TOPICS OF THE DAY.
INTERESTS.
THE Legislature is swayed, if not by interest, yet by Interests. King, Lords, and Commons, are after all but the officers to exe- cute the behests of the Interests, who reign paramount and di- vide the population among them. Vainly does the raw legislator dream, that once he has got the doorkeepers and the Sergeant- at-arms between him and the outer world, he can vote as his private judgment dictates : he is in "the House" merely to speak the will of the Interest or Interests which sent him thither and can remove him thence. When any great legislative measure is at issue, the question is less what do Sir ROBERT PEEL and Lord JOHN RUSSELL think, than how does this or 'tother great Interest stand affected. They are strong creatures these Interests, in the day of their power ; but, like all sublunary things—ennui excepted—they are mortal. They have their waxing and their waning ; and old In- terests fade and vanish, and new ones burst unexpectedly upon us, much after the fashion of dissolving-views. An Interest must be pretty strong—must have been for a considerable time growing to maturity—before it makes men conscious of its existence ; and the bare name of an Interest often continues a bugbear after it has ceased to be a real entity. Thus all of us have heard, thought, and talked of late about railways and their progress ; but it is only since the discussion upon Mr. GLADSTONE'S Railway Bill that we have become aware of the existence of a Railway Interest. Yet do we find, upon first acquaintance, this stranger to be a well-grown, firm-knit Interest. On the other hand, many—and especially the Colonial Office—persisted in believing that the defunct Anti- Slavery Interest still survived, till a late meeting at Exeter Hall re- vealed its resolution into its primary elements ; whereupon the said Colonial Office took heart of grace and shut the door in the face of sundry applicants who still assume the Interest's name and title. Two things are necessary to constitute an Interest—property, and a more or less generally useful end or aim. Sometimes the existence of the property originates the aim ; sometimes the aim collects the property. In Material Interests—such as the West India and Railway Interests—the property preexists ; and its preservation against impending danger or its application to a useful purpose is the aim. In Moral Interests—such as the Dissenting Interest in this country, or the Roman Catholic Interest in Ire- land—the property grows out of the means adopted to promote the aim. The members at first are bound by a purely spiritual tie ; but money is found to be necessary ; funds are raised and accumulate ; managers and agents are called into existence, who have a proprietary or quasi-proprietary motive to seek the perpe- tuation of the Interest. There are mixed Interests, too, in which a material is the nucleus to collect, or the animating spirit to set in motion, some seemingly purely philanthropic Interest. Of this class, the Landowners, when they profess to uphold the Corn-law on simply national grounds, offer one specimen ; and the League, with the manufacturing body giving it concentrated energy and perse- verance, is another.
Interests are the creatures of social circumstances. The Anti- Slavery Interest was begot by Negro Slavery, and destroyed by Negro Emancipation. The Dissenting Interest was created by the Act of Ejection in l 662,kept alive by the Test and Corporation Acts, and weakened by their repeal. The Roman Catholic Interest in Ireland was created by the penal laws, and strengthened by the half-measure of Emancipation. Possibly, a change in the Eccle- siastical organization of the country might destroy both. The Colonial Interest has been created, and has had its present cha- racter determined, by the accumulation of Colonial capital under the influence of our Navigation-laws and Protective system. The League Interest has been created by the accumulation of Manu- facturing capital under the same system. The American Revolu- tion for a time kept the Colonial Interest in abeyance ; and Free Trade would probably scatter the elements of the League, to re- unite in new combinations under new forms and names.
It is in vain for the rulers of a nation to contend against Inte- rests : they must govern for and by the preponderating Interests. Interests are the aggregation of inconsiderable individuals, by a na- tural law, into important and influential masses. In the political as in the physical world, it is the masses that tell. Interests are the materials out of which constitutions are to be made : they exist before them, and to a certain extent independently of them ; it is their growth or extinction that renders constitutional changes necessary. The new frame of government under HENRY the Seventh was rendered possible by the extinction of the old Barons Interest. The experiment of the Commonwealth failed because it overlooked the continued power of the Church Interest. The Go- vernment of the restored STUARTS was overthrown because it did not believe in the existence and power of the new Middle Class Interest.
Jealousy has been excited against Interests, as combinations against individuals on the one hand and against the public or ge- neral interests on the other. They have in their nature a tendency to this excess ; but this tendency is counteracted by the natural disposition of men to combine into Interests, giving rise to a mul- tiplicity which balance and limit each other. And it must be said in behalf of the more important Interests, that they are counter- agents to the provincial or clannish spirit, which leads men to club and cooperate on the mere principle of neighbourhood. Interests are the main agency by which many provinces are woven into a nation. It is therefore the great business of a statesman to study the In- terests of a country ; for these, more than the mere letter and forms of law, are its constitution. It behoves him to know what are the really existent Interests, that be may not lean for support upon a worn-out form, or struggle against a vigorous though un- recognized power. Interests are but names for associations of men and aggregations of property : it is the good of the men that is to be considered ; it is their property that renders them efficient allies, and capable of receiving as of giving assistance. When the altered circumstances of society have transferred men and means from a once-powerful to a new Interest, there is no more shame in aban- doning the old one than in quitting an untenantable house. To act otherwise is to sacrifice the substance for the shadow.
The existence or non-existence of Interests—their character and the means of wielding them—are to be learned by a process very different from that lately applied to the Railway Interest by Mr. GLADSTONE. He resolved it into capitalists seeking to make profit, and law-agents seeking to multiply business. These general terms might be applied to describe the constituent elements of every Interest. He ought, on the other hand, to have inquired— Has it numbers ? has it means ? has it an aim likely to keep its numbers together, or to conciliate the support of allies ? is its aim such as to make it probable that the application of funds to pro- mote it will long continue profitable ? These are the circumstances which give power and a long lease of it to an Interest. The states- man who thus analyzes those with which he has to deal, will know when a young Interest has worked its way into the pale of the con- stitution, like the Railway-owners ; when it may be safely consigned to the historian, like the Anti-Slavery agitators ; when it is about to receive important modifications in its form and pressure, like the Colonial Interest in the coming wra of Free Trade. Thus in- structed, he will neither err with the landlords on one hand, who will not believe in the power of the Manufacturing Interest speak- ing with the organ of the League, because it did not come in with WILLIAM the Conqueror ; nor with the men of Manchester, who fancy the Landed Interest effete and obsolete, because it does not elbow them on their 'change. A catalogue raisonnee of existing In- terests—Church, Dissenting, Humanitarian, Economical—Landed, Manufacturing, Colonial—Bank, Joint-stock Bank, Railway, Assur- ance Company, &c., with all their subdivisions—would be valuable, but far beyond the limits of a newspaper.
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