LORD STANLEY'S CONSERVATISM.
THE recess must be a very trying time for members of Parliament. They may very possibly never open their lips in the House, but they are, nevertheless, by virtue of their position, orators in the country. If the demand on them were confined to politics there would not be so much cause for commiseration, for a review of the session is, at all events, no harder than the hustings speech which is de rigeur at every election. But senators are expected to comprehend all sub- jects, and be equally eloquent on the advantages of high farming and scientific education, of Gothic architecture for churches and prize breeches for aged labourers. Of course, the inevitable duty is performed in many ways. Some men drone through it; others play the buffoon over it. Brilliant men talk gracefully round the subject, and thoughtful men, perhaps, make here and there a vigorous and original remark on a part of it. But the rarest thing of all is to find a speaker who has taken the trouble to reflect upon the whole of his subject, and gives his audience a mode- rate and consistent summary, in which nothing is omitted, exaggerated, or out of place. This is the task which Lord Stanley set himself to perform during the past week. Ho has been lecturing the farmers of North Lan- cashire in the capacity of President of their A gricultural Society, and, without being a practical farmer, has managed to deal with his subject in a manner equally interesting to agriculturists and the public. The point to which he ad- dressed himself was the possibility of small farming. North Lancashire seems to be still mainly in the hands of "small freeholders and hard-working tenant-farmers, whose families have lived on their laud from time immemorial." It is a population remarkable for industry, independence, and even some refinement. The houses are neat—with more than Eng- lish neatness, and the gardens are filled with flowers. But, amid all this prosperity and content Lord Stanley saw the "sad signs of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall." The laws of economy cannot be violated with impunity, and great as has been the progress of Lancashire dur- ing the last thirteen years, the fields aro still so small as to be overshadowed by the hedgerows, the rushes are so luxuriant that they might be mistaken for the staple crop of the soil, and the water stands on the land after the rain. The question to Lord Stanley's mind is, how can the small farmers compete with the men of capital ? The hedge- rows and the rushes, no doubt, aro in their own hands, but the complete drainage of a small allotment is often impossible. Steam, too, is rapidly being applied to the processes of agri- culture. The flail is a thing of the past ; the scythe and the sickle are losing ground ; and even the plough will soon be best sped by steam. How are the Lancashire yeomen to com- pete with farmers who can use costly implements of this sort? Lord Stanley's answer is contained in the word "association." " The occupiers must unite among themselves so as to secure the proper drainage outfall to carry off the water in time of flood." The farmers of a locality, " whether aided or not by their landlords," must " associate together " to obtain the more expensive implements, in case the companies which have been formed to supply them do not succeed. Nor can there be much doubt that Lord Stanley is in the right. Of what may be done by garden farming and liquid manure Belgium is a notorious example, but the light, friable, sandy loam of Belgium is peculiarly adapted for spade husbandry. " The damp, stiff soil" of Lancashire, on the contrary, re- quires a more vigorous treatment, and the means can only be found by association. Mr. Laing has borne witness to the ex- tent to which co-operation is carried in that land of small farms—Norway. In one valley he found water conveyed in troughs for forty miles. He pronounces the Norwegian farmers to be " far in advance" of us in respect of " working in concert, and keeping up establishments for the common benefit." But perhaps the most curious part of Lord Stanley's speech is the temper in which the subject is handled by the speaker. He deals with it merely on its merits. Personally he seems to have a predilection for small farms, but that does not blind him for a moment to the fact that small farms cannot be preserved unless they produce as much as large ones. More ardent minds would have endeavoured to stimulate their yeoman audience to action. Lord Stanley is content to solve the problem, to expose its conditions, and leave the parties concerned to profit by it, or not, at their own option. He seems to be so absorbed in watching the stream of human progress, so anxious to ascertain its direction, that he gladly leaves it to others to attempt to guide its course. Something, however, of this may be duo to the fact that on this, as on so many other subjects, he felt that he was not altogether in harmony with his party. At first sight, indeed, the question of the comparative advantage of large and small farms might seem to be one to which politics are entirely indifferent. Small farmers in all ages and in all parts of the world are the most conservative of men, and earned from Aristotle the praise of being of all classes " the least given to sedition." Therefore it might seem that the country gentlemen should be well disposed towards a system of agriculture which tends to multiply agricultural voters"; but, as a matter of fact, the supporters of tho system are commonly advanced Liberals. Small farms, it seems, seldom answer except in the hands of proprietors, and forty-shilling freeholders are apt to be independent. Large estates must be farmed by tenants, and land in the hands of tenants is most profitable when cultivated in considerable blocks. Thus the question resolves itself into that of the comparative advantage of large and small estates. If it would be for the benefit of the English people that our laws should cease to favour the aggregation of land in the hands of individuals, a deadly blow would have been struck at the aristocratic form of our society ; and the large.acred squires, Philistines, as Heine would have called them, obey but a natural instinct when they shrink from a doctrine which would, indeed, leave them for the present all the power that they now enjoy; but, ultimately, and at no remote period, threatens their very existence as a class.
Politics, in the proper sense of the word, are wisely banished from the dinners of agricultural societies, for it is the object of such associations to include persons of every shade of political feeling. But it is surely a strange criticism that enables the leading journal, because Lord Stanley on such an occasion made no allusion to party topics, to see in such a speech a proof of the speaker's attachment to a Con- servative policy. What may bo meant by an elaborate distinction between philosophical and democratic Liberalism, -which reckons Hume, and Bolingbroke, and Hobbes among Liberals, we are at a loss to imagine. If, as the drift of the whole article seems to prove, by Liberalism is meant Liberalism in politics, a man is not a philosophical Liberal merely because he is a bold thinker in metaphysics. If Hume and Hobbes were bold thinkers and Tories, Locke and Newton were bold thinkers and Whigs. Courts have, indeed, often been friendly to " speculation " in science, but the union of speculators on social or political subjects with despots has generally been about as long-lived as that of Frederic and Voltaire. Democratic Liberalism, we are told, tends to " change in the social order of things ;" philosophical Liberalism is "Conservative," and only wants "freedom of thought." If this be so, philosophical Liberalism is in no political sense Liberalism at all. There is, indeed, a real dis- tinction between Liberals, and we are not disposed to quarrel with the terms philosophical and democratic. But the true difference between them seems to be that the latter aim at the immediate transfer of power to a larger class than that which now enjoys it, while the former think that the non-electors are scarcely yet fit to exercise so important a trust. In this sense philosophical Liberals may be said to lean towards Conservatism; but the essence of Conservatism is the conviction that existing institutions are as nearly perfect as they are ever likely to be in a fallible world, and that any change is more likely to be for the worse than the better. With this convic- tion no Liberals have any sympathy, and if one class of them is called philosophical, it is because at the present moment they aim rather at social than political change. To destroy the last remains of social privilege, to introduce a wider spirit of toleration and an exacter sense of justice into the national mind, and by the spread of knowledge to inspire the non- electors with that patient sobriety of thought which makes men feel the responsibilities of power, these are the imme- diate objects of those who may be called philosophical Liberals—and Tories eye Lord Stanley with suspicion, because on all such subjects he speaks with no doubtful voice. Unquestionably to this extent he is in accord with his party, that he desires no immediate political change. The first Reform Bill did not come until the increase of wealth and the spread of education had emancipated the minds of the middle classes, and, in the words of Mr. Disraeli, the dis- pleasure of a peer of the realm had ceased to be sentence of death to a man. The same movement is rapidly raising the mechanics to the level of the middle classes. In every measure which tends to produce this result Lord Stanley feels with the Liberals ; and it will be strange if a man of his temper is not found eventually to be prepared for the result to which his policy inevitably leads. So long as his party leave him full liberty to think and speak as he pleases on these semi-social, semi-political questions, he is not likely to dissolve what are at once family and party ties. But the bulk of a Conservative party must always be obstructive. With obstructives Lord Stanley has, as they very well under- stand, no sympathy ; and though his position and character alike prevent him from having anything in common with the more enthusiastic Democrats, we shall be surprised if he does not find his position eventually untenable, and, under the gentle compulsion of events, bring the influence of the House of Stanley—when the course of nature shall have placed him at its head—back to the support of the Liberal cause.
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