TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ELECT10.7.1 NOTES.
Gun last week's diagnosis of the political condition of the country has not thus far been contradicted by the symptoms that have manifested themselves. The disappearance of every characteristic of gamine paned parties—of public men organized for practical united action on political questions by the operation and influence of common political convictions ; the ebullition of sectional zeal for questions beyond the range of immediate practical politics, and the absorption of all considerations founded on experience of the past careers of statesmen, as well as of those connected with a large foresight of the possible needs of the next few years, in a wild and meaningless enthusiasm for the present Prime Minister,—these are the symptoms we noticed last week, and they have increased rather than diminished. It strikes us that the interval before the new election, though not long, is yet too long for such a mania to retain its virus ; and that the Ministermlists are playing a somewhat hazardous game in going on to whine and howl to the constituencies their ridiculous complaints of conspiracy and coalition, in the face of the simple facts that no man of weight unconnected with the Administration pretends to find the proceedings in China wholly free from censurable rashness, and the majority against the Government counted all the more distinguished Liberals out of office. There must be something destructive to a man's honesty and sincerity in the tone of our Parliamentary oratory, when we find statesmen and gentlemen of the highest honour in private life rushing off at the smallest provocation into charges against one another, couched in the utmost acerbity of language and delivered with the utmost virulence of manner, which not only have no foundation in fact, but are a priori absurd, and cannot be seriously believed by those who circulate them. So far as Mr. Disraeli and the Tory Opposition were concerned, it was a regular part of their business to take advantage of any blunder which the Administration perpetrated, in order to turn them out and take their places. For what else does the Opposition sit night after night ? It was open to Mr. Gladstone and his friends to disapprove of Lord Palmerston's acts and his general policy. We know no reason why they in particular are to be debarred the ordinary right of exercising their judgment either on a particular question or on the general issue of confidence in an Administration. And when we apprehend what the strength of the tie is which connects Lord Palmerston with the sympathies of the Liberal party in domestic politics, we shall better understand what duty to party or to any other rule of conduct Lord John Russell and his friends violated in voting against the Ministers. Having already indicated our own opinion that there would have been great hazard in repudiating the proceedings of their agents in China, we have the less hesitation in expressing the contempt which this bandying of charges of factious opposition and unprincipled combination excites in our minds. It is a bad sign when the political leaders of a nation are not ashamed of attempting to mislead the people by the vulgarest of all artifices. We can only hope that before the election we shall have heard the last of this owl cry.
The only excuse that can be offered for Lord Palmerston in first broaching, and for his followers in repeating with "damnable iteration" through their election-addresses, this absurd outcry, is in the fact that neither he nor they have any policy to rest upon. The old Liberal programme of "Reform, Peace, Retrenchment," won't do, because from the first item the leader has wantonly cut himself off by his recent conduct ; and he is not barefaced enough to run in the teeth of facts by printing the two latter words upon his banner. With his own Queen's speech little more than a month old, announcing perhaps the most meagre programme ever yet put forth at the commencement of a session of Parliament by a Minister, he cannot stand forward as a Conservative Reformer in a practical! sense. He may allow his supporters to whisper applause of his episcopal appointments in the ears of Low-Church Derbyites ; but lie knows too much to come openly forward' as a partisan of extreme opinions in the Church, and to separate from himself at one fell stroke all that is scholarly and refined in the religious intellect of the country. His Foreign policy— if that phrase means anything more than his management of the last year of the Russian war—would be unsafe ground with most constituencies ; for it certainly ought not to be assumed that the people of this country approve what they know of his diplomatic proceedings in regard to the abandonment of our maritime rights, to the repression of the Belgian press, to the abortive interference at Naples, the yet unsettled dispute at Neue.hatel, the war with Persia, begun and concluded without the opinion of Parliament, but not yet paid for. When Lord Palmerston's eulogists talk vaguely of his foreign policy, they wish to limit the apprehension of the audiences they address to the vigour and self-reliance he iEsplayed in assuming the reins of government during the crisis of the Russian war. But his adversaries are not likely to allow so big a phrase to pass without analysis • and, little as the public is allowed to know at present about ;ill these matters we have mentioned, it knows quite enough not to sign a blank acceptance in favour of the warlike Premier. But the candidates, debarred from all the ordinary themes on which they are used to appeal to constituencies, must say something; and so the Russian war and the "unprincipled coalition" are the strings harped on till our ears are sick and weary of the monotonous twang.
Here and there a man of independent mind and earnest convictions, like Sir Arthur Elton, plainly states his dissatisfaction as a Liberal at this state of things, and appeals to a constituency. on definite principles of practical progress ; refusing to sink the Liberal party in the personal policy of Lord Palmerston, while he as prepared to give him general support in the owning Parliament. Unfortunately, Sir Arthur Elton labours under the disadvantage of having made himself conspicuous as an opponent of the continuance of the late war after Mr. Gladstone's lamentable aberration in the same direction. But his address to the electors of Bath. stands nobly out from the vague but vehement stupidity of most such addresses published within the last fortnight. Mr. Monaton Manes too, notorious for his admiration of the Premier, hints that a strong body of followers may encourage and induce that pliant leader to be more decided in his views of home politics,— surely a sarcastic touch from so dear a friend, indicating plainly enough his opinion of the nature of Lord Palmerston's political convictions. These two addresses are the only ones that seem to us in any way noteworthy ; except, perhaps, Lord John RueBeira preparative to his revived action in contemporary politics. The fact is, that by Ministerial candidates generally, all genuine political convictions are subordinated to the necessity assumed of keeping Lord Palmerston in power ; and his politics are of such a neutral complexion, that in order to effect this his followers must absolutely suppress their political convictions, for fear of being put utterly to shame by the inconsistency of their professions with the practical conduct of their chief. These considerations plainly shcrwthat the Opposition have committed a terrible blunder in providing a Minister thus utterly without a definite policy with precisely the sort of cry he wanted to appeal effectively to the constituencies. Nothing, in fact, can be clearer than that, considering the wretchedly meagre programme 'with which Lord Palmerston opened the session, and the addition of debating talent to the ranks of his adversaries in the Commons,. he could hardly have got through the session without a daily increasing discredit. The bills for the Persian war would have been coming in ; the Lord Chancellor would have again disgusted all Law-reformers by his dilatory and damaging half-heartedness; the complications arising from the condition of our relations in Italy, and on the Danube, must have offered rich materials for a merely critical and harassing Opposition. Such an incident as the ungrateful conduct of the Government to the Crimea Commissioners, ending in an ignominious concession to demand which takes away all the grace though none of the value of the rewards to be conferred, would have been a terrible blow to a sinking Administration. The almost avowed partisanship in Church appointments would have begun to alienate the educated classes, without permanently winning that most fanatical of cliques the extreme 7[4w-Church clergy and their followers. Looking at the matter merely as a game played between the two parties, the Ins and the Outs, we cannot but feel that every day would have lost Lord Palmerston something of his prestige, something of his hold upon the House of Commons and the country; and by the end of a session in which nothing would have been done, it would have become evident that the Government must either be reinforced both in men and in principles, or must give place to a totally different set. All this advantage has been thrown away. The Administration is provided with a rallying-cry. The country is summoned to support the Minister who carried us through the Russian war, and who is stopped at the threshold of his useful career of peaceful triumphs by a factious combination ; the honour of the British flag and the lives of British citizens and the interests of British commerce are all threatened by a reckless faction ; and just as the game was slipping from his hands, just as he was entering on that stage of Ministerial decrepitude with which we are by this time so familiar, he is saved by the precipitation and eager grasp of his opponents. To judge by present appearances, Lord Palmerston's opponents have inevitably checkmated themselves, and can now by no dexterity recover the game. For, bad as to a genuine politician the Palmerstonian programme must appear, we are unable, after reading Lord Derby's electioneering speech in the House of Lords on Monday night, to deny that, while Lord Palmerston represents victory over the Russians and a generally bold and showy attitude in foreign affairs, Lord Derby represents exactly nothing. It would be, not difficult, but simply impossible, for any follower of Lord Derby, who wished to frame an election-address after the model of that speech, to note down any one distinct principle that was enunciated in it: and after reading that speech, we can understand what puzzled us before, and what is a most significant fact to those who wish to forecast the result of this coming election,— namely, that the candidates who stand on what used to be called " Derbyite " principles seem studiously to abstain from using his Lordship's name as the leader whom they are prepared to follow. The fact is, we presume, that though Lord Derby occasionally meets some gentlemen of his party on special political occasions,. and plans with them a coup, yet that the party has no policy, and. would take office, if they could. get it, simply as a stimsfry of administration. Indeed, when one remembers that high in the ranks of the party are Lord Stanley and Sir John Pakington, one can well understand how embarrassing a positive programme must prove to the leader of the party. The one principle that held them together was finally abandoned in 1852. Since that time, they have acted with a" kind of organization from mere habit; and the coming election will in all probability witness and effect the final disruption of the party, and the absorption of its ale meats into the various sections to which they are each most powerfully attracted. Their last chance of consolidation was in getting into power and being forced to act on positive principles. They cannot possibly resist the dissolving influence of another five years of mere opposition, and the consequent development of independent thinking and isolated action. /Tow, believing that political progress is essential to the healthy life of a •community like ours, where political functions are intrusted to the people at large, and that political apathy involves not simply the suspension of particular measures of legislative improvement but a general deadness and corruption of public virtue, we cannot but deeply regret the condition we are forced to recognize. Such a condition of things, however, might be in itself one means of giving us a better House of Commons. If the constituencies, feeling that the old parties had at last really disappeared, were to look out for representatives of known integrity, wisdom, and business faculty—men who, professing no party allegiance now that the thing has become a sham, were prepared to devote themselves to the patient labour of improving the administration of the country, of taking care that the public service was first well and then economically performed,—if they were to look out for the men who in their own towns and counties are famous for their methods of business, for the generous and wise spirit of Christian chivalry displayed in their social relations, for the high and, beneficent influence exercised within their private spheres,—we should be content to wait with perfect assurance the time when a House of Common's largely composed of such men began to comprehend its true relations to political questions and political leaders, and should have no doubt that parties would develop themselves as soon as they were wanted, and that meanwhile the honour and interests of the nation would be in no danger from their suspension.
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