FRIENDSHIP'S PILLORY.
Is it prudent in the Examiner to insist on holding its clients the Whig Ministers up to public scrutiny week after week ? Why break the silence which it bespoke, and by its laborious apologies suggest the memory of their failures and sins ? Again, for the third week, the Examiner treats the Spectator as if ietook the lead in attacks on the Ministers such as to necessitate a defence: but it is the defence which corroborates and consummates the accusation. We state facts : the Examiner feels bound to reply with apologies, excuses, extenuations ; the apologies implying graver accusations than we have thought it necessary to extract from the facts.
We say that Ministers achieve little in Parliament : we are answered by boasts of a certain wholesale bill-making. The Ex aminer confesses that " the initiative of legislation must mainly lie with the Government for the time being," which "should keep an attentive eye upon social evils, and propose remedies for them in due time, without waiting to be pushed forward by exter- nal pressure." So say we; but we have objected that Ministers, in lieu of bringing forward measures in due time, delay them— like the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill. The general purpose of that measure was indicated at the end of 1846; it was distinctly expounded in 1847 ; it was taken up, to be spoiled by official handling, in 1848 ; Sir Robert Peel suggested it in 1849, as part of a great regenerative scheme and then it was seriously con-
sidered by the Whigs. But scheme, not only delay—when their measures are advanced, it is with so little care that the bills are really shaped in Parliament, and fail at last : this year it was necessary to bring in a second Encumbered Estates Bill to make good the wholly inoperative bill of last year : and now, Commis- sioners are appointed who inspire no confidence, but whom it is difficult to criticize because they are unknown. We complain that crude bills are passed in this wholesale way, in such numbers and in so imperfect a state that it is impossible to ascertain their relation to the context of the statute-book, and so vicious in themselves that they cannot work. The Examiner answers, that " the extent to which our legislation has been recast during the last twenty or twenty-five years is marvellous": "it is with difficulty that the most laborious and accurate lawyers can keep pace with the rapidity of modern legislation." This goes beyond our censure, yet we cannot deny it; only, if you will talk about these things, we must add, let us have fewer bills, more justly fitted to the context of the statute-book, and more effective.
To qualify himself for the defence of his clients, our contempo- rary tries to think and speak down to their level, and he affects to understand nothing above their conduct. He complains that we require the Government to be constantly in a state of intense action.
"Every session is to bring forward a new series of grand and comprehensive measures; a public man wlio has not always an organic law or a new code, or a new scheme of Silence, or a plan of universal peace or universal war, ready to launch at a moment's notice, is a mere administrator,' a me re executive minister; capable of conducting perhaps the business of a department, but wholly incapable of soaring into the lofty regions of 'statesmanship.' According to this theory, society is to be constantly undergoing a process of renovation, by a series of mighty
changes, which is never to cease These measures are to establish uniform- ity, to beat down reluctant minorities by the aid of the popular will, and to open a new Lora of civilization."
All this is put as if it were the doctrine of the Spectator: our readers will recognize it as the very reverse of our expressed opinions. We have expressly shown that the popular will can- not govern ; that minorities do govern ; and that change is not desirable for the sake of change. It is the process of incessant tinkering that we condemn : change not unless the change is neces- sary, and then let it be effectual. The theory which the Exami- ner looks upon with " the utmost horror and alarm," appears to us, who are not subject to such violent emotions, only silly. We de- mand no " grand " measures, but only such as are necessary; we desire nothing for " stage effect," but despise a practice of intro- ducing measures for stage effect, like Appropriation-clauses or Jew Bills to be cast aside with other "properties," or of shadowing forth others in vague boastful terms, so that they shall pass for larger than they are : we denounce prevarication, and require the measures of a responsible Ministry to be specific, clearly defined, and resolutely supported by their authors. The Whig apologist is obliged not to know what statesman- ship is. The words " administrator," " legislation," and " states- manship" are quoted with an air of surprise, as if the writer were not cognizant of any distinction between the things. "Ati" ministration,' as everybody knows except a critic whose as- tonishment is pleased to betray "the effect of novelty upon igno- rance," is the superintendence of laws already set down; eg lation" is the making of laws upon settled conclusions ; but "statesmanship" must take both those branches of government within its scope—must connect the past and the future—must guide a nation throughout its inevitable changes—must know the Wants and capacities of a people, fulfil the needs and exercise the faculties of that people. Those are the obvious functions of statesmanship : have the Whig Ministers shown a knowledge of the needs and capacities of the English people ? On the con- trary, they learned from Cobden and Peel how the English needed and could carry that which the chosen Whig chief pronounced to be "the maddest project that ever entered the brain of man": they could only learn the needs of the people through that pressure from without which the Examiner now condemns, though it was once used to help Ministers in the "pear-ripening" and " Peer- bombarding " processes : the direct pressure on them ceasing, the need, they think, has ceased. They know nothing of themselves, do nothing. The two most serious charges against the Whig Ministers have been, prevarication, and infraction of the established rule of Ministerial responsibility : the Examiner says nothing of these charges. His silence suffers judgment to go by default. Minis- ters evade responsibility by systematic equivocation in the de- scription of their own measures, and by holding office on a servile tenure. Another Ministerial advocate, the Globe, in an able and suggestive defence of Lord Palms' ston, reminds us of the obligations imposed upon a British Minister by his tenure of office ; but in a manner that a ars to us to misconceive the case. It is true that a Mitts.. Minister is bound to defer to public opinion; but it is in the sense of considering his tenure of place to depend on his concur- rence with the opinion of the Parliamentary majority, and not that of compromising his own opinions. Ministers who have continued to hold office against the opinion of the majority have been justly held up to censure as joining in a "cabal,' and those who have consented to administer a policy against their own opinion have incurred contempt. Pitt evidently felt the utmost pain in complying with the commands of his " Royal Master " against his own conviction ; and down to our own day, Sir Robert Peel has maintained the rule by which a Minister holds office only on his own terms. The theory of the traditional rule is, that if a Minister cannot obtain a majority to sanction his own policy, he is disqualified from office ; and that if the majority dictates a po- licy not his, not he but some other man who shares the conviction of that policy is the proper one to administer it. If no longer with his head, a Minister should be responsible for his successful administration with his honour. Lord John Russell's Cabinet has been the one to break down that just and sensible rule.
The Globe thinks that Lord Palmerston must wait on the fluc- tuating opinion of the public; and that the public ought to strengthen his hands, because he "keeps out the Tory," Lord Aberdeen, who is not " Liberal": also, that Lord Palmerston, who has done so much, might do more. The presumed compact appears to us to be equally unworthy of Lord Palmerston and the public, both in its terms and object. It is prevarication. If Lord Palmerston is a statesman so desirable for the English people, let him show himself as he is, in his full strength and splendour, and assuredly the English public will not reject him. John Bull, for all his Liberalism, likes a strong Minister; he likes to be led. The change, too, would be recommended just now by all the charm of variety. Our Whig contemporary asks what, except Lord Aberdeen's foreign policy, we would substitute for the pre- sent Foreign Secretary's 7—On the showing of his apologist, we might reply that we would substitute Lord Palmerston's own policy.
Apply to the Ministerial plan of compromise and equivocation the test of success. We reproach it with its failure. The Ex- aminer boasts hugely of the Navigation Bill, but confesses that the Navigation-law had already been thoroughly " riddled " by infractions, so that there was little to achieve in abolishing it : that little has not been done ; and yet the bill, for which credit is taken in 1849, was but an arrear from 1848. In like manner, the Encumbered Estates Bill, hinted to be a slice of the Peel plan, is but a correction of the bill of 1848. Ministers have not done what they set down as necessary to be done—they have not gain- ed credit by their professions and pretences : they have not suc- ceeded either in effecting reforms or in deceiving the public by personating reformers ; honest or dishonest, they fail. In Fo- reign politics, they countenance the independence of Sicily from the "King of Naples," and nothing comes of that indecorous B!cp, except that Liberal Palmerston is exhibited as the con- tinuator of Tory Castlereagh. In Colonial policy there is uni- versal failure. Mr. Hawes took a long-dated credit for Lord Grey's Australian "Constitution"—the bill is withdrawn with- out discussion. Mr. Labouchere proposed the Navigation Bill to conciliate Canada—Canada is disaffected, contemns his Navigation Bill, and calls for the status quo. Lord Grey promised the Cape labour-recruits in the shape of "exiles," with a free constitution—the Cape, from Boer up to Gover- nor, rebels against making the colony a penal settlement, and the free constitution " is thrown in Lord Grey's face. Everywhere, Ministers fail to do what they professedly intend, and find them- selves doing what they did not mean. That is not mastery of public affairs, or "statesmanship." Even in details, the feeble- ness of equivocation and compromise has the same results—they are masters of nothing, not even of themselves, but the sport of every circumstance : they propose a bill, and carry an "act" wholly unlike the original draught; they begin the session in Gae way and end it in one wholly unforeseen : they evade per- sonal responsibility, but not collective defeat nor political disgrace. They enter office to lose, not gain influence. Nobody complains that they are too powerful; everybody spares them ; they are their own destroyers. In universal discredit, throughout every province of the empire, they reap the reward of prevarication ; the memory of their own professions is an opprobrium ; the defence volunteered by their partisans is a calamity ; their repose is the forbearing silence to which their weekly advocate had better leave them.
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