TOPICS OF THE DAY.
" NE QUID RES-PUBLICA DETRIMENT' CAPIAT."
THERE are moments in the history of nations when its destinies appear to be solemnly brought before the critical tribunal of the contemporary world ; when its future is, as it were, placed deli- berately in the scale, and weighed against its vices, its evil pas- sions, its weaknesses, its straining for empire, all those qualities which threaten its continued existence as a great and growing power. If we say that there appear to us in the political horo- scope gathering signs that such a moment is approaching for England, it is not that we have any doubt as to the issue of such a solemn trial of this empire at the bar of the world's opinion, or the world's action. We are deeply convinced that the political and social elements of power in England afford the surest gua- rantees that her place in the front rank of nations will be firmly and enduringly held. But we are not convinced that she is ex- empt from the law of struggle and difficulty, which is the essen- tial condition of human things. There is a superstitious belief in the impregnableness of the position of England as a nation which largely pervades the mind of this country. We say a superstitious belief, because it is founded upon a vague and dangerous oblivion of the truth, that questions of na- tional safety and progress are, for all nations alike, for Eng- land as much as any other, questions of cause and effect. There is no greater danger for nations or men than to be wrapped up in confidence in a star, in prestige, in the achievements of the past, in vague idealist aspirations for the future. The supreme and last result of human wisdom is to re- member the essential element of weakness that is latent in all human things. The most magnificent empire, the most splendid physical frame have within them the seeds of dissolution and decay. Perpetual vigilance, perpetual balancing of the account between strength and weakness is as great a security to the na- tion as to the merchant. It is the neglected small items of de- ficiency, which to the careless man who does not face the ugly, facts of the ledger betimes, become the eventual seal of bank- ruptcy. In a word, the whole sum of the matter is to be found in the sentence, which is of equal importance in the highest region of Christian aspiration, as in the lowest of mere carnal human secular prudence, " Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall."
'thus armed with the suggestion of prudence, and the fixed con- fidence of an unshaken faith in our country, let us examine the present position of the empire with reference to the great question of its safety, or danger, its action, or retro-action, in. the present conjuncture of circumstances at home and abroad.
Now the power of a nation is divisable into three grand princi- pal categories, each of which for our purpose it is necessary briefly to consider. The broader twofold division of moral and material force, which is so familiar to the mind in this age, and upon which so many platitudes have been written, is not one which we think a practical help to the mind in treating this question of the nation's actual means of power. It is too epigrammatic : too little precise : belongs too much to the unfruitful region of sentiment. For our present purpose we prefer to adopt as the principal points of view—first, the living leaders of the commonwealth, secondly its armed power, and thirdly the general force of public opinion, public wealth, and public desires, which is compounded of the past history, growth, and present moral and material resources of the people of England. We can be but brief, but. we may be all the more suggestive for being brief; and first with regard to the statesmen class.
This is a subject upon which so much of late has been said, that nothing but the deep sense of the peculiar duty which in the pre- sent abeyance of statesmanlike power is cast upon guides of the public mind, could induce us to dwell upon the matter for a mo- ment. It is scarcely necessary to discuss it at great length. For all through the length and breadth of English society, political and private, it is becoming almost an axiomatic opinion that the hands which wield the highest political power in England, the limited class from which Cabinet Ministers are chosen, the class of Cabinet Ministers, past and present, are not endowed with the moral and intellectual strength which the development of the country and the actual needs of its present position require. It is in fact one of the gravest circumstances of the time, a fact of which the proofs are overwhelming, that the ostensible leaders of Parliament are no longer the leaders of the sentiments and the desires of the country, or indeed of Parliament itself. The whole course of the voting of the present session brings out this truth with startling force. And beside.this it is felt and known, that the professed leaders of the Liberal party, instead of endeavouring to place themselves really by measures and action at its head, are simply manceuvring among themselves for the distribution of power. The plain and simple truth is, that there never was a time when the claimants, the professed claimants, of power were standing so completely upon the sole ground of personal indispensableness. The country is, as it were, deliberately challenged to the inquiry, whether certain noble lords and right honourable gentlemen are or are not the sole persons who have the right to govern England in Cabinets ; thosepersonages not taking into the least account the popular tendencies or desires ; either running counter to them, or giving them an occasional half-allegiance, to be broken through in a moment. Here is an undeniable source of national weakness. Whatever else may be doubtful in such a relation of the statesmen-leaders of a country to the general bode of its thinkers and workers, of that there can be no shadow of doubt. For it is not less true in civil than in military warfare, that confidence in the captain is an element of strength and vic- tory. It requires but small familiarity with the workings of the popular heart, but little penetration in the observer to conclude that, in this important respect, the country is but little fitted for the stress of any peculiarly grave trial or catastrophe. We are far from asserting that each a catastrophe is approaching. We do but discuss the question on the ground that, in a revolutionary period of domestic and foreign politics' nothing should be considered ab- solutely impossible. We do but speak in protestation against the vessel of the State being in hands which, by their own confession, suffer it to drift, rather than govern it by the rudder. In respect of the second element of power which we have named, it is a matter of painful notoriety, in English and foreign circles, that justice is not being done by the governing class to the coun- try. It is one of the familiar elements of political calculation with those European votaries of the haute-politique, who discuss the fates of empires with malignant reference to the possible decay of England, that the military power of England is comparatively non-effective owing to the constitution of its army. In this particular, as in so many others, the defective organization makes the least possible use of the most admirable English materials. This is a fact which it is not possible for statesmen of the true type to disregard. We have of late made a very large numerical increase in our army. But it is generally apprehended that that increase has not conveyed an adequate impression upon the foreign mind : partly because with thatincreasehas grown, in even greater proportion, the need of the army in our own disturbed possessions : but chiefly because it is felt that no mere material augmentation of our forms is a safety to us, while the English public has no confidence, or but little, in the military administration. Here is another source of weakness ; of which the greatest sign is the comparatively defenceless state of the island at this present moment. Grave men, who dislike every form of alarmist talking, are beginning to feel that it is of the first necessity that our naval and military arrangements should, until French history has reached a quite different phase, be guided by the principle of keeping the country in a perfectly defended condition, and ready for every emergency, however sudden, or unforeseen.
If the power of the country does noi, reside in the statesmen class, who are not now in the enjoyment of the admiration and adhesion of the public heart, if it do not reside in our Par- liamentary system, which is in an anarchic condition and requires careful and vigorous reconstruction, if it is not to be found in a military regime, and body, which Aso is in a state of transition from a class to a national force, and suffering, as is the common rule, throes and pangs in the birth of the new order of things, where then resides the real power of the British empire in this its central metropolitan seat ? The answer is in the spirit, intel- ligence, and wealth of a profoundly patriotic people, with a noble past, with a soil unsullied for centuries by an invader's foot; with a political character and history that place it at the moral pinnacle of the world, and which make it seem the very " ark of the covenant" of the political destinies of the human race. Its power is moral power • in all the elements of durability, political efficiency, and aptitude, it is confessedly without a rival among nations. It is this grand fact which makes it impossible to dis- believe in the future of England except upon materialist, we might almost say atheistic considerations. Our belief in it is fixed. But we do not think it impossible that England may be put by events to the necessity of vindicating the truth, upon which she is striving to regulate her own life, that the moral power of a country, if developed, enables it to cope with mere material power triumphantly. It will be seen at a glance that all the power which constitutes the preeminence of the metro- polis islands of the British empire, is essentially non-organized power in the state sense. In the executive and legislative parts of the nation's functions it is weak and languid. In civil and mi- litary administration there is a great gulf between the desires of the governed, and the performances of the governors. And while this is so, all Europe is assuming, and especially our nearest neighbour, a highly compact form of civil and military organiza- tion, in which military necessities, military purposes, and designs appear to be the largely governing principle. Europe, in a word, is talking millennium and rose-water, and making a sort of senti- mental profession of humanitarianism in Congresses, while every Power is arming to the teeth, and the whole atmosphere is filled with forebodings and mutterings that herald a coming storm. We affirm then that we are, as a nation, under-organized for maintain- ing aright and by the ultimate arbitrament of the sword, if need be, our prominent position, and our own fixed policy in the world. We shall not fail to do it, because we have pledged ourselves to the moral position which is inexhaustible, while- other European nations look only to the help of the " arm Of flesh "—which, in the long battle, withers and shrinks into feebleness. But as it is jest possible we may be called upon to vindicate our own place in ta., world, in the only way the armed world understands, A is well that we should look to our weak places betimes : it ie well that. as our own political system does not, like that of Rome, admit o.1 the dictatorship, whose function is described in the title of article, every Englishman should take upon himself, according to the measure of his opportunities and his capacities, the discharge
a that great state need of vigilance over the State's welfare in a critical time.
The principal necessity of the hour in England is that men should organize themselves into bodies acting for some definite, practical purpose in all directions. It ought to be abun- fitly clear by now to all intelligent persons, that " opinion" is pot the only power in the world. It ought to be clear that mere public sentiment is comparatively of no weight without practical activity. If Adam Smith's doctrine poisoned the root of protec- tion, it certainly was the Anti-Corn-law League which cut down the great overshadowing upas-tree, the Corn-law. Not that we desire or suggest agitations. There is no definite aim or need now for any such form of political activity. We desire something very different, better organization of that which exists. We de- sire to see constituencies preparing with wise forethought for the exercise of the franchise ; sounding their own desires, the quali- fications of Members, present and proposed.; not rushing like a shoal of blind fishes into the net of the electioneering agent, when the deluge of a dissolution comes upon the country. We desire to see men strengthening their own purposes and wills, and not relying so much as of late upon the chance representative govern- ment of the "leading article" and the journalist. The press is an admirable vehicle of expression of the public demands. But to execute them new men and strong men require to be found.
It is inexpressibly painful to serious men to observe how little the present state of things in Parliament corresponds to the actual desires of the nation and the exigencies of its present position. But it is high time that men should give over complaining at a state of things which is evidently passing away. There are some truths too plain to be gainsaid in our present political history. One is that the Whigs are not at present leading the Liberal party : another is that the Liberal party must under a renewed organiza- tion govern England. Men must therefore give a more intelligent scrutiny than they have done to the merits of those who, in that party, may be the legitimate successors to the Leadership, which has been so long a time but simulated by the Whig connexion. And constituencies must turn their attention from the old stock cries of suffrage and ballot, questions which are removed now from the region of controversy to the region of development, and consider thatgreat question of English Government, English statesmanship, English administration, purification, and vigour. Beyond a doubt the men exist who can be the agents of this re- constructed, renovated English state-power, though men may either not have detected them, or their claims may be as yet over- shadowed, for a time, by obsolete allegiance to old things, or jealous suspicion of new.
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