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that is almost above the possibility of irrita- | delivered last session, have been cheered to ble despondency, an impassiveness that nev- the echo. No doubt there was a visible fluter fails under attack, and a fertility of in- ter about their heart-strings, a twitching of vention worthy of a demon or a god. But their nerves, a yearning of the still unmasall these qualities, rare as they are, and, tered instincts of the past to burst into a apart from the purposes to which they are generous cheer as he sat down; but there turned, intellectually admirable as they are, sat the pallid enigma of the new idolatry, are by no means qualities which it is at all with cold, impassive face, silently teaching desirable to be always contemplating with the lesson of self-mastery to his fascinated wonder and awe. For the most part they followers, and the natural instinct was subare dexterities, even the abstract respect for dued in a moment, and died away with the which cannot be cultivated without a con- last accent of this last appeal. Disraelistant lessening of respect for great and lib- worship will not give tact and subtlety, and eral aims, since admiration for the studied craft and counsel to the "brute votes" of manners and wonderful address of a good the House of Commons, but it will work that manager must inevitably slide into admira- revolution of nature which is said to be due tion for those happy strokes of mere skill in only to grace or its opposite. It will make which the object and purpose of the mancu- it easy to throw off the ties of conviction, vre is entirely lost sight of. But when these amusing to desert the faith of a life-time, qualities are worshipped by no means in the pleasant to outwit opponents by fairly outabstract, but in the very concrete case of bidding them; it will make political dishonMr. Disraeli himself, who combines with esty seem a department of æsthetics, and them a perfect unscrupulousness as to polit-political thimble-rig a polite study; it will ical principle, a readiness to ring the chan- elevate the invention of political machinery ges on Radicalism and Toryism, on FreeTrade and Protection, on "the Semitic principle" and the-man-of-the-world practice, precisely as is most conducive to his own fortunes as a statesman, the DisraeliFetishism which is dominating the imagina tion of the House of Commons will be seen to foster one of the most degrading of political idolatries. The enigmatic and inscrutable calm of the idol's face, the half-witted expression with which he foils the curiosity of the House when he is pressed for an answer which he wants time to meditate, the practised hesitation with which he announces what he had long determined on, the adroitness with which he prepares for a concession by giving notice of what looks like an aggression but which turns out, to the great disappointment of his enemies, to be only the bold face which a concession should put on, all these are personal accomplishments which it is but too easy, and exceedingly humiliating, to imitate, but in which imitators are absolutely certain not to succeed. But in one thing the votaries of the new Disraeli-worship will undoubtedly succeed. They will be able, it is already obvious indeed how able they are, to rid themselves as completely as their divinity of the superstitions of old convictions and life-long faiths. Nothing could be more striking than the Disraelite self-control with which his Tory devotees only on Monday night refrained from betraying their not yet extinct sympathy with Mr. Lowe's Conservatism, which, expressed as it was in language of wonderful force and dignity, would, if

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for breaking the fall of consciences into a
fine art, and make the successful use of such
machinery a service of honour. It is time
that our Parliament be reformed, if only the
new formation could be a regeneration. It
has steadily fallen in its ideal of statesman-
ship from its birth to its death. Lord John
Russell, no great political idol of ours,
was its first and best hero. Narrow, self-
important, and in many respects ungener-
ous, he had still the profoundest love of lib-
erty, and the highest earnestness of which
Whig politics were ever capable. To him
succeeded Sir Robert Peel, rather a great
minister than a great statesman, pompous
and ostentatious in manner, limited and.
shortsighted in his views, but acute in dis-
cerning the immediate signs of the times,
and capable of great personal sacrifices to
achieve what he felt the good of the coun-
try imperiously demanded. To him, again,
succeeded Lord Palmerston, with less of
moral principle than either of his predeces-
sors, flippant, careless of the higher aims of
politics, yet very tenacious of the few views
he was pleased to regard as principles, al-
ways ready to do battle against what he
thought un-English, and without a trace of
anything sinister in his character. And now
at last, in its days of decrepitude and de-
cay, Mr. Disraeli is the object of Parliamen-
tary worship, a statesman with ambiguity
for his chief attribute and artifice for the
method of his government, with political
principles which no one knows, unless it be
the principle of artfully propping aristocrat-
ic institutions on the suffrages of the most

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ignorant of the mob, with wonderful proficiency in theatrical counterfeits and also in amphitheatrical feats, such as riding with one foot on the back of each party,with, no doubt, splendid coolness and courage, which no one can imitate, and for the rest, made up of superficial and tricky cleverness, which every one can imitate quite sufficiently to humiliate himself. Aud such is the idol which Parliament is every day adoring with a deeper awe, and for which it deserts Mr. Gladstone, the highest-minded statesman of this generation, if not of any generation since the Restoration.

From the Spectator.

MR. LOWE'S LAST DELIVERANCE.

Ir Mr. Lowe were always as much in earnest as he is when denouncing democracy, he would, with all his drawbacks, yet be a great Parliamentary chief. There was something of moral as well as intellectual greatness in his attitude on Monday night. He stood up in his place alone and hopeless, with no party and no seconder, no supports save the strength of his own conviction and the power of his own brain, to do battle against both parties in the House of Commons, to argue down an accomplished fact, or if that might not be, to tell an unwilling audience, which hardly gave him a cheer, what manner of fact it had accomplished. If there is one personal victory for which Mr. Lowe cares, it is to elicit that roar of assent which follows a speaker who has expressed the unspoken thought of a great party in the House of Commons, an acknowledgement of power doubly valuable to one who does not see the faces of those whom he is moving, but in this instance he felt when he began and knew as he concluded that his sympathisers could not cheer. If there is one personal interest for which Mr. Lowe cares deeply it is the safety of his seat, and he had to render it questionable whether he should ever have a seat in the House of Commons again. He is not the man whom counties choose, and in every borough in England or Scotland he will be faced by a majority which he has declared unworthy of the privilege of electing him. Yet he stood up calmly, and for two hours poured out eloquent denunciations of the Revolution which a few minutes after he sat down was accepted in silence and without a division, by the men he had only last year led in a victorious defence against a far

milder assault. With his cardinal dogma that the suffrage is wide enough already, we have no sympathy whatever, in most of his vaticinations we have no confidence of any sort, but even in an enemy we honour high intellectual courage and personal disinterestedness. Mr. Lowe's speech did not change a vote, his argument perhaps did not deserve to change a vote, but he did one grand service to the House, he forced it to recognize the magnitude of the change which, partly from weariness, partly from hopefulness, partly from sheer stupidity, it has at last resolved to accomplish. He showed the members the truth, which from a widely different point of view we have been so constantly reiterating, that with the adoption of Household Suffrage the sovereignty of the British Empire passes away from the hands of the middle class into that of one far below them. The new power may be wiser or less wise, stronger or weaker, less selfish or more corrupt, but it will be new as the power which in 1832 superseded the Peerage in the direct government of the country. The House of Commons is the final executive as well as legislative authority in the British Empire, in India as in London. for the conduct of foreign affairs as for the imposition of parochial taxes. If it orders the conquest of China, or the remission of the sugar duties, the order must be, more or less, heartily obeyed. The Borough members return a clear working majority of the House, and the power of appointing those members passes under the Tory Bill to the non-electors men, that is, as Mr. Lowe clearly put it, whose politics statesmen do not know, whose ideas no man of all those who have voted for their enthronement even thinks himself able to understand. From the day the bill passes the working classes, skilled and unskilled equally, without selection, natural or other, are whenever they please to exert their authority our masters, ten times more absolute than the Peers ever were, for they lived in danger of revolt; five times as absolute as the middle-class, for they knew that in the last resort physical power lay elsewhere. Every decree will issue from the only class strong enough to resist oppression. If the Householders will to shut Hyde Park they can make short work of any Beales bold enough to threaten the railings. The House has changed by a vote, practically unanimous, the ultimate depositaries of power, changed them, as Mr. Lowe boldly told both parties, without wishing it, without designing it, without knowing aught of the new trustees. It intended, and right

ly intended to give skilful labour a full share | body who takes life in defence, or fancied deof power, and it has given all power over fence, of property. He is much more likely to unskilled labour, withont knowing what unskilled labour wants.

Mr. Lowe knows as little as the rest of us, and this was the weak point of an otherwise most effective and statesmanlike speech. His grand point is the impossibility of stating the political tendencies of the class below the skilled artizans, yet he immediately proceeded to state them as if he possessed the very knowledge he repudiated. Their tendency, he affirmed, would be under various forms to redistribute property, to upset "a state of society in which all evil things are given to them and all good things to others," to realize the wise old Hindoo proverb which tells us that power and money are never separated long. The social facts, he argues, will be in oonflict with the political facts, and will certainly be brought into accord. As we put it less eloquently a fortnight since, the uncomfortable will rule the comfortable, and will strive to become comfortable too. There is no harm in that end, if it be wisely pursued, but Mr. Lowe believes that it will be pursued unwisely, under the guidance of mere desires instead of thoughts. With what eyes, he asks, will the new constituencies look upon the 26,000,000l. a year raised for a Debt they did not contract, and for which they consider themselves morally irresponsible? Will they not take off all duties from their own luxuries tea, and sugar, tobacco and liquors, and place them upon realized property, in the form of a property-tax, or a graduated income-tax, or both? Will they not, as in Qeensland, clamour for inconvertible currency, and, as in America, strive to raise wages by enormous protective duties? These detailed prophecies these Sybilline leaves, devoted to the future of finance, seem to us a little feeble. It is quite clear the Householders will not do all these things together, for most of them are mutually destructive. They will not certainly repudiate the Debt, while putting it on the shoulders of the rich; they will not abolish indirect taxes, and put on a protective or prohibitory tariff. The Householders may be very silly, but they cannot be silly in two ways at once, and it is exceedingly doubtful if they will be silly in the direction of property rights at all. The very best representative of the new electors, indeed the only visible person who is like them at all, is the average British juryman, and in particular the juryman who sits on a coroner's inquest, and his tendency is towards a morbid appreciation of the sacredness of property. He will never convict any

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to enact savage laws against larceny, and grant extreme rights of self-defence, and pull down local taxation, as Mr. Hodskinson says the municipal voters of Stockport have done, than to make any attack upon property whatever. As to spirit duties, which Mr. Lowe says will be instantly abolished, our fear is that spirit-selling will be made, as in Massachusetts, a highly penal offence, as it certainly would be, in the great cities if the operatives had their own way. The danger is not that they will pillage anybody,— they are quite as honest as the small tradesmen who now hold power, but that they will in sheer ignorance demand "reforms" the effect of which will be to cripple industry; or expenditures in the shape of public works and relaxations of the Poor Law, the effect of which would be to compel the Haves to provide life annuities for the Havenots without any compensation. It is their ignorance which we dread, not their dishonesty, and in dreading it we have as few data as Mr. Lowe himself asserts any one else can boast. There, and not in any possible aberration about fiscal subjects, lies the solid and in our minds unanswerable objection to the adoption of household suffrage, unchecked and unchequered by new varieties of franchise. We are electing a new Cæsar, an absolute master, without knowing anything about him, except that if he chooses to be foolish wisdom must be silent in presence of irresistible physical force. Very likely he will not choose. If one thing was certain, a priori, in 1832, it was that the middleclass would be selfish in the matter of taxation, yet this is the thing in which its unsel fishness has been most of all conspicuous, it having deliberately lifted the most painful of all burdens, the income-tax, on to its own shoulders. The history of England for ages shows that there exists somewhere in the national character, in its retentive though slow brain, which accumulates so much and initiates so little, in its heart, with its strong sympathies with all nobleness that it can understand, some antiseptic, some remedy against every form and degree of blundering. The national character is good, and in the long run the householders can only represent the nation, or be in their turn superceded by the nation itself advancing to the front. Leaders in England have almost always been wiser and better than the led, and there is no a priori reason why outside the petty boroughs the householders should be worse than the middle class, and in the last resort it is not in the petty boroughs that physical power

strong that Englishmen fail to see the dif ficulty of acting upon it, are half inclined to believe that kings are raising and peoples enduring vast armaments out of mere wantonness or stupidity. That is not the case, and as the impression produces much mischief it may be as well to point out some few of the difficulties which impede, and we fear for years to come will impede, any serious reduction in the Armies of Europe.

lies. The householders of London do not electror to place the French like the Prussian bad men, and London is equal in strength Army beyond the reach of any Represento all the petty boroughs put together. We tative Body, has been got over, and it is are not afraid, as Mr. Lowe is, for the ulti- understood that the Chamber will vote the mate result of a measure which at all events increase of the minimum strength from 600,removes at once and forever the powerless- 000 to 800,000 men, the increase to comness of the Legislature "interests" had mence this year. In the teeth of such better not play with their new Sovereign "preparations for peace" projects of disbut we complain of this. The House of armament are worthless, except as expresCommons has, in defiance of all political sions of the public conviction that Europe principle and of its own convictions, without sacrifices too much of her energy, her popuany necessity, without any adequate consid-lation, and her treasure to security or ambieration, transferred all power to a single tion. That conviction is in England so class, and that the class most likely to be deceived by its pressing necessities, its Utopian hopes, and its unhappy ignorance. A change compared with which every other change is trivial, a radical change in the Constitution, has been sanctioned without willingness, without compulsion, and without knowledge. It is nonsense to talk of willingness, in the face of the debates of last year. It is folly to talk of compulsion when by enfranchising the great cities only we The nations of the Continent regard their could have bound the only formidable pop- armies exactly as we regard our Navy. ulation to our own side, Wallingford not Englishmen wish to be safe, and to be safe being exactly prepared to march on Lon- for reasons other than their neighbours' fordon; and as to knowledge, is there a mem- bearance, and they therefore keep up a ber in either House who even thinks he Navy sufficient to prevent any two navies knows what kind of House of Commons the from doing them serious harm. They could next one will be? If a measure so carried" Trust" Louis Napoleon just as easily as should work well, it will be a new proof how little human foresight can accomplish towards regulating the march of human affairs. At all events, whether he proves wise or foolish, pure or corrupt, energetic or sleepy, let us, at least, acknowlegde that on Monday night Great Britain elected a new Sovereign - by lot.

From The Spectator.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF DISARMAMENT.

Prussia could, and with great relief to the finances, but they think it more expedient and more honourable to render that trustfulness unnecessary. Consequently, they pay for their ships every year rather more than Prussia before her aggrandizement paid for her soldiers, and refuse to listen to humanitarian talk upon that subject with some asperity. The Continental peoples have just the same feeling, rational or irrational, and they make just the same calculation. They want armies numerous enough to drive out the troops of any power or combination of powers likely to invade them. The number which seems to them required REPORTS have been flying about Europe is usually a good many. Every Continenfor the last fortnight that Lord Stanley tal Power except Russia, which has other had submitted to the Lumexburg Confer- necessities, is at this moment, or has been ence a proposal for a general disarmament. recently, liable to be attacked by two powSo widely were they believed that the Prus-ers,- Austria by Prussia and Italy, France sian Government took the trouble to con- by Prussia and Italy, Prussia by Austria and tradict them, and every now and then some German or Belgian newspaper revives them with a certain vigour of asseveration. All this while Reuter flashes every day to all capitals a conclusive answer to the story, the progress which the Emperor Napoleon is making with his Bill for the reorganization of the French Army. The hitch which threatened the Bill, the desire of the Empe

France. An attack by even one power is a very terrible thing for the attacked nation, as Englishmen would know if a conqueror's soldier had ever been billeted on London, and all nations exposed to invasion are willing to make insurance against it the highest duty both upon their fortunes and their lives. The only point on which dispute is possible is the amount of insurance

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necessary, and most unfortunately for Eu-son, so many provinces to watch, and so rope there are two fixed data in that calcu- many cities to patrol, all which duties lation neither of which is at present suscep- Continental opinion expects of its rulers, tible of any change, the existence of one is by no means enormously strong, would nation which is compelled to keep up a vast but for the immense reserves be rather army for internal purposes, and of another weak. Were the Prussian Army like ours, which trains, drills, and provides material for unsupported that is by a drilled population, its whole people, Russia cannot disarm. it might, some fine day, in consequence of Her territory is so vast, it contains so many an agreement between Paris and St. Petershalf-civilized warrior races, its people are burg, find itself like a grain of corn between so little civilized, and its governing machine- two millstones; and such an agreement is ry is without the bayonet so feeble, that not impossible, can never, in the nature of with less than 600,000 men the empire would things, become impossible. At all events,. probably perish from incessant small shocks, it is not more impossible than an attack by attacks, émeutes, and rebellions. Without France on England, against which we have an immense garrison Poland would be lost. been providing for about five hundred years. Without an immense garrison the recent Of course, if the two nations would trust trouble between nobles and peasants would one another reductions would be possible, have resulted in an agrarian war spread but so would reductions in the British Naover a territory as large as the rest of Eu- vy if we could trust either France or Amerirope. Empires never die willingly, and ca. We ought, it may be, to do that, but Russia therefore remains armed, just as we we do not do it. On the contrary, whenremain armed in India. But every army ever we see our Navy growing weak we which includes many hundreds of thousands build and build in a way which, were our of men, can always spare a considerable neighbours afraid of maritime attack, would force for offensive purposes. say a fourth; produce incessant and very dangerous inand her neighbours must therefore always terpellations. As long as the French and be either ready to resist 150,000 Russians, American Navies exist, so long will Engor to follow Russian lead. Then Prussia land think them the data for her own caladopted in the past, under special neces- culations; as long as the Russian Army and sity, the system of arming the whole nation, the Prussian organization exist, so long will the recent campaign shows that the arma- Austria and France consider them the posment is efficient, and consequently her tulate in the argument. neigbours have to prepare to meet an entire nation in arms. Without such a force of its own, no nation bordering on Prussia could be tranquillized by any numerical reductions, for no reductions really impair the force at Frederick William's disposal. A hundred thousand men, less or more, actually round the colours make no difference, for every Prussian can be summoned, and every man can within a week appear in full fighting trim. Wherever the nation has been drilled a reduction of maétriel is the only efficacious one, and this Governments are most unwilling to make. They want the stores for defence. It is useless, for example, to have dragoons and no horses, artillery and no shells, and selling them off when collected is terribly thriftless work. America has done it, but then the United States is by nature placed beyond any reasonable probability of formidable invasion, and has, moreover, endless funds. Other powers must accumulate stores slowly, and once they have accumulated them, are most reluctant to sanction any flagrant waste of their resources or run any risk of being taken unprepared. Again, the Prussian regular Army, with so many fortresses to garri

Again, we habitually under-estimate the number of soldiers which Continental Governments really require for internal purposes. England, having a Government sure to obey the popular will when strongly or deliberately expressed, needs and maintains no garrison. If Birmingham, or Manchester, or Liverpool, or London were likely ever to resist authority as authority has been resisted in Paris, and Lyons, and Vienna, and Berlin, all the British Army at home would not be able to keep one city fairly down. The Continental Governments think it necessary, and, therefore, every city is garrisoned, every magistrate "supported" by troops, every strong post carefully maintained. Half the police duties are done by the Army, till the true analogy is not one between England and a Continental State, but between a Continental State and Ireland. What with soldiers and police, we keep up a force in Ireland equal to more than 1 per cent. of the population, and no Continental State, after deducting one service army, keeps very much more. Russia keeps less, and so does Italy, both of them countries supposed to be heavily burdened with unnecessary sol

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