LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
PROFESSOR DICEY ON UNIONIST DELUSIONS.—IV.
[To TH3 EDITOR or THE " firscumoa.-]
Suz.,—" No Liberal ought to support a Conservative Govern- ment" This maxim is rarely stated in its naked absurdity by any man with pretensions to intelligence unless he be a candidate fighting for a seat. But for all that, it is a maxim which turns elections, and clouds the judgment or disturbs the conscience of many a Unionist. With your permission, then, I will point out the several objections which are fatal to this precept of party loyalty.
It rests on a false estimate of the condition of the public opinion and of the relation between the political parties of modern England.
It sesames that there exists a coherent body of admitted Liberal truth opposed to another body of Conservative error ; that Liberal orthodoxy or Conservative heterodoxy is the faith of every Englishman; that the members of rival parties look upon their opponents with deep hostility, and that in the world of politics, as in the world of theological controversy, transition from one camp to another savours of treachery, or excites, at any rate, that disapprobation which popular judgment or pre- judice attaches to conversion from one form to another of religious belief. There have been times when this condition of opinion existed. In 1829, Dr. Arnold, if I remember right, thought that political animosity might engender civil contests. But we are living in 1887, not in 1829, and the terms which might describe the divisions of fifty or sixty years back do not even fairly caricature the present state of public sentiment. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can boast a definite and distinct creed. Who dares define the orthodox Liberal doctrine as to Female Suffrage, as to proportional representation, as to the proper relation between the authority of the State and the
rights of individuals On each of these points, and on half-a- dozen more "fundamentals," Liberal opinion is divided. On each of them we may find some Conservatives who agree with some Liberals and disagree with other Conservatives. This absence of definite formulae should excite neither wonder nor censure. Liberalism and Conservatism have for half-a-century been discriminated from each other by the distinction between democratic and anti-democratic principles. Democracy has triumphed; her victory has effaced old lines of demarcation. This is no mere external change ; let it be charged to no one on any side as dishonesty. All of us have yielded to the force of the complex influences which men call the spirit of the age. Differences lying deep in human nature will no doubt again make their appearance on the field of political life. Gratuitous prediction is gratuitous rashness ; other- wise, an observer might risk the prophecy that a time of bitter conflict is at hand. All I assert is that the vital oppositions of sentiment which sever citizens into hostile armies do not coincide with the boundaries which part modern Liberalism from modern Conservatism. Nor can the distinction between Liberals and Conservatives be identified with the distinction between the party which does possess and the party which does not possess a good character. In England it has often occurred that the repute of a particular political connection for sobriety, prudence, integrity, and conduct, has sunk so low that the party has-missed power neither from lack of talent nor from the essential unpopularity of its principles, but from want of credit. Fifty years of weakness was the penalty paid by the Whigs for having lost, under the guidance of Fox, the attributes summed up in the term "respectability." Distrust of Disraeli robbed the Conservatives for a generation of the influence which shonld naturally have accrued to them daring a period of quiescence destined to find its representative in Palmerston. In England, the party of morality and of con- duct has always in the long-ran become the possessor of popu- larity and of power. This is a truth to be commended to the serious meditation of every party manager,—if, what I know not, a wire-puller ever gives a moment to meditation. There is, indeed, a risk that the changes, the shiftings, the conversions and re-conversions, of publics men may lead the English people to hold statesmen, of whatever party, as cheap as Americans hold
" politicians." This danger affects all parties alike ; but what candid man can say that, in point of character, Conservatives compare unfavourably with the members of the Gladstonian Opposition. Each party has its black sheep ; of these let us say little. For the rest, Englishmen trust Mr. Balfour just as much as they once trusted Sir George Trevelyan ; Mr. W. H. Smith inspires at least as much confidence as Mr. John Morley ; there is no reason why Mr. Goachen—to put the matter very mildly—should be deemed a less competent Chancellor of the Exchequer than Sir William Harcourt. Character, wherever it be wanting, is the admitted possession of the Liberal Unionists. The deep discredit which the MaametTasna debate, and all the memories it evokes, has inflicted in different ways and in different degrees on every other Parliamentary connection, does not touch Lord Hartington and his followers. They can give weight enough to any party which receives their countenance. It is, however, far from my purpose to dwell much in these letters on the personal aspects of politics. What I do insist upon is that the situation, the principles, and the character of existing political divisions make it idle to apply to them a maxim which had a real application to the conflicts between the Whigs and Tories of a past generation. Rhetoric, sanctified by tradition, now lacks all the ring of reality, and the orators who honestly employ it mistake dreams suggested by historical reminiscence for the realities of actual life.
The doctrine, again, that the alliance of Liberals with Con- servatives is in itself disgraceful, is nothing less than the dogma of the duty of passive obedience to the dictation of partisanship. The preachers of this dogma, however carefully they veil their meaning, betray their own fundamental misconception of the nature and cogency of party obligations. In a country such as England, honest party differences rest on the tacit recognition by all Englishmen of the fact that we are all bound together by deep and essential agreement on the main principles of govern- ment. In lands where such fundamental concord has no exist- ence, party government, as we know it, is an impossibility. One cause why the revolutions of France have no end, is that rival factions are really enemies battling over the foundations of the Constitution. Republicans proscribe Conservatives because a French Conservative is a reactionary whose Mission it is not to preserve, but to destroy the Republic. Conservatives cannot tolerate moderate Republicanism, because they know that a Republican Ministry must aim at the destruction of Conserva- tive influences, and because they do not concede to the Republic the moral right to allegiance ; they remember that Republicans used the victories of foreigners to destroy a national Government, and that the Commune burst into insurrection when Prussian armies were camped round Paris. With us it is far otherwise. Party combinations are recognised as instruments—awkward instruments at the best— for carrying into effect the will of the nation. Party loyalty, while rightly honoured as a check on the pursuit of private interest, or on the indulgence of individual caprice, is, in the judgment of fair-minded citizens, limited by at least two condi- tions. Allegiance to party most not, in the first place, interfere with allegiance to the nation ; hence in periods of invasion, of insurrection, and, but for recent experience, I should have added of wide resistance to the authority of law, men of every political creed are expected to rally round the Executive,—come what will, "the Queen's Government," as people used to say, "must be carried on." Zeal for party, in the second place, is no plea for a partisan's toleration of what he deems public immorality. Hence the deep respect felt by men who, like myself, cannot share John Bright's views on foreign policy, for his honest pro- test against what he deemed the error of the Crimean War ; hence the infinite gratitude felt by hundreds of Liberals for his equally honest protest against sympathy with slave-owners, defended though that sympathy washy the plea that oligarchical rebellion against a Republic had created an independent nation. Each of these limitations is fatal to the doctrine of unrestricted party loyalty. Each of these limitations frilly justifies Liberal Unionists in the support of a Unionist and Conservative Government. The nation is threatened with peril as grave as open insurrection, and far more insidious ; the maintenance of national unity is the highest and most pressing of duties. Precedents are needless, yet two precedents are well worth notice. My friend Mr. E. L. Godkin, of New York, is a keen and most impressive assailant of Unionist policy ; but to friends who know his career, the example of his acts is more instructive than the acuteness of his criticism. His noble efforts created
the Independents of the United States, diverted them from the Republican Party, and induced them, for the sake of a great national object, to aupport a Democratic President. He did well, and Liberal Unionists—the Independents of England— will do equally well to imitate his conduct. From Gladstonians, again, we have heard much of Burke ; little reference have they made to the most important transaction of Burke's life. The "bottomless Whig" broke up the Whig Party to fragments, because in his judgment the eloquence, the recklessness, the imprudence, and the sanguine enthusiasm of Fox, were leading the country into the paths of political immorality and national, ruin. The Old Whig saw nothing blameworthy in support of a Tory Ministry.
To denounce all co-operation between Liberals and Conserva- tives is, lastly, to contradict the fundamental principle of popular government.
This matter deserves a moment's attention. Democracy rests on the sovereignty of the people,—or, in other words, on the acknowledged supremacy of the permanent will of the nation as expressed by the voice of the majority. With this principle,. party government, as understood in England, has always a tendency to conflict ; bat the collision between the wishes of a faction and the wish of the people is avoided or miti- gated by the looseness of party discipline. On many points a minority among Liberals will often, with more or less activity,. support Conservative policy, or a minority among Conservatives support a Liberal policy. Hence, by a rough and awkward process, the will of the nation is enforced against the will of a. minority who claim power as the majority amongst the members of the most powerful of two political parties. Palmerston was no Radical. Towards the close of his career, the majority of earnest Liberals would not have kept him in power. He retained his place in virtue of the tacit sympathy exist- ing between many Liberals and many Conservatives. There. were Tories who preferred him to Disraeli; there were Liberals- who dreaded the leadership of Gladstone or of Bright. The. nation obtained the Minister who was desired by the nation. If the rules of party loyalty be made so rigid that co- operation by the members of one political party with the members of another becomes an impossibility, then the- result inevitably follows that a body of men may rule who admittedly do not represent the views held by the majority of the nation. At this very moment, the citizens of the United Kingdom have pronounded against Home-rule. Yet, if the Liberal Unionists adopt the notion that co-operation with Conservatives is disgraceful, a measure of Home-rule will of a certainty be carried. The majority of the Liberal Party will triumph over the nation. This may be right or may be wrong, but this is not democratic government; and such triumph of the minority on a question of vital importance would make democrats demand innovations which would place the main institutions of the country and the leading principles of the Constitution on a foundation where they could not be shaken by the devices of party managers. However this may be, to stretch tightly the bonds of party allegiance is assuredly to risk a conflict between the desire of a faction and the will of the- nation.
The maxim, then, of "no alliance with Tories" need not trouble Unionists. It derives currency from a misinterpretatiork of existing political opinion., it is based on a false notion of party loyalty; it conflicts with the sovereignty of the nation.—
Previous page
