TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BRIGHT AS CONSERVATIVE.
BOTH in the speech at Keighley yesterday week, and in the speech near Padihani on Tuesday, Mr. Bright posed as, what in many re3pects he really is, a good, sound, English Conservative. This will be a new aspect in which to regard him for those who remember his eloquent denuncia- tions of the British aristocracy and the Bishops,—those creatures "of monstrous, nay, even of adulterous birth,"—and his fierce attacks on the wealthy in the name of the poor, not only during the time of the Anti-Corn Law League, but also during the Reform agitation of 1858 in the many splendid but often very bitter speeches by which Mr. Bright signalised it ; but it is nevertheless a true one, and we think we can show that in a very real sense Mr. Bright is by nature as good a Conservative as exists in England.
But when we call Mr. Bright a good Conservative, we only mean this,—not that he loves to wear all his life a shoe that pinches him because he has worn it once, but only that he loves to wear the shoe that does not pinch him, at least till it is worn out, rather than get a new one. No doubt, the whole influence exerted by the aristocracy over the House of Commons, and all the traditions of an Episcopal Church, have been to Mr. Bright as politically gall- ing as tight shoes are physically galling, ever since he was a boy. He is not BO Conservative as to cling eagerly to a galling incident of life of any kind. But he is so Conservative that he does not really desire to change that which he would nevei have created, but to which he has so far got accus- tomed that he looks upon it with a certain moderate satis- faction, as a familiar feature in a scene that he has learnt to love. We believe that it was, indeed, in some measure, Mr. Bright's strong feeling that under the Ten-pounders the British Constitution was not broadly enough based to inspire any hearty national Conservatism, that made him so anxious to popularise it and gain it a hold on the affections of Englishmen in general. Undoubtedly, there is a kind of Conservatism which insists on width of basis, as well as one that exults in the exclusiveness of narrow privilege. There was a middle-class Conservatism which would have gone no farther than the ten-pounders, but which could not feel that there was any basis for Conservatism at all while the unreformed Parliament was in existence. Mr. Blight's Conservatism was wider than that. He felt that he could not really regard the English Constitution as one to be clung to with all the Conservative elements of the English character, till it rested on a basis so wide that any father of a family might claim to represent his family in choosing the Member of Parliament for the locality in which he lived. But this once achieved, Mr. Bright's main feeling will evidently be a Conservative one. He will still, of course, reserve to himself the right to level the Episcopal Church with the Churches of the Nonconformists. He will still, of course, claim the right to find some machinery by which the Commons may overrule the Peers. But for the rest, he will be disposed to cling to what he has, rather than to venture into the region of new and " new-fangled " ideas. Mr. Bright is as Conservative as any Englishman ever born, of any habit that has associated itself even with the prejudices of a great multitude. He is by theory a Republican, but no English statesman of the day has shown more hearty and personal loyalty to the Throne, and it is probable that none would be more grieved than he by a revolution which would shake the Throne. He is by principle a Democrat, but Mr. Bright has never in public even mooted the idea of abolishing the House of Lords, though he has mooted the idea of passing a constitutional amendment which would render it im- possible for the Lords to veto the same Bill a second time. He likes a wide suffrage, but he tells us honestly that he does not wish to go beyond household suffrage; that he thinks if the principle that the father of the family shall vote for the family is not wide enough for the United Kingdom, representative institutions in the United Kingdom will never be improved by widening that wide basis. He has often praised the American system, but he will not hear of equal electoral district-, and evidently thinks Mr. Forster some- thing like a mere revolutionist for advocating an approximation to that plan. As for the minority representation, he loathes it, without discussing it, not, as it seems to us, because it is in prin- ciple anything but strictly democratic, but beoause it is some- thing to which he is unaccustomed, something which appears
to challenge,—what it does not really challenge at all,—the right of the majority to rule. In a word, though Mr. Bright can- not feel Conservative towards anything which does not really attract a very large popular sympathy, yet that condition once satisfied, he is amongst the most Conservative of the Conserva- tive, and would rather retain any number of theoretic anomalies than make too violent an inroad on what had endeared itself to the imagination of the masses. Even in relation to a matter so alien to all his own convictions as Church-rates, it was he who advocated the retention of the form of a Church-rate for those who voluntarily accepted it. There is a great deal in the observance of a traditional form even after the significance of it is gone, which recommends itself to the heart of a true Conservative, and in this sense Mr. Bright is amongst the truest of Conservatives. "The ancient principles of the Con- stitution," is a phrase which is as often found in Mr. Bright's speeches as in those of any Conservative orator. "You want those you are admitting to the franchise to be guided by the ancient principles of the Constitution, in all that they do when they have power," he said, in 1867, "in order that they may not depart from that great chart which I hope, in some degree, they have studied, and which was laid down by our forefathers in this House." Could you find in the speeches of Burke, or Pitt, or the late Sir Robert Peel, a more thoroughly Con- servative aspiration ? "I profess," he said to the Conserva- tives in 1859, "to be in intention as Conservative as you,—I believe infinitely more so, if you look forward twenty or thirty years into the future ;" and he urged the cause of Parlia- mentary Reform expressly on the ground that Reform would "confer a lustre which time could never dim, on that benignant reign under which we have the happiness to live."
There is no paradox in saying that Conservatism of Mr. Bright's kind is extremely popular with Englishmen, that though they will not as a people approve what is without a broad popular base, that broad popular base once secured, they cherish a dislike to experiments, a pre- judice against superfluous tinkerings, a deep suspicion of clever suggestions. They like to tread on the beaten track, and though when they feel a grievance, they will try to re- move it, they will try to rsmove it with as little change as possible, and will certainly prefer extracting its sting to any attempt at abolishing its cause. They love to patch their house rather than to rebuild it, to keep as ornament what was originally meant for use, to turn to constant use what was origin- ally meant only for precaution,—to do anything, in fact, rather than alter the forms to which they are accustomed, and discard the usages whose drift has become obsolete. And Mr. Bright r ,presents the English people in nothing so much as in this Conservative bias. He smiles at the old Gothic tower, but pro- poses to retain it. He will never again use the drawbridge, but he is not a little proud of it. He has secured the portcullis so carefully that it can never be let down, but nothing would induce him to remove and destroy it. He is a Conservative, sympathising with the mass of the people ; and if Sir Stafford Northcote really wishes to prosper, he might do worse than follow somewhat anxiously in many of the footsteps of Mr. Bright.
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