A TORY MUTINEER.
ONE of the most instructive of the political signs of the times is always to be found in the speeches of the mal- contents of the party in power, at least when such speeches are well received by a popular audience. With a constituency as wide as ours, the tendency to restlessness and reaction against the actual regime is always there, and these are the kind of indications which show in which direction that ten- dency is working. We have read, therefore, Mr. Gorst's speech at Chatham with considerable interest. Mr. Gorst is almost professionally a mutineer. Ho began political life by a New Zealand career, which resulted in a sharp attack on the Government of the colony in his " Maori King," and in pre- dictions as to the only mode in which the Native Question could be settled, which have not in any way corre- sponded with the actual results. Since he embarked in English Conservative politics, he has continued pretty steadily to find fault with the principles on which his leaders manage matters. Next to Mr. Bentinck, he is one of the severest of the Conservative critics of Conservative policy. But unlike Mr. Bentinck, he criticises from the point of view of popular feeling, rather than that of aristocratic privilege. His speech at Chatham on the present condition of things, and the mistakes of the Conservative leaders, is therefore specially instructive, and the more so that it was so favourably received. Connected as he has been with the Conservative Association, Mr. Gorst has had plenty of access to the various currents of Conservative satisfaction and discontent. He, if any one, ought to know what will be a popular line of attack on the management of his party, and what sort of criticisms would only recoil on the heads of those who gave voice to them. And as far as we are in a position to judge, he has used his opportunities of observation fairly well and really discriminated the direction in which the Con- servative Government is likely to lose credit with Conservatives, so far as they do lose such credit at all. Let us note, then, the principal themes of Mr. Gorst's discontent. First, it is obvious that he is dissatisfied with his party leaders, though he dexterously turns his sneers at them into the form of compliments, either to the sagacity of the Prime Minister or to the Turks,—compliments paid to whom are evidently regarded as virtually paid to Lord Beaconsfield, and vice vend. He calls the leaders of the English parties 44 Pashas," and says, "We are governed very much in the same manner in which the Turks are governed. We are governed by our Pashas, but nothing more tends to the stability and solidity of the Empire than the fact that it is presided over by gentlemen of the class to which I have alluded ;" in other words, men chosen not for their " abilities," but for their "social and territorial influence." He is very careful to insist that Hartington Pasha and Derby Pasha are " very much like other people, not very much wiser, and not very much better,"—and the remark is received with enthusiasm. Moreover, when he personally compliments Lord Beaconsfield on the sagacity he has shown in appointing to the more technical Departments gentlemen whose ignorance on these technical subjects is " absolute and complete," justifying the remark by comments on the very groat danger of any meddling interference with the work of a technical department as it is laid out by its permanent staff,—it is obvious that the com- pliment is meant to have a double effect, that of amusing the people, and that of exciting a gentle contempt for the Ministerial chiefs who are thus recommended for office by their want of capacity for rule. So far, all that Mr. Gorst's speech shows is that he wishes to make fun even of his own leaders, and that his audience is not at all indisposed to chime in with his mood,—rather likes to hear them called Pashas possessed of a very ordinary amount of intelligence, and to be told that they govern by rank, by acres, and by submitting their judgment to very much bettor- informed and wiser subordinates, in relation to whom their best claim is absolute ignorance, and therefore absolute teachability. But of course, this obvious intention to depreciate the leaders is intended to lead up to something, and it does lead up in Mr. Gorst's speech to a double complaint that the Con- servative leaders too much disregard party ties in the distribu- tion of their patronage, and that they too much count on party ties in the conduct of the Parliamentary campaign. In two words, what Mr. Gorst appears to demand is a more strictly party use of patronage, and a much less strict enforcement of Parliamentary discipline. Mr. Gorst says, on the first point, that " when a party had succeeded and had placed its leaders in office, it seemed to him that those leaders should regard them- selves as trustees appointed to carry out the principles of the party to which they belonged, and to secure, as far as they could be secured, the interests of that party by patronage. He did not mean that all the places at the disposal of a Ministry should be bestowed upon the political friends of its members. What he meant was that the Ministry in office should secure, as far as possible, that men holding sound political opinions should be promoted to positions of trust and power." And Mr. Gorst is generally dissatisfied with the state of things as they are in this respect. " In patronage the interests of the party were scarcely ever consulted, and he confessed that he did not think that was a proper state of things." He, no doubt, considers very justly that if Derby Pasha and North- cote Pasha would but in this respect imitate Safvet Pasha and Damoud Pasha, and the other Turkish rulers to whom he likens them with so much pride, this little deficiency would be quickly remedied. The Turkish Pashas have never been upbraided with failing to look after the interests of their own party, which in their case is apt to mean —as it soon would in ours—the interests of their own faction. And though it is not probable that even by following Mr. Gorst's advice England would soon be reduced to the state of Roumelia or Thessaly, we do think that by following his advice, the Civil Service would very soon be reduced to the level of the Civil Service in the United States. If Mr. Gorst's counsel means anything, it means that " the spoils should go to the victors." And that is exactly the maxim which has reduced the official organisation of the United States to its present rather humiliating condition. President Hayes has, indeed, been elected on a promise to try and reform to the very bottom the evils which have sprung from the unfortunate adoption by President Jackson of the policy which Mr. Gorst has just recommended to the notice of the Conservatives, and for recommending which he has earned the hearty cheers of the Conservatives of Chatham.
On the second point, the strict discipline in which the Parlia- mentary Whips keep the party organisation on both sides, Mr. Gorst's view is quite as strong and quite as revolutionary. " As to the undue influence exercised upon Members of the House, he referred to the action of the Whips, whose duty it was to check any exhibition of independence on the part of any Member of their party. He was not very sure whether this institution of whipping was not altogether out of place in the present day. It might have been necessary at one time, but for himself, he must state distinctly that in regard to his politi- cal opinions and conduct, he would submit to the whipping of no man or men, save those who formed the constituency which he represented,"—a sentiment which again brought down the hearty cheers of the Conservative electors of Chatham, who felt no doubt, collectively and individually, elevated by it to a position very near to that of the Whip of the party,—the patronage Secretary of the Treasury. It is somewhat curious that Mr. Gorst either did not notice, or found it convenient to ignore, the very curious relation between this doctrine of his and the other doctrine we have been considering. He did not tell his constituents that the more technical name for the whip' of a party is, when that party is in power, patronage Secretary to the Treasury,' and that Mr. Hart Dyke is at once ' whip' of his party and the member of the Government through whose advice and assistance it is determined how the minor rewards of party at all events are to be distributed. Now what Mr. Gorst wishes is, that while Mr. Hart Dyke should renounce almost all his disciplinarian authority over his party, his office should receive more authority than ever in regard to the distribution of party rewards. While every Conservative Member is to act without reproach on his own goodwill and pleasure, except so far as his constituents call him to account, the honours and the privileges of party are to be distributed much more exclusively than they now are among the loyal members of the party. That strikes us as coming very much to the direct governing of the party, so far as possible, by the expectation of honourable bribes. If
no one is to be found fault with, or held even in bad odour, for deserting his party on a critical division, so long as his constituents approve ; but at the same time, as a rule, only good Conservatives are to be appointed by a Conservative Government to offices of influence and power, then, discipline must be kept up by the prospect of tangible rewards alone. In fact all discipline, except so far as the hope of these tangible rewards will secure it, would be at an end. We need hardly point out to our readers how very close the analogy is between these doctrines of Mr. Gorst, which the Conservative electors of Chatham seem to have received with immense applause, and the doctrine of the old Demo- cratic party in America, as first acted upon by President Jackson. In the United States there is, we believe, no such thing as a political Whip for the party. Every man does what is right in his own eyes, except so far as his constituents call him to account for what he does. And in the United States, too, till within the last few years, there has been no one to challenge the doctrine that the Administration "should regard themselves as trustees appointed to carry out the principles of the party to which they belonged, and to secure, as far as they could be secured, the interests of that party, by patronage." As far as we are aware, a more deliberate attempt to " Americanise our institutions" has never been made than was made in Mr. Gorst's speech at Chatham. He discountenances the healthy opinion in favour of party disciplinewhich alone keeps Par- liamentary Government from falling into all the confusion of " Government by public meeting," and yet he advocates a much more exclusively party spirit in the distri- bution of party rewards than has hitherto prevailed on either side. Of course, the tendency of these views is obvious enough. The only organising force left at the disposal of party would be party patronage ; but that, he maintains, ought to be freely used. Democratic Conservatism has very generally approved the same view. The " residuum " like to be told that they, and they alone, are masters of their Members' votes ; and that when they place a Government in power, that Government should reserve as much as possible all its good things for members of the party which placed it in power. Mr. Gorst has of course a perfect right to these views, But they are noteworthy, as showing whither Mr. Disraeli's large con- fidence in the residuum is leading his Tory followers. And after Mr. Gorst's speech, we hope we may not again hear it asserted that it is the Liberal, as distinguished from the Conservative, party which desires to "Americanise " our English political institutions.
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