TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.
THOUGH the ceremonies of prorogation and dissolution remain for performance, the actual business of the session, and the ex- istence of Lord MELBOURNE'S Parliament, are now ended: with this Parliament also, in all likelihood, ends the rule of what is called the Reform party ; and the progress of improvement will depend very much upon the new ground about to be occupied by public men, and less than ever upon mere party arrangements. This is a natural occasion for reviewing the space over which we have passed to our present position, in a course where it has fallen to our lot to take a peculiar line ; a line more prominent than pleasant, but one which, were the whole road to be travelled over again without companions, we must still persevere in—or forsake Tama, which we place before all things. When, in May 1836, the Reform Ministry induced the Reformed House of Commons to submit to the House of Lords on the great political question of that day, the Spectator protested against their course, and predicted their eventual downfal, however long it might be postponed for Tory convenience, or retarded (as it has really been) by a succession of lucky accidents impossible to fore- see. We protested against their course, because their error—if in- deed it were not treachery in favour of the aristocratic " order "— was upon a vital point, and where no power of speech or address upon subordinate matters could avail to serve them. We predicted their downfal, because their forces consisted of various parties, with various opinions, only held together by success ; and because their rested on a belief in their sincerity, which submission to power adversaries was sure to shake. On the other hand, the organized bands of their opponents had a vis inertia, which if once successful in repelling attack, was certain to gain strength by time, and gather up much of the power which a movement, triumphantly checked, was as sure of losing. If the Ministry had no means of overcoming the obstruction in their path, we counselled resigna- tion : first, because it was the regular course, it being alike con- trary to the spirit of our constitution and the common sense of' mankind in the conduct of affairs to take responsibility without power ; secondly, because it was the right and true course, both seeming and being honest ; lastly, it was the prudent course. Its boldness would have dispelled suspicion and have restored courage, whilst our Tory opponents must have succumbed, and finally; or have taken office against a party whose strength had already defeated them, and with the odium of coming in in oppo- sition to the fair working of the then cherished Reform Act. The subsequent Fabian policy of the Conservative leaders, and the posi- tive refusal of PEEL to become Minister when he was nominated, (for though the Bedchamber appointments was a constitutional point, it was not a point that would have been raised by ready men,) show that even upon the narrowest views of selfishness the honest was the most profitable course.
When the Ministry passed the time of resignation by, we ceased to dwell upon it, and immediately suggested "open questions" ; not as an end to give the Radicals a share of power, (which, how- ever, they were fairly entitled to claim,) but as a means of uniting the Liberal party preparatory to an endeavour at recovering their lost ground and taking up a new position. For the opinions and suggestions then put forth, the Spectator was assailed with all the weapons that the office-holders and their partisans could employ against us—private threats and detraction, as well as open abuse and the more guarded attack in the guise of argument. And whilst our views were vituperated, our predictions were met by counter-prophecies, each in succes- sion promising some vague future good. It was said, that to re- sign would "let in the Tories" ; but we were assured, in the language of NAPOLEON, that the pear would be ripe by Easter, (1837,) when a dissolution would take place on the question of Peerage Reform. How this delusion was dispelled it is needless to dwell upon : willingly dragged through a long dirty way, the Re- formed Commons do not stand before the country one whit better than the Lords for honesty and liberality, and a great deal worse as regards intellect, powers of business and debate, and a manly directness in the expression of opinion. When the King's death, in the middle of the session of 1837, saved the Ministry from the destruction impending over them, (so rapidly in a little year had they approached their doom,) Reformers were assured that halcyon days were at hand ; all was now " right" ; the Court was with them, and something grand was to be done now since the obstruction from the prejudices of the Crown was removed. The Spectator said, if any good was to follow the accession of the Queen, the Liberal interest must have something to fight for: some movement in ad- vance must be announced, to dissipate apathy and unite Reformers, or the Tories would strengthen themselves in the coming election. The answer to us was an imputation of motives : the answer of the Whigs was Lord Joint RUSSELL'S Stroud address and Lord DURHAM'S Bowlby letter ; and the answer of the People was a diminished majority. As soon as the elections were over, we esti- mated the sure majority of Government at 14, exclusive of about as many Doubtfuls; and, saying that such a majority was useless to moot questions of organic change, we suggested, that if the Ministers really desired to benefit the people, they should form and mature a series of " practical measures." Looking at the past, we feared that they would not; and predicted a government by a Conservative Opposi- tion,—a state of things in which the powerless Whigs should hold place on Tory sufferance, upon the principle of attempting little and doing nothing, till time and events should still further disunite and dispirit the Liberal party and increase the Tory strength, and then, when the Government was ripe for the Conservatives, the Whigs would be expelled without ceremony. For these opinions also we were abused : the Whigs, by some unknown process, at some future period, were all (it was prophesied) to become con- verts to the " Ballot " and " Further Reform" ; and both were to triumph gloriously. How this delusion has terminated need not be stated. The Ballot and Suffrage-extension may serve a hard- bound candidate to fill up a period, but they have ceased to be questions of practical hope : the Ballot has not even been discussed of late ; its leading advocate is relieved from the representation of London, and the great Anti-Ballot Lord is taken as a can- didate in his place.
Passing over the Civil List, and questions of Finance, (though the Spectator in 1838 called attention to the decliniug state of the revenue, and urged the necessity of a revisal of our fiscal system,) the next epochs of the Whig Decline and Fall were the abandon- ment of the Appropriation-clause and the resignation on the Ja- maica Bill. Reinstated by the predilections of the Sovereign, a backstairs intrigue, and the aversion of PEEL to responsible office, a delusion was next spread as to something wonderful that was to come of "open questions." As no reliance could be placed in the intentions of the Ministry, and the day for open questions had gone by since neither popular confidence nor voting strength could be gained by them, we regarded them with indifference : and the event justified the scepticism. For before the Government could meet Parliament, it had to be " reconstructed " ; and Liberals of un- questioned honesty, and of what is called the " best information," went about boasting of great things to be done by " reconstruc- tion." As it was obvious that the essential element of Parlia- mentary strength was still wanting, we said so ; and though the fact of two important defeats in one week supported the opinion, the Spectator was again abused for not having given in to this delusion, Since then, (March 1840,) the last stage of our prediction of 1837 has been reached : we have had Whigs in place, but the power of controlling and shaping the Government has been entirely in the hands of the Conservative Opposition. Every question, whether peculiarly Whig or peculiarly Radical, has been so worn as to drop of itself: Irish Appropriation, Irish Corpo- ration, Ballot, Suffrage-extension, and a long list of etceteras, are " down among the dead men," or settled on more Tory terms than the Tories could have gotten. The very power of holding their own—of resisting Tory aggressions—had departed. Every device, every delusion, was exhausted ; and it became necessary to conjure up some new mirage in the political desert, to lure along the disconcerted followers with the hope of a promised land teeming with " cheap bread," " cheap sugar," and " cheap wood." And in raising this political phantasmagoria, the very error we had ex pressly warned them against in January last, when we published the Supplement on the Import-duties, was fallen into—the error of hasty, ill-considered, and partial plans, which should unite all the interests in opposition, without having sufficient breadth and mas- tery to dissipate distrust of trick or heartily to rouse the entire public.
So much for the past. The results of the coming future are less easily foreseen than were the former, because they in a measure depend upon the result of many hundred distinct and individual actions—upon many hundred elections, determined to some extent by accidents, by local prejudices, and by personal predilections, influence, and character. But there are certain shapes in which the political future can only appear, and these may be determined and considered. The main question, therefore, is—Who is to have the majority ? what is that majority likely to be? and what results will follow?
A majority to affirm the principle of the Ministerial "fixed duty" is utterly out of the question. If by unimaginable luck the Whigs got a " measuring-cast" majority for general support, or rather the possibility of having a majority on a want-of-confidence division, which would render the Tory leaders averse to office, the question of the Corn-laws would be staved off by all the much-ado-about- nothing tricks in which the Whigs are adepts. When brought for- ward, it would be distinctly announced that the amount of the duty was a detail, and the principle of the duty not a vital question ; and the game of the last few years, government by a Conservative Opposition, would be played over again, though ended in less time. But we still entertain the opinion we expressed when the pro- bability of a dissolution first became clear—that the gain will be on the Conservative side. And we entertain this opinion because we cannot see any facts that even tend to disprove it. It is possible that, in the few great towns now returning Tories,. Whigs may succeed; bht the only places we can specifically point to as in this category, are Liverpool and Nottingham; and we cannot undertake in either case to say that Whig success is sure. On the other hand, they may lose one or two in the City; some of the other Metropolitan districts, as well as Middle- sex, are to be contested ; so are Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, with the chance in some of them of Conser- vative gain. It is easy to rail at persons stating a disagreeable fact ; but if the probabilities are that the Whigs will lose some- thing in their strongest holds, where is their majority to come from? In the counties they are sure to lose : they have already lost South Lincolnshire without a contest. In the smaller boroughs they are likely to lose: Reading, for example, seems gone; one of the Whig organs tells us, " the Liberal cause is in a distracted state here.' They cannot gain in Scotland. In Ireland, it is to be inferred the gain will be on the Conservative side, from the alleged state of the registry, the feeling in that country against the competition of foreign corn, the Repeal pranks of O'CoNstum., and the precautions against a Dublin defeat which even he is said to be taking. We therefore infer that PEEL will have a majo- rity. This may be an unpalatable or an erroneous inference ; but the data on which it is founded are presented to the reader : they cannot be changed by denying them or vituperating us,—any more than the result could be influenced by the Spectator puffing forth an easy, off-hand, climax-rising " calculation, ' like the fol- lowing from an Irish paper:
"The calculation generally made is, that the Queen will have a majority of 50 in the new Parliament. We shall be eery much disappointed if it he not nearer 70. Indeed we should not be surprised at all if it were upwards of a hundred."—Dublin Evening Post.
The amount of the Conservative majority it is impossible yet to calculate : the effects of a large or a small majority may be esti- mated with more certainty ; and, paradoxical as it may sound, a small working majority might be better for PEEL than a larger one. The principles of his party do not require him to move; he is not like the Whigs, the first condition of whose existence was movement or the profession of movement : it is sufficient for Con- servative purposes, and what is more, for Conservative principles, if he do nothing but carry on the government. A small majority will keep his own party in order, by operating upon their fears. Mr. GLADSTONE will have to postpone the A postolical succession ; those who wish for Church-extension must wait for it ; and even the deep-dyed Orangeman must cover himself with a cloak. And let those gentlemen who have been so drone to justify Whigs by Tory examples, remember the difference of natures, and bear in mind that this suppression of opinions among members of a party, which was the disgrace of Liberals and one cause of their decline, will be Tory strength. However small his Commons majority, he can carry his measures through the Lords if he only have a majority of one : and its very scantiness will be a reason to supporters for the Government yielding those things it may be inclined to grant,— parks and local improvements, and such like amenities of Toryism, (which, while they pleasure the many, will profit the few by snug bits of patronage and employment); or even a large reform of the Import-duties, should the Minister be sagacious enough to cut the ground from under his opponents' feet. But with a Liberal Opposition almost as numerous as his own host, PEEL'S tower of strength would be in the conduct of that Opposition. As long as the Liberal leaders had a prospect of speedily coming into office, they would be scrupulous and cautious not to commit them- selves ; they would look more to the Court than to the Country ; we should have a backstairs Opposition, trusting to intrigues among women, and courtly go-betweens, rather than to any broad and bold enunciations of principles or opinions. When out of the House, they would be haunting the Palace to trip up PEEL ; and in it the new Whig tactics would illustrate BROUGHAM'S picture of those of their predecessors—" a feeble motion, prefaced by a feeble speech, made by an elderly lord, and seconded by a younger one. With a minority obviously insufficient to take office, PEEL'S troubles, and the fair prospects of those who look to principles and public improvements without regard to party profits or political trading, would begin. His extreme followers would be emboldened to create dislike by their insolence, and disunion by urging their extreme opinions : but that is his affair. It is ours that Free Trade would be zealously advocated : a revision of the sliding scale, so as to limit the range of oscillation by adding to the lower duty and reducing the higher, would probably be gained; we might be pretty certain of a revision of the Tariff; and as for the Colonial mo- nopoly, PEEL, considering his character and position, gave the West Indians, in his speech on the Sugar-duties, as distinct a warn- ing as ever was given to mortal men that their monopoly is doomed. Law Reform, as yet peddled with—the organic abuses of Chancery, dropped altogether—the scandalous condition of the Ecclesiastical Courts, never mentioned—would be earnestly taken up, and the Conservatives compelled to improve, or never hear the end of it. The Estimates, which now pass as a matter of course, or with an occasional remark pro forma from Mr. HUME, would be rigorously scrutinized by the Whigs, when they had no immediate hope of profiting by public profusion ; and who knows but that they might support Mr. Hume as of old in an attempt to reduce the finery of the trumpeters of the Guards, and Mr. THOMAS MOORE attune bis lyre to embalm in immortal verse the extravagant dresses of the band ? The military insolence, which if it were practised in an enemy's country would entail death or dismissal on the offenders, though now exercised with impunity against the citizens who pay and feed the Army, ,would be noticed in Par- liament ; the assault of a commissioned stripling on the civil officers, punished by a verdict and imprisonment, and perpe- trated again on his liberation ; the daring rescue, by a military force, of military officers in the custody of the law at Canterbury, and the contemptuous obstruction of the purpose of justice by the commanding-officer ; the late midnight outrage at Windsor, under the very palace of the Sovereign, where a band of military revellers, " swoln with insolence and wine," sallied out into the streets, destroyed the property of respectable citizens, (before their riot in the more congenial gaming-house,) and impudently exposed the relics for claim in their own barrack-yard—nay, this very week, a subaltern of Artillery at Woolwich has actually refused to deliver
up a felon to the warrant of the civil power,*—these, and things like these, when the Whigs have no longer the patronage of the Army, will not be passed sub silent& as matters of course; and peaceable subjects, living near a barracks, may get some better protection in return for their allegiance and their taxes. In short, the evils denounced by the Whigs for twenty years and more of opposition, and kept in abeyance during their ten years of office, will be denounced again when Whigs are again hopeless of place. The increased power of public opinion, and the greater force which the abolition of pocket boroughs has given to aggregations of men instead of individuals, will enable an Opposition, if it were only half as numerous as this is pretty sure to be to extort large " practical measures " from the hands of any Ministry. Organic change is not likely to be mooted with success at present : too many are committed against it—the change would be too sud- den and too barefaced, and the once ardent zeal for it has died away through discouragement. The next great move, whether liked or not, will be an approximation to Chartism. But this is distant : and in one sense it is well, for the rising youth on both sides will be better prepared respectively to yield or to exercise political power, than the set minds of the present day.
• The treatment of this case by the Ordnance should be watched. If the young man acted on his own responsibility, his commission, strictly speaking, is forfeited; if he acted under the commands of his superior officer, let us have that superior officer to deal with, and hear what he has to say. if military men are to refuse an alleged murderer to the civilplower, they may refuse any other criminal—a political criminal or criminals, for ex- ample ; and " high prerogative" people may try a " coup d'etat " with the Army instead of Customhouse-officers and Sugar-duties; which would be by far the most dangerous " coup" of the two.
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