THE REACTION OF FOREIGN ON ENGLISH POLITICS.
IT is worth noting how powerfully, and, in most directions, how usefully, our greatly increased study of foreign politics is reacting on English parties and political creeds. At every election we see more distinctly the disappearance of the many petty questions which the theoretic crotchets of a few able men forced into the front of English politics, and the growth in the place thereof of a larger and wiser school of new Liberalism. When Mr. G. S. Lefevre said the other day, in his clever speech at Reading, that the independent Liberals were the Liberals on whom no one could depend, he referred not to that new party of which he himself is evidently des- tined to form a valuable member, but to the dying school of old Radicals, which is occasionally misled by the genius of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright to start some theoretic crotchet like "direct taxation," or to galvanize some worn-out nostrum like the ballot, and in the meantime to throw its influence into any scale that may promote the formation of a Government " on sufferance " out of which even a small minority gene- rally hopes to squeeze great concessions. But in this sense of the term the independent Liberals are rapidly losing influence in the country, and in great measure exactly for this reason,—that they try to hold aloof as much as possible from foreign politics, and ignore the lessons we are learning from other peoples. The new Liberalism stands in much the same relation to this exhausted type of Radicalism in which the " natural" system of classifying flowers stands to the old Linnsean system. The former takes, we believe, a general type for each species of flower, and collects under that species the flowers which in their aggregate features approach it sufficiently nearly ; the latter merely counted the stamens, and so classed together the most widely different varieties. The old Radicalism committed nearly the same blunder. It had an abstract test of freedom, and would have classed under free constitutions all which had a numerically extensive electoial suffrage and little sign of aristocracy. The new Liberalism, taught by long experience of foreign national life, looks in a large way at all the symptoms of national vitality and union, and refuses to think France, for instance, half as free as Italy, though the former has universal suffrage, ballot, and no aristocracy ; while the latter has a limited suffrage and a powerful aristocracy.
But the question will immediately occur to every thinking
politician whether we do not owe what is now called the "Conservative reaction " in England very largely to this study of the politics of foreign nations. We have seen, it will be said, the most democratic countries possessing the least free- dom, and the moat aristocratic enjoying the most. We have seen the greatest and most noble revolutions—the Hungarian and the Polish--conducted by great aristocracies, and we have seen the great Liberal party of Germany divided and paralyzed for want of a great aristocracy to lead it. We have seen a headless democracy in the Northern States of America seeking in vain to express adequately the yearnings of a great nation ; and we have seen a very ably-headed democracy in the Southern States expressing very adequately the resolute deter- mination of the ruling caste to extend the oppression of a sub- ject race. What can all these spectacles teach us so strongly as the Conservative lesson of prizing the freedom we have and the aristocracy by whose help we keep it,—of holding tenaciously by our present institutions, and carefully resisting that perni- cious radicalism which might end in giving us an equality and uniformity moulded in the typo of America, or, worse still, in that of France, instead of the freedom and social variety moulded in the type of Italy and England?
This is what is said, and said with much superficial truth, by those who wish to show that there is something sound and permanent in the " Conservative reaction." A little closer view of what we have gained from foreign politics, however, will show us that while its first tendency undoubtedly is to undermine the old philosophical Radicalism, its ultimate effect must be to destroy also the roots of dead Conservatism, and even of stiff Whigism, and leave us with a larger, freer Liberal faith than we could ever have elaborated out of mere insular politics.
In the first place, let us remark the influence of the new study of foreign politics in dissolving the old Tory and Whig traditions concerning England's " interests " on the Continent of Europe. Nothing is more remarkable than the recent growth of our English respect for the political significance of race, and the ready sympathy we yield to the desire of a single race, speaking a single language, to unite, whenever it is at all feasible, its political fortunes in a single State. No ten- dency could be less welcome to Tory predilections, none is more directly opposed to some of the immemorial Whig tra- ditions, and yet none has gained more rapidly of late years. Without being prepared to give any abstract adhesion to it,— which would, indeed, render almost all political fabrics un- stable,—we have been absolutely forced to admit the great ad- vantages of this natural division of States, as distinguished from the artificial unions produced by conquest, and held together by force. The most recent and most startling result of this tendency has been the universal approbation with which, in spite of rancorous Tory condemnation, the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece has been received. A still more important fruit of the same feeling is the decay among the new Liberals of all re- spect for those " fixed ideas" of both Whig and Tory statesmen which go to.maintain the " integrity of the Ottoman Empire," at the cost of all growth in Greece, Servia, and Moldo-Wal- lachia. The old traditions maintain that the wishes of natives are nothing in comparison with the " interests " of England, or the balance of power in Europe. The new Liberal faith is, that there is no balance of power so stable, no interest of England so great, as that promoted by contented and united nations, conscious that they are complete in themselves and anxious only to resist encroachment, not to initiate it. Before this conviction both the Tory and Whig crotchets about " balance of power," " integrity of the Ottoman Empire," " importance of the Austrian alliance," and 50 forth, have already given way repeatedly, and will have to give way yet more. Indeed, these formuhe only hold their ground by virtue of the respect with which a few aged statesmen on both sides of the House inspire us. Something very like this is true also of the principles of international law which Eng- land has been obliged to accept in consequence of abandoning the isolated position in which she once stood. We have already given up the practice of referring to the mere " interest" of England, as if that were the paramount question. We were obliged at the Congress of Paris to ask ourselves what is most for the interest of all nations, and to sacrifice some of our most cherished rights in time of war to the general interest of the more numerous States which will always be neutral ; and this, again, against the strong opinion and tradi- tional creeds of eminent statesmen, both Tory and Whig. Our study of foreign politics, then, and intercourse with foreign nations have by no means promoted "Conservative reaction" in the foreign and international policy of England.
How far has it done so in our home affairs ? Only so far, we think, as it has strengthened—and this it has done very materially indeed,—the value we attach to our distinctive national life, and consequently to everything which binds closer the unity, and to everything which contributes to the perfect development of the nation's character. The tendency of our new study of foreign politics has undoubtedly been to make Englishmen think less of the internal sectarianisms and political dogmas which separate class from class and party from party, and to foster with greater care every institution which claims in any way to be co-ordinate with the life of the nation. Hence, no doubt, the popu- larity of Lord Palmerston's determination to keep the mili- tary and naval services in efficient strength, and the en- thusiasm felt for the Volunteer movement. Hence, again, the rapid disappearance of the political animosities of dissent, and the general rally to the standard of our national Church. But we have only noted half the truth when we have noted this access of strength to the direct Conservative forces of national faith and policy. There has been a simultaneous movement, equally strong and remarkable, tending to the rupture of those Conservative barriers which have hitherto prevented the nation from feeling pride in its own unity, and which fomented the grievances of exclusive organizations. For example, great progress has been made in identifying both the mili- tary and civil services directly with the whole nation, instead of with only a single class in it, by the opening of its ranks to free competition,—and we can trace this movement directly and specifically to the influence which the French system in these matters has exercised over the English from the time of the Crimean war. And this movement has, we need scarcely say, been definitely opposed to the Conserva- tive dogmas. Again, as regards our national Church, while it has risen in importance with the nation, and the poli- tical scruples of Dissenters have faded away, a no less powerful tendency has set in towards erasing those exclusive dogmatic trenches which were constructed on purpose to make it a party Church, instead of the Church of the nation. And, here again, we need not say that the whole drift of the new current of feeling has been steadily under- mining the old Toryism and Conservatism on ecclesiastical subjects. Again, on social, if not on political, subjects, how much of the tendency towards unity, the growing dislike to sectarian rivalries, has come to us from the Continent. The new and broader school of political economy which Mr. J. S. Mill has founded, and which has drawn favourable attention to the co-operative schemes identifying the interests of capital with labour, instead of pitting them against each other, is, in almost all its features, due to that strong drift towards social unity which is so much more marked on the Continent than amongst ourselves. And the yearly increasing interest in the education question, the growing desire to see education spread over the whole breadth of the land, is also more or less an import from the Continent. We cannot sum up the general effect of the influence of foreign polities on English politics better than by saying, that it has immeasur- ably strengthened the Conservative national feeling amongst us, and, as a result of this, broken down all those Con- servative sect, class, and party distinctions which had so long usurped the nation's authority and sanction.
We believe it will be found that in all the coming elections the mere doctrinaire Whigism and Radicalism of old days will find no response from the nation,—that the people will prefer even blind Conservatism to that. But we believe it will also be found. that the new and living sympathy for other nations, and the pride in our own national organizations, is accom- panied by a very deep Liberal sympathy for every movement which removes the strongly marked barriers between class and class, and opens every national institution which has been monopolized by a party to the whole nation. If foreign politics do this for us, they will make the new Liberal creed some- thing better worth fighting for than the dreary dogmas of the philosophical Radicals.
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