TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CULTIVATED LIBERALS AND POPULAR LIBERALS. THERE is a superciliousness of thought and demeanour about the dominant Liberalism of the day in treating the old popular notions of liberty and political right, which not only weakens the Liberal party but tends to subvert its deepest principles. The cultivated classes, and the news- paper press, which the cultivated classes more or less inspire, seem to have lost their hold of all the convictions which used to gain them the enthusiastic support of the people at large, and to have dropped into that literary type of Liberal- ism which cares for little more than free discussion on all subjects and the triumph of the most telling argument. The consequence is that, as there is a large uncultivated class which cares for Liberal principles perhaps rather more hear- tily than any other, but which seldom enters the lists in the discussions of the newspaper press at all, there is a growing chasm between the cultivated Liberals and this larger sec- tion of the people from whom they ought to draw their strength and their animal vigour. Hence, again, a growing de- ficiency of animal vigour in the dominant ranks of the Liberal party, and a growing sense of soreness and neglect in the subordinate ranks, who hear their leaders discriminating. be- tween popular Liberalism and enlightened Liberalism in a way that they dislike and resent. We do not think they would dislike and resent it if the old hearty tone of genuine respect for any great national conviction as such, still ani- mated Liberal thought. But this is not the case. Instead of educated Liberal feeling speaking in the name of the whole party, and in language that the party at large can re- joice to accept, we have them speaking in the name of cul- tivated thought, and addressing themselves exclusively to the cultivated classes. There is growing up a marked intel- lectual aristocracy among the Liberals, who refer with gentle contempt to " vulgar liberalism," much as refined divines refer to " vulgar theology," forgetting that uncultivated men ought to have a political as well as a religious faith, and that its general truth and earnestness are of far more importance than the shades of thought which mark the dis- crimination of the reasoner and the scholar. The result is, we venture to think, at least as injurious to the aristocratic Liberals who ask to be judged by "the culture of the age," as to the humbler allies whom they are deserting. The ten- dency to appeal universally- to the reason rather than to the instinct of Liberalism, which is thus encouraged, is doing much to eat away the very roots of true Liberal principle.
Let us illustrate what we mean further. Educated Liberals have, we need scarcely observe, no overweening respect for tradition and usage as such. In this they differ from the Tories. Their appeal is to argument, refined intelligence, reason ; and if argument, refined intelligence, and reason seem to go against tradition and usage, they are for reforms ; if not, if nothing can be suggested to take the place of the u sage which can be shown to be better to the full satisfaction of a refined intelligence, they are for abiding by what is. But the practical effect of this attitude is, that the modern aris- tocratic Liberals, seeing that amount of risk in all change which all educated intellects must see, and having lost all the instinctive aversion to great corruptions and abuses which was the soul of the old Liberalism, are even more inclined to sit with folded hands than modern Conservatives themselves.
• No doubt there is none of that deep prejudice against change at the Liberal's heart which still lingers in the Conservatist ; the Liberal has lost all prejudices against everything, and only asks sufficient reason to try a change. But " sufficient reason" is so bard to supply, without a little instinct of dis- gust against abuse to act as a spur. A thousand theoretical objections to any proposed course can always be seen and stated. A clear intellectual conviction that a change for the better is possible, rarely comes without a thorough intole- rance for the evil as it stands. And an instinct of intolerance for evil as it stands, which was the root of the old Liberalism, no longer inspires the modern phase of it. The modern Liberals have no objection to any suggestions in the world, but have no fixed purpose to find some suggestion that will do. They are open to counsel, and if the cultivated thought of the age ever could make up its mind as to a right remedy —which that valuable abstraction never can nor does—they would readily adopt it. But in the mean time, why move P Liberal thought is busy discussing, and will act as soon as discussion comes to an end. Till then, intellectual Liberals wait with open mind, but not a hungry one; and unintellectual Liberals murmur in silent disgust to see that there is no sting in the dislike to abuses—no determination to try remedy after remedy, until an adequate one is found—no im- pulse to throw evil off at any cost. Again, the tendency to appeal exclusively to the cultivated reason, and to despise the instinct of Liberalism, tells in an- other way on the animating principle of the Liberal party. It eats away at the deep love of liberty and self-government for its own sake—whether wrapped in a vulgar or a noble external dress—and slides in, in the place of it, some canon of refined taste or intellectual expediency by which it judges the various Liberal movements, and calmly pronounces them dangerous or dignified. Now, these two principles—profound impatience of all admitted abuses and determination to remedy them—and a warm love of liberty and self-government for its own sake,— are the two genuine roots of a true Liberal faith, and when either of them begins to die away and give place to that mere literary Liberalism which objects only to fetters on discussion, we may be sure that the Liberal party is either moribund, or at least needs new life on the surface. Let us look at some of the practical evils of this increasingly literary phase of Liberalism to the faith of the Liberal party. In the first place, there is the languid way in which the cul- tivated Liberals deal with the monster evil of bribery and electoral corruption. By no kind of political abuse is the true instinct of Liberalism more strongly and vehemently outraged. For not only is it a gross loss of both honesty and power and wealth to the community at large, but it strikes at the very root of all genuine liberty and self- government, which are mere names and shadows where great elections are really determined by a distribution of bribes. Well, how have the Liberals met this evil ? Some of their most distinguished leaders, appealing to the en- lightened reason of the age, are known to hold that it is no evil at all ; that it should be increased rather than diminished, in order to throw ,greater power into the hands of Govern- ment; that it is the only means by which the ignorant and vulgar can be made amenable to the influence of the thoughtful and the refined. Such, we say, is the real esoteric doctrine of not a small portion of the cultivated Liberal school. We are perfectly aware that it admits of very skilful advocacy, and that it is by no means easy by pure argument to refute it. We shall be said to be cutting the knot when we assert that the genuine instinct of Liberalism rejects the doctrine with loathing, and affirms that every remedy ought to be tried, every rational effort made, however soon it may prove unavailing, rather than meekly tolerate so shameful and perilous an anomaly. In spite of the venal minorities who hold the fate of so many constituencies in their hands, the dumb masses of the Liberal pady throughout the country are far more thoroughly disgusted- with electoral corruption than the literary mouthpieces of that party suppose. It is mainly theorizing which has had the power to unsettle their principles, and half reconcile them to the shameful anomalies that excite the indignation of the party at large. Again the literary sang-froid with which the Reform movement was treated by the Liberals has done much to paralyze the whole spirit of the party. No doubt, as we have always asserted, the country was not prepared to sanction a mere slide in the direction of democracy. The leaders of the Liberal party made a grievous mistake in giving, without faith, as Mr. Stansfeld told them, pledges which they subsequently abandoned without shame. The Liberal party was in earnest in wishing to see a scheme de- vised for admitting the working classes into the body politic, without handing over its control to them. The literary Liberals who represented the party were not so far in earnest as to desire to risk anything in such an attempt. They attempted to rid themselves of the responsibility by proposing a really vulgar measure, in which no one of them believed. The country felt that it was a cynical measure, proposed in disgust by men who wished to wash their hands of their pledge, rather than to remedy the real admitted grievance, and the country wisely rejected it. But the schism between the cultivated Liberals and the party at large was thereby materially widened. The literary Liberals had shown that they had no sincere and profound desire to in- crease the range of popular self-government. Again in the cry for diminished expenditure and financial economy, the moving party among the Liberals no doubt took unwise and not national ground. They resisted the neces- sary public works instead of the wasteful economy of those works. The passionless cultivated school saw their advan- tage, defended the necessity of the defences, and threw up every change. What wonder that the mass of the Liberals There is no -doubt force in that line of argument if only it are divided, that many of them, in their disgust at the evil, were but true. The incessant recurrence of a precedent and the helplessness of the party that used to push en does constitute a law, even in politics, and the tacit consent a reform, hope, by rallying round Mr. Gladstone, to foree of a population must sometimes be held equivalent to their economy at the wrong end by sapping the resources of ex- formal acknowledgment of right. Nobody would affirm that travagance ? Here again the vulgar Liberalism is right in its the sovereignty of the Queen in Wales existed in spite of the deep conviction that thrift is the essence of national power people, though the principality is the only province of the and honour, but it meets only with languid sympathy in three kingdoms which never by formal act accepted the principle, and frank confessions of the insuperable difficulty British line. Nor would a sound civilian deny that the volun- of the task, from the cultivated exponents of its opinions. tary acceptance of popular parliamentary laws by the people Once more, in foreign questions, like the American and the of the Channel Islands, if continued for a series of years, Hungarian, the fundamental sympathy of the true Liberal would render them liable to obey laws emanating from the with the cause of freedom, in whatever connexion or disguise, same authority which they did not happen to like. If Hun- gets little countenance from the cultivated thinkers of the gary for centuries had really submitted to be considered as party. The disgust for the vulgar mid boastful concomitants part of Austria, her legal right to autonomy would be most of American democracy so entirely envelops and eclipses in gravely diminished. The Emperor declares that she has so their sight the alternative of liberty or slavery at the bottom submitted, that in foreign affairs an absolute unity has been of the struggle, that the new which the Liberal party in established and sanctioned by common consent, that the Hun- England is bound to take of it has as yet had no public ex- garian Ministry has been consulted as part of the general pression at all. Instead of this, the literary_Liberals pour forth Ministry of the Empire, and that Hungarian soldiers have caustic comments on the gross vulgarities and irritable arro- bled by the side of Austrian comrades. The illustration is gance towards England shown in the Northern politics. We powerful because the facts are patent to all men, but the reply are quite aware of these offensive peculiarities, but we assert is none the less prompt and 'unanswerable. What may have that they should count little indeed, to a true Liberal, beside happened before the Pragmatic Sanction, M. Deak does not the great principle at issue in the conflict. Not thus, how- attempt to discuss. Whatever may have been the previous ever, thinks the critical and inanimate Liberalism of the position of the two monarchies, the King in that document, literary classes, which is angered at nothing but ignorance, in order to secure the succession in the female line, solemnly vulgarity, and bigotry, while it has half lost its impatience and of his own free will guaranteed the separate and integral of immoral abuses, and its glowing sympathy with human .existence of the Hungarian kingdom. The evidence adduced freedom. The tone of its leaders would be that of the by the Emperor, therefore, is valid only since that date, and grave, sad words of the despondent poet, were it only half as from that time, says M. Deak, there has been no unity save profoundly conscious of the bitterness of its own emptiness ; in foreign affairs. " The method, the condition, and the forms And while literary Liberalism is thus alienating all that is throne would cease if all the issue of your Majesty's ancestor, deepest and most vigorous in its own party, it is losing the the Emperor and King Leopold I., should fail; for in such a moderating influence which it ought to have over the one- contingency, as we developed in our first address, in ac- sided tendencies of the advanced section, and driving them to cordance with the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, the trust in leaders who do not, and cannot, "turn to scorn the country would be free to choose its own King, whilst the falsehood of extremes." Will not Mr. Gladstone, who alone other lands, according to the Pragmatic Sanction given to of the younger Liberals of his day combines cultivated tastes them, and which they accepted, would devolve to the more with at least some leaven—we can scarcely say as yet the remote female branches of the House of Hapsburg." In genuine leaven—of the eager Reformer, mediate between these foreign affairs, indeed, there has been unity, for the King rapidly separating sections, and once more reconcile the of Hungary is Emperor of Austria, and the King of Hun- massive strength of popular enthusiasm with the cautious gary has rightfully " a prerogative by virtue of which judgment of cultivated thought ? If, as we trust, lie is he decides of his own sovereign will the external re- destined to do so, he must fling to the winds much of the lations with foreign Powers." Writers who persist in superfluous fastidiousness of his political character. representing the Hungarians as men mad " with the fever
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