TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CLOSED SESSION.
PLEASANT must be the change for our Senators from Dr. .2Eolus
Reid's capricious supply of best London atmosphere, with its odours stolen not from banks of violets but of Thames, to the mountain and the moor and the sea-coast, to the sweet fragrance of down-trod- den thyme, or the pungent freshness of breezes that have swept the broad Atlantic. We grudge them not their holyday ; though, so long as editors, fashionable ladies, maids of all work, factory chil- dren, and union doctors, exist and thrive among us, the claim of M.P.s on the score of over-work is comparatively weak. Yet, as none of the classes enumerated leads by any means an existence that a human being free to choose should aspire to, small blame to our legislators for keeping up the tradition of an autumn holy- day. The nation's work is none the worse done for that ; though we do not see why it should not be carried over from session to session, and be taken up again at the stage where it was left. Cy- nical or transcendental persons may fancy there would not be much loss if Parliament held perpetual holyday ; and Thomas Carlyle—who thinks that speech is silvern but silence golden— would apply his dictum with double emphasis to Parliamentary eloquence and the daily comments of "able editors." But men who live in an atmosphere of Parliamentary eloquence and able editing learn to tolerate the din of the machinery for the sake of the work done ; and that work has been done, a summary of re- sults will prove even to the satisfaction of Mr. Carlyle and our Anti-Parliamentarians. And as the working of machinery de- pends greatly on the skill of the superintendents, and we were not backward to congratulate the nation on the change of hands that was effected last December, we feel bound to show that the na-
tion has profited by the change, and that the work turned out is of better quality and more in quantity than it otherwise promised to be.
Had Lord Derby maintained his position a political offence par- taking equally of meanness, evasion, and audacity, would have been condoned, and the offenders permitted to enjoy the fruits of their crime; the standard of integrity and candour in public life and among public men would have been lowered ; the nation familiarized with the demoralizing spectacle of base arts triumph- ant ; and a policy established amid the acclamations of a grate- ful people, handed over to the malignant care of those who denied Its efficacy, sneered at the wisdom of its authors, and, calling it by a name intended to be opprobrious, would have wielded it as an instrument of offence and revenge against its supporters, and have done all that misuse could do to render it odious. The first act
of the session was satisfactorily employed in changing all this— in extruding from their place of power a party that had reached it by false pretences and claimed to keep it by impudent avowals of insincerity, and in rejecting a financial policy that was waste-
ful, partial, and undigested, still looming in the future, with an obstinate aversion to reveal more than an unpopular outline pro- jected on a hazy atmosphere of bewildering word-cloud. The event might have been otherwise. The accidental issue of a score of elections would have turned the scale. How much the country has negatively gained by the result, in the absence of agi- tation in the more excitable districts of the country, under leaders practised in this business—in the absence Of a general suspicion of the intentions and capacity of the Government, illustrated as this would have been by the union of all our tried and trusted states- men with all our popular tribunes on the Opposition benches—we may be thankful to have been spared a definite proof. How much it has gained in purity and efficiency of administration, may be definitely tested by the Parliamentary report which consigned Mr. Stafford to public reprobation, and will not, we may venture to affirm, figure with heraldic blazonries and ornamented border among the heirlooms of the ducal Pereies. It would not be easy to over-estimate the advantage to public business in Parliament due to the transference of the great majority of men of oratorical ability and official training from the Opposition to the Government, resulting in the assignment to each of these of a special department instead of the general function of criticism, as well as in the sub- sidence or subordination of much activity on the part of independ- ent Members, that would under a less effective and influential Go- vernment have broken loose and interrupted the business of the session. A well-officered regular army has done the work of the Parliamentary campaign, instead of a horde of raw recruits under a dashing guerilla chief. The Canada Clergy Reserves Bill, the deathblow to Transporta- tion, with its essential complement in the substitution of an- other mode of dealing with our criminals, the despatch of the Cape Constitution, and the concessions to Jamaica are all indications of a Colonial policy that aims at maintaining the link between the Mother-country and her dependencies by a sense of mutual interest and common origin rather than by constraint and interference. They are all the more valuable that they are the result not of an individual conviction of the Colonial Minister, but a simple deduction from the experience of recent years forced upon the nation by repeated complaint occasionally rising into menace. But they have derived from the character and knowledge of the Duke of Newcastle this great advantage, that they have been granted not grudgingly nor in dudgeon, so as to lose all their grace, but accompanied with declarations of prin- ciple so enlightened, and in a tone so generous, confiding, and cor- dial, as to be no less efficacious than the measures themselves in restoring that mutual affection and respect which must henceforth be looked to as our sole reliance in maintaining the Colonial em- pire for which our forefathers have made costly sacrifices, and the time significance and value of which we so long pertinaciously misunderstood.
The only positive failure in the programme with which Lord John Russell opened the second act of the session, on the 10th of February, is in his own project for the improvement of the means of Education for the poorer classes in this country; and even of that we have perhaps the most useful portion in the Charitable Trusts Bill, which has become law. On the other hand, the un- fortunate events which have led to the resignation of Archbishop Whately and two other eminent supporters of the National Mixed Education in Ireland must be placed in the opposite account. The Commissions to inquire into the state of the Universities have as yet produced no legislative fruit, but the Universities them- selves are not sleeping on the questions that have been raised; a result that, with all our respect for the self-reforming tendencies of these venerable bodies, we attribute in part to the fact that the Chancellor of Oxford has ceased to be Prime Minister of England. Our data for comparison between the late and the present Go- vernment in respect to the India Bill consist of Mr. Herries's un- equivocal declaration of what he as President of the Board of Con- trol considered to be the policy of Lord Derby's Government, im- plying the least possible deviation from the old system ; of Lord Derby's contradiction to Mr. Herries, implying that the late Go- vernment had no convictions or intentions at all ; and of Lord Stan- ley's negative amendment and equally negative speech, at a time and under circumstances when a substantive proposition would have retrieved the credit of his party, and was to be expected from an ambitious and clever young man suddenly placed in an unusually favourable position for achieving a reputation and impressing him- self on the public mind. It may be admitted that the India Bill of the Government was intrusted to a mind neither bold in its con- ceptions, nor rich in resources of invention, nor happy in the pos- session of local knowledge and experience ; and that the bill aimed consequently at nothing more than tentative reforms, which, if they do not ;disappoint expectation, may hereafter form the basis of more radical and extensive changes. But it seems tolerably certain from the indications mentioned above, that, small as our present instalment of Indian reform may appear to certain parties, it is at least larger and more effective than the measure which would have emanated from the late Government. If Mr. Bright and Mr. Blackett could have operated a more dashing coup d'état, —if Lord Ellenborough would have gratified himself and excited a somewhat indifferent public by a razzia upon Leadenhall Street executed in the lightest cavalry style,—Mr. Herries would cer- tainly have seen no need of any alteration in either government or disposal of patronage; and Lord Derby, we may be sure, would have seen nothing, or eared for nothing, but the power of the Directory, and the excessive trouble of opposing a vested intereat on a question which very slightly influenced parties in this eoun- try or votes at elections. As it is, a change has been introduced, the effect of which has to be watched and ascertained : fixity of tenure for a term 'of years no longer shelters the Directory from public opinion : let public opinion make itself well acquainted with India, learn to be accurate as well as zealous and phi- lanthropic, and there is no longer any obstacle to introducing the best possible government into India with or without a month's notice.
The branch of policy on which it is impossible to form a compared tive or positive estimate of the conduct of the present Government is that which concerns our relations with foreign countries. What is really known with respect to the point which most interests us is, that the four leading Powers of Europe are in accord upon the mode in which the arrogant and insolent outrage of a powerful semibarbarian despot is to be met. But, unquestionably, Mr. Layard gave utterance to a conviction shared by most non-official persons, when on Tuesday last he told the Government that they would have strengthened their hands for a manly, straightforward policy, if they had been less reserved. There is no reason for be- lieving that an English House of Commons would have been so indiscreet as to interfere in the details of negotiation, or so blinded by faction as to throw discouragement upon any efforts of Govern- ment to save the honour and interests of this country without vio- lating the peace of Europe ; while, on the other hand, the firmness of our diplomacy would have lost nothing from its resting on a declaration of the English Parliament, and the Emperor of Russia would have paid at least as much attention to Sir Hamilton Sey- mour's remonstrances if 'they had sounded in his ear as the thun- der of the voice of a mighty nation. The truth is, that the English people beholds in Russia not merely the overbearing neighbour of a weak power, but the great standing army of despotism, the plun- derer of Poland, the conqueror of Hungary, the foe of all that is most precious and worth fighting for in our modern civilization ; and Mr. Hume, pacific and economic, was speaking the innermost heart of millions when he said the noble fleet blazing away with unshotted guns at Spithead might have been better employed in blowing a Russian squadron out of the water. No one doubts it would do it should a collision take place ; and should the Russians in the end be found to have gained without a campaign all that they could have gained by a victory, the peace so preserved will scarcely be thought very soothing to the honour or consonant to the traditions of our country. Still it must be remembered, with regard to the comparison we are instituting, that our present
Cabinet has a claim to puhlio confidence, in the absence of decisive evidence, which Lord Derby's Government could not for a moment have enforced. If experience of foreign affairs and knowledge of foreign statesmen are worth anything, no Cabinet of recent times could claim comparison with it ; if pronounced liberal opinions and boldness of attitude in combina- tion with the most anxious desire for peace, and an habitually courteous, cordial, and conciliatory bearing, towards foreign courts, can insure a favourable and an. honourable issue of a complicated quarrel, surely the union of Lord Aberdeen with Lord Palmer- ston, the agreement of both in the policy to be pursued, are gua- rantees on which the nation can rest more securely than on any which the talents, knowledge, firmness, and sympathies of the Earl of Malmesbury could have afforded, either in themselves, or when their possessor was member of a Government too weak to be bold, too unpopular to pursue an independent course, too new to states- manship and too unfixed in principle to unite calmness and pru- dence with decision in a crisis of peril and difficulty. We may find cause to regret the course taken by our present Ministers ; but while the event is yet pending, we cannot but feel that the chances of an unfortunate and disgraceful issue are incalculably lessened by the change that has transferred Lord Malmesbury to the task of criticism and question, and Lord Clarendon with a staff of En- Foreign-Ministers to the more responsible task of negotiation and action.
The necessities of the situation have concurred with the genius of an individual in giving unusual éclat to the financial arrange- ments of the session. Finance Minister of a great commercial na- tion, at an cent when this branch of policy has been the pivot for many years of our party struggles—member of a Government which had come into power on the rejection by the House of Com- mons of the financial policy of their predecessors—and succeeding a man of great cleverness and telling powers of rhetoric, who was moreover the real leader of his party and dictator of their policy and pretensions—Mr. Gladstone was bound by the strongest per- sonal and political motives to produce a budget that should be at once bold, comprehensive, sound, and popular. The satisfaction of the country, and the support of an overwhelming majority of a House of Commons chosen under another Government, and which had overthrown that Government by a very narrow majority, have amply testified to his success. It is needless to refer to details fresh in the memory of every one ; but it would be impossible to review the results of the session, however briefly, without advert- ing to the ability displayed by Mr. Gladstone in the conduct of his measures through the House of Commons. His singular apti- tude for the office he fills was impressed upon all who sat through those long discussions, to which his mastery of the subject in hand, his knowledge of all its details, his breadth of conception, his fair- ness tempering yet never weakening his decision and firmness, his promptness, his completeness, lent the charm that belongs to all exhibitions of great intellectual power, clear conviction, and de- cided purpose. But beyond this special capacity and fitness, the qualities of mind and character then displayed have produced upon the public a conviction that Mr. Gladstone is a man whom no duties and difficulties of statesmanship would daunt or perplex ; a man to whom the nation may look for wise counsel and vigorous action in any emergency that may arise ; and whose presence among us secures that, as older statesmen pass from the scene, the councils of the realm will not want a master mind.
When the Coalition Government was formed, we expressed strong hopes that the obstacles to its permanence might not be found insuperable ; and we should ill convey our impressions if we passed the results of the session in review without pointing to the fulfilment of those hopes, up to this time, as the most valuable result of all. Hitherto we have been conducting our comparison on the conjecture of what would have been done had Lord Derby continued Prime Minister, and the Opposition remained, as they began the session, in igolated and independent sections, separated by personal rivalries and the ghosts of dead and buried opinions. But it is when we look forward that the value of the Coalition ap- pears most striking. Lord Derby and a majority of the House of Commons might have staved off for a year or two the revision of the Representative System that next session will bring for discus- sion; but at what an expense of agitation and fierce clamour, end- ing probably in a climax of sudden concession, which would have
• silenced reason and experience, and have given up the vessel of the state to chance and popular passions. Now, all sections of Liberal politicians are acting in concert ; their opponents may be said to be annihilated as a party. The temper of those who most desire a change is calm though expectant, because they know that Government rests on the support of popular sympathies ; those who would dread a change in which the leaders of the Democracy should alone concur, and which should be stamped with their hall-mark alone, will welcome a settlement indorsed by eminent statesmen of known attachment to the old institutions. Under no other circumstances could the temper of all classes of the nation have been so favourable to the reception of a scheme deliberately adopted by the Government ; under no other circumstances could Government have attained the breadth and completeness that may be hoped from a scheme which all force of opinion, however various, in favour of any change in the directions aimed at, will have helped to mould ; under no other circumstances would a scheme have so lost the aspect of ay instrument, and taken the grander air of a true national Latlopment. The Coalition, and the Coalition alone, has rendered all this possible : and for this reason, highly as we value the results hitherto attained both nega-
tive and positive, we esteem them as little in comparison with the security created that the nation will pass through the crisis of a new Reform Bill with as much good and as little harm as is con- sistent with any great political experiment.
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