TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT CAN A STRONG TORY GOVERNMENT DO?
THE Tories are winning the game. Everything during the recess has conspired against the Liberal party. They have achieved, it is true, a national triumph, but then they have lost a series of seats. They have tided over the American difficulty without interference, but then secession itself has been a terrible blow to the Liberal cause. They have reformed the chaotic system which we call National Education, but then they have lost in so doing the votes of ten thousand stipendiary electors. They have extricated India from the financial slough, bue then every Indian family is raging against Sir Charles Wood. Their French Treaty has saved the nation one half of the losses it would have in- curred by the civil war, but then there is distress, and dis- tress, though it come from Heaven, always makes people judge ill-temperedly of the difficulties upon earth. Even the negative facts of the recess have been telling against them. There has been no novel occurrence in Italy upon which Earl Russell could write a despatch that would fall like a shell in the Irish camp. There has been no fresh armament in France so as to compel the nation to turn its eyes to the only Englishman now competent to power, who was a Minister during the last great war. Above all, the Tories have held their tongues, Lord Malmesbury has uttered nothing about the necessity of supporting the Pope, nor has the Member for Buckingham proposed to tax anything in order to lighten the duties on malt. Silently and most ably has the registration been !` looked after." Borough after borough has fallen, the West of England boroughs are sapped, Lord Derby, if his men would but accept his lieutenant with a little more heartiness, has already a slight advantage, and a dissolution, unless some new question arises, would give him, to all appearance, a working majority. The Government only exists by suffer- ance, from the strong reluctance of many Tories to interfere with a Premier who has brought the country once more into fighting trim, and the still greater reluctance of their chiefs to thrust a great party struggle upon the grief of the Queen. These checks cannot avail for ever, and it seems to be understood that after Easter, unless some new change oc- curs, Lord Derby will once more assume the reins,—perhaps for some years to come. Of course there are fifty accidents, any one of which might prevent such a consummation. The Italian question might at any moment rive the Conserva- tive phalanx to pieces. Some speech of Mr. Disraeli's on the ecclesiastical topics he has lately affected, some inju- dicious awakening of the latent anti-slavery feeling, might enable Lord Palmerston to dissolve on a cry to which the boroughs would answer en ?name. But we are writing for the moment of parties—not principles ; and as a party the Liberals are for the moment the weaker aide.
They have but one fact in their favour, and it is con- tained in the question, What will a strong Tory Govern- ment do ? By an etiquette as strong as a law, a Govern- ment cannot be ejected, except upon some political pro- gramme, and whence is it to be derived ? We are not of those who are always repeating the parrot cry, that the two \ great parties are different individuals, professing identical views, and with no substantial points of divergence. Whigs and Tories have each a bias, which one day will again carry them as far asunder as ever they yet have been. But as yet, in the actual position of affairs, what can a Tory Govern- ment do ? We know very well what it can leave undone. It can throw over all church rate measures, and put a stop to ideas of retrenchment ; it can abstain from perfecting free-trade, and leave ecclesiastical questions to settle them- selves ; it can put the Land Titles Bill on a shelf, and bring • the discussion on intercolonial expense to a summary and unsatisfactory end. All that is not governing, but only preventing government, and the Tories can do that in oppo- sition as well as on the Treasury Beneh. They must have a positive programme, and what can it possibly be ? They will scarcely venture, when seated, to throw church rates on to the land, as some of their friends have suggested. If they do, they will get a lesson as to the squires' notions of fairness, which will make them look upon the Member for Tavistock almost as a deliverer. They will scarcely bring forward another Reform Bill to be voted down by the Whigs and not supported by their own side. They will not, we may rely on it, come in with a cry for reduction, or largely increase the army, or allot more money than they can help to develop the volunteers. Nor are they very likely to tamper with national education in Ireland, and so bring themselves under suspicion with their most faithful sup- porters, the country clergy of England ; nor to bring forward a law of tenant right which the Peers would never consent to pass, nor to reverse recent Irish policy in any one visible way. They might commence an administrative reform, which is as much their business as their adversaries', but they have given no pledge of the kind—their traditions are opposed to such tasks—and they have an itching firr Government boroughs, next dissolution, which is dreadfully in the way. They might certainly interfere in finance. Finance, except commercial finance, is not the Whigs' strongest point. Even Mr. Glad- stone, great as he is, has a way, in mere matters of account,. of promising four eggs, then giving three eggs and a chesnut, and then declaring that they make four, which lays him a little open to smart attack. If the party had a really great finan- cier, he might do something which the nation would, at all events, pause to observe. If Sir S. Northcote, for example, could find a substitute for the income tax which was not protective—say, for example, a series of penny taxes—he might conciliate the middle class to a degree which might give his colleagues a three years' lease of power, and induce us all to bear an otherwise negative Government. But, short of this abolition of the income tax, which has attracted and puzzled every financial politician in England, what in the way of home politics can a strong Tory Government do ? Externally they can do a great deal, but then it is not of a kind which will strengthen them with the English people, or even increase their reputation upon the Continent. They can lend their moral support to Austria and so do incalcu- lable harm to the rising fortunes of Italy and the irritated people of Hungary, but they cannot giveAustria guarantees— which, and not sympathy, Viennese statesmen desire. They can give up the entente cordials with France, and throw all pending questions into an almost inextricable confusion, but neither in Italy nor in Mexico can they directly defy the Em- peror; in Mexico, because we stand pledged to a policy which they can neither resist nor support ; and in Italy, because they will rouse the only fanaticism English Liberals seem to have left. They may strive to secure the independence of the Pope, as Mr. Disraeli once recommended, but then there are Orange votes to be kept as well as Catholic support to be purchased. They can pet and foster the Southern States, and thus bring on themselves the wrath of every Northern American, but they cannot break the blockade, and so obtain some compensation, for the nation will not in that direction move faster than the cotton-spinners themselves. They can protest against German unity, in the interests of South German rulers, but they cannot do more than protest, or Prussia may fall back on France. The British Government is influential abroad only when it is known to be supported by the people ; but a Conservative foreign policy will at best receive but a cold acquiescence, continued only so long as it may require no sacrifices. Its utmost effect will be to retard, to neutralize the movement of events, rather than change their direction. Merely negative action, the prevention of every movement the nation desires, or even gentle censures on all that the nation approves, will never furnish the bases for any permanent policy. And yet, except this, what remains for Lord Derby to do that Lord Palmerston could not have done? One change, indeed, he may effect, which is of high value to England. By banishing the Whigs from power he may help to restore their tone, throw them back on the people who are their strength, brace up their minds to an active as well as a critical policy, and develop among them those possible leaders whom the party so despondingly seeks. There is nothing like a cold douche to restore one's vigour of nerve. But these are unconscious effects, and it is by the results they intend, not by those they secure, that statesmen, like sinners, will in the end be judged. The "reaction" has told on the votes ; but the Tory party, strong on the hustings, strong in the clubs, and strongest of all in the aid of the current of circumstances, still seeks the programme which shall give them something to do other than interrupt all progress abroad, and forward Whig progress at home.
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