TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. STANSFELD ON THE INDEPENDENT LIBERAL POLICY.
TN the very imperfect report of Mr. Stansfeld's recent speech at Halifax, to which alone London had access last week, by far the best portion was of course carefully omitted. Mr. Stansfeld has not yet gained that political statue which com- pels the leading journals to sacrifice, on busy days, two or three columns of their space to his remarks, and the sum- maries of such addresses always confine themselves to points which the summarist regards as the most business-like declara- tions of conviction on the leading questions of the day. The best and most effective portion of Mr. Stansfeld's speech was a little too thoughtful and too general in its interest, to at- tract the attention of such a summarist. Yet if Mr. Stansfeld can find many of the so-called independent Liberals to agree with him, the principles he laid down for their guidance would restore them to the influence in the country which a few years ago they very deservedly lost, by making it evident that they cared less for the general honour and power of England, than for the darling individual objects of their own political section. The party which received its name from the conferences in Committee-room No. 11 was discredited exactly for what Mr. Stansfeld so strenuously disapproves,— the inclination to merge all questions of general policy in the effort to extract from the weakness of opponents, on some one selected point, a temporary triumph which was more than compensated by the retrograde tendencies on all other questions which they were compelled to ignore, or even to extenuate. Mr. Cobden has quite recently attempted to revive the very same disastrous tactics, by intimating that it would be folly to hesitate about abandoning Lord Palmerston, if Mr. Disraeli could only be made to give security for more thorough -going re- trenchments, although he is perfectly aware that Mr. Disraeli would try to satisfy France, Austria, and the Pope alike, at the expense of Italy. Mr. Stansfeld's argument is directed ably and aptly against this narrow, and not very noble teach- ing; but it takes a wider range, and suggests even more than it explains. Such a policy is futile, because in the very act of making retrenchments at the expense of a cause ultimately dearer to the nation than its money, you prepare the way for a certain reaction of opinion against the limitations of a false economy,—and the pendulum will swing farther in its recoil than it did before. But it is more than futile ; it is in fact, a treachery to the Liberal cause and to the proper duties of representative men,—for Liberals are not Liberals in that they press, even successfully, one piecemeal reform, but in that they press everywhere and equally against real abuses, and spend the influence of England with a frugal, but im- partial hand in the cause of true freedom. To be untrue to this spirit, to compromise for victory on one point the proper conscience of the party upon all, is not merely to compromise principle for expediency, but to waste the living resources on which alone Liberal politicians can rely for car- rying with them the feeling of the country. The simple truth is,—though Mr. Stansfeld would scarcely venture, perhaps, to carry his suggestion so far,—that the independent Liberals of recent years, in trying, according to their own admission, to extract one thing at a time from the weakness of the party in power, had ceased to be in any true sense Liberals at all. They have worked by the job ; and this is exactly what Liberals, of all parties, can least afford to do—what it is, in fact, sheer suicide for them to do. And they have done this, not merely from over-eager- ness for individual objects, but because, to tell the truth, their leaders till within the last year have not been Liberals them- selves, but rather democrats, economists, non-conformists, sometimes reformers in this direction, sometimes reformers in that, anything but possessed of that extended and generous sentiment which is not onesided, and which cannot be content to gain a step in one direction at the ex- pense of falling back two steps in another. This Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright have never hesitated about. Eager re- formers in the direction of free trade and retrenchment, and earnest apologists for democratic institutions, yet it would be difficult, we think, to find any men in the Liberal party who could be less characteristically defined as Liberals. The Liberal tone of mind is that which sympathizes most evenly with the great cause of human freedom ; which gives most sympathy where the allies of that cause are most hotly en- gaged with the retrograde party. Nothing could be asserted with less truth of the old leaders of the Independent Liberal party. No tendency of theirs is more marked than the dis- p)sition, for instance, even to side with -despotism abroad, where they suppose that such partizanship will promote peace and economy and tariff reforms at home. Napoleon himself has had few firmer allies for the last ten years than the eminent man who so ably and successfully cemented the union between the tifo nations by negotiating the commercial treaty. Italy has had few colder friends amongst English politicians than the man who said, perish Savoy sooner than England should be dragged into a war in defence of the oppressed. This has not been the fault of these eloquent and eminent men. Strong as is the grasp of their understanding, they are not men of wide and cultivated sympathies. They are both, at all events Mr. Bright, capable of entering very keenly into individual cases of national wrong; and with the natives of India no English statesman since the time of Burke has probably ever felt more warmly than Mr. Bright. Still it is even in this case rather on behalf of material misery and wretchedness, than on behalf of moral servitude, that he chafes and grieves ; and Mr. Cobden has never betrayed any symptom of pitying a nation materially prosperous and peaceful for any deficiency in its political freedom. Again, neither of these gentlemen have ever persuaded themselves to denounce the tyranny of a demo- cracy, or of a despotism founded on a democracy ;—simply because it is not the spectacle of the free play of a great nation's mind which they respect, but rather the ascendancy of' an aristocracy that they grudge. And this is not true Liberalism. The soul of all Liberalism is the value for freedom, however that freedom may be attained,—the real hatred of any chain on the soul of men which prevents the full flow of their intellectual and moral political life from bursting freely forth.
Now what we assert is, that if Liberalism be thus under- stood, the very spring of its popular power is sapped by any narrowness in its party leaders which deliberately sacrifices one or more great Liberal causes in order to carry successfully any single point. The true strength of the Liberals consists in the strollg reciprocal action and reaction of one great Liberal cause on another. If you abandon any one deliberately, and for a purpose, you cut off the feeders even of the very cause for which you are contending. Nothing probably has done more to cool the zeal of English Liberals for the represen- tation of the working classes which they have felt to be a matter of right, than the significant fact that the greatest advocates of this measure have never professed to care much for European freedom out of England, have steadily resisted the employment of English influence on its behalf, and have, falsely enough, represented an extension of popular power, as likely to aid their efforts to withdraw England from all in- terference with foreign affairs. This is clearly felt to be the very antithesis of a truly Liberal policy, and this, therefore, has greatly prejudiced many true Liberals against the extension of any representation to masses ruled by leaders such as these ; that is, it has altogether broken the unity and damped the spirit of the Liberal party. The very heart of the Liberal faith is a wide and generous trust in the spontaneous play of a nation's mind, the deliberate choice of its will. Whatever involves the suppression or restraint of that trust involves a loss of Liberal force, and it is to the large and wilful sacrifice of it that the tactics of the so-called "independent Liberal" party, till within the last year at least, have definitely tended. It had become a party "contracting" to effect certain specific changes, called, and often justly called, reforms at any political price at which it could negotiate them. And price has often been the utter neglect of true Liberal prin- ciples.
The ascendancy gained by Mr. Forster, the member for Bradford, and also, we think, by Mr. Stansfeld, among this section of Liberals during the last year, promises, we hope, to put an end to this mistaken policy, and to restore the inde- pendent Liberals to their true place in the House. They will, if they follow Mr. Stansfeld's advice, cease to be a make- weight between the two parties,—that is, to be Willing to sell to either whatever influence they havefor the slightest immediate practical concession. They will become a party really founded on the breadth and earnestness of their sympathies with all movements in favour of enlarging the sphere of national self- government,—resolute to oppose even a Liberal 'Government when that Government is faithless to its work,—but .never willing to tender allegiance to the reactionary party, in re- turn for any isolated concession ;—they will set their face steadily against throwing over any great cause on which the vitality of the Liberal party depends, even for the sake of purchasing a gratification in retrenchment, or a reconsideration of the representative system.
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