28 APRIL 1849, Page 11

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

REACTION A DREAM.

Sift JAMES GlSAHAM declares that be takes his stand on the Re- peal of the Navigation-laws as the field whereon to fight the bat- tle of Progress and Reaction; and Mr. Disraeli and his friends are rash enough to accept the challenge on behalf of reaction—they will contend for reaction. Alas l they know not what they do. By pledging themselves to an impossible enterprise, they are pre- paring their own entombment. Mr. Herries, poor man, thinks that he discerns reaction actually going on : he is under a ca- lenture and dotes upon a mirage. Reaction follows the excitement of effort. The heat cools, and the spirit suffers a rebound. Exaggerated hope, disappointed, turns to exaggerated dissatisfaction : the thing coveted as the finest possession in the world is discovered to be no philosopher's stone. Absorbed in contemplating only the desirable objects aimed at by a particular measure, men make no account of dis- agreeables' until they are realized; and then those disagreeables provoke a feeling of dislike. Reaction there is, if the term be a general expression for these feelings. But as a return to some condition of things used up and aban- doned, the political world has no such thing as reaction : it exists not. You will find no genuine example in history. Even occa- sions that pass by the name of reaction prove on scrutiny to be something else. For example, in France the " Restoration " was as little a reaction as it was a restoration. The Republic had been recognized ; however brief, the Empire was an European institu- tion; a new generation had grown up with Imperial associations; the miscalculations of Napoleon brought about disaster, mistrust, and dislike to the Empire, which fitted well into the traditional memories of the Vendeans and Emigres. But it was not a reac- tion—it was a new action; and the Restoration was the establish- ment of a new Monarchy, for which indeed the old line was used, but it was as different from the Monarchy of Louis the Sixteenth as the new faces in the Tuileries were from those which sur- rounded the Grand Monarque. Charles the Tenth tried to make the Restoration complete and the attempt was fatal to himself. Again, our Reform Bill agitation is said to have been followed by a reaction. Most erroneously—the feelings that followed the Reform Bill were the very reverse of reactionary; and so little has reaction commenced even yet, that general opinion—ay, among many leading quondam "Tories "—is now ahead of the "Radical" opinions of those days. It was soon found, indeed, that the Whigs were not so good as men had wished to think them ; and honest King William—who tried to do his best whether as sailor or as king—took the dissatisfaction manifested at the hanging back of the Whigs for a "reaction ": but when he seized the occasion of old Lord Spencer's death to oust the faine- ants, he was soon obliged to call them back again, "to keep out the Tories." The Whigs were suffered to continue their career of counterfeit statesmanship, which conciliated support by affecting what they did not care or did not mean to realize ; but the paltering with their own measures, the O'Connell dallyings, the outrage on the Jamaica constitution, the Bedchamber affair, and the ex- piring Budget of 1841, gradually brought the popular contempt to a climax, and perforce they went out. Yet all this while there was no reaction against the principles under shelter of which the Whig party had held power : it was their want of sufficient action which withdrew from them the support of former friends, and laid them at the mercy of political rivals. Mean- while, a -new party had risen up to continue that action, though under new names. Sir Robert Peel, leaving behind worn-out "Toryism," had constructed the new " Conservative " party, with a newly-devised course of action. But that was not reaction. There was a new movement against the Whig placemen, their incapacity, and detected false pretences; a new movement to try what the new Conservative party could do for the State : and well the trial answered, since it effectually brought "free trade" into active working. In many respects the juncture of 1849 is similar to that of 1841: Whig Ministers are feebly dabbling in free trade, are dabbling in Ireland, and are coercing the Legislatures of Jamaica, British Guiana, and other colonies. But though dissatisfaction at their stationary inertness causes a strong tendency to turn against the men, there is as little desire to go back to 1841 and its policy, or even to 1829, as there is to revive the almanack of those years. We are not going back to 1841, but onward to 1850; and the next policy, in lieu of that which vexes and tan- talizes the country, must be the policy of 1850, and not of some long past year. The two great principles—of Conservatism to keep a good at- tained, and Improvement to attain a further good—will always be in antagonism, like any other pair of correlative dynamic forces; but whichever principle is brought into play by its re- presentatives, that principle must be embodied in a living and contemporaneous policy, not in the dead policy of the peat. We can as little go back to embody Conservatism in renewed Corn-laws, or even in the doomed Navigation-laws, as we can restore George the Third or Louis the Fourteenth. It is not in the order of nature that it should be otherwise, any more than the father is succeeded by the grandfather in lieu of the son : if it were possible, it would be neither natural nor desirable. Any set of men, therefore, who would take part in the councils of the nation, must be prepared to do so apropos to the living affairs of

the decade commencing with 1850, and not the decade of 1840, '30, or '20. And to obtain popular sanction and support, their policy must be calculated to give positive advantages to the country: be it conceived in a Conservative or a Reform spirit, their policy must confer a benefit, and a benefit obvious to the people. Now, in what way are the Protectionists preparing for that condition of returning to power ?