TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD JOILN RUSSELL AND THE LIBERAL PARTY.
THE disruption of the Liberal majority in Parliament, and the suppressed or latent hostilities of its leaders, constitute a complete bar, for the time, to any effective legislation, whether on doraestie subjects or upon that momentous one which has been chosen as the sign and token of the special confusion of the hour—India.
However, Lord John Russell has this week stepped forward in a remarkable manner upon the scene, evidently actuated by the wise thought that the state of the Liberal party, as to numbers and leadership, renders it undesirable, without some reconstitution of it, summarily to eject Lord Derby from office. Lord John per- ceives also that the India Bill of the Government is absurd in itself, and furnishes an almost irresistible but dangerous tempta- tion to the majority to destroy the Ministerial existence of its authors. He desires therefore, as it would appear, to save India, and to save the Liberal party; the fir,t from the calamity of hasty legislation, the second from the misfortune of a return to
power without that careful review of the past and resolve for the tuture, without that improved leadership, which, last week, we proclaimed so emphatically to be the one primary neces- sity. Unless Lord John has this high aim, unless he is beginning to open an intellect which is fortified by sin- cerity of purpose at least, if not by inflexibility of will, to the true and single vital necessity of the moment, his pro- ceedings of this week can have no other meaning than a mere check to the Parliamentary rival, whom he principally assisted to eject from office. And the country instead of being helped for- ward a step to a strong Liberal Government by Lord John's act, is removed a step further from it. For we believe that every act and word of the ex-Cabinet Ministers of the House, done or spoken under the inspiration of those different sectional jealousies or policies, or doctrines, which disunited them in the past, is a further weighty blow to that wedge, which is splitting up Parliament into fragments without cohesion, the mere difjecta membra of a Legis- lature. But every act done under the inspiration of a serious de- sire to reorganize, to govern better, to bring into office men who are untainted by, or genuinely at heart repentant of past follies, will bear its own fruit of reverence for the man who does it, and of Parliamentary success. Lord John appears to have assumed the task of piloting the House, and the India question, and his party, through the shallows into which the vessel of the state has been allowed to " drift" of late. The task is one which will tax all his ingenuity and tact. But it will be successful if it be approached in a spirit of true patriotism, and some sort of appreciation that the country is just now actuated by some hopes, and fears, and purposes not quite compatible with a mere pleasant arrangement with "noble friends." For we are strongly convinced 'that, if Lord John have it in his mind only to show Lord Palmerston that the Ministry lately destroyed, and mainly by Lord John's own hand, requires his leadership to return to office withal, he is preparing for himself a deeper and more bitter humiliation than any he has yet experienced, But we will hope better things. After all that has passed between Lords Palmerston and John Russell, any attempt to unite upon the mere principle of dividing between them the spoils of power, will fail to win the confidence of the nation. For it has been on the question of the honour and spirit of England that Lords Palmerston and Clarendon were dismissed. And what has been disclosed since that happened, certainly does go far to justify at least a temporary exclusion of them from office. It would be equally degrading for statesmen and for country that a solemn verdict and judgment should go for absolutely nothing. The sentence passed, is not one, certainly, of political death, but of exile. And the country will gladly welcome a return to power in, mass of the great Liberal leaders, if offices and persons are so distributed and placed, as to afford some guarantee that the country's needs, and not the statesmen's feuds or jealousies or claims, have been primarily considered. Indeed the country, though it has risen to expel erring Liberal Ministers from office, looks upon them not as incurable political offenders, but as having committed serious yet not irreparable faults. They will justify this lenient construction according as they can the more rapidly cause all private animosities or personal crotchets to disappear in face of the serious position in which the country is placed on foreign questions at this juncture, a position which calls loudly for a Government and statesmanship far exceeding in dignity and power what can be hoped from the still-born Administration of Lord Derby. All these considerations should present themselves with force to the mind of Lord John Russell, whose every movement and word will be scrutinized with jealous anxiety, on the one hand by a country which has not yet abandoned all ancient reverence for his name, and gratitude for his past, and whioh would gladly receive the boon of a renovated Ministry and Parliament at his hands; and on the other, by those many doubtful critics or open enemies, who have other and-perhaps sinister purposes in view. Both observers have but too much reason for their anxiety. For Lord John Rus- sell has of late years so voted as to make it doubtful whether he means to throw in his lot definitively with the country or the cliques. And it is not possible to feel otherwise than a keen anxiety in watohing the course of the man of whom at all events it must be said that it would be possible for him, if for any one, by
the prestige of his name and services to be the organizing head of the Liberal Government of the future : a Government, which ac- cording to our ideal of it, while including the old pillars of the state, which the surveyor has pronounced, to say the best of it, somewhat out of repair, should give to the building the buttress of a new and more vigorous element, in which a Lord John should represent prescriptions, traditions ,and the conservative aspect of English reform,—a Gladstone, the liberal scholastic element of po- litical thought, and a Horsman the new demands of the people for administrative purity, and bolder national action : a Government which in a word should unite the new and the old.
Feeling deeply as we do that the question before the country of the moment is the trial of the Liberal leaders, we cannot but fervently hope that Lord John may have a good deliverance. And the occasion seems one which should test the keenness of perception and fineness of nature in a statesman, if ever they were tested. There must truly be something passing the com- prehension of ordinary men in the dangerous atmosphere of office, something that intoxicates, or stifles the judgment and the con- science in the dizzy heights of Parliamentary leadership. No- thing short of the intoxication, of the self-idolatry, which makes statesmen think themselves inispensable to the country, can dis- able Lord John Russell from grasping the power and moral re- sources which are ready to his hand, if he will fairly break with the last five calamitous years. He has the opportunity if he will use it, of gathering round him all that is pure and aspiring in the Liberal party, which would either carry the majority with it, or speedily give him a majority in Parliament. If he could re- solve, not merely think about resolving, to devote himself to the cause of Reform, in suffrage, and military and naval matters, and expenditure, and, above all, in the moral demeanour of England in dealing with Continental powers and questions ; if he would give an improved suffrage, a regenerated army, a purified Ad- ministration, and fairly break away from those who cling to old abuses, and everything which is identified with them, he might form a strong, enduring Government, the fame of which would be unequalled in English history. Such a leadership, such a re- form of governing and personal influences, would gild his de- clining days with a lustre, compared with which the achieve- iiaents of his prime would be as mere dull dross by the side of pure gold. We are hoping chimeras and describing Utopias per- haps. But when the hour is come, who can help praying for the man ? And who does not see that. the wonderful linking of old things to new, which has been the type of English progress, and the guarantee of English constitutional life, would be fitly exem- plified by the inauguration of the reformed statesmanship, whiCh we desire, under the influence and name of so venerable an asso- ciation.
The materials for such an Administration exist beyond a doubt, and they do but require the shaping hand of a leader, whether it is to be Lord John or some other. For the present the problem of organizing the party into a sincerely reforming Go- vernment, must turn upon the question whether the leaders can regenerate themselves. Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, are all alike the objects of a watchful scrutiny of act, word, and motive, of a kind perhaps never before applied by a community to its foremost men. And that capacity for for- getting and condoning past errors, which we rejoice to know, is so largely infused in the national breast of England, something therein akin to that charity which can believe all things and hope all things, will welcome, approve, and reward every symptom of a renewed determination on the part of such men, to repent truly of political mistakes. The country feels too keenly the need of a strong and liberal Administration to busy itself over much with critical analysis of the past. It is too practical, and too much pressed by practical necessities to run after ideal statesmen, if the accredited leaders will but make moderate concessions of their ex- clusiveness, and recognize in time that the present day is not one in which their personal jealousies can safely be indulged to the confusion of public affairs. The microscopic scrutiny of public opinion and the press, affords too ready a medium for watching the acts and guessing the motives of public men, for them to dis- regard. And if statesmen will not try to study, and sympathize with the aims and wishes of England, but prefer to consult their own desires instead, there can be but little hope of good govern- ment or national content.
We cannot but feel that there has been a great gain both to the cause of India and of English Liberalism in Lord John Rus- sell's interposition of Monday last. And we would fain hope that the service he haddone will be recognized by his former colleagues in power long after the exasperation, which he hes now caused them, by baulking them for the moment of their Ministerial prey, will be forgotten in gratitude for this opportunity reculer pour mieux saucer. A party struggle upon the future government of India was repudiated in terms most express by all parties, but prepared for by their overt acts. Such a struggle would have poisoned the sources of future Indian legislation, and unless it can be definitively avoided will still do so. It was the misfortune Of the question, that while all were sincerely agreed as to the flagrant inexpediency of such party struggle, the introduction of two rival bills, and the collateral political circumstances of the hour made it all but inevitable. It is distinctly due to Lord John that a prospect of relief from the difficulty is held out. And whatever be the motive of his interposition, it cannot but be useful, as tending directly to give pause, deliberation, and weight to the next steps of the Liberal party. A peremptory return of
Lord Palmerston's Government to power, following an ignomi- nious defeat of Lord Derby upon an India Bill, would have been at once a violation of that judicial impartiality upon the great question which all profess, and an almost cynical repudiation of its own late decision upon Lord Palmerston's Administration on the part of Parliament itself. From these evils the returned Ad- ministration would have been the first to suffer.
The reticence of Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert, at this critical moment of party history is not a little remarkable. Beyond a doubt, it is of more moment to the country that they should be thinking and doing rather than speaking just now, especially if their thoughts and deeds be di- rected to the grand and paramount inquiry how, if at all, they and the other Liberal leaders of Parliament may hereafter work together. It is clear that the present situation cannot be pro- longed. The duty of solving the problems of the Liberal party is made urgent and imperative by the almost plaintive confessions of inability to govern, which have been contained in every move- ment of Lord Derby and his colleagues since they took office. At present the country may be said to be without a Ministry, and without an Opposition. But political nature abhors such a vacuum. And it is a subject of real anxiety to the nation at large. For it is by no means clear that the small cloud hovering about the firmament of Europe may not gather at any moment into thick tempests. And it would. be calamitous indeed if the country were to be overtaken by the international difficulties, of which such signs are abroad, while its leaders are still prolonging domestic dissension. We do not conceal from ourselves the diffi- culties which the history of the last few years places in the way of a genuine, healthy, and effective reconciliation of the different Liberal leaders. But assuredly every reasonbothof interest and duty peremptorily summons them to the task. And it will be hard indeed. if there can be no consummation of a work whereof the motive is the charity of the Christian, and the patriotism of the citizen, and the reward a share in the government of a country, of whose greatness and claims it behoves statesmen to be severely mindful. There was a time when Burke said that a great empire and little minds go ill together. Let our statesmen by mutual reconciliation, and a strong Government based on patriotic self- sacrifice, prove that if the empire is greater since his day, the minds, at all events, are not less.
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