25 OCTOBER 1873, Page 6

LORD SALISBURY'S MANIFESTOES.

Iis very unjust that Lord Salisbury should have such 1 influence over men's minds, but he has it, and will con- tinue to have it. He seldom says anything that is very new, rarely produces a plan, and always treats politics from the same narrow stand-point, that property is sacred. His audience, too, is not very wide, and unjust as he will deem the sentence to be, we very much doubt if he is regarded by any large class of Englishmen as a possible Premier. Nevertheless, he has amazing influence, for it is over the cultivated class, and more especially over journalists. It is very wrong and very immoral, but there never was journalist yet who could help giving a little admiration to the born orator or real " leader " writer,—and Lord Salisbury is both. He has in either department fully Mr. Disraeli's adroitness, with much more force, because he believes in himself and his one doctrine, and he gratifies intellectual indolence, till he will never encounter anything like the attacks men like the Duke of Marlborough or Lord Malmesbury have to endure as patiently as they may. You cannot abuse heartily what you have so heartily enjoyed. The thesis, for instance, propounded in the Qaarterly that the old Liberals are tired of their Radical allies, and wish to come over to the Tories, is utterly without foundation, except as the description of a momentary weariness of a Government so good ; but it I is stated so persuasively, it gratifies little enmities so perfectly, it is prefaced by so very striking an account of the reflex influence of the Continent and America on England, that it is hard to see how inferior the thought is to the method of its expression. How is it possible to be exasperated with the neat knock on the head which the Pall Mall gets for its con- stant parade of petty mistakes in administration, which, says the Marquis, never even reach the electors ; or the cool and vigorous declaration that all the people influenced by the small blunders Government has made would not make up one minor constituency! There is joy among journalists in a neat expression, even of their enemies' hatreds. For instance, it is a very grave fact, as against Toryism at this moment, that it should abuse everything that has been done for the last five years, yet refuse to repeal any measure of them all ; but Lord Salisbury tells his audience that the " processes of destruction are in their nature irrevocable. You can no more set on foot an institution that has been cast down than you can raise the dead. It would be a new institution." Lord Salisbury knows history, and knows that is nonsense ; that scores of institutions have been revived in different countries, that the very three he loves most— the English Monarchy, the English Church, and the English House of Lords—have been killed and buried, and have been revived, and have not suffered at all when in the tomb. They rose when Cromwell died in full power unchanged, and it was not till the country, a second time weary to death of them, changed their prerogatives by statutes which it took two hundred years to pass, that they were changed into new things. Charles II. had the power, though not the brains, of the Tudors ; the House of Peers was as arrogant in 1680 as in 1640, and the House of Com- mons was more servile in 1685 when it sent John Coke to the Tower for a mild remonstrance against the King's scolding than in 1621, when it wrung freedom for internal trade out of Elizabeth's strong grasp. But the sentence is a very neat and enjoyable excuse for not doing what cannot be done, and so it passes unchallenged. The Marquis says England is always affected by the Continent or America, and that is quite true, and seems to give one a guide for thought, but then nobody knows whether England is or will be affected by liking or disliking. No doubt Alva and the Armada helped to make England Protestant, though the executions under Mary had more to do with the matter ; but the Revolution in France of 1830 did not make Englishmen Tories, but furious, almost fighting democrats. The success of the Comte de Chambord may make them Tories, or it may make them bitter Radicals, and we defy any human being to say whether the liking for order or the hatred of Popery will win in the land. There is no light in the Marquis's theory, but then there is a luxury of words, of style, even of bright, though useless ideas, which charms Englishmen out of their judgment. The Commune, no doubt, upset Englishmen, but instead of making them Tories, it has made them sympathise through half the country with the Agricultural Union, which is, in distempered judgments, the nearest thing to it. The Irish Church was disestablished, and Lord Salisbury almost admits that it was a gangrene ; but instead of allowing any credit to the Liberals for

that, he only says we cannot go on cutting out gangrenes for ever ; that constant amputation may kill the body politic, as well as the body physical. The sentence is most perfect, and has entranced even some Liberals, but what does it exactly mean ? If Lord Salisbury were a surgeon, and a limb mortified, would he let the patient die, or is he simply using an exaggerated and rhetorical form of expression, and declaring that he could not go on all his life having his corns cut? People do, nevertheless, and rush about all the better for those "continuous amputations." There is a capital epigram in his speech at Hertford, with which we in part agree, that the Ministry have a tendency to display' that kind of Christian meek- ness which turns the cheek to the smiter in Russia and America, and demands the uttermost farthing from the Ashantee." That is exquisitely put, and exchanging Russia for Prussia, we should agree ; but nevertheless, Lord Salisbury in power would not have fought Prussia, which did nothing but set a bad precedent,—or Russia, which only asked in an ill-conditioned manner for an inevitable grace,—or America, which pleaded for arbitration. And he would have fought Ashantee. It is no policy he is producing, but only the neatest of critical journalistic epigrams upon his enemies. He, indeed, calls upon his countrymen to stop short of new and enormous amputations ; but he can see none coming except Home Rule, which is not coming, or likely to come, except as a cry indefinitely weaker than Repeal and Emancipation, and cer- tain to be more summarily voted down. He tells the Tories and Whigs to coalesce and defend the outworks of everything, from the Church to property, and his readers half believe his advice sound, he expresses himself so well ; but he does not show how this is to be accomplished without a Tory regime, or a Liberal Government so powerless that it cannot govern at all. If he said simply "Rest, for the country is wearied out," he would be intelligible, and very possibly right ; but he does not say "Rest," for he hints at some enormous sanitary measure, which will create as much discontent as ever a new measure did, and he is besides under the leadership of Mr. Disraeli, to whom rest is a thing unknown. There is the final weak point of his sentences. He calls loudly to the middle-classes to come over to the land of Peace, where Glad- stone shall cease from troubling, and Locke King be at rest ; he ignores entirely the fact that the sway of that land of the lotus-eaters is given to a man who, to keep his throne, would surrender the country to any swarm of the most vivacious of mankind,—say, to the Con- servative working-men, who would change everything with a rush. Where is the security that Mr. Disraeli will let his full-fed and sleepy recruits be at rest, and would not propose Disestablishment ; or accept some proposition made by a lawyer for abolishing registration, and so establish universal suffrage; or suggest that the Empire be federalised, and so change the House of Lords into a Senate of Australian notabilities, Irish orators, Canadian "politicians," Scotch farmers, and Welsh Dissenting ministers ? Suppose the middle-class accept the trumpet - call, or rather the call played so well upon the horn, and come in crowds to the Tory banner, what security are they to have that Mr. Disraeli may not outbid the Ultras ? Was it for Household Suffrage that the Cave was formed, or will the middle-class be less easy to beguile than Mr. Horsman and the House of Grosvenor ? We fear not, and recommend them to hear and to read the Mar- quis of Salisbury, with the full recollection that while the Tories have found in him an orator and an essayist who delights both parties, power over Tories rests only with the author of the explosive letter to Bath.