LONG VACATION POLITICS.
THE first "distant and random gun" of that dropping fire of oratory which relieves the silence of the long vacation has been fired this week at Tavistock by Sir John Trelawny. The reporters have not yet begun to listen so eagerly to the addresses to constituents as they will do when the session recedes further into the distance, and "flushes of deep silence mock their skill ; " but as far as we can gather what he said, it was not a very admirable specimen of the ideal Long Vacation speech. The speaker was naturally de- pressed by little success in Parliament, and, perhaps, even less success out of it. The Church-rates Abolition Bill had been decidedly defeated even in the Lower House, and none of Sir -John Trela wily's other ideas had secured even deliberate atten- tion. Hence he confided to his constituents that he would abdicate his leadership on the Church-rates question, at least as long as the present Parliament lasts. In short, the member for Tavistock was apparently in a dejected frame of mind, and looked upon his review of the session like a school- boy on repetition-day, when the old difficulties and mistakes haunt his memory, and render him even more unhappy than when they were first encountered. The dumb Conservatism of the country bewilders the old Radicals, and though SirJohn Tre- lawny had a favouring audience he does not seem to have done much in the way of improving the occasion. It was the greater pity, because the moment for discussing liberal eccle- siastical principles, on which Sir John Trelawny especially interests himself, though rather in the old-fashioned negative style, is now exceedingly opportune. There never was a time when Long Vacation speeches might do more to ripen opinion on subjects not yet fully ripe for Parliamentary discussion, but everywhere pressing themselves on public attention. If
the war with reference to slavery, and doubtless he might members of Parliament would give first a little thought to have claimed even more with justice. the true ideal of a Long Vacation speech from a member to his It is curious to see how an educated American regards the constituents,—to what it may effectually do and what it alleged infractions of his liberty of which we have heard so ought not even to attempt,—we might have something more impressive than that long series of disconnected, grave or gay reminiscences which, in their whole range, from the comic
Parliamentary compendium of Mr. Bernal Osborne to the solemn funeral discourse of Mr. Newdegate or the fluent ledger-accounts of Sir Stafford Northcote, so seldom really illustrate a principle, or give the elector a new insight into the importance of his duties.
A speech to constituents must usually be an indifferent one which would make a good speech in the House. The duty of
electors is very different from the duty of the elected ; the former have to look at politics in a far more elementary and fundamental way than the latter must do, when once at least they are fairly entered on practical deliberations. Yet mem- bers would always be benefitted more than they themselves know if they would, at least once a year, make the effort not to "review the session," as it is called, so much as to pick out and illustrate the real guiding principles that have been at work in it, causing new combinations, new repulsions, and a new current of political thought. Electors ought to know and representatives ought themselves to strive to understand and recall, the real political forces that have been at work preserving one party, undermining another, and creating a third. The electors want, too, some clear idea of the relation of the various leading statesmen to political principles; and if they were in fact more distinctly informed and satisfied on these subjects, they would care less to enforce the slavish con- ditions by which they so often and so injudiciously try to turn their representatives into mere delegates voting for or against specified measures as directed, without in any way sharing their constituents' reasons for supporting or opposing them. We should have fewer exactions of ballot-pledges, Anti-Church-rate pledges, Sabbatarian pledges, Maine-law pledges, and so forth, if there were a franker explanation between members and their constituents as to the real aim of their Parliamentary policy, the opposing forces which impede them in pursuit of it, and the policy by which they have thought it right to work it out. It is because electors know so very little of the real political heart of their members, and feel all their votes to be so much a matter of accidental party tactics, that they demand specific promises as to particular votes without caring whether they agree, or differ wholly, about the reason for that vote. A member may promise to vote for the ballot, because he seriously believes that secret voting would be a powerful Tory instrument, and yet win by his promise the suffrage of electors whose only object in getting the ballot is, as they think, to undermine the power of wealth and land. This could not be so if there were anything like a frank understanding between the electors and the elected as to the general drift of the hitters' policy, the claims they have really at heart to vindicate for the middle and working classes in Church and State, the reasons for which they support or thwart the leading states- men of the day, and the tests by which they judge of those statesmen's sympathy with these claims or hostility to them. If there were any large exposition of political principles of this sort in relation to the political chiefs and the general teaching of the session during the Long Vacation, it would be less easy to find electors thinking far more of one petty pledge than of the temper and spirit in which that pledge was given, and in which it had been kept. But this, it will be said, is all vague. What principles out of the great range of politics ought members to select for this full kind of discussion with their constituents ? Clearly those which are for the moment forcing themselves most on public notice, which are partly indeterminate as yet, and which, therefore, are fresh enough to illustrate the immediate temper and latest tendency of the representative. On subjects that are not for the moment practical, that are not before the public mind, a man may take almost what view he chooses, without betraying his true wishes and convictions, without its being, in short, really characteristic of his political aims. But on a subject that is just rising into the field of discussion, which forces itself upon us at every turn, no man can help being more or less his true self. He cannot make shift with an old party watchword, simply because he has been long ac- customed to it, and sees no chance of its being more than a party watchword. He must more or less reveal his real
thought and feeling about it. The present session will supply an admirable illustration. In it the least imme- diately important debates have been by far the most testing, the most significant of coming change,—because they have shown us Liberal and Conservative thought actually crystalliz- ing afresh on a new class of subjects—that of Church compre- hension. It might be said with some plausibility that it is a very inadequate test of what men will do,—say for the political representation of the working classes, or for the cause of freedom in Poland,—whether they happen to wish clergymen to be hampered with an elaborate dogmatic system of subscrip- tions, or to be as free as possible to express their own belief. Nor is it a good test till you see the spirit in which this clerical freedom is claimed or refused. But if you carefully note this, nothing could give a surer insight into the real dividing lines between Liberal and Tory principle in the House and in the country. For all the forces are at work on it which really distinguish the true types of Tory, Con- servative, Liberal, and Radical. There is the Tory's strong feeling that the stability of the universe depends on maintain- ing the English Church and State, just as they are, as the only guarantee of divine truth and human justice. There is the Conservative's far more widely-spread intellectual awe of the risk of change, his dread of what changes change may involve, his feeling that if you move a single piece on the board the whole combinations of the game will get beyond his grasp, and his consequent wish to sit studying his move a few years longer. There is the Liberal's hearty faith in freedom as the true law,
while restrictions are the exception which require special jus- tification, and his profound conviction that, in the case of the present comprehensiveness of our national Church, many of these restrictions are utterly unable to offer even a shadow of self-justification. There is the Radical's keen theoretico- destructive impulse, his wish to overturn in order that he may model again on an untried theory of his own, his grudge against a venerable institution which "takes tithes and effects nothing." All these tendencies have been at work in the late session, and have seemed to us to demonstrate very remarkably the real drift of opinion in Parliament, to distinguish the true from the nominal Liberal among both the leading statesmen and the rising members,—and also to demonstrate the tolerably certain fact that while the country, alarmed at the course of events in America, is harking back into stronger Conservatism, yet in the class from which our members are chosen, and on subjects not embarrassed by the influence of foreign events, the Liberal faith grows fast at the expense of its three rivals, though for the moment it is obliged to hold itself strictly in hand in order to accommodate itself to the temper of the people.
Look, for example, at the leading statesmen. Lord Russell and Lord Grey are, we think, the only ones among them who have taken their stand unequivocally in favour of abolishing any of the subscriptions to dogma, and they have limited themselves to the two most conspicuously futile and mis- chievous—the subscription required for the University M.A. degree at Oxford, and the subscription required from a few unhappy municipal officers which the Qualification for Office Oaths Abolition Bill proposed—of course in vain—to repeal. The peers are protected from the confusing dread of popular opinion, so that even Lord Russell and Lord Grey, for statesmen so placed, have gone but a little way. Yet, if we had to choose among the greater statesmen of the day the men most truly and emphatically devoted to the true Liberal principle—that liberty is the best guarantee for truth, instead of endangering it,—we should fix upon them. Lord Palmerston has kept his lips sealed on this, as on so many other questions, and even courted the bigots of Scotland, in the matter of the Sunday opening of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh,—the best test we could have that Lord Palmerston is now the Conservatives' favourite Minister, though indulging one or two sincerely Liberal sentiments in foreign affairs. He is, probably, a Gallio about these ecclesiastical reforms,—certainly not dreading them for their own sake,—as certainly not caring to risk anything to secure them. And, though capriciously Liberal in Continental politics, Lord Palmerston has shown himself throughout his whole career really indifferent to each new advance in the direction of freedom. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, who was by his antecedents Conservative principally for the sake of the high party in the Church of England, shows every session more and more, and almost against his will, the true value he attaches to liberty, if only for the sake of that truth which he values even more than liberty. His speeches this session on the Dissenters' Burial Bill, on the Act of Uniformity, and on the University test have shown that his mind is gradually crys- tallizing into true Liberalism, and that, as a political Church- man, he will soon be much more nearly allied to Dr. Stanley than to the High-Church bishops. Amongst the younger men the movement of thought is even more significant. Mr. Butler-Johnstone, though nominally a Conscrvative, has ; spoken but to prove himself an ardent Liberal who takes even the highest ground of principle. Mr. Goseben and Mr. Mor- rison have both lent a high order of ability to the same cause. And it is scarcely possible to name one who has earnestly opposed it who is not, either in the whole type of his mind a genuine Conservative, like Mr. Henley and Mr. Walpole, — inen who do not value freedom nearly so much as they dread change ; or a Tory-Conservative, like Lord Robert Cecil, who does not appear to value intellectual freedom at all, and. values the power of the landowner very highly indeed. The more the members of Parliament look at the teaching. of the last session, the more convinced they will be that, if the electors are becoming somewhat blindly Conservative, if it is becoming difficult on the hustings,—as, for instance, at the Montgomery boroughs, to find even a shade of dif- ference between the Palmerstonian and the Derbyite condi- date,—the true progress of Liberal principle is going steadily on, though it is forced now both by extraneous and natural causes into channels which are not affected by the confusion of foreign politics. We wish the Liberal members would give their attention to this subject, and instead of humouring their con- stituents during the Long Vacation by facetious allusions to the little Parliament has done, and the little they have themselves done in Parliament, would give them a lesson on the working of those principles which are really reconstructing parties in the House,—aunihilating the theoretic Radicals, stimulating the arrogance of the few old Tories, alarming with the vibra- tions of a new movement the slow and timid Conservatives, and strengthening the force of' the considerate Liberals—the new Whigs—with every aid that intellectual strength can give them, though the electors contribute few new addi- tions to their ranks. If the Conservative reaction goes on among the ten-pounders, an upper current in the opposite direction is certainly visible among the Parliamentary classes, and we shall soon have the curious spectacle of a Parliament wishing for more liberty for the Church than the masses prompted by bigots will be willing to concede,—and the masses asking for more political power than Parliament, fearing their intellectual narrowness, will be willing to give. Surely a good lesson on the fermentation of Liberal principles, even in this time of reaction, might be read by the Liberal members to their less Liberal masters.
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