MR. DISRAELI AND PARTY MORALS.
IT might be a good thing, though we do not ourselves think so, if the Tory party were extinguished ; it cannot be a good thing that it should be reduced to a condition of moral anarchy, without a policy to pursue, or a principle to maintain, with office for its only end, and chicanery for its accepted means. Yet that is the condition to which, if the party itself does not mutiny, it will speedily be reduced by the policy Mr. Disraeli has devised. We cannot remember, in all our political history, though it records the careers of Sunderland, of Boling- broke, and of Mr. Disraeli himself, an expedient more degrading, not only to the particular Government, but to government itself, than that by which the Premier has endeavoured to parry the present Liberal attack. Mr. Gladstone raised, in the most peremptory and determined way, a great issue,—Shall the Irish Church continue to exist, or not ? and the Tory party, we do them the justice to say, frankly accepted the challenge. Every conviction they have in the world, every prejudice, every tra- dition, every party alliance, every interest, as well as every instinct, binds them to resist the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Throughout the country, the foremost men in their ranks, squires, rich citizens, beneficed clergymen, were eager that Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions should be met by a iiirect negative, that the House of Commons should declare unmistakably that it intended to preserve the Establishment for ever. Even within the House, where all enthusiasms are tempered, the apathy with which Lord Stanley was received, the consternation produced by Lord Cranborne's splendid diatribe, the ringing cheers which inter- rupted the speech of Mr. Hardy, displayed the true temper of the party, the conviction to which it desired to give expression. That conviction is, in our judgment, erroneous ; but, at least, it is honest and clear, and entitled to moral if not to political respect. How does the Tory leader respect it ? He first, in the boldest and most confident manner, accepts the party challenge. He then writes and publishes a letter to a political friend accepting and widening the moral issue, declaring that the cause of the Irish Church is the cause of Establishments in general, that Establishments benefit civilization, that "the crisis of England is at hand," announces, in fact, a policy of no sur- render. Then he either draws up with his own hand or fully sanctions a carefully worded amendment in which the idea of no surrender is abandoned in favour of a policy of "modifications" the extent of which is left wholly undefined. This amend- ment is supported by Lord Stanley in a speech not inconsis- tent with the total disestablishment of the Irish Church, a speech which, whatever else it meant, meant that the Govern- ment was entirely undecided as to the course it should pur-
sue. And then, on the following day, the Home Secretary is put up to reaffirm the original idea, to declare that the Church should never be disestablished with his consent, to deny the possibility of any concessions which should weaken the insti- tution. The "mere name" of one day is a sacred thing the next. The Tory party, therefore, is placed in this position ; it must either follow a leader clearly prepared to throw over- board its own most cherished convictions, or it must mutiny, and so lose its last chance of saving any part of the institu- tion which those convictions constrain it to reverence and to protect. It must either suppress its own feelings, and sur- render its own views, or it must, by shattering its own organi- zation, consent to see those feelings set at naught, and those views disregarded in the actual conduct of affairs. It cannot hope to save the Church except by supporting a leader who is ready to give it up. A position more fatal to the morale of a great party it would be impossible to imagine.
The Tories, it is true, survived a similar one last year ; but then the suffrage was not, like the Irish Church, a semi- religious question ; and it was quite possible to believe,—as Mr. Henley, for example, does honestly believe,—that household suffrage would-be more favourable to Conservatism than any rental qualification. No such palliation is possible in the matter of the Irish Church. It is with Tories a matter of moral, or so to speak, religious conviction, that this institution is a good, that it ought not to be abolished, that in abolishing it the nation will be guilty of a very grave moral error. To suppress a conviction like this, a conviction of the inner mind, a conviction beyond reach from arguments of expediency, is to injure almost fatally the morale of the party which suppresses it, will impair its spirit, will destroy its self-respect, will deprive it of the one strength without which a Parliamentary party is useless or injurious to the State. Yet this is the task which the Tory party, if it supports Mr. Disraeli, must of necessity accept. It must, while believing the Irish Church a sacred thing, an ark of the covenant, not to be touched by profane hands, support a man who announces unmistakably that he is prepared to put up that ark to auction. We write, of course, without having heard Mr. Disraeli's own interpretation of his own amend- ment, but the moral mischief was done when Lord Stanley sat down. There is not a doubt, whatever the Premier may sub- sequently say, that he was ready, if he found that course pay, to sacrifice the Irish Church, and expected his followers to support him, while he left himself free to adopt that or any other policy,—invited them, in fact, to declare that their highest care is not for principle, but place. We regard the Irish Church as a great evil, as a religious institution imposed by the sword upon a reluctant people ; but we had almost rather it should endure a few more years than that a great historic party, a party to which England owes at least this, that no reform has ever been abandoned when once completed, should be thus morally degraded, should, while its very soul draws it towards Abdiel, consent to follow Lucifer.
Mr. Disraeli's policy, if it were persisted in, or still worse, adopted as a precedent by other Premiers, would in the end turn Parliamentary government into one long intrigue. As Mr. Bright so eloquently pointed out, he destroys the func- tions both of the Government and of the Opposition. He lays down no policy and rejects no policy, but puts up one speaker to hint that he has a plan his adversaries may possibly accept, and another to declare that he has no policy at all, except a firm resistance to innovation. He hints to one set of Members that he wants time to carry out their ideas, and to a second set that he wants to carry out others of a precisely opposite kind, till nobody on either side can tell whether he is doing right in voting for or against him, till half his own side feel as if they must suppress their convictions, and half the other that they must abandon the party faith without which Parlia- mentary government cannot be worked. The grand merit of Parliamentary government, the one good which compensates for its wearisome tardiness, its almost imbecile cumbrous- ness, is that it matures opinion, that it keeps governors and governed in perpetual accord, by bringing the governed slowly up to the governors' level. But on Mr. Disraeli's plan, no such education is possible for the country. Plain men can never make out even so much as their rulers' idea of what policy is best, much less why it is best. The Government gives no reasons, hints that all policies are best, and then, before opinion has time to ripen, acts as suddenly and dramatically as if Government were an affair of the theatre. Household suffrage was established last year while members were at dinner, and before the existing electorate had read one single speech by a man of Cabinet rank for or against that vast change. There is nothing whatever in Mr. Disraeli's attitude to tell anybody what he wants or why he wants it, to ripen opinion up to any point, or to preclude him from announcing after Easter that he will do nothing, or that he will abolish the Establishment, or that he will change the United Church of England and Ireland into the Church of England and Ulster.
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