A TORY FEAST OF TABERNACLES. T HE goddess of turnips, or
whoever it is that watches over county members and inspires their eloquence, has had a triumph this week in a speech of her favourite votary, Mr. Newdegate. The county member, as a general rule, is a hibernating animal. He sleeps through the legislative months from February to July. He wakes up at harvest time, is extremely vivacious when partridges are in season, may be seen scouring the country when the hounds come out, but retires again at the close of winter into torpor and in- activity, and lies dormant till law-making is once more over and hay-making begins. Mr. Newdegate is an exception to the general rule. The goddess of turnips never allows her beloved son to repose for long. During the dreary session, when the other agricultural heroes of the Conservative camp are buried in a sleep softer than their own grass, she wakes him, as Thetis woke Achilles, and leads him beyond the limits of his slumbering lines. She inspires him with a horrid energy which persuades him to spend the hours when he had far better be asleep, in alacrity and war. She hounds him on to do battle for the Church and State, to harry the flying squadrons of Dissent, or to lead some forlorn hope against Maynooth. Heaven protect the unwary Radical or Papist, who, taking advantage of the darkness, prowls too close to the Protestant camp ! He will meet with a champion who is always up and doing at every hour of the night. Thus it is that the sacred chroniclers, whose duty it is to record the performances of the parliamentary chieftains during the year, never lose sight of Mr. Newdegate. But though the vision of this great and good man is familiar to us through all the signs of the political zodiac, even Mr. Newdegate is more himself when he is surrounded by the insignia of agriculture. The sight of model ploughs, model reaping-machines, large Cochin China fowls, and prize oxen, naturally exerts a salutary influence over the minds of those whose political career is devoted to their cause. It is as soon as autumn comes and farmers' dinners com- mence—on some Bceotiau festival when the cloths are drawn and speechifying begins—that Mr. Newdegate warms up into unusual life, gathers all his powers, begins to gene- ralize on history and on the British Constitution, and shows himself worthy to be called—what he certainly is—the prize county member of the midland districts. It is the case with all rotatory bodies, and of course with Mr. Newdegate's mind among the rest, that they begin to rotate slowly and increase the rapidity of their motion by degrees. At the commencement of his speech at the farmers' gathering at Market Bosworth, Mr. Newdegate may be said to have been, if not dull, at least not profoundly wise, and it was not till afterwards that his thoughts became remark- able for their interest and importance. In the commence- ment of his speech he confined himself to mere common- place observations, which any one might have made. Of general politics he treated briefly under three heads. First and foremost, he thanked Heaven that we had got a House of Lords—a formula so common now-a-days at Tory after dinner speeches, that it is almost entitled to rank as the Tory " Grace after meat." Secondly—with his own annual speeches on the subject of Maynooth more especially in his mind's eye—he defended the practice of making long speeches in the House, on the questionable ground that long speeches often originated new ideas. Lastly, he regretted that there were not more county members in Parliament to represent the interests of the land. What are one hundred and sixty amongst so many ? They are swamped by the residue of the six hundred, just as Hungary's representatives stand in danger of being swamped by the rest of the empire. On this subject we do not know that we can offer Mr. New- degate much consolation. Up to this point everybody will be with him, though the wish to originate new ideas may carry even Mr. Newdegate to too great oratorical lengths. But we can hardly say that it is probable that the number of county members will be very much increased. The little band must compensate themselves for the disappointment by being still more thankful for the existence of a House of Peers, by making—those of them who can speak—still longer speeches, and by increased political enthusiasm on the subject of hops, corn, and church rates. The really instructive part of the proceedings may be said to have commenced when Mr. Newdegate dropped all Con- servative truisms, and, passing from reflection to investiga- tion, began to discover great inductive laws about society and the progress of mankind with a rapidity sufficient to disconcert a Kepler or a Galileo. By the casual fall of an apple Newton is said to have been led to turn his mind towards the principle of gravitation. Standing in the midst of red-cheeked farmers and roast beef, Mr. Newdegate has discovered a law which stands to political prosperity as gra- vitation to the material world. It is the law of the pa- triarchal system of family, or, as Mr. Newdegate continued, allowing his knowledge of modern language to induce him to take an unfair advantage of his audience—all "that the French have learned to term en " He came upon this principle in a moment, as Newton came upon gravitation and the apple, while his eye was running over the festive scene around him, in which a scriptural imagination had already led him to detect a resemblance to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The present, be said, was a patriarchal meeting. They were all met at Bosworth, a place of many associations. They thought of Bosworth and new red coats and the cry of cheerful hounds. But other and more ancient associations were identified with the name of Bosworth. He alluded to the battle of Bosworth : "a mighty contest with great principles was here decided. The triumph of Bosworth was the triumph of family over one who had usurped power in defiance of those sacred ties which constitute our home and the organization of our families." What is it that ren- ders England pre-eminent over all nations of the earth ? What was it that defeated Richard III.? What is it, the absence of which has brought France to the despotism of one and America to the despotism of the many ? The sacred organisation of the family—the great principle of home. On this account Mr. Newdegate "rejoiced at the patriarchal character" of that meeting which he was called upon to ad- dress. "Depend upon it we have nothing to be ashamed of in the patriarchal character of our assembly. It is the re- cognition of that respect for family which is and has been the strength of England." Sir Archibald Alison himself, the great Tory interpreter of the ways of Providence, could not have explained the course of history on a more simple theory than this which Mr. Newdegate thus propounds. We notice it, not so much for its intrinsic truth as for its intrinsic beauty, and the brilliancy of the inductive method by which the philosophic Mr. Newdegate found it. He had, first and foremost, the farmers and their wives at Market Bosworth. Secondly, he had the battle of Bosworth. Thirdly, he had the French empire. Fourthly, he has the American consti- tution, leading up inevitably and of necessity, as all Conser- vatives know, to the present American war. In all this he saw the operation of the great patriarchal principle, a prin- ciple which brings with it prosperity, and the neglect of which entails disaster.
Surrounded as Mr. Newdegate was by fat sheep and low- ing oxen, broad-handed tillers of the earth and their buxom wives, above all, placed in the middle of a tent—a fact to which the observant mind of Mr. Newdegate attached much importance—it is not surprising that he should have thotight first of tabernacles, and secondly of the patriarchs. Bos- worth naturally recalled the battle fought in the vicinity. The band no doubt suggested Britannia's glories and the loyalty due to Her Majesty the Queen. America and France probably suggested themselves. What on earth they have all to do with the patriarchal system might, however, have escaped a less ingenious reasoner. But Mr. Newdegate be- longs to that antiquated order of politicians who regard the State as a happy family, of which the country gentlemen and the noblemen are the sheiks, and an hereditary monarch the father and supreme head. A revolution, on this theory, is certainly a disturbance of the patriarchal principle, and as it is quite true that Napoleonism is the result of revolu- tions, Napoleonism may be said to be a result also of the abandonment of the patriarchal system. As the United States became a national power by somewhat similar means, it is obvious that America too is a similar example. Lastly, the battle of Bosworth was fought against an uncle who, by putting his nephews, the legitimate sovereigns, to death, dis- turbed the natural order of patriarchal succession. Strict logic would only infer that the non-patriarchal usurper was unsuccessful ; but Mr. Newdegate goes further, and con- cludes that to be unpatriarchal must be a mistake. He approves, accordingly, of the farmers being accompanied to social gatherings by their wives. It is a patriarchal custom, and one which prevents the imperiling of the "great prin- ciple of home." By his patriarchal system, it is clear that Mr. Newde- gate means, at one and the same time, two things which are by no means identical : feudalism and hereditary monarchy. It is by no means necessary that they should go togethet, though hereditary succession is the form of government most natural to a feudal age. We need not dwell upon the con- fusion of mind which regards domesticity and the love of home as part and parcel of the feudal system. It is more amusing to observe that the old Tory notions of twenty or thirty years back have not yet died out. Whatever is not unintelligible in Mr. Newdegate's speech is a romantic eulo&ium on a now impossible feudalism. It belongs to the political creed of the hunting-fields of half a century ago. England is great because she is a nation of farmers and coun- try gentlemen ; the former contented to obey, and the latter condescending to guide. This good and respectable, though perhaps fabulous, conservatism is dying out. The country gentleman is ceasing to be the happy monarch of a con- tented peasantry, and the feudal relations of vassal and I liege exist only m the imagination of Lord Robert Montagu, the novels of Mr. Disraeli, and the poetry of Lord John Manners. Still Mr. Newdegate holds on to the ancient creed. The squires of Warwickshire stand by him, and at a hunt.. dinner, or a farmers' club anniversary, feel ready to defy the world. Such happy enthusiasm, such unaffected simplicity, is a pleasant sight in these sceptical times, and would be a pleasanter if there was not some reason to suppose that the party to which Mr. Newdegate belongs was on the eve of returning to power. We are somewhat sobered by the re- flection that the reign of Newdegates is more than possible. The Tory leaders may be more enlightened than the mass of their own followers. A large number of their supporters are, no doubt, men who are above such puerile absurdities as those above criticized. But Lord Derby's strength, after all, resides in a body of electors and adherents not a whit more intelligent than those who cheered Mr. Newdegate's sage remarks,, and imagined themselves to be profound admirers of the great patriarchal system. Conservatism, as the present Conservative party is constituted, represents the sentimental crotchets of the better kind of country gentlemen. At a. Tory gathering like the gathering at Market Bosworth, we learn what, after all, are the real sentiments of those who. will succeed Lord Palmerston, if he falls before his Parlia- mentary opponents. A Tory Feast of Tabernacles is therefore a somewhat melancholy spectacle. But it has its cheerful side. There is a good deal of genuine English feeling even at the bottom of Tory rodomontade. The Bosworth squires and farmers and their wives are not bad specimens of English character. Let us hope that they enjoyed their merry-making, and that they did not imperil either their own necks or the safety of the patriarchal system while they performed what we suppose Mr. Newdegate would call the "sacred" duty of going home.
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