Gladstone deduces such extraordinary consequences? Look at banks, insurance offices, dock companies, canal companies, gas companies, hospitals, dispensaries, associations for the relief of the poor, associations for apprehending malefactors, associations of medical pupils for procuring subjects, associations of country gentlemen for keeping fox-hounds, book societies, benefit societies, clubs of all ranks, from those which have lined Pall-Mall and St.James's Street with their palaces, down to the Free-and-easy which meets in the shabby parlour of a village inn.Is there a single one of these combinations to which Mr.Gladstone's argument will not apply as well as to the State? In all these combinations, in the Bank of England, for example, or in the Athenaeum club, the will and agency of the society are one, and bind the dissentient minority.
The Bank and the Athenaeum have a good faith and a justice different from the good faith and justice of the individual members.The Bank is a person to those who deposit bullion with it.The Athenaeum is a person to the butcher and the wine-merchant.If the Athenaeum keeps money at the Bank, the two societies are as much persons to each other as England and France.Either society may pay its debts honestly; either may try to defraud its creditors; either may increase in prosperity;either may fall into difficulties.If, then, they have this unity of will; if they are capable of doing and suffering good and evil, can we to use Mr.Gladstone's words, "deny their responsibility, or their need of a religion to meet that responsibility?" Joint-stock banks, therefore, and clubs, "having a personality, lie under the necessity of sanctifying that personality by the offices of religion;" and thus we have "a new and imperative ground" for requiring all the directors and clerks of joint-stock banks, and all the members of clubs, to qualify by taking the sacrament.
The truth is, that Mr.Gladstone has fallen into an error very common among men of less talents than his own.It is not unusual for a person who is eager to prove a particular proposition to assume a major of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition, without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal more.The fatal facility with which Mr.Gladstone multiplies expressions stately and sonorous, but of indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to practise this sleight on himself and on his readers.He lays down broad general doctrines about power, when the only power of which he is thinking is the power of governments, and about conjoint action when the only conjoint action of which he is thinking is the conjoint action of citizens in a state.He first resolves on his conclusion.He then makes a major of most comprehensive dimensions, and having satisfied himself that it contains his conclusion, never troubles himself about what else it may contain: and as soon as we examine it we find that it contains an infinite number of conclusions, every one of which is a monstrous absurdity.
It is perfectly true that it would be a very good thing if all the members of all the associations in the world were men of sound religious views.We have no doubt that a good Christian will be under the guidance of Christian principles, in his conduct as director of a canal company or steward of a charity dinner.If he were, to recur to a case which we have before put, a member of a stage-coach company, he would, in that capacity, remember that "a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast."But it does not follow that every association of men must, therefore, as such association, profess a religion.It is evident that many great and useful objects can be attained in this world only by co-operation.It is equally evident that there cannot be efficient co-operation, if men proceed on the principle that they must not co-operate for one object unless they agree about other objects.Nothing seems to us more beautiful or admirable in our social system than the facility with which thousands of people, who perhaps agree only on a single point, can combine their energies for the purpose of carrying that single point.We see daily instances of this.Two men, one of them obstinately prejudiced against missions, the other president of a missionary society, sit together at the board of a hospital, and heartily concur in measures for the health and comfort of the patients.
Two men, one of whom is a zealous supporter and the other a zealous opponent of the system pursued in Lancaster's schools, meet at the Mendicity Society, and act together with the utmost cordiality.The general rule we take to be undoubtedly this, that it is lawful and expedient for men to unite in an association for the promotion of a good object, though they may differ with respect to other objects of still higher importance.
It will hardly be denied that the security of the persons and property of men is a good object, and that the best way, indeed the only way, of promoting that object, is to combine men together in certain great corporations which are called States.
These corporations are very variously, and, for the most part very imperfectly organised.Many of them abound with frightful abuses.But it seems reasonable to believe that the worst that ever existed was, on the whole, preferable to complete anarchy.