LORD BEACONSFIELD'S LEADERSHIP.
THE rumours of Lord Beaconsfield's resolve to resign the Leadership of his party have all died away, in presence of his own declaration to his party assembled in Caucus at Bridge- water House. He retains the Leadership, at least for the pre- sent, and his leadership is always, or at least hitherto always has been a substantial fact, Lord Beaconsfield's greatest power being that of mastering all internal rivalry. We regret the decision, for the sake of the country, which would benefit by the disappearance of so dreamy and unaccountable, yet so in- fluential a figure from the field of politics, and are not sure that it is wholly to the substantial advantage of the Conserva- tives as a party. No doubt, Lord Beaconsfield is the great figure in their ranks. It is in him, and not his colleagues, that the Tories of the towns believe ; he alone in the party has any hold over the imagination of the masses ; and he, and he alone, calls out any enthusiasm in "society," that " interest " which is now the greatest factor in the Tory strength. It may be a pleasing or it may be an ominous fact, but no one doubts that it is a fact, that in this age, which is supposed to be so fatal to individualism, the recent contest, which shook a nation, was fought out to the end in the names and under the flags of two potent personalities. Remove Lord Beaconsfield or Mr. Glad- sPane, and all would have been changed. Moreover, he and he alone, can prevent his party from adopting that policy of blank resistance, that " Non-possumus " attitude to which all Tories, in all countries, are prone, and which invariably ends in their temporary extinction as a political power. Nobody else could say to them, as he is reported to have said at Bridgewater House,—that they really must not impede reforms genuinely desired by the country, and be obeyed. And lastly,
his retention of the command prevents jealousies as to the suc- cession, which might be bitter, and gives time for the solution of the grand party difficulty, Le discovery of a leader in the Commons whom the party and the country will allow to be an eminent statesman. Sir Stafford Northcote is not that, and never will be, and no one else as yet is competent for the leadership at all. Mr. Stanhope is, perhaps, the best of them, and Mr. Stanhope is not up to that mark.
Nevertheless, Lord Beaconsfield's continued leadership in- volves, from the Conservative point of view, some immense drawbacks. He is not a Conservative, and the bones of the party, the castes which are content with things as they are, never heartily go with him. They hear the multitudinous hum of democracy behind the strain he is always singing, and sang again at Bridgewater House, in praise of the Conservative working-man, and they dread the sound. Then they want new leaders, especially in the Com- mons; and under a chief so old, and so separated now from the life of the Lower House, no new man can grow big. The strong youngster whom the party must develop, if it is ever to reconquer' will be out of sympathy with Lord Beacons- field, who has the defect of all men of his degree, that he appreciates those most who are most devoted to himself. His pupils are at once very few and very weak. Indeed, he has been so original and so separate that another man with his views would seem only a copyist, and would, according to the law in such cases, exaggerate all his defects and misrepresent all his qualities. On the other hand, the leaders Who might spring up, the Peel, or the Tory Gladstone, or the Tory Canning, would feel themselves half-paralysed in the necessity of deferring to a man very old, very sell-confident, and very far removed from the atmosphere in which they have to con- tend. Such a man when he arrives will probably represent true Conservatism, and will neither be understood by his chief, nor be able to overshadow him. He will be required, as Sir Stafford Northcote is now required, to lead the party on a path he does not know, to profess ideas he does not entertain, except as ideas in which his chief believes, and to adopt shifts repugnant to his whole order of mind. For instance, he would, if we do not mistake one hint in the Bridgewater-House speech, be required not only to abstain from resistance to the new county suffrage, but to accept it, and to deflect the redistribution measure till it became a Tory victory. Mr. Disraeli could have done that, and have educated his followers to sullen obedience while he did it, but nobody else will succeed while follow- ing that course. The leaders in the Commons, in fact, will have to follow a course which only genius could trace, and on which only a genius so separate that he is unlikely to be repeated would ever have been inclined to enter.
Of course if Lord Beaconsfield possessed in himself the powers which could supply all deficiencies and dispense with all aid, the patty would suffer little or no ultimate injury from his leadership. But does he possess them? That he did once, we shall not question, for we have never doubted that beneath his charlatanry and his calculated recklessness lay powers which in certain directions were of the high- est order. But we do not believe there is any tinge of party antipathy in our feeling that those powers have greatly diminished, or even died away. The speech at Bridgewater House, on Wednesday, was made on a supreme occasion, and ten years ago would have been a landmark in English or even European politics ; and Lord Beaconsfield threw into his whole strength, but it was a.failure. It was even tedious, so tedious that men slipped away. Sir W. Hart Dyke says the "Press " report of the speech is "imagin- ary," and no doubt it is very bad ; but still other reports substantially coincide, till the public at least knows that nothing of the first importance has been omitted. And in what remains there is nothing. "Organise, organise l" is the grand cry, as if one could put the aura popularis, or rather the procella popularis, into a bottle ; or as if organisation, in the Whip's sense, were of much use, in the face of a coming and probably extensive Reform Bill. Lord Beaconsfield talks of the Conservative working-man, and the misconceptions which have produced his defeat, and the necessity that the new Government should follow his foreign policy, and the certainty that England is not Radical, just as Sir W. Hart Dyke or any other sensible and second-class poli- tician might do, the single effort to strike a higher note being contained in the advice . that opposition should be "dignified." There is the touch in that of the man who understands that for Conservatism to succeed it must impress, that in buffooning there is no impressiveness, and that.if the game is to be rowdyism, the Radical can always win ; but there is nothing else. There is no touch of genius, no trace of originality, no gleam of verbal lightning, no sentence for everybody to remember, no cue for every speaker to expand into a speech, no hint even of the direction in which the place for assault is to be sought. The Irish thunderbolt, which only fizzed, sputtered, and stank, is dropped, but Harlequin-Jove picks up no other. There is in the speech neither vigorous reasoning nor trenchant cutting ; nor can we find either in the speech of Thursday in the Lords. There is humorous sarcasm in that in plenty, though not of the old lightning kind ; there is some touch of gracefulness in the thanks offered to the Lords ; and there is one startling sen- tence, that "England's prosperity is based upon her power," which might be developed into a history, or be the basis of a policy ; but there is nothing which can guide, or illumine, or comfort Conservatism as it is. There is an absence of the old incisiveness and insight, of the old coruscation, in which stage-lightning and the electric flash were once so strangely mingled, which to us, looking on from the historic, and not the party stand-point, is melancholy enough. We like heartily to see the battle fought out by laty figures, even though the Titans do. sometimes beat the Gods. The Conservatives at Bridgewater House were true to their own best quality—their loyalty—when they cheered the announcement that their defeated Leader, who had himself, in his manifesto, given them their death-wound, would lead them again ; and we can not only appreciate, but can honour, that burst of faithful applause. One loves dogs, and mainly for that. But that emotion does not blind us to the fact that in continuing Lord Beaconsfield the Conservatives weaken their future, trust themselves to a lead which may not be able,—we doubt if the Irish blunder would have been com- mitted ten years ago,—and will probably; land themselves in such a position that just when the battle grows fiercest, and victory becomes conceivable, they will have to accept a new Commander-in-Chief, new and untried officers, and tactics nob only new in themselves, but directed to a new end for the cam- paign. We do not believe in the continued success even of a Tory-Democratic Government, though a ruling Tory Democrat can devise his own adventures, but Tory Democracy in.opposi- tion must be nearly powerless. The waste of blood and trea- sure may impose upon a nation, but only to say,—" Please waste some treasure and some blood, and then we shall cease from criticising you," is to become feeble, or even just a little ridiculous.
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