LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
• " THE FORWARD MOVEMENT OF CONSERVATISM."
[To sma Borroa or ram •• SISIOMMOL".1 Sta,—Will you allow me to supplement your article of April 9th by pointing out what appears to me a significant difference between the "forward movement of the Conservative Party," of which you speak, and similar forward movements of the Liberal Party ? Have not the latter invariably been heralded by the advanced guard of an educating Liberal minority, who have finally brought the mass of the party up to their line P This has been true to some extent even in the case of Home-rule : Vicere fortes ante Agamemnona. But the present forward movement of the Conservative Party has the air of its prede- cessors,—it is a " leap and a bound " of the whole party, broadly speaking, to positions previously occupied by Liberals ; as usual, there has been no advanced educating Conservative minority. Mr. Disraeli, it is true, "educated" his party ; but it would not be fair to call him an educating minority, and the name would be equally inappropriate to Lord Halebury ; he has had " ideas," we know, but they are as new to his own party as they are to us ; he never " told his love " before. Is it unreasonable to look for this advanced minority as a crucial test of sincerity and reality in any general party movement P And, by the way, is it natural
for the "glacier movement of polities " to have " swept all Con- servatives forward, until the whole Conservative Party has become Liberal Whig "—and at the same time to have left Liberal Whigs where they are—unless, indeed, they be a lateral or terminal moraine P—I am, Sir, &c., Oxford, April 11th. J. lasso.
Previous page
