TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NATIONAL PARTY.
EvEN this short experience of the renewed session has more than sufficed to reconcile ua to recent events. The course which we expected the representatives of Liberal opinions in the House of Commons to take has been exactly that which was marked out on the first effectivenight of the renewed session, Monday, by Mr. Horsman and. Lord. john Russell. The principles upon which a Constitutional Opposition should be conducted were made as dis- tinct to the Representatives of the People as they have ever been in our best Parliamentary days. Neither Lord John nor Mr. Horsman attempted any rhetorical flight ; both dealt with the present position of public affairs in a manner abstracted from party interests ; both appealed far more to common sense and to sound feeling than to recent excitements or " culpable expecta- tions" ; both rebuked rather than encouraged heated impatience. They were speeches of a kind which would have fallen flat if they had not found a response in the conscience and heart of men : thus the attention they received was at once a tribute to the cor- rectness of the view and an evidence that there is sound stuff in. the present House of Commons. Mr. Horsman declared himself willing to remain on the Opposi- tion side of the House "until they should find themselves under a leadership which would enable them to move to the:other side and maintain their position there with honour to themselves and advantage to the country : " he objected to any harassing of Ministers with the view of rendering them uneasy in their seats. " Her Majesty having been pleased to confide the high office which they hold to her present Ministers," said Lord John Rus- sell, " it is our duty to hear the various measures developed which- they will propose, and to consider the merits of those measures, and also .how far we can rely on the promises which the Ministers hold out to us." The Representatives of the People, if they follow this lead, will be prepared to give to the present Ministers of the Crown a fair trial ; they will judge them exactly as they would have judged or as they have judged the late Government—by the test of their measures as promoting the interests of the country. Mr. Horsman was a member of Lord Palmerston's Government, and if that statesman had listened to his subordinate he might to this day have continued Premier. If Mr. Horsman did not flatter his friend when both were in office, he does not malign him now. He testifies to Lord Palmerston's " unvarying courtesy and kind- ness, and generous consideration and protection" for those who act with him. Lord John Russell gives his testimony to the services which Lord Palmerston rendered by his exertions during the war and his selection of the opportune moment for making peace. But Lord Palmerston fails by the test of Liberal principles as they have heretofore been understood. Under his administration, as Mr. Horsman says, Parliamentary Reform was postponed ; reli- gious freedom was an open question in the Cabmet ; aristocratic nepotism was an official custom ; and the Premier was in the habit of turning the cold shoulder to his friends and looking for sym- pathy and support to the opposite benches, converting the political question which ought to be embodied by a Cabinet into a personal question. That which we have been in the habit of colloquially calling " the Liberal party" has always been understood to com- prise men anxious to enlarge the political liberties and franchises of the country, anxious to increase the scope of the religious free- dom which we have so far attained, and to render every man equal before the law political as well as the law municipal ; of men who were always readyto base their pretensions upon the support of the entire country, whose interests they claimed to advocate as con- tradistinguished to the interests of class or the privileges of rank. The Liberal party, therefore, is only " dans son droit " when it tried the late 'Government by those tests, and it is only standing upon its right when it tries the new Government by the same tests. It cannot assume that Mr. Disraeliavill betray the Jew Bill, that Lord Stanley will be unable to overcome the family difference on the subject of Church-rates, that Sir John Pakington will fail to steer a successful course and make port on the subject of Na- tional Education, or that Lord Derby's Reform Bill will turn out to be worthless. But it is only fair that the Representatives of the People should show their determination not to abandon their own principles, and not to swerve from trying the Government in office by those tests. They may be ready to believe in Lord Malmesbury's motives, and stay hail with satisfaction the adjust- ment of the diplomatic " difficulty" with France ; but the Go- vernment of this country will not only obtain credit by remem- beying that there are other states with whom we should be in friendly, relations,—A is bound to have that fact in remembrance; and if its memory should fail it ought to be condemned by the Representatives of the People. There is no necessity to discuss the question whether we are to look only to " measures, not men" ; we demand both measures and men. We want measures to promote the interests of the Country, to realize its just wishes, to develop its capacities ; and we want the men fitted to introduce and carry out those mea- sures. It is something more than political prejudice which makes us doubt whether the steady opponents of Parliamentary Reform, the apologists of religious intolerance, and the sympa- thizers with arbitrary government, are the men for our day. It is not for human nature to declare that anything is " impossible," but we must- see the fact before we can believe Lord Derby to be a Reform Minister. Meanwhile, nothing would be gained by displacing one set of persons to put another set of persons in their place. It has ceased to be a personal question. Lord Palmerston's taunt that Mr. Horsman seemed to know the majority, and to wield it as if he were leader, displayed more of pique than point ; for it is only justice to say that in his relations with the late Government and the Liberal party Mr. Horsman has uniformly subordinated the per- sonal consideration to the political principle and to the interests of the country. This is the sound policy. Let the Representa- tives of the People take care of principles, and the party will take care of itself. If they try every measure, and every man, in. office or out of it, by the test of fitness to promote the just wishes and the welfare of the country, they will be de facto the leaders of a National Party ; and the strength acquired in that service will with the lapse of time only the more effectually accumulate to reader the next National Government powerful and successful.
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