TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PATIENT POLICY.
BY " patience and forbearance," said Lord EBRINGTON at Ilfra- combe, the Reformers may yet succeed in keeping the Whigs in office. You must not expect. observed Mr. CHICHESTER on the same occasion, that any thing will be done in the way of reform : it is not credible that the Lords will allow the Ministers to do more in the next than in the last Parliament : but if the Liberals will only give Ministers united support, then the chief end of the Reform Act will be accomplished—the Whigs will be kept in, the Tories kept out. This, in effect, was the sum awl substance of the speeches of Lord EBRINGTON and Mr. CHICHESTER; this is what the Whig orators and journalists are telling the Liberals throughout the country. The reward of past, the inducement to future exertion, is simply the retention of the Whigs in office. For this, the Liberals are to suffer long and endure much: for this, organic reforms are to be abandoned, and practical improvements laid on the shelf.
Let it be granted that it is worth while, for the sole purpose of having Whigs at Court and in the Cabitict, to postpone measures of reform : is it possible that any set of politicians can still imagine that the way to counteract the Tories is to remain oa the defen- sive? What has been the MELBOURNE policy hitherto? "Suf- fering" has been the " badge of all" the Whigs--not for con- science' but for office' sake. In the plenitude of their patience and forbearance, they have endured defeat after defeat, insult upon insult, meekly folding their arms and never returning the blow. True, they have blustered. Lord 7bIELBOL-RNE talked big—boasted of his Comtfions' majority—and then allowed Lord LYNDHURST, in contemptuous security from the shadow of harm, to reduce his mighty promises to "nothing." What has been the result of this policy ? Read it in Lord EnntxGroeis moping speech, in Mr. CHICHESTER'S dismal forebodings, in the pamphlets and " leaders" of writing gentlemen who " speak the sentiments of men in oilice"—it has been defeat, as unexpected as severe. Well, then, would not a rational person say with the poet,
" .Melius fit patientia Quicquid carrigere est ?Klub,"
but that it is the part of a coward and a simpleton to submit without resistance to injury, and persevere in a policy which perpetuates mischief, instead of making a vigorous effint to obtain a remedy ? Such, however, is the Whig plan. The Reform-damping policy is still proclaimed from the Ministerial head-qeatters, and the rally-cry of the Liberals to adieu is still to be that which has been the harbinger of defeat.
Previous page
