10 JANUARY 1852, Page 11

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE WANT OF 1852.

A Poi.cizcnaE could scarcely express more comprehensively his de- sire for an improved management of public affairs in England, than by wishing for a strong Government. That would involve; or cause, all special improvements ; as to the lack of it may be ascribed all the special deficiencies of the last few years. A strong Government is one which, having convictions, intelligence, and energy, secures thereby faithful Parliamentary support, and gene- ral confidence from the public. It is the fashion to excuse the inadequate performance of its duties by the Government, by re- peating that parties have been broken up, and that faith in party leaders has ceased to be a bond of union among political men. The old parties have broken up, because those who composed them rallied for the most part round measures rather than principles, and, the measures being carried, the combination has been rendered useless, and has indeed ceased to have any strength of cohesion by being without purpose I or, where it still holds any sway, it is through merely personal rather than political influences. More- over, faith in party leaders naturally shares the fate of party it- self; it either ceases altogether when they have held to carry the measure or measures their advocacy of which drew men to their banners, or it becomes a mere personal attachment, neces- sarily narrow in extent and weak as a political influence. This we believe to be the case with our present Ministers. What- ever services any of them have rendered in time past-and those services are not to be gainsaid-the public does not feel that they are likely to be efficient for the time to come ; feels, indeed, that they have long ceased to be so. Whether the Whig leaders ever thoroughly sympathized with popular progress, may perhaps be doubted : they passed a Reform Bill much more democratic than they intended, and the impetus of which they were not masters car- ried them on through a series of other measures ; but that impetus from without exhausted, what have they done since, but perpetuate family and clique arrangements, to the detriment of the public service and the stoppage of practical reforms ? We do not mean to deny that useful measures have been passed during their tenure of office,- as would have been the case during the tenure of any con- ceivable Ministry ; but they have no policy of their own, coherent, distinctive, and complete ; nothing that belongs to them as re- presentatives of a onoe great political party, but a pack of tradi- tional names and phrases, a considerable amount of official repul- siveness and impertinence, and a devouring rage for the stimu- lating diet of loaves and fishes for self and families. These, even combined with average abilities as Parliamentary debaters, are not sufficient qualifications fur the leaders of the English people in such times as ours. The times demand a government which has a policy, and can carry it out ; and be it remembered, that to have a policy is more than half-way towards carrying it out. We be- lieve there has not been any period within the memory of man at which a Ministry that knew its own mind and could em- body its intentions in properly-framed legislative measures would have met with less factious opposition, in Parliament or out of it. The great body of the English people is of one mind as to such questions as ask for solution at the hands of Ministers. The danger would rather be, in the case of a bold, energetic Mi- nister, that the Opposition, which the late Emperor Alexander thought so useful a national institution as to talk of establishing one in Russia, would be wanting altogether ; that his schemes would not be sufficiently tested by discussion in Parliament, ex- cept for the leading of the press. Free Trade and Protection having agreed to a truce, it would be difficult to name a question on which a Minister, thoroughly conversant with the facts on which he had to operate, and uniting that amount of boldness and prudence which England has a right to expect from her experienced statesmen, might not be secure of carrying. with him a vast pre- ponderance of the sense of the nation. It is the idlest of excuses for the leaders to say that the people would not follow. The poli- tical indifference has arisen from the imbecility of the leaders. The trumpet has sounded not at all or with an uncertain sound ; or worse still, the leaders halie fought for selfish ends, have mar- shalled the people to popular cries which have after all meant no- thing but place and pelf for the generals. Let but a genuine great man rise up in the political arena, and proclaim a genuine national cause, and he will be followed with the same ardour and zeal with which great men and great causes have always been followed, and often, in want of them, very little men and very paltry causes. Let but any man who has practical knowledge of affairs, and position to turn ideas into actions, show that he comprehends any one of the unsolved social problems that are accumulating round us, and that he can lead the nation to a solution, and we will answer that he shall not want followers or acclamations. It is evident that the revolutionary tern, initiated in 1789, has passed through theperiod in which the characteristic was the struggle of the individual to be free from all control of authority or guidance, and has passed on to that nobler character of longing for wise guides-of desire for true government. a Feeling the weight of too much liberty," human thought in all departments is recurring to a consciousness of limitation, of dependence, and is recognizing pride, conceit, and self-will, as the bane of knowledge and of progress. In politics as in everything else, men are crying, "Who will show us anygood r and the great need of our time is, that those who fill high political positions should either show themselves capable of grappling with the great questions of the day and of the age, or should give place

to those who can and will. A more perfect definition of anarchy could scarcely be given than that it consists in the accumulation of unsolved social problems,—in the existence amongst large masses of the population of misery, ignorance, and vice, in such excess as renders them dangerous and discontented members of the com- munity to which they are locally and historically attached. This is a condition to which the long continuance of an incapable Go- vernment may bring us before we be aware of it, and which, when we beoome conscious of it, may have gone so far as to be incurable. It takes a complex state of society like our own no such very long time, under a proper amount of slothful, blind, and selfish govern- ment, to reach that condition so finely epigrammatized by the Ro- man historian, "nee vitia nee remedia potest pati."