{"id":66836,"date":"2026-04-19T19:32:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T23:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=66836"},"modified":"2026-04-19T19:32:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T23:32:02","slug":"the-eternal-liberal-wisdom-of-plantypall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=66836","title":{"rendered":"The eternal liberal wisdom of PlantyPall"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn\u2019t thinking about politics when recently I re-read Anthony Trollope\u2019<\/a>s Palliser novels. I was considering the emotional risk in revisiting favorite fiction.<\/a> To wit: I was in turbulent adolescence when I first read Wuthering Heights<\/em>, so naturally Heathcliff became my beau id\u00e9al. But when I picked up the book again in full (sane) womanhood, I was horrified. Over the years my lover had somehow morphed from dark romantic hero into a psychopathological diagnosis. Too much baggage. I dumped him.<\/p>\n

Thus, I was prepared to find some of Trollope\u2019s vivid characters disappointing. Some were. But one reunion sort of seduced me: Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium\u2013 the stodgy, unglamorous civil servant who becomes Prime Minister in the fifth novel.<\/p>\n

PlantyPall (as he is called by his political colleagues), a very rich aristocrat, is no glamorous heroic figure; yet, unlike most of our very rich aristocrats, he\u2019s a liberal, and an articulate one. When I read his piercing analysis of the role of legislators and the abiding distinctions between liberals and conservatives, he knocked me out.<\/p>\n

As we Americans try to grasp our current madness, it is a profound comfort to read these excerpts from PlantyPall\u2019s thoughts.* His heartfelt wisdom, 150 years old, is even more resonant today in the United States than it was in his Victorian England.<\/p>\n

He makes it so easy to choose which side we\u2019re on.<\/p>\n

On the Liberal and the Conservative, <\/strong>from The Prime Minister<\/em> (1876)<\/p>\n

…I was trying yesterday to explain to myself why I have, all my life, sat on what is called the Liberal side of the House…<\/em>I suppose what we all desire is to improve the condition of the people by whom we are employed, and to advance our country, or at any rate to save it from retrogression…<\/em><\/p>\n

The Conservative<\/span>…wishes, I suppose, to maintain the differences and the distances which separate the highly placed from their lower brethren. He thinks that God has divided the world as he finds it divided, and that he may best do his duty by making the inferior man happy and contented in his position, teaching him that the place which he holds is his by God\u2019s ordinance…<\/em><\/p>\n

That lesson seems to me to be hardly compatible with continual improvement in the condition of the lower man. But with the Conservative all such improvement is to be based on the idea of the maintenance of those distances. I as a Duke am to be kept as far apart from the man who drives my horses as was my ancestor from the man who drove his, or who rode after him to the wars<\/strong>,** \u2013 and that is to go on for ever.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is much to be said for such a scheme. Let the lords be, all of them, men who have loving hearts, and clear intellect, and noble instincts, and it is possible that they should use their powers so beneficiently as to spread happiness over the earth…If such happiness were attainable it might be well to constrain men to accept it.<\/em><\/p>\n

But the lords of this world are fallible men; and though as units they ought to be and perhaps are better than those others who have fewer advantages, they are much more likely as units to go astray in opinion than the bodies of men whom they would seek to govern. We know that power does corrupt, and that we cannot trust kings to have loving hearts, and clear intellects, and noble instincts.<\/em><\/p>\n

…The doctrine of Liberalism<\/span> is, of course, the reverse. The Liberal, if he have any fixed idea at all, must, I think, have conceived the idea of lessening distances, \u2013 of bringing the coachman and the duke nearer together, \u2013 nearer and nearer, till a millennium shall be reached…<\/em><\/p>\n

Men\u2019s intellects are at present so various that we cannot even realize the idea of equality, and here in England we have been taught to hate the word by the evil effects of absurd attempts which have been made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that, because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of the vocabulary of good men.<\/em><\/p>\n

Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it. How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think otherwise? How can you look at the bowed back and bent legs and abject face of that poor ploughman, who in winter and summer has to drag his rheumatic limbs to his work, while you go a-hunting or sit in pride of place among the foremost few of your country, and say that it all is it ought to be?<\/em><\/p>\n

You are a Liberal because you know that it is not all as it ought to be, and because you would still march on to some nearer approach to equality…<\/em><\/p>\n

Change the word “Parliament” to “Congress” in the excerpt below and you’ll recognize precisely what so many of us Americans are saying today: “A member of [Congress] should feel himself to be the servant of his country, — and like every other servant, he should serve. If this be distasteful to a man he need not go into [Congress.]” Read on:<\/p>\n

On the Purpose of Parliament<\/strong>, from The Duke\u2019s Children<\/em> (1879)<\/p>\n

…I would have you always remember the purport for which there is a Parliament elected in this happy and free country. It is not that some men may shine there, that some may acquire power, or that all may plume themselves on being the elect of the nation…<\/em><\/p>\n

I have known gentlemen who have felt that in becoming members of Parliament they had achieved an object for themselves instead of thinking that they had put themselves in the way of achieving something for others. A member of Parliament should feel himself to be the servant of his country, \u2013 and like every other servant, he should serve. If this be distasteful to a man he need not go into Parliament. If the harness gall him he need not wear it. But if he takes the trappings, then he should draw the coach.<\/em><\/p>\n

You are there as the guardian of your fellow-countrymen, \u2013 that they may be safe, and that they may be prosperous, that they may be well governed and lightly burdened, \u2013 above all that they may be free. If you cannot feel this to be your duty, you should not be there at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

*With apologies to Trollope, I’ve broken up his very long paragraphs into shorter ones, to allow our 21st century eyes and brains to absorb more easily what I feel is such a universal and timeless treatise.<\/p>\n

**As I write this, I am listening to June Tabor singing “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,”<\/a> a song by Eric Bogle<\/a> about the catastrophic British military leadership “strategy” at Gallipoli. The lyrics of this song pertain directly to that phrase I highlighted above, and tear me apart whenever I hear it.<\/p>\n

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I wasn\u2019t thinking about politics when recently I re-read Anthony Trollope\u2019s Palliser novels. I was considering the emotional risk in revisiting favorite fiction. To wit: I was in turbulent adolescence when I first read Wuthering Heights, so naturally Heathcliff became … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7725,9432,8679,1095,1175,631,7798],"tags":[11775,11774,1979,2333,3485,3242,11771,11772,11773,10651,6845,2604,11769,11770,3321,3015,8427,9856],"class_list":["post-66836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-culture","category-government","category-politics","category-the-facts-of-life","category-the-war-on-workers","category-war","tag-and-the-band-played-waltzing-matilda","tag-the-prime-minister","tag-anthony-trollope","tag-congress","tag-conservatism","tag-duke-of-omnium","tag-eric-bogle","tag-gallipoli","tag-heathcliff","tag-june-tabor","tag-liberalism","tag-parliament","tag-plantagenet-palliser","tag-plantypall","tag-the-dukes-children","tag-the-palliser-novels","tag-world-war-i","tag-wuthering-heights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t