THE " FORTNIGHTLY " ON THE TORY DEFEAT.
ALETTER, evidently proceeding from one of the very highest political authorities of the day, which appears in the new number of the Fortnightly Review, gives very striking support to the view which we have always sup- ported in this journal,—that the offence of the Tories in the eyes of the people of England has been certainly not that they were; but in part at least, that they were not, in any true sense Conservatives ; that their most striking acts of policy were the very reverse of Conservative, and though very far indeed from Liberal, were sensational after the fashion in which Liberal foreign policy has been often accused of being sensational, though in the interest of causes which Liberals would have been the first to condemn. No one could bring out more powerfully than " Index " has brought out in the Fortnightly Review the revolution effected in Tory policy by the remarkable man to whom Sir Stafford Northcote still declares his complete loyalty, or the startling contrast which it exhibits to the policy of the various Con- servative Administrations of the last sixty years. Generalising slightly from the estimate of "Index," the chief feature of these Administrations may be counted to be, whether at home or abroad, a predominantly prudential character,—pru- dential, in economising all causes of popular excitement at home as well by removing obvious grievances as by enforcing a pure and efficient administration ; prudential, in economising to the utmost all risks of exciting collisions abroad, even at the sacrifice occasionally of a good deal of English prestige. " Index " illustrates this latter point by the late Sir Robert Peel's well-known "capitulation," as it was called, to the United States in regard to the Ashburton Treaty; and he might have illustrated it also by Lord Aberdeen's conspicuous, and, as many thought, almost craven desire to keep the peace with Russia in 1853. Undoubtedly, the main idea of every Conservative Administration,—Canning, of course, being reckoned not as a Conservative, but as the best abused by Conservatives of all statesmen who ever served them,—for the last sixty years, has been to attenuate to the utmost all exciting causes of popular emotion,—to keep things quiet at home by removing grievances and presenting no exposed surface for criticism ; and to keep things quiet abroad, by doing all that is possible to support existing Governments, and to check large " unsettling " movements of which no one can calculate the effects. That Lord Beaconsfield began his career by declaring this sort of Conservative Government an "organ- ised hypocrisy," " Index " points out ; and that at a much later stage in his career he announced that the Conservatives of this country were old-fashioned, and required a good deal of educational discipline to fit their minds to the new notions which he wished them to take in, he reminds us also. Clearly "Index" is quite right in supposing that the Administration just condemned by the English people was the very blossom or fruit,—whichever you like to call it,—of these new notions ; that it was intended to present the very strongest contrast to the Administration of such a leader as the late Sir Robert Peel, and to show what political education might do in reconciling a Tory party to the great masses of the people. That Lord Beaconsfield's experiment has been condemned, and condemned with a very emphatic and exceptional accent of condemnation, we all know. But we wish a critic of so much authority as "Index," had given us his opinion on the
point as to what it precisely is in that experiment which has been so vigorously condemned. We know well enough what
it is not. It is not the old Conservatism which has the deepest practical roots in English character. But what is it I Is it the attempt to deviate in any direction from that old Conservatism, or is it rather the flashy and bombastic way in which that attempt has been made ? Or is it the bad causes on be- half of which it has been made ? If we interpret aright the great authority who expresses his view in the Fortnightly, he inclines somewhat to the view that it is this glaring abandon- ment of the old Conservative policy which has disgusted the constituencies ; that what they looked for was what Mr. Disraeli, in his address to the electors of Buckinghamshire in January, 1874, really promised them, a great and sedate policy of a rather passive kind, and that in all this flare and fizzle they have seen a glaring breach of that engagement. If that be the implied drift of parts of the article,— as we imagine it is,—we confess to considerable doubt whether it is a true explanation of the disgust expressed. We should ourselves suppose that the disgust expressed has been in a far higher degree disgust for the cynical character and immoral sympathies of the late Government, than disgust for their deviation from the old standard of true Conservatism; and for that view we will shortly give our reasons.
In the first place. there seems to us clear evidence that the condemnation is more due to an intense uprising of Liberal opinion, than to any alienation of Conservative opinion. We print this day the letter of an alienated Conservative. But we do not believe that the Conservatives could have come not merely in such numbers, but such greatly increased num- . bers, to the poll, if any large proportion of them had been
alienated by Lord Beaconsfield's policy. It is the indifferent Liberals who have been roused to strain every nerve, not the hesitating Conservatives who have been repelled. Conserva- tives are, after all, only too easily led. Their political minds are apt to be neutral, and easily influenced by their leaders. For the most part, in the present case we believe them to have been convinced that their leaders were right, and that the party voted as straight as any political party ever votes.
In the next place, it is certain that amongst the upper-crust, at least, of both parties, there are many more Liberals who have been known to go over to the other side, than Conserva- tives who have come over to ours. Wherever there was no keen moral disapprobation of the Tory policy among Liberals, there was usually a certain hankering after the grand flourishes of the Beaconsfield regime. We have even heard very good Liberals say, and say since the results of the Election were fully known, that Lord Beaconsfield, in spite of his very pre- tentious failure, had rendered any return to a purely pruden- tial and shrinking foreign policy, for ever impossible. With his usual inability to understand the special characteristics of Englishmen, and his usual ability to discern the super- ficial qualities of human nature everywhere, he had made the blunder of using a high-handed manner on behalf of bad and even execrable causes, and that, too, without the means even to make good his high-handedness after he had displayed it. But none the less it was said,—and as we think, truly said,—that neither Conservatives nor Liberals had condemned the high tone taken, though the Liberals had utterly condemned the causes on behalf of which it was taken, and had further felt ashamed of the "much cry and little wool" which marked the Administration.
And this, so far as we can judge, is the exact truth. Lord Beaconsfield was right in supposing that England has never really liked the ultra-prudential attitude of the most typi- cally Conservative Ministers of this century. Englishmen liked Sir Robert Peel's statesmanship and administrative pride, but not his anxiety to keep all recognised authorities in Europe unmolested. Nevertheless, Lord Beaconsfield was wrong in supposing that they would like either swagger itself, or, worse still, swagger in a had cause. Unfortunately, the Conservative part of the constituencies would not believe that their states- men had been swaggering at all, much less swaggering in a bad cause. But this is what the Liberal part of the constituencies did believe, and what they condemned with all the force at their command. They condemned the swagger decidedly. But they condemned the swagger in a had cause with a force that was much more than decisive—with deep, earnest, and indignant passion.
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