THE POSITION OF THE WHIG PARTY.
IT is the fashion just now to say the Whig party is extinct, and undoubtedly the word, as a party designation, is slipping out of use. A river, however, is not extinct because it falls into the sea, and the Whig party is not dead because everybody-, from Earl Grey to M. Proudhon, calla himself a Liberal. Principles do not die, and the Whig party is based upon a principle, that Governments ought to seek an end beyond the preservation of what exists. So far from being dead, Whig ideas have conquered the half million of persons who really govern England, so completely, that they are com- pelled to fall back on subtler distinctions to express any difference at all. The ruling class at this very moment is expressing the most essential ideas of Whig politics, a hearty desire for the orderly freedom of the Continent, an earnest sympathy with all practical improvement at home, a reluc- tance to push Reform BO far that it shall land us in demo- cracy, and a strong desire, if equality be only possible, to regard an affiance with France as the best guarantee for progress and civilization. But the effective force of this great party is undoubtedly grievously- impaired—so impaired, that men heartily in accord with its ideas, fear to associate them- selves with a discredited name. With the nation at their back, they cannot conquer in debate, without the assist- ance of allies the propertied class only just tolerates, and are compelled to resort day after day to compromises, every one of which adds new followers to the Tory ranks. We are not now speaking of that want of distinct policy so often charged against the Whigs. The policy of a great party consists not in this or that measure, however wide or important, but in the steady application of certain principles to events as they arise. It is not the fault of the Whigs that they have effected so much for England since 1881, that occasions for party strife are few and far between. On the one point on which their special views are really required—Italy—they are frankly expressed, and when the secret history of 1860 shall be written, this generation will be startled to see how effec- tive a friend to Italy the British Government has been. You cannot display strong party principles on fiscal reforms, or bankruptcy laws, or registration bills, or even, in England, on the creation of a national guard. When the occasion arrives the parties will fall back into ranks as distinct, and in all probability as hostile, as they have ever been. But the W higs, apart from the momentary absence of great questions at home, are disabled by misfortunes which affect them as a political organization. They have, to begin with, no real leader. Lord Palmerston is no leader of the Whigs. They can accept his foreign policy with cordiality, and, like all other Englishmen, they admire his pluck and vigour with a heartiness which some- times rises into enthusiasm. But he is no real leader of theirs. They would not follow him for a month if foreign politics were again in abeyance ; do not trust him on radical questions like representation ; and heartily dislike his system of managing Parliament, and administering through inferior men. The family party was a nuisance, but Whigs hold men like Earl Grey, Lord Durham, and Lord Althorp, still far superior to the Laboucheres, Smiths, and other com- petent clerks, of whom we have had so many. The natural chief of the party, again, is under a sort of cloud chiefly produced by his own deficiencies, Lord John Russell is, perhaps, the only first-class statesman in England who is in- variably on the side of liberty, who can be depended on with- out reference to difficulties, or the dangers some men always see in any action distinctly favourable to freedom. He is as good an administrator as the party is at all likely to get, while he possesses that degree of the confidence of society with winch no English statesman can permanently dispense, and which is despised only by those who believe that England should be governed not according to its own ideas, but ac- cording to the ideas they think England ought to entertain. But Lord John Russell, with all these qualifications,is still not the frankly accepted chief of the Whig party. He is utterly unable to endure any position but the highest ; suspected— sometimes unjustly—of intrigue, and hampered by a thorough belief in worn-out cries. To this day Lord John Russell does not understand why the Durham letter was a failure, or why the people will not respond to a cry for representative reform. He is half disposed to lead a crusade against the middle class as boroughmongers' and resents with a quaint pertinacity the Intrusion of any Reform Bill not suggested by himself. Failing Lord John Russell, to whom is the Whig party—as distinguished on both sides of the House from the ruck of Liberals—to turn for guidance ? They want a Cavour, not a Clarendon—a statesman who will lead and organize, and not a representative lay figure. Sir James Graham is toe old, and has ceased to fill in the eyes of Members, even the position he retains in those of the publie. Lord Granville is Lord Palmerston over again, minus his efficiency ; and Lord Herbert of Lea shows, at present, no disposition to assume a place more prominent than that of head of a department. Lord Granville's "early friend" Lord Canning, though per- haps a more efficient partisan than be is usually considered, lacks the promptitude which is the first characteristic of a party leader; and Lord Elgin remains and will always remain, a rising politician. Even of possible names, it will be per- ceived, the list is almost confined to the -Upper House. The Whig leaders, confident in their hold over opinion, their aristocratic connexion, and their political knowledge, have for years indulged in the ruinous luxury of shutting out new men. They have not recruited their political strength even from the law. Sir R. Bethel may be as efficient as his admirers believe, but he has no sort of hold over politicians, while the Solicitor. General is a gentleman whose name one only remembers by grace' of Dod. As to young men, they seem to be an extinct class, and scarcely one young com- moner can be named even with claims to promotion—not one with the shadow of a right to leadership. There must be governing capacity somewhere in those serried ranks which ..will follow Lord Palmerston into the lobby to support the budget ; but they are not in the front, and, what is worse, nobody is making the slightest attempt to lead them there. The Whigs—to use an expression of Lord Lyndhurst—are using up the old men, and will one day wake up to find that the only first-class debater on the Liberal side is Mr. Bright. Do they, perchance, want him for a leader ?
A single man may be said to represent that "third party" that Parliamentary House of Orleans, which, under Sir Robert Peel, succeeded in controlling, by the help of the nation, both the hereditary parties. Mr. Gladstone possesses every qualification for a great Parliamentary leader except one : a following. The Tories might support him if sure that he would follow his instincts instead of his intellectual con- clusions. The Liberals might follow him if quite sure that his instincts would not compel him to throw them over, once a week, on all questions other than finance. But neither party can follow both sides of his mind, and both equally unfit him to be strictly a leader of the Whigs.
We had intended to say something of the political cow- ardice which, more than almost any other deficiency, is ruining the true Whigs, of the infinite amount of pledges they consent to swallow, for no reason conceivable except a notion that the voters want them as much as the pot-house committees say they do, and every one of which loses solid support. A real Whig no more wants more Edwin Jameses in Parliament than the governing million does ; yet how many Whigs argue, with a. comical acidity of tongue, that England ought to have some more Marylebones P The ballot is swallowed by dozens who have not a hope on the subject except that the Peers will be firm, and who, if they had only the courage to be Whigs instead of nondescript Liberals, would be heartily virelcomed by the class which support. But these, after all, are subsidiary questions. With a leader and an organization, the hustings would soon lose their terrors, and the rank and file be as exempt from silli- nesses of this sort as their leaders already are. The Whig party, all-powerful with the nation, is powerless for want of discipline and chiefs.
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