TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FREE-TRADERS IN PARLIAMENT.
THE question of Corn-law Repeal and Free Trade in general, which has for some time back been agitated by appeals to the public, has aiow been carried into a higher court. The late dissolution of Parliament was resorted to, ostensibly, with a view to assemble a House of Commons which should represent more truly than the old the opinions and wishes entertained by the body of the people in regard to Free Trade. The old House of Commons was said to be dissolved for the purpose of enabling the electors to return a new one, the members of which should be selected on account of their peculiar fitness to sit in judgment on that question, and who should have a settlement of it recommended to their attention as the most important and urgent part of their Senatorial labours. It was given out by Ministers, that as the Parliament of 1831 was convened with a special view to deliberate on Parliamentary Re- form, so the Parliament of 1841 has been convened with a view to 'make Free Trade its especial care. The immediate result of the late dissolution has not been so successful as that of its prototype. A majority of Parliamentary
-Reformers (nominal and real) was secured by the dissolution which succeeded Earl GREY'S accession to office. The dissolution of 1841 has not secured a majority even of supporters of the MEL- BOURNE Ministry : the number of Free-traders is less than the
number of Whig partisans, and the number of earnest resolute Free-traders still less than that. A cause of so much importance, however, is not to be abandoned on account of a first reverse. The state of trade generally throughout the country, and the state of the national finances, will force it upon the attention of Parliament, even though the advocates of Free Trade, dispirited by their want of success in the elections, should grow fainthearted and remain silent. The economical condition of the country, and the merits of our commercial policy, are the questions which must unavoid- ably engross by far the greater share of the attention of the new Parliament. The principles of the Free Trade system of political economy are by many believed to be the only ones upon which a satisfactory solution of our difficulties can be arrived at. The number of Members returned to the new Parliament as holding these principles, is sufficiently great to insure a patient hearing for the facts and arguments upon which the principles are based. It is still possible to make this Parliament to a considerable extent what some sanguine natures anticipated it was to be—the Free Trade Parliament. By intelligence, concert, and judicious action, the Free-traders may in the present Parliament lay broad and deep the substructure of future triumph.
For the regulation of their conduct there are two things which they ought never to leave out of view. First, the degree of suc- cess which has attended the popular agitation of Free Trade prin- ciples, and the means by which that success has been obtained. Second, that Parliament is a new field for the agitation of their question; and that there it must be urged by more guarded tac- tics—that the forms of agitation which have been successful out of doors are not adapted for the House of Commons.
For the success which has attended the missionary efforts of the Free-traders out of doors, they are more indebted, perhaps, to their disclaiming party politics than to any other circumstance.
By not lending themselves to any of the three great political sects,
they have incurred the distrust and of the leaders and ac- tive agents of all of them. The Tory saw that the union of his party would be endangered by the progress of principles upon
which its members were likely to disagree ; the Whig regarded as
so many Marplots men who preferred principle to Lord Alm.- BOURNE ; and the Chartist denounced them as raising the question
of Corn-law Repeal merely to distract public attention from the Charter. But they were far more than compensated for incurring these hostilities, by the tendency of their isolated independent position to promote their success with the great body of the com- munity. They approached no man for the purpose of combating or sapping his partisan faith ; they sought to give no party a triumph over the others; they recommended measures alike com- patible with the distinctive principles of all parties. No man put himself on the defensive against them as enemies of his cherished opinions. Their statements and arguments were allowed to tell for their real value. The good effects of this policy have been re- peatedly shown—in the proceedings of public meetings, and even in the results of the late elections. In almost every instance where the election was perilled upon the merits of Corn-law Repeal and Free Trade exclusively, these principles have been triumphant. The most marked Ministerial defeats have taken place in those in- stances where old partisan considerations have been made more prominent than the question of Free Trade. The Ministerial de- feat, unquestionable and signal though it has been, would have been still more decisive had not the Whigs, at the twelfth hour, given in their adhesion, feeble and hesitating though it was, to the principles of Free Trade.
This abnegation of party must be adhered to in Parliament, if the principles of Free Trade are to gain ground by the efforts of their adherents who have been returned to the House of Commons. The merely personal war between the Ins and the Outs will be renewed in that House the moment the parties have changed places; and if the Free-traders identify themselves with either, they will be obliged
to compromise their principles—to postpone and abandon motions out of mere personal considerations. With a House of Commons Iconstituted as ours is and has been, a Ministry shapes its course not according to what is demonstrably best, but in such a manner as is least likely to offend the discordant feelings and interests of any of its supporters. The Opposition sets itself not to advocate principles, but to watch the proceedings of the Ministry with a view to carp and cavil at them in detail. It tries to represent the con- duct of Ministers in such a light as may be calculated to alienate the confidence and good-will of their partisans and transfer their support to itself. Both parties shrink instinctively from adopting or advocating decided lines of policy or broad general principles, which must be pushed and adhered to regardless of the crotchets or interests of individuals. They niggle at a heap of details, which may be taken up or let go according as private parties frown or look pleased. The consideration of what is to be done' is subordi- nate with them to the question who is to have the doing of it. Their grand object is to keep or gain the ascendancy. The advo- cates of a great principle, of a marked line of policy, have nothing to gain by making themselves the decided allies of either side. The independence requisite to enable a man on all occasions frankly and unreservedly to advocate his principles, is confessedly incom- patible with the character of a supporter of Ministers ; it is equally incompatible with that of a member of Opposition. When there are in Parliament only two or three solitary adherents of a great principle like that of Free Trade, nothing is to be done. But when there is a body of them, however small, sufficient to command at- tention, their true policy is, attaching themselves to neither party, to vote on every question that arises on its merits, and to embrace every opportunity of avowing their principles and pointing out their application to the different questions of detail that come before them. The effect of such an independent ingredient in the deli- berations of the House quickly tells. There is nothing in the minds even of Ministers and Members of Parliament that makes them prefer error to truth where the former has not the appearance of making for their own interest. Leaving that out of the question, they instinctively prefer doing a thing well to doing it ill. The repre- sentations of such an independent body will often induce a Minister to modify and shape his measures with a view to insure their ap- probation. When this has been done with good results in matters of minor importance, a sense of the benefit obtained, a natural de- sire to preserve the appearance of consistency and avoid self- contradiction, may make him yield in greater matters; or, if these considerations prove ineffectual, the experience that the regular Opposition is sure to take up the views which he entertained on foamer occasions but now rejects, and that to be exposed to such an attack materially damages him out of doors, render the Minister manageable. By this process a small body of firm, high-principled, independent Members of Parliament, can give an entirely new tone and direction to Parliamentary discussions, form and enlighten public opinion, and effectively control those who ostensibly wield the sovereignty of the nation.
In so far as independence of party is concerned, the Free-traders in Parliament ought to adhere to the policy they have adopted out of doors. But allusion has been made to the necessity of adapting their mode of agitation in some respects to the temper and habits of Parliament. The agitation of questions of public policy out of doors is almost uniformly carried on in meetings col- lected for the express purpose ; in large meetings, where appeals to passion and imagination, telling home at once upon each indivi- dual, exaggerated by sympathy, are more effective and more gene- rally employed than accurate reasoning; in friendly meetings, to which people resort for the purpose of hearing their preconceived opinions better and more powerfully expressed than themselves can express them. The habit of taking a prominent part in such discus- sions (if they deserve the name,) is not exactly the best school for a useful and influential Member of Parliament. The new Free Trade Members, if they would be useful in their sphere of action, must remember that they are in an assembly which has business to transact, and peculiar forms of transacting that business : above all, they must remember that a large majority of the Members are pre- possessed against their views—violently prejudiced against them; while those to whom they are to look for support and sympathy, are not of the goodnatured class who, contented with cheering, allowed them to be the bellwethers of the flock, but jealous rivals for the honour of being leaders. Much tact—a judicious blending of firmness with concession—will be necessary in order to preserve discipline in their own band. And with regard to the House at large, great pains must be taken in mastering its forms' in order that they may be sure that what they have to say is so shaped and timed that no attempts to silence them on the pleas of irrelevancy to the discussion before the House, or interruption of its business, may be made with success. So far, too, they must study the tem- per of the House, as not to introduce irritating topics unnecessa- rily: they will be obliged frequently enough to say and do things that are displeasing—they must earn a title to insist upon these by their dispassionate tone, and by their deference to the feelings of the majority whenever it does not involve a sacrifice of principle. Their path to usefulness in the House, and through the House among the general public, is slow and laborious, but certain if dili- gently followed up. The maxims for their guidance are—never to say any thing the direct practical bearing of which is not clear ; to guard against transgressing the essential forms of business ; to time their motions and remarks judiciously ; to avoid those per- sonalities, whether of attack or defence, which only serve to lead away from the question; never to yield when they are certain that they are essentially right, and that what they have to urge is of int. portance, however unpalatable it may be to the majority. The Free-traders sent to Parliament by the exertions of the Free-trade interest exclusively, are numerous enough, and have among them men of talent and information enough, to take and keep their own ground—to follow out such a line of Parliamentary agitation of their question as has been hinted at. There is only one ground for doubting whether they will adopt it ; and this mistrust rests upon no knowledge of their individual characters, but upon observation of the general spirit of British society. The tone of the House of Commons is essentially exclusive and aristo- cratic: the lead is taken and conceded as a matter of course to small knots of politicians, who claim it in virtue of their aristocratic or official connexions. The tone of British society is essentially servile. The very bluster of independence, which we sometimes hear, is but an expression of conscious servility seeking to hide itself under big words, or at best, of anger at a man's want of power to get over that weakness. As a proof of this, it may be remarked that no steady, continuous expression of that sturdy, independent language, which the wealth and intelligence of the middle classes of this country enable and entitle them to assume, has ever yet been heard in the ten-pounder House of Commons. The middle-class Members sent there from the manufacturing districts have followed their respective aristocratic leaders with most sheep-like sub- mission. The bullying language regarding aristocrats, the favourite pabulum of out-door meetings, has been changed for a placid simper and whisper of acquiescence in the House of Commons. If there have been at times bursts of democratic declamation from these gentlemen, it has only been on occasions when some scion of nobi- lity, by setting the example, seemed to sanction the liberty ; and beyond empty words they have given no sign of superiority to a servile deference to caste. They have all been awed into submis- sion by civility or persiflage. The advocates of Free Trade must have strength of mind to feel that as legislators and representa- tives of the people they are in the House of Commons the equal of any man they meet there, or they never will be able to assert the cause of Free Trade efficiently in Parliament. They must cherish other feelings, adopt a different language, from what retail- dealers are wont to address to customers across a counter. They ought to be for the industrious middle classes of this age, what PYM, Hentrnms, and ELLsor were for the country gentlemen of theirs.
Parliament is now the field in which the Free Trade controversy can most advantageously be carried on. What can be done by out-doors agitation, without the aid of a simultaneous movement in the Legislature, has been done. What is lost to the cause by wanting the prestige of Government advocacy in the approaching discussion, is more than compensated by emancipation from the in- cumbrance of party politics and official insincerity. There is an ample and a noble field open for the Free-traders, if they possess that tranquil unaffected assurance of their own worth as men, and of the importance of their cause, which is requisite to enable them to hold the even tenour of their way in Parliament with Quaker-like composure and obstinacy, and that sagacity and power of conti- nuous labour which alone can give them weight in the House of Commons. This is no time for carrying their measures by a coup de main, or earning by a lucky hit an ephemeral popularity ; but it is as fair a time as ever existed for capable men commencing a new • career of national happiness and true honour, and achieving an un- dying reputation.
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