POPULAR PANIC AND POLITICAL CROTCHETS.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
Si,-Will you allow me to protest against your eagerness to crush out individual crotchets in the Liberal party? Whatever "discredit" may be brought on the Liberal party by " tolerance of crotchets," surely it ought to bear, if it is to remain a body of men aiming at freedom! If it crushes out freedom in its own body, how can it promote freedom in the country ? I do not wonder that the irritating acts of the Obstructionists should be stirring an impatience of talk and delay, and should lead to a desire for a uniformly-working machine which should grind out so many laws an hour ; but surely the Spectator should try to check the excesses of a popular panic of this kind, instead of encouraging it! If the policy advocated by the Spectator had been followed by Liberals, that intolerable crotchet-monger, Buxton, would never have compelled the Whig Ministry to abolish slavery ; those equally intolerable crotcheteers, Cobden and Villiers, would have been snuffed-out by steady Whigs like Macaulay, who expressed great irritation at their breach of party discipline ; and the present Postmaster-General would have never been able to waken Parliament to the need of pre- serving the rights of "Commoners," keeping open land which was being rapidly swallowed up by landlords and builders, with the sanction of Whigs as much as of Tories. And, with this scorn of crotcheteers, will there not grow a scorn of all inde- pendence, moral as well as intellectual ?
The concluding words in the Spectator's article alarm me much, though I earnestly hope that they do not mean to express quite so cynical a contempt for honesty as they seem at first sight to show. Yet I entreat you to read them again, before you decide that the snuffing-out of independence is the great duty of Liberals. The words are,—" We admit that Dr. Pankhurst is honestly dreaming, and not pretending to dream, and therefore we prefer, if we are forced to make the choice, a sensible Tory to Dr. Pankhurst." Ergo, if Dr. Pankhurst pretended to dream, instead of houestly dreaming, your objection to him would be less decided, because then, he might surrender his convictions on [That was not our meaning. We meant that a foolish fanatic can do even more mischief than an adventurer.—En. Spectator.]
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