TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHIG AND TORY.
ALL mortality is touching. For transitory beings, it is a melan- choly sight to view the gradual disappearance of anything, man or custom, work or institution. As the youthful Madame de Genlis wept to feel the declining strength of the mother that whipped her, so, no doubt, every Busby has had a sigh of tender regret for the youth that had been nipped in the flower of his flagellations. As even the stanchest Whig must have mourned departed Toryism, so the fading Radical sheds a tear over de- parting Whiggery. It is a melancholy thought, that perhaps we now look for the last time on a Whig Ministry. A degree of grandeur attaches to the idea of anything as the last of its kind. The blanketed and fantastic Red Indian, sole relic of his tribe, stalks the peopled desert with the sublimity of a living past. It is not at all to be presumed that the last of the human species will be, in himself, nearly so impressive a personage as Mrs. Shelley'a Last Man—nearly so bass and solemn as Calcott's vocal anticipa- tion of that individual ; it is not to be predicted negatively that any sort of man may not be the last—possibly a retail trader of London, or a shopman ; but even supposing that he were in the butter and cheese line, it is impossible to represent to one's self the last butterman, in the familiar tilted cart, going his rounds in a deserted world—the whole human race out of town—without a sense of awe, So also one views the end of the Tory party, and watches the encroachments of decrepitude on the Whig. The one event follows the other by natural consequence. The Mohican was born to war eternally upon the Sioux. Upon what can the Whig exist, except upon complaining of the Tory ? But the Tory race has vanished ; scarcely a specimen survives. Those that vaunt the name are spurious. "Young England " is no more a Tory party than the huge portmanteau on the stage, with a little boy in each leg, is a real elephant; and Young England itself has "gone out" as completely as last year's pantomime. Bentinck is a Tory, but under a metempsychosis which forbids identification ; it would be as difficult to recognize the "sic volo sic jubeo " Tory of the good old George the Third time in the modern persuasive Protectionist, as it was to know the manly Tiresias in the young lady that he grew to be. Sibthorp may be accounted a Tory, for want of a better ; but he is an indifferent specimen : the types of the race were open-handed, and would have laughed at his dread of good salaries. Your true Tory was a jolly paymaster, and would have spent his last guinea in a lump rather than be thought mean. Stanley is only a Whig over- soured. Ellenborough is the best Tory specimen in good preser- vation; Newcastle is a finer specimen, but a good deal passe. You see how rare the species is now : the black-cock will sur- vive it.
The Whig is becoming almost as difficult to find. Indeed, we scarcely know one complete at all points. Mr. Ward, the last spokesman for the party, at Sheffield—who would take credit for saving and spending in a breath, vaunting the proof of "efficiency and economy " which the present Government "would be able to give, when it should have completed those great works traced out for it by its predecessors "—who expected to be "tossed in a blanket" on going to Sheffield, for his Whiggery—Mr. Ward, we say, is a favourable specimen of the Ministry ; but he is not a Whig. His Whiggery is not his nature, but an infirmity, as whiteness is disease in the Negro. Lord Grey is an hereditary Whig, but he is of no party except himself. Lord Lansdowne is a real Whig, but the colour is much faded. Palmerston never was anything but an official. The only true Whig in full preserva- tion is the Premier, Lord John ; and he is used up. Without "Reform " to agitate, or Tory to antagonize, he is lost, and he can do nothing. He is as lost in the world as a ferret where there are no rats. He can scarcely get on from day to day. We quite understand the indulgence claimed for his Government by a distinguished contemporary, and thoroughly sympathize with the writer. The Examiner is commenting on Mr. Disraeli's objection to the Whig Ministry for remaining in office although it does not possess a majority in the House of Commons; the House being split into three minorities— "It comes to this, then, according to the view of Mr. Disraeli, that the country would be without any Government whatever in default of a commanding majority, in a state of opinion that does not allow of a commanding majority, dividing the public as it does into three parts. This being an inadmissible conclusion, and as
we can only be governed the best way we can, it follows that, full of difficulty and discouragement as the position of the Ministry undeniably is, it is nevertheless a necessity, and therefore a duty that it should remain at its post; and this brings us to the question whether a Government, surrounded with such difficulties and disconragements, for the existence of which it is not in any degree answerable, and from which it cannot with honour and duty fly, ought to be visited with all the bitterness of sarcasm for failures and miscarriages admissedly referable not to any deficiencies in the men, but to the peculiarity of their compulsory position? The answer to this question determines the sense or the irrationality, the fairness or the injustice, of Mr. Disraeli's elaborate attack.
"For the errors of a Government, impressed, as it were, to the severest service with scanty means, both justice and generosity would make large allowances— much larger, let us add, than are required in this case; for considering the diffi- culties this idinistry has had to meet, difficulties of a magnitude and complexity unmatched, and the disadvantages at which it has been placed through circum- stances not within its control, accurately described by Mr. Disraeli, it is only mar- vellous that the Government has acquitted itself as well as it has done, and that the catalogue of its omissions and errors has not been far longer and much graver. As the bad workman proverbially quarrels with his tools, so the good one makes the best of weak instruments; and if we find some lame and unfinished strokes, we do not condemn the hand so badly seconded, but infer from what is done what the capacity must be with better means for giving effect to its Skill." The sarcasm of this seeming defence is more delicate than Mr. Disraeli's, and more cutting : the plea to reconcile us to the Ministry as that odious thing "a necessity "—the concession of the vast deeds that Ministers would do if things were altogether different and Ministers were really masters of the situation— the hinted contrast with Peel, who converted minorities into majorities by a mastering policy—and the large allowance for men so helpless—is a sort of banter the more cutting for its re- fined and covert mode. "You, Disraeli," cries the Examiner, "would not do it to one of your own size ! " Lord John does rub on wonderfully, considering. It is as admirable to see the Whig of the Ante-Reform 83ra getting up such a tolerable imitation of government as it is to hear Braham at seventy and odd years sing the "Bay of Biscay." And we confess that we are in no hurry to bring the comedy to a hasty conclusion : let it be played out- let the last Whig Ministry have its harmless fling.
Nay, so glad should we be to prevent the utter extinction of anything, that we would preserve at least specimens of the ex- piring races, Whig and Tory, as white oxen are preserved at Chil- lingham and the aurochs is shielded from extinction in Russia. Obsolete classes are still represented in our state pageantry : the yeomanry of a past age survive in our "Beefeaters,' the chivalry in the hereditary Champion, Roman and ancient Briton in the Gog and Magog of the Lord Mayor's show. So we would have two state offices created to preserve the memory of the two races now expiring—" Her Majesty's Tory" and Her Majesty's Whig..." The first incumbents in those dignified posts might be the Duke of Newcastle and Lord John Russell. And when human represent- atives of the party altogether fail, a wicker Whig and Tory of the past may succeed Gog and Magog in the November pageant.
Previous page
