THE ETHICS OF NEO-TORYISM.
IT has been becoming increasingly evident since Lord Beaconsfield's death that he had "educated his party" more successfully than he had himself imagined when he made the boast in the autumn of 1867. Household Suffrage, it is now clear, was by no means his only achievement as a political instructor. What he aimed at doing, as soon as he determined to supplant or to succeed Peel, was to revolutionise the Conservative Party, to change its character fundamentally, to undermine it at its foundation and place it on a new moral basis. The sober and statesmanlike Conservatism of Sir Robert Peel was abhorrent to him, and to mark his repudiation of it he abjured the very name. He ostentatiously proclaimed himself a Tory, not a Conservative ; and his ideal leader was neither Peel, nor Canning, nor Pitt, but "the injured Boling- broke." The reason of the preference is not far to seek. Lord Beaconsfield's ideas of government were essentially Oriental, and Lord Bolingbroke represented those ideas better than any other English statesman. Lord Bolingbroke desired to increase the power of the Sovereign at the expense of that of Parliament; which, in effect and generally, would mean thegovernment of the country by the Minister who was most skilful in mastering the Royal will. Bolingbroke himself was not ill qualified for such a post. He was accomplished, brilliant, and eloquent; full of re- source, and without scruples. It is easy to understand how such a politician would realise to Lord Beaconsfield's youthful mind the Oriental ideal of a successful statesman, and how the image of "the injured Bolingbroke" dominated his imagination even in the maturity of his career. From this point of view politics became a game of skill, of which the main object was to expel in manoeuvre and intrigue, and to baffle opponents. The politician degenerated into a sort of gambler, and became gradually possessed by the gambler's passion, in which all higher considerations are absorbed in the delirious wish to win. Apply this key to Lord Beaconsfield's political career, and it will be found to answer every lock and ward. Free- trade, Parliamentary Reform, foreign politics (except the Eastern Question, on which he had cherished ideas of his own), all were treated by him as pieces on a political chessboard, having no value in themselves except as instruments for check- mating an opponent. Macaulay's sagacity, thirty years ago, discerned "the little rift within the lute" that was by-and-by to destroy the traditional policy of the Conservative party. The passage we refer to occurs in the speech which he delivered on his election for Edinburgh in 1852, and it is so striking that it is worth while to quote it. Lord Derby's Government, of which Mr. Disraeli was of course the ruling spirit, was in office. That Government did not propose to touch the question of Parliamentary Reform • yet here is one of their haphazard pro- posals as described by Dacaulay : "What precisely I am to expect from them I do not know ; whether the most obstinate opposition to every change, or the most insanely violent change. If I look at their conduct, I find the gravest reasons for appre- hending that they may at one time resist the most just de- mands, and at another time, from the merest -caprice, propose the wildest innovations." And then Macaulay proceeds to illustrate his meaning, by calling attention to the fact that "the most violent and democratic change that ever was pro- posed within the memory of the oldest man had been proposed but a few weeks before," by Lord Derby's Home Secretary. "In general, when a great change in our institutions is to be proposed from the Treasury Bench, the Minister announces his intention some weeks before. There is a great attendance, there is the most painful anxiety to know what he is going to recommend? Mr. Disraeli had taken another course. "At the end of a night, in the coolest way possible, without the smallest notice, Mr. Walpole proposed to add to the tail of the Militia Bill a clause to the effect that every man who had served in the Militia for two years should have a vote for the county." According to Macaulay's calculation, this would add about, "six thousand voters to every county in England and Wales." And the three qualifications were youth, poverty, and ignorance. As to age, "the nearer to eighteen, the
better." As to poverty, " the elector is to be a person to whom a shilling a day is an object." As to ignor- ance, the men who compose the Militia "are not among the most educated or the most intelligent of our labouring-classes." From this and similar indications of the neo-Toryism intro- duced by Mr. Disraeli, Macaulay sugared a serious danger to the institutions of the country :—" On the whole, what I do expect is that they will offer a pertinacious, vehement, pro- voking opposition to safe and reasonable change ; and that then, in some moment of fear or caprice, they will bring in and fling upon the table, in a fit of desperation or levity, some plan which will loosen the very foundations of society." This prophecy has been fnlfilled in a variety of ways already, and it is probably destined to receive some more illustrations. Fortunately, the Tories have only been once in office with a majority since Macaulay uttered the prediction, and then we all know how near they were to involving England in one of the most iniquitous and disastrous wars of modern times. And as it was, the efforts of the Liberal Opposition, backed up by the country, did not suffice to prevent wholly un- provoked wars in South Africa and India,—wars which added largely to the Debt and taxation of the country, and from the calamitous consequences of which the present Government has only as yet succeeded in partially delivering us. The last illustration of Macaulay's gloomy prophecy has just been supplied by Sir Stafford Northcote in the House of Com- mons, and by Lord Salisbury in his startling speech in the House of Lords last Tuesday evening. The former gave notice of his intention to move the rejection of the provisional agree- ment with M. de Lesseps, when he had nothing before him but the bare skeleton of the arrangement. He saw the scheme suddenly exposed to a breeze of unpopularity, and he could not resist the temptation of inflicting what seemed a feasible defeat on the Government. In that exhilarating prospect the interests of shipowners, the risk of a rupture with France, the rights of private property, the complex problem of our occupation of Egypt, were forgotten or disregarded. What can be expected of a party whose soberest leader is capable of exhibiting such freaks of perilous levity ? But Lord Salisbury on Tuesday evening. surpassed—which was not easy—the rashness of his colleague in the Commons. The speech was un- premeditated—Lord Salisbury said so in his first sentence ; yet this is the sort of policy which a responsible statesman, the leader of a great party, one who aspires to guide the counsels and to conceive and carry out the policy of the nation, thinks it prudent to fling upon the public mind without the slightest warning. Assuming that M. de Lesseps has legally an ex- clusive right of canalisation through the Isthmus of Suez, nevertheless, says Lord Salisbury, "I doubt very much the competence of the Sultan or the Khedive to make an agree- ment which should bar the nations from the natural right of a passage across the Isthmris for the commerce of the world.
This is something more than a legal question ; it deals with that far higher question of how far Governments have the power to confer, without appeal, on persons receiving concessions, prerogatives which shall have the effect of pre- venting the natural access to means of transit which, as a prinui facie right, is 'possessed by the commerce of the world."
Well might the Lord Chancellor express his "unfeigned astonishment" at such a doctrine. No more revolutionary doc- trine was ever heard within the walls of Parliament; and from the lips, too, of the stout, the almost fanatical champion of the rights of property and the prerogatives of the Sultan! Egypt belongs to its Sovereign as much as any part of the British dominions belongs to Queen Victoria, and the nations of the world have just as much right to make canals and railways through British territory, in spite of the sovereign rights of England, as they have to make canals through the Isthmus of Suez without leave of the Sovereign Power. Suppose we had annexed Egypt after Tel-el-Kebir, what would the British Jingo think of Lord Salisbury's proposal that the Isthmus of Suez, or any other portion of Egyptian territory, should be considered the common property of mankind, so -far as the needs of cosmopolitan commerce required it ? If Mr. Cham- berlain had propounded such a doctrine, how every Tory newspaper and platform would resound with indignation Yet Mr. Chamberlain never uttered a sentence which even ingenious perversion could twist into decent resemblance to Lord Salisbury's Communistic suggestion. And here lies the danger. When a Radical propounds a startling doctrine, a thousand tongues and pens are on the alert to sound the alarm and magnify the danger. But the public have not yet realised the portentous change which has passed over the Conservative party since their late leader undertook their education, nor the consequent danger of giving them a majority in the House of Commons. As the career of the late Government proved, a Tory Ministry with a majority in the House of Commons, as well as in the House of Lords, is under no check, except from public opinion, and cannot be ejected till it chooses to dissolve. And it may persuade itself, as Lord Beaconsfield's Government did, that public opinion is on its side. Indications are rife that the advent of a Tory Government to office just now would be signalised, among other adventures, by some Irish policy which might disintegrate the Empire, shake the foundations of property, and necessitate the independence or reconquest of Ireland. A great deal more than the question of a second Suez Canal is involved in the substitution at this moment of a Tory for a Liberal Government, and we trust and believe that the Con- stituencies are alive to the danger.
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