DEAD PARTY.
'EVERY one who speaks or writes just now admits that the Tories have become liberalised, and that there exists no longer -anywhere an English party of absolute resistance to change. The Unionist chiefs think this so strongly, that they are basing large plans upon the assumption, and we do not find that their adversaries, however much they may be annoyed with those plans, deny that the assumption is well founded. All allow that all parties, however different they may desire the pace to deny that the assumption is well founded. All allow that all parties, however different they may desire the pace to be, admit that progress is the ultimate law, to be accepted like the law of gravitation, or the motion of the earth round the sun, even by those who do not understand its meaning or its proofs. No one, however, seems to notice that this disappearance, if it has occurred, is a very wonder- ful thing, at variance with much of the teaching of history, and opposed to what many philosophers have reckoned among the inherent facts of human nature. That a whole community should become fluid—for remember, a glacier flows as well as a stream—and should agree, with whatever differences of willingness, to voyage towards the unknown, is an entirely new phenomenon, worth, in a day of expectation rather than of events, a moment's careful study. Fifty years ago, thoughtful men would not have believed such a situa- tion possible,—indeed, they would have disbelieved it in pro- portion to their thoughtfulness. There will always, they would have said, be reactionaries, Tories, Eldon-like men, who will resist change as change, who will believe that the level attained is the right level, and who will feel something sacred in the impulse "to stand upon the ancient ways." The temper expressed in the saying, " Nolumus leges Anglim mutari," is the temper of whole divisions of man- kind, who, seeing that to make life endurable is most diffi- cult, and that it has been made endurable, insist that their duty is to keep all things exactly as they have always been. Entire races, and those successful races, have Maintained that their fathers were wiser than they, and that to advocate serious change, even if obviously beneficial, had in it some- thing savouring either of impiety or madness. There are tens of millions in Asia to whom that view of life seems the only one which is even defensible, and they have founded empires, kept up great civilisations, and, to the extent of their wants, overthrown the obstacles presented by tropical nature. Even in Europe the party of blank resistance has always been a powerful section of society ; and in America, political conservatism of the immobile type, deepening, as regards the Constitution, into a faith as much outside reason as any religion in the world, is probably the strongest of all existing forces. The English, the old observers would have said, were supposed to possess an unusual portion of this spirit ; were impene- trable, as regarded a majority of them, to new ideas ; made, in fact, a religion of the existing and the customary. They, of all men, were inclined to believe that the usual was also the divine. That such a people should universally give up this method of thought, should regard it as having no truth in•it, and even as slightly ridiculous and evidence of senile amentia, would have appeared to our grandfathers absolutely incredible. They might have expected the faith in progress to make converts, and even to become triumphant ; but that the party of resistance should die out, that all men should acknowledge motion as a natural and permanent condition of being, this they would have called impossible, as much outside expecta- tion as the disappearance of men with red hair, or the universal dropping off of tails from cats. Some, they would have argued, will always look back with affection to the past, and some among them again will regard the whole past with equal eyes, and they at least will refuse even to think of wandering voluntarily away. These observers would, moreover, have had experience -to back them. There was not then, as there is not now, out- side England, a country in the world where the party of immobility was not strong, where there was not a section of society which declared that it was neither glacier nor stream, but rock, rooted to the centre, and determined as the first condition of its being not to move. In truth, the very idea of a world in which no one thought it possible to stand still, would have appeared to such observers fan- tastic, a mere speculation of dreamers ignorant of men. It is, nevertheless, difficult to doubt that we are living in this impossible world. There are plenty of pessimists who say and think that the movement is towards a precipice, or that it is ill-guided, or that it is dangerously fast ; but of those who would stop it altogether, who wish to remain and think remaining possible, there are in polities none left. It is not merely that there is no party of them, there are no individuals. Here and there, in hall and farmhouse and barrack, there must linger such a, one, half-conscious or even fully conscious of his variance with the world around him ; but he remains silent, and were it not that a poor man, with nothing to lose or gain, some- times expresses the ancient opinion—very fierce he is, too, as a rule—one would hardly believe in the existence of the ancient Tory. No man with such thoughts in him steps forward on the hustings, or asks questions at a meeting, or expresses himself in literature, or even disburdens himself in song. The strongest protest ever uttered now against progress is some touch of sly satire, some half-poetical lament over the restfulness of the elder life, some cynical murmur—usually, this time, from science —that in every germ there is not only life, but a tendency towards the symptom called death, and that therefore movement must at some point be arrested and be still. No journal preaching immobility, so far as we know, exists ; and we doubt if there are three men in Parliament, the Peers included, who would acknowledge in their most confidential moments that they held immobility, that is, an absolute refusal to advance, be the pace what it might, to be the most righteous resolve. Even the Clergy, who, if they are custodians of a depositum fidei, should dread change, or at least regard it in a spirit of criticism, accept it as law, and if reluctant, soothe their minds with theories of "develop- ment." As for the populace, in all other countries the guardians of custom, they listen gladly to all prophets of change, whether they be statesmen or fools with fads, and accept implicitly the theory that if the ship does but drift, it must be towards a happier land. The very women are ceasing to be content with immobility, and think of the ways of their mothers with as little respect as if most of their knowledge were not still traditional, and as if troth —and women, much more than men, hold their own convic- tions to be true—could alter from day to day. No entire people since the world began has been in such a mental situa- tion, or has ever so completely repudiated the thought that it is right, or wise, or possible to say-of anything human "as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen !" Whether the situation is good or evil, safe or dangerous, we are not concerned to discuss to-day. Probably it is neither, sufficient check for practical purposes being found in the different pace of the moving bodies,—indeed, though an iceberg must move, a ship may smash itself on it quite sufficiently well,—but we feel some interest in the rather useless speculation whether it will last in any permanent way, say for ten generations. By all precedent, it should not. The cause of the universal willingness to move seems to be that the rich are too comfortable to dread experiment —the victims, unconsciously it may be, of a little satiety— and that the poor are too uncomfortable not to wish any experiment made—just as a man with toothache will try nostrums he does not believe in—and those conditions never last together. The governing notion of the hour, moreover, that everything must prove its right to exist, must pass, like other governing notions, and with its passing, the permanent tendency of the human race to anchor itself and be still, must, one would think, revive. We should expect, judging from the history of man during that minute space of time for which his history is fairly known, that after no long period the English masses, now so unrestful, would find a political system which suited their wants and temperament, and would thenceforth cling to it, as the Americans do to their Constitution, as something semi-divine. They will say or feel that they have attained the excellent, and be as irritated with all who would change it, even in trifles, as if they were old nobles or Chinese. They would in that case be much more Conservative than the pros- perous, because they would be much more nervous, feeling that their margin of security was exceedingly narrow. They would grow bitter against innovation, and being tired once more of defending institutions and customs by reason, would deem it, as the tired races do, sufficient to say on their behalf that their fathers thought them good. We all hope, and some believe, that the masses will all attain soon moderate physical comfort, some rudi- mentary culture, great self-respect, and perfect security, and the class which formerly was in that position, the small yeomanry or "statesmen," for hundreds of years held the idea of change to be almost sacrilegious. It is not so easy as many think, to keep up movement, which, after all, involves exertion, merely for its own sake ; and a weary people, like a weary person, sits down and blesses rest. After effort, sleep ; and some day, perhaps soon, all the drumming that human nature will bear, without cutting the drums in uncontrollable irritation, will not rouse the English people from its needed sleep. Then we shall pro- bably hear again that it is of all populations the most 'Conservative, and shall certainly hear from the hustings the argument, Will ye depart from your father's ways.' That seems as impossible to us to-day as a universal belief in progress seemed to our grandfathers ; but it will as surely come as the ebb of the tide. In all countries, under all circumstances, amidst all races, the party of immobility suffers trance ; but it will die only when the world dies with it.
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