" POLITICAL POWER "—WHERE IS IT ?
"A GREAT general !" Mr. Barclay described at Guildford, the other day—" a great general " of "a great party." Who is he ? who the party ?—The party, said Mr. Barclay, is the Protectionist; the general, is an imaginary person ; but not, he expressly said, Mr. Disraeli! However, it does not become any party very well to laugh at the speaker. As to the Protectionists, they have elected their man in West Surrey ; but what then? What can they do, beyond obstruction. Politically they are no party—it is gone ; but verily there is none other. Where are the Whigs ? the Radicals? the Tories? the Chartists ? There is no party, no effective body of politicians, no active power. The farmers cry out that they are " distressed," and threaten an appeal—to whom ? See what Mr. Boyes said of the landlords, last week, at Banbury. The Morning Chronicle taunts Sir George Grey with having no policy for next session. Lord Lincoln has gone abroad ; Sir Ro- bert Peel has retired from responsible statesmanship. We may laugh at Mr. Barclay's air-drawn " general " and leaderless "party," and yet we do not know where we are to look for better.
Men chatter at political meetings about " protection," "policy," " measures of next session," and other imaginary entities, as if the faculty of discussing realities had departed and politicians took no shame to themselves for talking about shadows. To hear them busy themselves about these nullities, one might think that the power of the nation had really gone—vanished for want of a war to exercise it, or dispersed for want of close boroughs to keep up the aristocratic ascendancy. And indeed, if the several classes that do possess some residue of power suffer their stagnation to continue, they are likely to expire of inanition. No power can be retained except by exercise. Yet the power which remains to several classes in the country is not contemptible, though it may differ from what it used to be. " Our old nobility," for instance, is not extinct; though it can- not subsist on the traditions of the past, any more than an indivi- dual duke can keep himself alive by eating over again the ances- tral feasts. They possess the elements of vast power—one entire Legislative Chamber, great influence in the other, broad lands, wealth, offices hereditary by right or by custom. But their posi- , tion is materially altered ; and unless they alter the exercise of their influence accordingly, no doubt, their power will ooze away. They cannot retain it as a nobility by behaving like tradesmen. At Berwick, the other day, Sir George Grey spoke of the Duke of Bedford as a singular instance of landlord liberality, because he acted for the benefit of his tenants without an eye to imme- diate " returns." Landlords no longer possess immense bands of retainers subsisting entirely at the cost of the feudal chief, and ready for his service, man and horse, at a moment's notice : the lord can no longer call into the field a host of his own, and must have another hold on the people. That might be. The farmer might be made to feel that the kindest, most accessible, and most unassuming of landlords, is the Peer; the Peer might be the tri- bune of the labouring people in all local affairs; the Chamber of Peers might signalize itself by real regard for the comfort and happiness of the poor and the lowly. Then the power of the Peers would make itself felt, not only as an example elevated above others less generous and less rich in resources, but as one practically bound up with the welfare of the many. The many would ardently uphold it as an "institution" for increasing their own welfare and the greatness of the country.
The gentry, whether the landed gentry of the country or the moneyed gentry of the towns, furnish most of the candidates for the Second Chamber ; they possess a share of land and wealth ; they are the upper section of " the employing classes": they have the power to follow a noble example in their relations with tenants and labourers; or they can give to commerce a liberal turn— stimulating production as much as they please by intelligent im- provements, but not wringing the last reluctant hour out of the workman, nor stinting him of the one precious shilling which "makes all the difference" in his wages. Immense might be the change in that direction, if the employing class set heartily to work in promoting improvements of machinery to ease the labour and augment the wages of the employed; and if it were done, it would win for the employers such facility of improvement and such willingness of labour as the world has not seen—except, to some degree, in the houses of very liberal and intelligent men, toiling to make an exception stand good against the general prac- tice. No doubt, "that would be Communism "; but it would en- able us to laugh at the idea of turbulencies like those of 1842.
The middle class is likewise an employing class, and so far might follow the example of the gentry. It is also the class mainly holding the Parliamentary franchise—a vast power, if in- telligently and conscientiously used. Suppose the middle class were to make a trial in what might be done by a good selection of Members? It might then govern the world. We have not got to that stage yet; but the middle class really is looking up from its till, and asking what it can do to oblige the country. The people, in the French sense of the word—the working and labouring classes—possess the immense preponderancy of phy- sical force, vitiated perhaps by confinement in the factory, but more informed than it used to be by education. The physical force of the people is seldom used except in fitful turbulence : it might almost dictate its own terms, if the people would attain to have one mind—would learn " to know its own mind."
One class drawn from all the rest possesses little political sta- tion, scarcely any political influence of a personal kind, but im- mense indirect influence—the professional class. It administers the intellectual offices, the sciences, the arts, and religion. It possesses the less influence, perhaps, because it has scarcely studied how to cultivate a collective influence ; or it might almost dictate terms to all the other classes, through themselves, by shaping their very will. To a degree it does so already; but the function is performed languidly, because, sooth to say, the professional classes are less governed than they have been at any period of the world by a religious desire to do good according to the de- velopment of the laws which each in his province has studied. The excessive pressure of competition forces men, or at least in- duces them, to think too absorbingly each about his worldly in- terest, too little of the function which such a class possesses in its generation of developing the higher faculties of man, not only for the present but for the future. Here is power enough latent in all these classes—opportunity enough—wealth of resources ; but all neglected, or faintly ex- ercised, for want of ideas sufficiently distinct or motives suf- ficiently enlarged and elevated. Such political energy as exists is chiefly directed, not to developing the power, or the positive and active faculties of the nation, but in jealously checking some kind of power,—in "curbing the power of the aristocracy," in " keeping down the power of turbulence," in pulling down "the power of the priesthood," or in suppressing the free development of religious opinion. All tends to the negative; every class will waive the permanent interests of its country and its kind for temporary and personal objects. Surely a time is approaching when we shall have a higher idea of common sense ?—when we shall not falter in doing what we think right, truly wise, and ul- timately beneficent, under the fear that to "the Greeks" of our day, the merely mechanical utilitarians, and " unidea'd," short- sighted, practicalists of the present, it may be " foolishness "2
Previous page
