THE TORY ORGAN DESIGNATE.
Why, then, should the Saturday Review scruple at once to place itself at the disposal of a Conservative Government under certain conditions as to the ruling mind there, and so remove this very serious difficulty from which Conservatism suffers so acutely ? No doubt the mesalliance of the Tory Government with the Herald and Standard is a real obstruc- tion to the Conservatives. But those worthy papers have shown so much capacity already for learning tactics from the Saturday, that if they could once get over the first spasm of seeing youth and beauty elevated above them, they would no doubt soon work together as ably and harmoniously as a Mormon household. The Whigs have already cemented a large number of such useful connexions. Besides their official alliance with the amiable Globe, they have at least three other subordinate, and, as it were, morganatic connexions, that are, each in its turn, of great use to them. After a Saturday evening's Cabinet, the Observer frequently confides to the public, with that starched sabbatarian deco- rum with which stately matrons, meeting after church, gossip to each other in the porch or churchyard, some interesting proof of her confidential relations with the Minister. During Lord Palmerston's regime, and at all times on mat- ters closely concerning the imperial mind in France, the Morning Post knows how to open her fashionable mouth with political knowledge as well as courtly tact and aristo- cratic scandal. And finally, on financial matters, even the portly and substantial Economist frequently deigns to dis- cover the mind of the Treasury or the Exchequer concerning the problems of the housekeeping accounts. Why then should the Conservatives be less fortunate ? Why should not the coming triumph be inaugurated by the happy installation of the Saturday Review by the side of the new Minister ? Surely the modesty of the Saturday Review should not prevent it. Surely, when hearts are really so completely at one, some mutual understanding between the Conservatives and their ablest and most witty admirer might be brought about. Let it not be said of them, as some novel-heroine significantly remarked to her lover, that the " happiness of the support of Hungary against Austria. At its very first two lives was about to be sacrificed to a caprice." Let not debut it followed the lead of the Peelite party in vehemently Mr. Monckton Milnes, who takes a deep interest, we doubt AR Saturday Review of last week had a very facetious paper on the various analogies between Bishops and Brides, in which, however, it omitted to enumerate the tradi- tional duty of reluctance—the nolo episcopari of the Bishop —the moral consternation of the Bride at the audacity and novelty of the matrimonial proposition. Perhaps the omis- sion of so exceedingly superficial an analogy in a paper so elaborately humorous was intentional ; perhaps its inclusion might have been too direct a key to the pleasing bashfulness of another article in the same number on the double de- ficiencies of the Conservative party in leaders and in "organs"—an article in which the flutter and hesitation of a willing and faithful love towards the incoming Conserva- tive Ministry are with shy courage volunteered. After stating with much force, but perhaps some prejudice, the conviction that England is heartily Conservative and only stumbles at the awkward necessity of having Lord•Derby 1.; and Mr. Disraeli for her Parliamentary and Ministerial leaders, the writer goes on to point out with pathetic modesty and candour the second great, but really not in- superable, difficulty in a Conservative Ministry. " On some occasions" a Conservative Cabinet " would be in urgent need of defence outside the walls of Parliament, and where it would find it is a puzzle to everybody who travels through the yearly increasing crowd of newspapers. It would be un- gracious not to allow that the two Conservative daily journals• have improved and are improving, and an enthusiastic reader might, perhaps, be pardoned for believing that their defi- ciencies are rather comparative than positive ; but still there is something almost ludicrous in the idea of a Government resisting a vehement popular outcry—let us say in the recess —with only the Morning Herald and the Standard to de- monstrate the absurdity of the prevalent delusion." Surely, this is a modest bid for the first place in the journalistic harem of the coming Minister, at least on condition that that Minister be neither Lord Derby nor Mr. Disraeli. Why should the Saturday cast this blank and unconscious gaze around over the wilderness of newspapers in search of some one equal to the position P The daily drudges of the party " have improved and are improving," under the kind counsel of a mutual friend, and they need only that mutual friend as an aristocratic mistress above them, to inspire them weekly with thought and sentiment, in order to be quite up to their mission. It is on the mistress's energy that the neatness and activity of servants depend. Why beat about the bush ? If Lord Robert Cecil could but become the mind of the next Conservative Cabinet, why might not the Saturday Review take upon herself the duty.of inspiring in chief, and being inspired in chief by, the Tory Government; in short, become in the tenderest sense " guide, counsellor, and friend ?" Then, indeed, would the truest and loftiest tie between Minister and " organ" be realized at last, then we might indeed have the new mind of the Tory Cabinet, exclaiming ecstatically with Wordsworth that he had found at last a "being breathing thoughtful breath,"- " A perfect creature nobly. planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command ;" and yet also "A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's weekly food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."
So ideal a tie between Minister and organ cannot often be realized in this world. He might well repeat, as Mr. Trollope makes the old baronet in a similar position repeat, in his new tale, " Why should I not ?" Why should not such a union be solemnized ? Surely there would be no one to forbid the banns. Has not the Saturday Review earned, by a long and persevering course of anxious Conservatism, the right to take up her place, with- out any challenge of her purity, at the side of a professedly Tory Minister? We cannot remember, in the not very long period since that vigorous and fascinating paper first ap- peared in the highest circles, a single act that would be grossly inconsistent with the proposed alliance unless it be field essential to a new road, and puts on it a preposterous demanding the close of the Russian war, and assailing Price, he is compelled to submit to award. Why should not Turkey. It has since taken the Conservative side with the the patentee submit too, and so accept, like everybody else, enthusiasm of a true partisan in every question of home and not the reward he thinks due to himself, but the reward foreign politics except the one to which we have alluded. which the world thinks due to him ? It was long—under the cloak perhaps of anti-Gallicanism, but without much regard to that excuse—the bitterest of all the foes of Sardinia when she was initiating the glorious policy which has since been crowned with success. It dis- couraged explicitly the liberal course of the present Emperor in Russia. It has attacked not only the home but the foreign policy of the French Emperor with a completely indiscrimi- nate venom. It has opposed with all its power the reform of the administration of India; it sided vehemently with the Tories on the Chinese war of 1857 ; it has enthusiastically supported Mr. Trollope's superficial depreciation of the African race, and it has recently taken the Southern view of the American struggle with an earnestness quite unrivalled except by Captain Jervis and a few of the extreme Tory fa- natics,—having a fortnight ago inserted an article which every one took to mean that England would be clearly justified in breaking the blockade of the Southern ports. And while all its foreign sympathies—except on the Hungarian ques- tion—have been on the blindly authoritative, if not the despotic side, its home politics have been no less distinguished by callous Conservatism. It has attacked the Radicals with a keenness and animosity that would be impossible to a true Liberal, even though he might agree in distrusting and doubting their principles. It opposed Reform with much more than the hatred of a Conservative—of such a Conserva- tive, at least, as Sir E. B. Lytton or Mr. Walpole. On social subjects it has sneered down every Reformer, as for example the Social Science Association, whom it could not argue down. It cannot conceal its horror of a change in the marriage law, which to the working classes might be a practical boon—the abolition of the restraint on marriage with a deceased wife's sister. It has done all in its power to restrain the effort of the Universities to extend their influ- ences over the middle classes. And on Church questions it has been almost retrograde. In short, if the true distinction between a Conservative and a Liberal be, that the former looks with despair on improvement, and therefore regards every change with a fixed u priori dislike, while a Liberal looks with hope on the progress of the world, and therefore can never see an evil without an effort to remove it,—the Saturday Review is Conservative to the backbone.
Why, then, should the Saturday Review scruple at once to place itself at the disposal of a Conservative Government under certain conditions as to the ruling mind there, and so remove this very serious difficulty from which Conservatism suffers so acutely ? No doubt the mesalliance of the Tory Government with the Herald and Standard is a real obstruc- tion to the Conservatives. But those worthy papers have shown so much capacity already for learning tactics from the Saturday, that if they could once get over the first spasm of seeing youth and beauty elevated above them, they would no doubt soon work together as ably and harmoniously as a Mormon household. The Whigs have already cemented a large number of such useful connexions. Besides their official alliance with the amiable Globe, they have at least three other subordinate, and, as it were, morganatic connexions, that are, each in its turn, of great use to them. After a Saturday evening's Cabinet, the Observer frequently confides to the public, with that starched sabbatarian deco- rum with which stately matrons, meeting after church, gossip to each other in the porch or churchyard, some interesting proof of her confidential relations with the Minister. During Lord Palmerston's regime, and at all times on mat- ters closely concerning the imperial mind in France, the Morning Post knows how to open her fashionable mouth with political knowledge as well as courtly tact and aristo- cratic scandal. And finally, on financial matters, even the portly and substantial Economist frequently deigns to dis- cover the mind of the Treasury or the Exchequer concerning the problems of the housekeeping accounts. Why then should the Conservatives be less fortunate ? Why should not the coming triumph be inaugurated by the happy installation of the Saturday Review by the side of the new Minister ? Surely the modesty of the Saturday Review should not prevent it. Surely, when hearts are really so completely at one, some mutual understanding between the Conservatives and their ablest and most witty admirer might be brought about. Let it not be said of them, as some novel-heroine significantly remarked to her lover, that the " happiness of the support of Hungary against Austria. At its very first two lives was about to be sacrificed to a caprice." Let not debut it followed the lead of the Peelite party in vehemently Mr. Monckton Milnes, who takes a deep interest, we doubt not, in our fair and caustic contemporary, have again to chronicle in his musical lines the same sad history that he has once told so well : " Alas ! that love was not too strong For maiden shame or manly pride. Alas ! that they delayed so long The goal of mutual bliss beside."
For here, too, a greater fate hangs in the balance. It is not the happiness of an individual life, but the prosperity of a great party, which depends on the frankness of the Con- servatives, and the coyness of the Saturday Review.
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