90 IN THE MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS Witt in 1671 is explained at once when the anarchical constitution of the Dutch republic is remembered-its want of a central authority, and the fact that, to raise money or troops, the consent of a number of petty councils was necessary, in the multitude of whose councillors there was anything but safety. The quality of the counsel, and the ability of the counsellors, are elements of main import in the affirmation of the Wise King, that without counsel purposes are disappointed, but in the multitude of counsellors they are established. To Montesquieu it seems that the heads of the greatest of men become narrowed when they are gathered together, and that where the wise are over many, wisdom is correspondingly less. Là où il y a plus de sages, il y a aussi moins de sagesse. Butler's Hudibrastics run to the same tune : "For though most hands despatch apace, Are found t' have contrary effects; Lukewarm and timid counsels are said to prevail almost invariably with all small assemblies of men upon whom a serious responsibility is thrown; whereas rash counsels are often adopted in large assemblies, because in them a sense of individual responsibility is lost in numbers. At Plassey, Clive, for the first and last time in his life, called a council of war; and, true to the adage, the council refused to fight. "If I had abided by its decision," said Clive, in his evidence before the House of Commons, "it would have been the ruin of the East India Company." One of his critical biographers re cognizes the same truth as holding good in all ages, and in all transactions, civil and military, when vigour and decision are requisite to success; the shelter of numbers being never sought but by those who have not the moral courage to act on their own conviction; whereas true intrepidity of mind never seeks to divide responsibility. "In the multitude of counsellors there. may be safety; but," says Alison,* "it is in general. safety to the counsellors, not to the counselled." Shakspeare's remonstrant envoy to the English nobles utters a ringing note in every line of his remonstrance "And, whilst a field should be despatched and fought, One would have lingering wars, with little cost; Pitiable was the plight of more than one Austrian commander, himself brave and intelligent, during the wars of the French Revolution and Empire, when, as Dr. Croly describes the status quo, he must wait for the opinion of other men-men too far off to know a single fact of the campaign; too blind to see it, if they were on the spot; and too jealous even of their own general to suffer him to beat the enemy, if victory would throw their nothingness into the shade. The successes of the * Dr. Gregory had said it before Sir Archibald; and how many may not have said it before Dr. Gregory? Scott makes Raleigh say it, in Kenilworth, when the Queen rebukes young Walter for denying her Doctor Masters access to the sick Earl of Sussex, then in the skilful hands of Wayland Smith. "Know'st thou not the holy writ saith, 'In the multitude of counsel there is safety'?" Ay, madam,” said Walter, "but I have heard learned men say, that the safety spoken of is for the physicians, not for the patient." -Chapter xv. 92 NON-EXECUTIVE BOARDS. allies were too rapid for their cabinets, and the "stiffskirted and antiquated privy councillors of Vienna and Berlin" stopped the way; couriers were busy while soldiers were yawning themselves to death; pioneers stood pickaxe in hand, waiting the order to break ground; and the only war carried on was in the discontents of the military councils. John Balfour, of Burley, has gained a main point when he succeeds in persuading the wiser of his friends that the counsellors of their party are too numerous, and that they cannot expect the Midianites to be, by so large a number, delivered into their hands. "They have hearkened to my voice, and our assemblies will be shortly reduced within such a number as can consult and act together." Mr. Carlyle's pronounced preference of one man "with an eye," and a stout arm, and a strong will of his own, to any amount of parliament and palaver, would have come home to the business and bosoms of such as Burley in their day. The contrast is often quoted between the Academy, whose forty members took fifty-six years to compile the French Dictionary, and Dr. Johnson, who alone compiled the English one in eight. Side by side with the Emigration Board, under whose management hundreds were dying of fever from close packing, and under whose licence were sailing vessels which, like the Washington, were the "homes of fraud, brutality, tyranny, and obscenity," Mr. Herbert Spencer some years ago compared Mrs. Chisholm's beneficent enterprise, and from the comparison drew conclusions of practical moment. An Executive Board, even supposing it to combine every element of talent and experience, has been pronounced little better than an ingenious contrivance for eluding the fair accountability of a governing body to those whose interests it represents. "As to the no CHARITY COMMITTEES AND COMMON SENSE. 93 bodies and lay figures who form so large a section of every railway board, they silently consume their sherry and biscuits, acquiesce in all the chairman's suggestions, endorse the contractor's schemes, maintain a dignified. air of puzzled wisdom, and pocket the guineas which the secretary hands to them with a sweet sense of official fatigue, which the apprehended ruin of a thousand shareholders does not embitter or disturb." Then again, of charity committees and the like it has been said that utter helplessness is their most curious characteristic; that, animated by a sincere desire to do a great deal, they seldom contrive to get beyond the preliminary stage of talking; but every evil must work its own cure, and by this time benevolent and charitable people are confessedly coming to see the absolute impotence of a numerous body of men for carrying on the details of business, and to resign themselves to the necessity of a more concentrated agency-though complaints are still rife, that the custom of confiding the administration of all benevolent undertakings to a large body of men is in some quarters retained with a tenacity against which the teachings of experience are powerless. It was of a joint-stock literary undertaking that Gibbon was thinking when he remarked, that the operations of a society are often perplexed by the divisions of sentiments and characters, as well as often retarded by the degrees of talent and application. A recent essayist on Common Sense observes that it does not work in numbers, and will not act freely in consultations, committees, nor, especially, in large numbers: a thousand fairly sensible people will, under the pressure of contact, do a frightfully foolish thing at which each acting alone would stand aghast. THE SURE SIDE OF SURE1 YSHIP. PROVERBS xi. 15. PRUDENTIAL morality, with the prudential ele ment at least as largely present and as actively efficient as the moral, is the characteristic, not only of very many proverbs of the world worldly, all the wide world over, but of not a few in the sacred Book of Proverbs itself. Some of these would seem to be best read, for purposes of Christian edification, with the Sermon on the Mount by way of a corrective. Among such is the proverb on the perils of suretyship. "He that hateth suretyship is sure;" "and he that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it." "A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend." "Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts." "Take his garment that is surety for a stranger," etc. There is only, the maxims go to show, one sure side of suretyship; and that is the outside. Keep out of it altogether. He that hateth it is sure. have nothing to do with it is safe. He only that will Mr. Crabb Robinson, mildly free in thinking, and in journalizing his thoughts, was once unpleasantly" affected in Yarmouth parish church by "a verse from Proverbs, read by the preacher," the verse, in fact, which is now under our notice. And what suggested itself as remarkable to the heterodox listener was, that no enemy to revealed religion should have attacked it by means of a novel or poem, in which mean and detestable characters should be made to justify themselves by precepts found in the Bible. A work of that kind, he considered, |