THE EUTHANASIA OF TORYISM.
TORD SALISBURY seemed in his speech to the Prim- 4 rose League on Wednesday to regard the Tory party as having just passed through a new birth. The Primrose League he treated as having restored it almost as effectually to its youth as Medea proposed to restore Pelias to youth by the magic of her witch cauldron. He regarded the appeal to those deeper feelings with which women regard the traditional and reverential heroisms of private life, as securing to Tory principles quite a new lease of power in the future. But when he came to examine the practical proposals of his own party there was no trace, that we can find, of the old Toryism. Indeed, the anonymous writer of the leading paper in the Fortnightly Review bewails the gradual euthanasia of Toryism in Opportunism as all but an accomplished fact, though he holds out some faint hope at the close of his paper that another Toryism may arise if Tories will only be patient, watchful, and true to themselves.
But what is Toryism ? We should have said that it consisted essentially in the government of the ignorant and uncultivated by the wise and refined, and that, too, even by the help of organised force in case of any collision arising between the masses and the aristocracy of birth and knowledge. Of this kind of Toryism we may be sure that the bestowal of the suffrage on the householders, both in town and country, has made an end. The people will not, and do not, vote for any party who treat popular rights and privileges with contempt, directly the traditions and tastes of a privi- leged class come into collision with their own. Look at the feeling with which the new electorate regard such questions as pensions for the junior members of the Royal Family, even when one of them has spent a long life in official labour like the present Duke of Cambridge. Does that look like the rejuvenescence of Toryism? Again, look at such a question as the opening of careers,—military as well as political,—to the working man. Does that look at all like the rejuvenescence of Toryism ? To our mind the old Toryism is really ex- tinct. And the new Toryism, as the Primrose League has revived it, is little more than the faintest possible shadow of the old,—the Toryism of popular taste, as distinguished from the Toryism of class privilege. We are far from denying that there are elements of aspiration in the minds of the people which may and do give rise to a tone of feeling very hostile, as well as very superior, to the old, vulgar, grasping Radicalism. For instance, religious con- victions of any deep kind are very apt to associate them- selves with hearty dislike of the cry for Disestablishment, and so far as these religious feelings can be revived in the minds of the people there will be a new dawn of something faintly resembling the old Toryism. The throne, again, is still popular with the English people, and even the names of the old aristocratic institutions. So long as the House of Lords does not use its power to affront the democracy, but only to baulk a vulgar and hasty kind of Radicalism of its formulated demands, the House of Lords may retain its influence with the English people; once let the people get the idea that the Upper ouse grudges the poor their chance of bettering their position in the world, whether it be true or not,—and even if it be the instinct of statesmen and not at all the selfish desire to cling to the privileges of class that produces the impression,—and the power of the House of Lords will become a mere broken reed. The Toryism which still has a certain influence over the minds of the multitude, is only that afterglow of the old creed, which diffuses a faintsplendourover the ancient objects of political reverence, without really denying to the new democracy any one of its cherished gains.
One of the main complaints of the Tory who gazes back with sad eyes on the Toryism of the past, is that so many of the modern Tories will have nothing to say to the party of religious principle. The disputant in the Fortnightly Review, for example, reproaches the Moderates of London who would not support either Mr. Diggle or Mr. Athelstan Riley in the late School Board contest, but advocated adhering to the old compromise of 1870, and not disturbing that settlement by new demands. But our elegist forgets that one separate spring of the old Toryism was a profound scepticism, such as Gibbon's, for example, which really held that there was no guarantee for human happiness except enlightened prudence, and that you can have no worse guide in the great tangle of human affairs than a religious enthusiasm which is sure to run great risks in reliance on that supernatural aid in which in the last extremity it confides. Doubtless many of those London Moderates who deserted the dogmatic party in the London School Board contro- versy, were really tepid sceptics who thought any com- promise with the religious party that would stop their mouths and prevent them from going the full length of their doctrinal tether, the best possible guarantee against a most dangerous kind of credulity. Now this tepid Toryism which springs from a profound fear of the explosive elements in human nature, and is always eager for political alteratives and sedatives to human enthusiasms, is gone for ever. There is no attraction for democracy in the doctrines which rest wholly on distrust of democracy and even of human nature itself. That is one of the kinds of Toryism which has lost all hold of modern politics. We do not know which would be the less likely to win the favour of the masses of the people, a modern Coriolanus who expresses frankly his scorn for "the residuum," or a modern Sadducee who discourages and throws cold water on all enthusiasm of belief. We imagine that the latter would attract even less support than the former.
Toryism of any true kind, Toryism which professes to drill the masses of the people into submission to the will of the more refined and educated class, is gone for ever. Parliament being the real ruler of the nation, an opinion which cannot get itself any true voice in Parliament, cannot get itself any true influence over the nation's policy. And it is only in an attempt to revive the nation's faith in popular traditions and beliefs which appeal to the heart of the people, that a shadowy kind of Toryism can still hope to keep its head above water. But such a shadowy kind of Toryism must necessarily be very oppor- tunist; and as a matter of fact, so it proves. It clings to great leaders whose names have a, magic in them, but who now never venture to appeal to caste-feeling. It avails itself of every wave of religious emotion which restores a certain amount of faith in great institutions. It appeals to fine tastes and the traditional dislike of vulgar and pretentious boastfulness. And so it sometimes wins a great victory-, as it did for the stability of the Union, which had both common-sense and a great political tradition at its back. But Toryism of the old caste kind, the Toryism which asserts the right of the educated and rich to dictate to the ignorant and poor,—the Toryism which is founded on fear of the people and not on faith in the people,—the Toryism which leans on the Army and denounces the fickleness of democracy,—is as extinct as the moa or the ornithorhyncus. There is still room for that belief in ancient institutions which comes of good sense and long habit, if it be not pressed to extremes, but Tories can only conquer, if they are careful Opportunists as well, and avail themselves of every passing wind of taste and doctrine which tells in favour of the past and against the tyranny of modern innovations.
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