TOPICS OF THE DAY.
POLITICAL CONFESSIONS.
4, The present Parliament is drawing towards an end ; and it is possible that a general election may take place even sooner than its natural termination'—Mr. 8. Laing's Address to his Wick Constituents.
JvsT before the Cabinet is about to hold a systematic series of meetings for the better preparation of aGovernment measures for next session, the Quarterly _Review, as the principal or- gan of- the Conservative party, sums up a discussion which has been long going forward respecting the breaking-up of parties and " the declining efficiency of Parliament." The principal care of the writer, however, is to account for the declining efficiency of the Opposition. He passes in review the Administrations of Lord Grey, of Lord Melbourne, and more fully of Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, and Lord Palmerston. Peel is touched upon ; Lord Aberdeen is omitted; and nothing is said upon the finance of the later Administrations. The principal object is to show, that un- der these different Ministers, for different causes, Parliament has latterly produced few measures of importance or advantage. Lord Grey, who carried the master measure of modern holm.: ments, also effected many other changes of importance. Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, which immediately followed, passed statutes to regulate the machinery of Municipal Corporations, Church- administration, Registration of Marriages, Irish Poor-law, and Penny Postage : but here he appears to have exhausted the pro- ductive powers of the Whig party. Lord John Russell, who was so successful as a leader of the House of Commons un- der Lord Melbourne, and who assisted in the carrying of all those measures, held office as Prime Minister and as leader under Lord Aberdeen for about an equal period, and was the head of a Cabinet whose administration was almost barren in measures. The Conservative writer in a periodical which once battled for the Corn-laws is obliged to touch very gently upon Peel's administration ; and therefore he cannot give one reason, which we may supply, for the declining efficiency of Parliament under Cabinet leading. Sir Robert Peel, who entered life with the Conservative party, became the great instrument for carry- ing that reform which his mind was best able to apprehend—the reform of our commercial system. In doing so, he transferred ' party conflict from the political to the economical or mercantile ground, and introduced a period of Parliamentary life which broke up the old divisions, and at the same time threw the mem- bers of party out of practice in the exercise of old political wea- pons. The Russell Administration of the Whigs, to keep out the Tories, wearied out the public patience ; until, in March 1852, Lord Derby was sent for. But he accepted office avowedly as the head of a minority, and his Government was necessarily limited to such measures as the Liberal majority would abstain from ex- tinguishing with a veto. The Quarterly Review boasts of the Chancery reforms begun by his Administration ; but surely Lord Chancellor St. Leonards only took up reforms prepared by others beforehand. The best results of Lord Derby's Ministry on suf- ferance were, to prove the capacity of Sir John Pakington and a few other Conservative gentlemen for practical administration, and the impossibility of restoring old Toryism, or of establishing some Asian mystery under Mr. Disraeli. The sessions from 1853 have been progressively less and less productive, until the last was distinguished by a series of small successes and gigantic failures. The Quarterly describes measure after measure which• Lord Palmerston's Government brought in with a sound of the trumpet and then allowed either House of Parliament to tear in pieces. Theyjoined partnership with Sir William Clay to share his defeat; they licensed Mr. Lowe, to bury him in a Select Committee ; they coquetted with Lord John Russell, to see Dis- senters enlist under the banners of Mr. Henley, the Peelites Lordin 'that wonderful combination ; and they half-deserted Lord John, without avoiding his fate in the division. But Lord Palmerston defeated Parliament by truckling to it, and surprised it into submissions which it had never made before. The Peers, who trampled on his attempt to introduce Life Peerages without consulting Parliament, consented to his Appellate Jurisdiction Bill, which created Life Peerages by statute and cramped the Royal prerogative. And the Commons consented to pass through all its stages in four or five days the Bishops' Resignation Bill, fundamentally altering the tenure of the highest offices of the Church. The Quarterly shows that Lord Clarendon did in the Foreign Parliament of the Paris Conference much the same that Lord Palmerston did in the British Parliament; alarming friends and foes by the magnitude of his pretensions, yet surrendering the traditional policy of the country with respect to neutrals in war-time, and signing a protocol which embodied a censure on the Belgian newspapers, after he had protested against handling that subject. The ease of the Quarterly _Review seems to be this,—the Go- vernment has become so contemptible that the Opposition has nothing to work upon, and party is completely broken up. To us the review tells something more. In these days of a certain in- dustrious indolence, it has become the custom of public men to organize business as much as possible in routine, and every mat- ter is as far as it can be " left to the department." The same Principle has been to a great extent introduced into the relations of Government with Parliament. Government is left to do what it likes in its own sphere •' Parliament acquiescing. Parliament
also claims to do what it in its own two Chambers—to have its way, bills or no bills; and Government yields. It does not punish the obstructiveness by resigning. This forbearance on the part of Government appears completely to have disarmed the Re- presentative Chamber of the only weapons which in modern days it can exercise. Impeachments are out of fashion ; and if Minis- ters will submit to be bullied without resigning, what screw can Parliament put upon them? On the other hand, if Ministers are allowed to do what theyplease without incurring the responsi- bility of precipitating a Goliiimment resignation, how can they i complain? It is true that Lord Palmerston is pledged to go through the forms proper ccf a' constitutional Minister, and that so far he differs from his celleagues of the French, the Austrian, or the Prussian Government—his colleagues, we mean, in the gene- ral administration, of. European affairs. Evidently he regards Parliament as mi obstruction which his foreign compeers have not to encounter ; but, with wonderful courage, tact, and temper, he has shown that even that formidable obstruction may be managed without much difficulty ; while the inconvenience is compensated by the very remarkable convenience, that the same Parliament is a magnificent machine for raising a command of money which no foreign minister can in any degree attain. Neither Gortschakoff, Manteuffel, Buol, nor Walewski, can command such a purse as Lord Palmerston finds absolutely inexhaustible, for he never has yet reached the bottom of it. One of Lord Palmerston's schemes is announced this week, with more detail than before, by an accredited organ of the offices. It was stated months since, in a paragraph which went the round of the journals, that "Lord Palmerston had issued a circu- lar to the Parliamentary heads of each department, requesting them to supply him in the month of November with the particu- lars of all the legislative measures which they are desirous of being introduced into Parliament." As the Quarterly Review remarks, this announcement is a retrospective confession of non- intercourse between the heads of departments, and the Observer now admits that a " thorough reform in this respect " was abso- lutely necessary. Perhaps, if the annals of past Administrations were inspected it would be found that the Parliamentary heads of departments under previous Ministers had consulted together ; or we might not have carried such measures as Municipal Reform, Parliamentary Reform, Customs Reform, Poor-law Reform, Post- age Reform, Ecclesiastical Reform. But yet it is admitted on au- thority, that during the present Administration this intercourse of departments has been suspended. Each head of a department has been permitted, or has been doomed—we may use either phrase—to go " on his own hook." If he could get his way out of the Commons, he would be tolerated by his own colleagues ; if he could not get his way out of the Commons, his colleagues would cut him, as they cut Mr. Lowe and his Shipping Dues. This, with the crossing of divisions in the House of Commons has led to no little " confusion "—to a scandalous defeat of Ministers in their boasted measures ; and Lord Palmerston saw- the neces- sity of " a thorough reform in this respect." What, then, is the remedy P—A new consultative body, unknown to the constitution ; a species of supplemental Cabinet to debate measures or calculate chances of defeat before their introduction into Parliament; an imperium ex imperio.
Perceiving the evils of the position, the Quarterly Review " will not jump to the conclusion that it rests with any leading politicians in Parliament to abate the nuisance by any act of their volition." The great Tory organ professes uncommon respect for independent men ; it " will not attempt to point out how the existing confusion can be cleared," or " the motley mobs " of the Commons reduced to something resembling " the old costumed and regimental character of its accustomed organization." The constituencies, at all events, continue to be divided as of old into " Conservative " and " Liberal." Public opinion at large objects to organic changes, but demands good administration. " The electioneering gear continues to be much in the old working order," with its clubs at top and attorneys at bottom. And, com- paring the state of things at home with the state of things abroad,
upon the whole we find that the British are a free people, strikingly prosperous : so God save the Queen ! In other words, the Quar- terly proclaims that the millennium has come, and that we must bear the visitation with as much fortitude as we can, for it is not so bad as we might expect.
As an absentee Member for the Wick Burghs, Mr. Laing has delivered an optimist view of public affairs much in the sarae spirit. Mr. Laing, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, Lord John Russell, with here and there a stray independent Member who happens to have some practical acquaintance with the state of opinion in Europe, have, he says, " advocated those principles of peace and nonintervention which are now embodied in treaties and assumed as axioms." There are some practical reforms in ad- ministration, finance, and criminal jurisdiction, which Mr. Laing will tolerate ; but, " with well-considered estimates, sensible budgets, and a discreet administration of state patronage," he thinks we may keep a wide field of enterprise "for the next five or six years." He also recognizes in the actual state of things the ennium of 1851 realized : but it is a glass-house millennium, and, foreseeing a chance that stones may be thrown at it, he pre- pares for the storm afterwards • a new theory of millennial epochs. Another organ, which speaks as it were from the library of politics, is by no means reconciled to the mercantile millennium ; nor is it content with the administration of clubs and attorneys which contents the Quarterly. On the contrary, it calls to that if these worthless Parliaments are elected, the constituencies are responsible ; and that if the ten-pound constituencies create contemptible Houses of Commons, the indignant British people will demand the one measure—" a sweeping Reform Bill." With that exception, there is not in all the mass of print in all the organs any suggestion for a course to a safe haven; or for an anchoring-ground. The politicians who survey the field of the future are content with a prospect of confusion ; they also seem content " to leave it to the depariments." Undoubtedly, the Ministry that created the colony of Ruatan on foreign ground, and then conceded a British colony without consulting Parlia- ment, has carried that principle of non-consultation to ultra per- fection. Probably "the departments" suppose that they are to be left in peace by Parliament, because in Parliament they are prepared to let " the interests " have their own way.
" Parties "—that is, the old parties—certainly appear to have come to the end of their resources. They have nothing to propose, and they content themselves with assuming that the country wants nothing. It is a good theory for those whose shop is empty; a fine solace for Members of the present House of Commons who have done so little, and who are looking to the day when they will have to balance accounts with their principals. Perhaps, however, we shall look a little closer into the validity of this con- solatory theory, that we have arrived at the perfect sttaaggee of political existence, in which nothing remains to be done, nothing is wanted, except " estimates."
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