WHAT "TORY " AND " LIBERAL " ARE COMING TO
MEAN.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Until the " Eastern Question " recently rose into a pro- minence which overtops all other political questions, the doubt (amounting to a fear) was here and there expressed, and more widely felt, that no distinct political line divided the country, and that public life would hence lose all the stir and vigour which is bred of collision. The great question of the hour appears to me, however, to point out the vanity of such fear, and itself rebuke us, by displaying conspicuously at our very doors that undying division in human nature which will supply political life with all the clash and collision it can ever need or desire, and hence to be working a good work which it were well we should perceive and acknowledge.
The followers of Lord Beaconsfield very plainly describe their leading motive as that of upholding the honour and interests of the British Empire. In taking care of these, the interests of the inhabitants of Turkey, European and Asiatic, are second. The opponents of Lord Beaconsfield are led on by those who put in front the interests of the people most immediately affected, while British honour and interests follow behind.
Few will deny that this is the political division the Eastern Question is making conspicuous and practical, and it is hence dividing the country politically into two camps,—one containing those who put self and its interests first, and the upholding justice and truth (or in Bible language, the upholding" the kingdom of God and his righteousness") second ; and the other, those who reverse this order in their regard. In other words, this hideous question is tending to make prominent among us, as a political line of division, that line which ever has and ever will divide the nature of men.
But for a political division to be permanent, we want not only the broad lines of demarcation, but a neutral or meeting ground also, where each party may descend and argue, without abandon- ing their distinct characteristics,—and we have it here. To those who think justice requires the destruction of the Turkish Empire and the freeing of the Christian races, how more than wrong, how- foolish does any policy seem which, like that of Lord Beaconsfield, tends directly—if it tends any way—to the bolstering-up of a despotism doomed to die by its own innate iniquity? And in this word " foolish " a neutral ground appears, where both opponents may meet and argue, and their arguments be upheld by all the under-current of life and vigour the admitted differences of principle which animate each inspire. If this question, which cannot be laid, shall make the division it brings out so con- spicuously become at last the permanent political division, a great good will have indeed arisen out of its undesired presence-
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