TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION.
THE Corn Bill is before the House of Lords ; and the fact that it lies with that body to determine whether or not Parliament shall be dissolved on the ciuestion of the Corn-laws, gives some substance to the speculations touching a general election. We do not think such a crisis so probable as it may once have seemed. The House of Lords will scarcely be so indiscreet as to force 'it on. The Protectionist minority have not achieved so much credit or success in the House of Commons as to come before the Peers with overbearing influence; the Duke of Richmond's exhibi- tion on Monday did not tend d to establish a good footing for " the Country party" in the ensuing debates. Nor was the display of resistance which was made by the meeting of Peers at the Claren- don on Saturday last adequate to the efforts or exigencies of the party ; yet it was bruited with an ostentation that indicates the utmost exertion to collect every recruit that could be mustered ; so that their strength is likely to have reached its maximum—to fall off rather than augment. We are disposed to think, therefore, that the Peers will not very readily be misled by the Duke of Richmond, or even by Lord Stanley. But if Lord Stanley were to succeed in committing the Lords to defeat the Ministerial measures, as the Chronicle rightly ob- serves, it does not follow that Parliament would be dissolved by Sir Robert Peel. That Minister's recorded majority in the House of Commons has rather increased than diminished. Every sign shows that the estimation in which he is held by the country, formerly high, is higher now than ever it was. There is therefore nothing to rebuke the continued favour of the Crown, as there was when the Whigs retained place although deserted by their majority both in Parliament and at the poll. But the Lords and the Commons would be in collision, and the business of the state arrested. To bring the two Houses "into harmony," the Crown might create Peers, as William the Fourth did,—a resort unlikely to be recommended in the present instance ; or might dissolve Parliament,—which Sir Robert Peel would scarcely advise, seeing the majority of the Commons is already with him. The only remaining alternative would be for the Crown to change the Minister ; and probably, according to the usual practice, Sir Robert Peel would hand over the Government to the opponent who is the immediate cause of an adverse decision—to Lord Stan- ley. In such case, with an adverse majority in the Commons, Lord Stanley would find recourse to a dissolution inevitable; he would have to appeal to the country on the Corn question. Be- fore that country he could scarcely justify his occupation of office ; being, as he would be, forced upon the reluctant accept- ance of the Crown by a minority in Parliament. It would scarcely be possible to devise a more unfortunate question, or one put under more inopportune circumstances. It must inevitably evoke an active bad spirit. But the period is particularly unsuitable for a struggle of bad motives, since at the best there must be plenty of unworthy intrigue at work. To the ordinary corruptions of electioneering must be added the corrup- tions peculiar to this period of railway- speculation and reaction ; to the customary political spite, the spite of disappointed avarice. The main contest would be a decidedly party struggle, but one peculiarly embarrassed by bitter feelings and ugly aspects. The landlords would appear in the act of refusing a popular measure conceded by the Government—by all the statesmen in the popu- lar branch of the Legislature who have taken a leading part in any Government—by every part of it except a minority composed of the landlords themselves. Their resistance, upon whatever pretext made, is vitiated by the fact that they avowedly anticipate from the change a loss of selfish and especially of pe- cuniary advantages. A very nice sense of delicacy might have made them retire from the legislative assembly while the other sections decided the question. True, they say that the inter- ests of tenant and peasant are bound up with theirs : but venal motives so obviously and so largely distort their view, that their discernment of the truth is as questionable as their honesty ; and their rural dependents already begin to suspect them. A more punctilious sense of honour, we repeat, might have made them take a more passive share in .the contest : the fact that they did not do so aggravates the suspicious character of their position ; and even the countenance of mistaken earnestness will appear, to those whom they would persuade, like the crafty stage-play acting of hypocrisy. Their antagonists will not fail to take advantage of that condition : the agents in every section of the Liberal party will improve it diligently- ; and most especially the Anti-Corn- law League will be at work fostering the revolt of tenantry and peasantry against the landlords. You of the Protectionist party who may chance to read these words, know while you read that what we say is true. To some extent, more or less, the attempt to excite that revolt would fail : but console not yourselves 'too hastily ; precisely to the same extent would the contest be one between town and country—between the rude, raw, feebly-organ- ized rustic districts, and the compacted, intelligent, wealthy, ex- citable towns. You: sole diversion to counteract the civic influ- ence would be by fomenting a servile war—riots of Short-time factory hands and other discontented portions of the " classes dangereuses," against the town employers ; and your agents would foment such rioting. Is that issue nothing to be avoided? Where are these mutual injuries to stop ? Some sanguine cal- culators have assumed that political ingredients would not enter into the turmoil : do not believe it—the election would distinctly and avowedly be an election against Lord Stanley and the House of Lords. And—perilous novelty for the Tories 1—they would meet that election with Peel in Opposition.
Compare such a train of all but inevitable events with those which would flow from the more probable alternative,—that the Lords will acquiesce in the Corn Bill; that Parliament will run out its natural term ; and that the electors -will be called upon simply to renew the Representative Chamber. No particular question would be thrown forth to agitate the country to a pitch of tumult. Unless circumstances greatly alter, no political party would be prepared with an attractive programme of eminently popular measures. Parties would mainly stand on general prin- ciples ; which are seldom very exciting, and are now neutralized by the utter disruption and confounding of parties. Railway in- trigues would have their swing; but would be unable to borrow the bitternesses and violences, the venal lavishness, in addition to their own, of political discords. Such a state of things, indeed, would be favourable to-Sir Robert Peel. He still represents what is the predominant opinion of the day. He does so now, as he did in 1841, and will in 1847. He makes a point of doing so. He did not indeed always act on that plan—the Reform Bill was a grand exception : he battled it •stoutly, though he saw that It was supported by predominant opinion. But the success of that measure was probably his great lesson in political conduct, the pivot on which his subsequent career hinges. When he has, on more recent occasions, seemed to disregard predominant opinion, as he did in sanctioning-Sir James Graham's educational clauses in'the Factory Bill, he simply makes an error in calcula- tion. Or perhaps, while he seems for a time to miscalculate, he is but preparing for a future which he foresees, and which will eventually fit his anticipatory movement. That nice adjustment of his political views appears to be brought about by two qualities of his mind, which are easily. to be discerned : his personal con- victions, like those of the people, although quick to be suggested to the inward sense of his mind, and set working in his thoughts, are slow to arrive at the point of full maturity and of action ; and if, as has not seldomeheen the case, he is personally in ad- vance of prevalent opinion, his keen sense of what is prudent and practicable under the circumstances holds him back.
There is a case in which Sir Robert Peel might advisedly, though not immediately, dissolve Parliament. Undoubtedly, even though forced to suffer the ultimate passing of the Corn Bill, the Protectionists might continue a very irksome and vexatious opposition to the necessary business of the Government. Is it to follow that they must wear out the patience of a Minister distinguished for fortitude, pertinacity to his own conviction, and determined sense of duty Quite the reverse: he has still his recorded majority in the Commons ; he might, if he pleased, "tide over the session," permitting the factious among his Tory opponents to exhibit their perversity in vexations obstructions, helped possibly by the insidious among Whig place-hunters ; and then, after showing that he could brave tricky attempts to outrun his endurance, he might, without waiting for the natural expiry of Parliament, appeal to the Gauntry on his general policy—take a "vote of confidence," at the poll. The result cannot be doubted. Already a reaction in his favour is springing out of the obvious desire to displace him by a kind of political persecution ; and were he forced 'to make a direct appeal to 'the country—which would be done, of course, with all his tact and skill.–the response would no doubt be still more emphatic than in a general election under the Septennial Act.
To take a thoroughly popular stand, 'no doubt, he must dispose of some unpleasant questions that are now in his way. We have already mentioned the supposition that he is ready to go beyond some of his colleagues on the Sugar question. The cognate ques- tion of the chronic Anti-Slavery crusade is one upon which he has allowed himself to become entangled. There are others, con- nected with religious tolerance, education, qualification of voters, and so forth, in England and Ireland, which may need his atten- tion. The Short-time question is one which may give him trouble ; though it is scarcely within the category of substantial political measures. But any one of these questions, becoming really troublesome, must provoke his proper attention ; and when once he really attends to a question, he effectively grapples with all that is politically embarrassing in it to himself. We have Mr. Cobden's testimony to the Premier's popularity in the North. Success is so imposing a circumstance, that success even of this Corn Bill will extort the admiration of the South. A general elec- tion would, in almost any form of dissolution, be a reference on the subject of Peel to the country under circumstances attesting his efficiency, and enhancing that popularity which has grown up so late in his life, but so rapidly : the country would respond according to the unavoidable force of circumstances, by return-
ing a majority prepared to support Sir Robert Peel. any per-. haps may deprecate such a result ; some might wish more, some less ; but all will acknowledge that the process is peaceful and safe.
There might, indeed, be one way of preventing that issue, by means no less peaceful, and, as we hold, no less safe : Peel would be superseded if any other competent statesman were prepared to go beyond him practically in a truly popu- lar policy. if a statesman were prepared to come forward with such a programme at the next general election, his would be the majority ; with a strong chance of his having much effective aid from the present Minister. We perceive no sign cif such an event. On the contrary, speculation may descry the chance of a curious fate hanging over the statesmen whom the Liberal party still consent to recognize as leaders. Suppose, by concur- rent Protectionist attacks and Whig intrigues, Sir Robert Peel were ousted from his place, and that not Lord Stanley were to come in, but the Whigs,—or that they were to succeed him after a brief interval : still there would be even beyond that future an ulterior future. Unless the nature of men were remarkably. changed, the Liberal party—the popular section of the public and the Representative Chamber, desirous of progressive improvements in our political and social condition—would be in want of a leader. At present, by dint of that via inertia which has so re- markably paralyzed the energy of the party, Lord John 'Russell is permitted to stand in the place of leader. Every experience tends to show that he is naturally unsuited to the post. He ob- tained some credit as the head of a department, in the Colonial Office ; but in the broader field of national politics, increasing years have brought no increasing successes. He has talked—he still talks—sometimes writes ; but of late he has neither originated measures to carry them, nor grafted on the measures of others substantial improvements. Duly acknowledging his past ser- vices, one easily perceives that he belongs to the past tees when those services were rendered. His liberality is the liberality of that, not the present, day ; his daring is an obsolete audaciV.., falling short of what is now accounted mere prudence. His broaching the doctrine of "finality" was no unconsidered and inconsistent sally; it was merely the first evidence, given under his own hand in the Stroud pamphlet—as it was repeated, after seven years' rumination, in the Edinburgh Review, when the Whigs were " coming in" last winter—that his progress stop- ped with the Reform Bill of 1832: in actual conversion to Free Trade he was years behind his political rival, of whom he had so large a start. When he came into office six months ago, he be- trayed an utter want of power to control his own party—to say nothing of his want of preparation for meeting the country : he had not performed a single substantial service in Opposition. Even now he shows himself unequal to the exigencies of the pre- sent juncture : instead of heartily cooperating in a policy which rapidly tends towards those objects that the Whigs profess to hold in their dearest affections, something restrains him—some incapacity to devise a plan of action worthy of the occasion —some invidious, self-seeking annoyance that credit should fall to others. Instead of mastering the situation, adopting the spirit and forward energy of the day, and becoming a real leader of the Liberal party by placing himself at its head, Lord John provokes, by his reluctant show of concurrence, a suspicion that he neither will nor can lead—that he is secretly favouring difficulties—little petty party obstructions. He, who ought to be so active an auxiliary, does not scruple to avow •that he is only a " spectator "!—as if the country wanted a 'mere "spectator" at the head of its popular statesmen ! This determi- nation not to join with others in the service of the country, be- tokens an humiliating sense of inferiority ; as though the scion of the house of Russell felt that if he were placed with another it must be under that other.
Called, then, to active power, the Liberal party, if they did not consent to renew the defeats of 1841 and 1845-6_ , would soon dis- cover that they were in want of a leader. What sight would meet their glance around ? They would see the most active statesman of the present day dissolved from party ties, with a dis- engaged energy. He has shown himself the natural leader of those who desire practical progress, because no other statesman of them all has achieved so much practical progress ; and such as hold politics to be something graver than a game for sport or lucre, will desire to have at their head a man who can put pro- fessions in the shape of deeds. Would such real Liberals stop with Lord John Russell, or go beyond him to Peel ? Assuredly they would go beyond. If Sir Robert Peel were superseded by the assertion and pursuit of a more generous and energetic policy than his own, his political rivals would indeed recover a start of him, and deserve it ; but if he be displaced by mere intrigues and sham competition for popularity, his displacement will simply re- sult in the final exposure of antiquated quacks, and in forcing upon him a better staff of coadjutors than he has ever yet possessed.
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