TOPICS OF THE DAY.
RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.
Tus actual position of the leaders of parties is full of valuable in- struction. It is a position of disappointment and trouble. Taking Lord Derby, Lord John Russell, Lord Aberdeen or the Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Cobden, as chiefs of the parties into which the country is divided, not one of the four can be either satisfied with the present or hopeful as regards the future. On the contrary, every one of them is in a mess, and without any clear prospect of getting out of it. And, what is of more importance, because it con- tains the moral of the lesson, each case is one of retributive jus- tice • the discomfort endured being of the nature of a punishment justly incurred by the sufferer's wilful misconduct. Lord Derby has to swallow ' Free-trade. That is inevitable. He cannot do it at a gulp, as nauseous doses are taken with the least inconvenience, but must needs sip, and suck, and taste to the uttermost, the gall and wormwood which the nature of things has prescribed for him. And why ? why cannot he em- brace Free-trade like so many before him, without this painful loathing and dew torture P—Because of his own behaviour in 1846, and down to the time when the Queen sent for him the other day, at Lord John Russell's suggestion. He was the au- thor and has been the stay of the Protectionist party. If he is not a Protectionist, he is nothing. His rash quarrel with Sir Ro- bert Peel, his leadership in the persecution of that true statesman, his delusive promises to landlords and farmers and shipowners, his professions of confidence in the triumph of a lost cause, his mis- leading eloquence—all these things now rise up against him, if not to torment his conscience, at least to sting his pride, by making his recantation itself shameful, and so compelling him to recant in a doublefaced, shameful manner. In leading an Opposition for fan or spite, he could pretend what he liked with impunity ; bu the responsibilities of power at once unmask the impostor, and without relieving him from the necessity of going on with the de- tected sham. Our first • simile is not quite exact : he has not merely to swallow bitterness sip by sip, but to swallow it and bring it up over and over again till, truth shall be fully avenged. No wonder that Lord Derby should have avoided office as long as possible.
He might have avoided it altogether but for Lord John's Rus- sell's parting advice to the Queen. That advice was unconstitu- tional and improper, because given after constitutional responsi- bility had ceased. But another responsibility attaches to Lord John Russell in this matter. He is still responsible to his party; and he appears to havd done them a great disservice. He probably imagined that Lord Derby would not swallow Free-trade' and would therefore have to repeat last year's process of In and Out again ; the Whig chiefs getting back to office, " as you were," with the advantage of having this time seriously frightened the least thoroughgoing of their supporters. It was a sad miscalculation. Lord Derby, really abandoning Protection with whatever wry faces, may keep the Government for a long while. Any change would be endurable after Russell-Grey, rule for six years; and the actual change, as it promises the benefit of useful Whig labours in Opposition, has merits independent of the mere novelty. Lord John, accordingly, is now reproached by many of his party with having betrayed them by his awkwardness, or perhaps through the singular jealousy of his disposition. They ask why, if he took on himself to propose his successor, he did not name somebody who might perhaps have restored the Liberal party to the position, which his Government never held, of being supported by a ma- jority of its own in the House of Commons. And this question suggests a well-merited reproach. For years the ex-Premier was urged to strengthen the Liberal party—to obtain for it the confidence of the country and a majority of its own in the Commons—by getting rid of the most inefficient and unpopular of his colleagues, and calling to his assistance such Whigs as Lord Clarendon, and such former colleagues of Sir Robert Peel as the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir James Graham. But no; his inordinate but feeble self-sufficiency, combined with his be- lief in the indefeasible right of certain Whig families to govern, could not stomach the proposition that his Ministry needed im- provement. So he went on, depending on the frail support of being squeezed between two Oppositions, till the general incapacity of Ins Government became too manifest for longer toleration. De- serted by his adherents, turned out of office by himself, and dis- regarded by the country, he is provoked by the consequences of his blunder in proposing Lord Derby as his successor into making a plunge or two in Opposition ; but, having been justly reproved for quarrelling with Lord Derby's Government because, like his own for six years, its party is a minority in the Commons, for threaten- ing to stop the Supplies, and for otherwise seeking to embarrass the Government of which he is the principal author, he is now pretty quiet, and seems to be conscious that he has "made a mull of it." If his party know their own interest, they will keep him as in- active in Opposition as he was in power. As intending to be again Prime Minister of England, he is a heavier encumbrance to them than their own errors and neglects in having allowed him to make a Tory Government for some years to come far from improbable. The colleagues of Sir Robert Peel cannot be much better pleased With themselves than Lord John Russell and Lord Derby. Their great chief has been gone nearly two years, and they have not yet even chosen a leader. They have seen the Russell Government slowly dying eat for want of a policy, and have themselves neglected to promulgate, it may be even to construct, a policy of their own. They must know that what the country at large has needed and desired for a long while, is statesmanlike purpose in the leaders of parties : of any party, it may be said ; for the old party distinctions and associations have been almost extinguished by the struggle about Free-trade, and a large preponderance of public favour would be given either to Lord Derby, or to Lord John Russell, or to any of the Peelites, (they have no leader to be named,) or to Mr. Cobden, if he would declare a sufficient policy of Conservative Reform, and give evidence of possessing the will to carry, it into effect. The Peelites have had ample opportunity of satisfying the country in this respect, and they have almost entirely neglected it. They had a great prestige to work upon, and many other advantages; but have neither done, nor even said, anything of consequence. Self-imposed obscurity is the defect of their position. If Sir James Graham, the only one of them who has not appeared asleep since 1846, had lately taken a more distinct line of his own, a course more independent of the Russell-Grey Whigs—still more, if men of the ability- and pa- triotism which private circles attribute to the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Gladstone, acting in concert with the respected Lord Aber- deen, had formed a clear view of the public exigencies and had made it known by actively sharing in the business of Par- liament—the Queen, it is very likely, would not have taken Lord John Russell's advice about sending for Lord Derby. In the politics of a free country, inaction is a personal disability. And the Peelites cannot say that they were not warned long ago of the consequences of their torpor. If they regret a general election upon all sorts of false issues, and the prospect of a new Parliament without fixed ideas, led by a Government of pretenders without a policy, they must feel guilty of having neglected opportunities of action by which the mischief might have been averted.
The Manchester gentlemen are out of court. Though they have not been deficient in a bustling sort of activity, their views of na- tional policy consist of vague generalities suited only to the plat- form. They may enjoy a triumph in seeing Lord pee y swallow Free-trade ; but when that spectacle shall be over, they will have no function or distinctive character. Indeed, they greatly resemble the Protectionist party in having but one idea, and one which is on the point of disappearing from our politics; that, in two or three months, they will probably break up trough differences of opinion on other subjects. There would have been just the same prospect for the Derbyites if any of our parties were now capable of supplying the country with an acceptable policy, and the Queen with a man qualified to carry it into effect.
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