Contributor has always greatly admired. Macaulay used his polished satire upon him, and has sketched for him a possible career on the supposition that he survived the fatal field of Newbury. A thoroughgoing partisan like Macaulay, of whom a friend said,

“ I wish I was as cock-sure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything,” was unable to comprehend a man who would not commit himself unreservedly to one side or the other in a great civil strife. Like the Church of Rome, he was indeed willing to allow the plea of invincible ignorance to those not on his side. They are mistaken, yet perhaps cannot help it. But that any should see the good and the evil in both parties, and espouse neither for bettor or for worse, was to him the sign of radical weakness. He felt in the same way toward Halifax and Temple, men by no means of the same loftiness of character, but whose likeness in intellect and temperament led them in the same path.

The mugwump earns no high place on the rolls of fame. He does not bring great results to pass, or reach an absolute end. But the world is more and more learning that great results are not always happy results, and absolute ends desirable finalities. Luther achieved the dismemberment of Latin Christianity, and to-day the hearts of the good and devout are anxiously asking for the restoration of lost unity. Could it be offered on the platform of Erasmus it might be gladly acccpted. Cromwell overthrew the ancient monarchy and the Church of England. The nation was glad to get them back on almost any terms. Robespierre triumphed over the Girondins. To-day their memory is pityingly honored, while his is execrated.

The looker-on who notes the headlong rush of the locomotive, or peers into the engine-room of a great ocean steamer, loses himself in the contemplation of power and energy. But he does not see, unless instructed, the restraining devices by which the enormous forces of the steam are checked and controlled. The work of the mugwump is akin to that of those hidden valves and stops. He is angrily or contemptuously thrust aside by the men of sharp and fixed ideas, who are ready to pay any price to reach their millennial imaginings, but who find out, when these are reached, the reality of the latent defects which lurk in their schemes.

To recur to the figure used before, the partisan barnacle sticks to its rock, let the waves lash it as they will, or clings to moving ship, unknowing that it really clogs the progress it exults in ; but out of it comes nothing (unless we accept the ancient legend), not even a goose.

“ He that wavereth,” said that stanch old conservative, St. James, “is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed ; ” but the wave has power not only to wash clean the shores of continents, but to preserve the purity and vigor of the illimitable ocean. To its sharp and bitter brine the barnacle owes the life which enabled the shellfish to cleave fast to the support of its choice. Give to the extremists, whether ultramontane or radical, their own way, and the consequences would be umnixed calamity. It is the far-seeing and moderating influence of the mugwumps of the world, the remnant who do not bow the knee to the Baal of the hour, which enables the true prophet to come in his appointed time, and to do his needful work.