TORY DEMOCRACY.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR.' I Sin,—May it not be permitted to a Tory Democrat to traverse some of the powerful reasonings of the Liberal Spectator ? You
write, I venture to suggest, on the assumption that Toryism must still mean what it meant in the days of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst, the resolve to fight for the few against the many. But it is surely clear that household suffrage, conceded by a Tory Ministry, has revolutionised the whole posi- tion. We Tory Democrats love and desire to preserve Con- stitutional Monarchy, a Peerage, and the union of Church an State. We know that there is no unmixed good in this life. We are perfectly aware that the existence of a peerage, for
instance, involves more or less of snobbery ; and yet we prefer our mixed institutions to the American or Continental system. Just so, we know that the union of Church and State impairs the Church's zeal; but it hallows the State sati broadens the Church, and the advantages, in our judgment, vastly exceed the disadvantages. This is why we are Tory Democrats. The numerical majority of the whole nation must rule in the long- run; this is what we call democracy ; but we wish to modify it by a Constitutional Monarchy and a popular aristocracy. It is because Lord Randolph Churchill has grasped this main idea that we recognise in him a leader. No doubt he is liable to make mistakes. Who was so erratic as Lord Chatham? Yet Chatham saved his country. Do you not apply two levels as standards ? Yours is the sober, common-sense, Moderate Liberal view, true as far as it goes ; but does it go all the way ? I cannot ask for much space in your own well-filled columns ; but there is another side to politics beside that which you so powerfully exhibit. We all have our prepossessions, and you have a clear right to yours. I read you week by week with great interest and constant admiration. But you would be the last to wish that everybody should think in quite the same way. All I want you to own is that a man may love liberty and yet have the strongest objection to the rule of a single majority. We are all agreed that the people must decide the ultimate issues of politics. Old-fashioned Toryism, standing behind a wall and throwing down stones one by one, is gone. Tory Democracy will, I venture to believe, consolidate the Empire.—
I am, Sir, &c., ARCHER GURNEY.
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