TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TIMES' CHALLENGE. ANTI-REFORMERS of all grades and every mode of thought, from Mr. Lowe, who believes in oligarchy tem- pered by brains, and the Times, which believes only in the rich, down to the Standard, which believes in the squires, and Mr. Roebuck, who believes only in himself, are resorting in their despair to the cry which is perhaps of all others the oldest in English politics. The Constitution, they repeat, with wearisome iteration, "works well." They throw down inces- santly what they are pleased to style a "challenge," calling upon any Reformer "to show in what the House of Commons has failed to do its duty." The challenge has been taken up a hundred times, but the answer is always unnoticed, there is another grand flourish of trumpets, and then the gauntlet is thrown down once more in safe defiance of all comers. At the risk of wearying our own readers, we will take it up for the last time, and once more state distinctly wherein Reformers who, like ourselves, believe neither in the rights of man nor the divine right of democracy, hold the House of Commons to have failed.
The House of Commons, as organized in 1832, has per- formed in the thirty-five years of its existence one, and but one, work of the first magnitude, and that one has been in its essence a work of destruction. It has gradually but deter- minedly swept away every restriction which impeded the full development or the free action of the classes by whom it is elected, has pulled down, stone by stone, the huge barrier by which the unreformed House had sought to impede their pro- gress. Every monopoly save one which interfered with com- merce, every tax which pressed upon industry, every law which impeded association has been resolutely assailed, and after a struggle of more or less duration has been finally abolished. Tlie!Com laws and the Navigation laws, the laws against the letting of money on hire and the laws which for- bade non-traders to use their wealth in trade, the entire scheme of Protection, the whole system of colonial restric- tion, the laws which pressed upon literature, and the taxes which crushed the press, every obstacle, in fact, in the path of the middle class has been decisively swept away. It was a magnificent work for one generation, and it has been so splen- didly accomplished that at this moment the Englishman who pays income-tax is probably the freest human being in the world, the one upon whom order sits most lightly, who has most careers before him, who benefits most, and is injured least, by the vast process of improvement which we vaguely call civilization. As part of this work, or needful supplement to it, the House has reorganized the Imperial finance, and led by two men of genius so singular that even their enemies could not for very admiration resist their advice, it has re- organized taxation so well that while the revenue has been maintained till Consols have risen to 91, and English credit stands precisely one-fifth higher than that of Prance, and Indian credit has been lifted above that of any country save Holland, the taxes have almost disappeared. The Treasury is fuller than in 1831, yet the pressure on the people, income for income, has diminished more than one-half. Moreover, this section of its great task has been performed by the House in a temper almost without parallel in history, for it has delibe- rately shifted a great portion of the national burden from off the shoulders of the population on to those of its own consti- tuents. One clear half of the national revenue is now contri- buted by a class almost exactly conterminous with the electoral register, a fact which, though due in no slight degree to the terror which a close constituency must always feel of the masses, is in the highest degree creditable to its wisdom and its philanthropy.
But with the completion of its task of wise destruction the capacity of the House of Commons has come to an end. It has absolutely no power of construction, no ability whatever for the still greater task which, now that the ground is clear, it behoves it to undertake. It cannot even organize, far less construct. It has spent during its lifetime, exclusive of war, upwards of four hundred millions upon the Army, and has not created one either adequate to the wants of the country or in accord with the national genius, and though painfully, almost oppressively, conscious of the truth, is powerless from want of popular force even to suggest a remedy. It has spent even more upon the Navy, which it must now recon- struct, and though aware that half its money is wasted; has neither the genius to devise nor the firmness to insist on a thorough reform. It has failed absolutely to secure good municipal government, and from want of popular force sits powerless in presence of the gigantic but removable social evils of its own capital, is afraid to create a government for it, and unable to compel the committees which it substitutes for a government to sweep the snow from its own doors. It has failed to organize the people until the first threat of coercion from the masses finds its representative in tears of mortifi- cation and anxiety, and itself driven back like an effete monarchy upon the support of the Guards. It has failed to civilize the rural population till in the thirty-five years there has been no advance in their condition, till the greatest demagogues are compelled for very shame to strike them out of the lists of possible electors. It has failed to educate or organize the town populations, till every month brings forward some horrible report of urban disease, or savagery, or ignorance, till Liverpool, and Glasgow, and Manchester show scenes as savage as Bengal, and the average of deaths from starvation in the capital is more than one a day. It has failed even to attempt the extinction of pauperism, and after spending more than two, hundred and forty millions in the maintenance of paupers, still spends seven millions a year not only without a hope but almost without a wish for release from the burden. It has failed to organize labour so utterly, that after thirty-five years of effort employers and employed are still in a position of angry hostility, and the great industries of the country are discussing openly whether the incessant quarrelling between masters and men will not speedily bring them to an end. It has so' failed to organize the Church that there is within it neither genuine freedom, nor genuine order, that Romanists cannot. be kept out of our pulpits, and men who express the convictions of all educated laymen and of an infinite majority of the masses can hardly be kept in. It has failed in either conciliating; or organizing, or conquering Ireland so lamentably, that after thirty-five years of government British power is maintained there only by the sword, and Parliament has been compelled to withdraw, as against authority, the protection of the laws. And finally,—though this charge is, we admit, of necessity vague,—it has failed in its foreign policy so completely that the civilized world believes it to be guided only by selfishness, that no freeman looks for help from England, and that our natural ally, an ally worth all Europe, an ally whose interests,. and tendencies, and ideas are identical with our own, has been alienated till a generation must pass before mutual recognition is even possible. We dare the Times to affirm, with all its audacity of statement, that these failures have not been made,. or that it has a hope that the House of Commons will succeed. in remedying, or will honestly try to remedy, any one of them..
But will the new House ? As we believe, and as all men not blinded by content with their own prosperity believe, it. will. A really representative House, representative of labour as well as of capital, of wants as well as of possessions, of hands and stomachs as well as brains, will, we believe, in the first place by the mere law of its existence, the mere force of its half conscious tendencies, do for labour what the existing House has done for capital—sweep away every obstacle to its free employment, everything, ignorance included, which bars, its way to prosperity; will first of all grant compulsory educa- tion, compulsory hygiene, and perhaps by regulating instead of fighting the Trades' Union idea, compulsory provisions against thriftlessness, sickness, and old age ; will, partly by organizing co-operation, partly by building strong tribunals of arbitration, make strikes, i.e., servile wars, historical ; will, by making a field as saleable as a watch, render agriculture as free as any other trade ; will give each city the opportunity of a municipal development of its own, Will make this vast capital as habitable for the poor as for the rich, and will by these measures, and the expansion of Mr. Gladstone's half uttered thought of using State credit to protect the capital of the poor,' ultimately extinguish pauperism. It will do these things for the masses just as the existing House has done for the middle class, because they will be in accord with its instinct and its interest, and, because such measures being so in accord, it will find intelligent leadership towards them.. And possessing, as it will, popular force, the energy which springs from the support of all, it will dare give the nation what this House dare not give, either an adequate and costly free army, as we should prefer, or a compulsory national organization for war, such as Prussia and America maintain. Being strong, it will dare to use the knife trench- antly on abuses like dockyard management, to laugh at the feeble dread of a Parliament for London, and to beat down the class resistance to Irish reforms. It will have the energy to construct, and will in its new strength, for the first time in our history, cease to be jealous of the Executive, regard it not as a foe, but as the useful agent of the national will, to be used for all work really national, whether it be for the control of the Army or the management of railway communications. That single change, which is inevitable,—for a really popular "House, a House which could summon all workmen to its defence, could not dread the Executive,—opens an endless -vista of possible improvements, of work which is now left un- done, because it could be accomplished only by the aggregate strength of the whole State. And those internal reforms once completed, our foreign policy would not be far to seek. With the nation armed, Great Britain would be as powerful as the "Union; a popular House of Commons will see in that Union its most fitting ally ; and the Anglo-Saxon race once united in a strong alliance, Washington, London, Melbourne, and Cal- cutta acting with one will, let the despotic Governments menace as they please, freemen are masters of the globe.
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