TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. DISRAELI AT MERCHANT TAYLORS'.
MR. DISRAELI at Merchant Taylors' struck a somewhat eccentric key-note to a speech of which it was appar- ently the object to show how mistaken the Tory party had been, in so long opposing themselves to the English nation on the great subjects of " liberty, industry, and religion." It was more than a generation, he said, since he first had the honour of addressing the Merchant Taylors in their Hall, and that was when " an eminent statesman, one of the greatest of the nobles of the land, yet more illustrious for his rare abilities than even for his lineage, was attempting to rally the fragments of a beaten, a broken, and a disheartened party." We conclude that the reference is to the late Lord Derby, and that the time was the time when Lord George Bentinck formed and led, under Mr. Disraeli's counsels, that Protectionist party in the House of Commons which was so soon to be marshalled and guided by Mr. Disraeli himself. Why this particular reminiscence should have been put forward so prominently by Mr. Disraeli, at the very moment when he appeared especially anxious to recall to his audience the advantages which the country had derived from " doc- trines, chiefly of Continental growth, and which have subse- quently been known by the name of Liberal opinions," it is not very easy to conjecture. But assuredly he will not find it in his " historical conscience " to assert that if, as he says, "we have combined religious equality with a National Church," the praise is due in any degree to " the fragments of that beaten, broken, and disheartened party," which the late Lord Derby, Lord George Bentinck, and he united their energies to rally. No doubt he could show a more plausible case for the assumption that he, and through him, his party, are in some degree to be credited with the feat of " reconciling the authority of monarchical and aristocratical institutions with a large distri- bution of political power among the people." But then, again, what could be more ludicrous than the notion that he and the band who gained distinction by their fierce onslaughts on Sir Robert Peel's Free-trade policy, can be allowed any share at all, except the share which a barricade has in pro- moting the circulation of traffic in the streets, in the work of making " a free exchange of commodities consistent with the existence of a prosperous, because an untaxed native industry." When Mr. Disraeli first addressed the Merchant Taylors in their Hall, that was precisely what he was taking very energetic measures, as far as in him lay, to prevent. Does he recall that epoch with such evident pleasure only as desiring to show that " the Continental doctrines which have subsequently been known by the name of Liberal opinions," were wholly responsible for two out of three of the great changes for the better which he named, and more than half responsible for the third,—or is it rather, because he wishes to make his personal pre-eminence stand out in stronger relief against the great party-blunders by which his progress has been retarded ? It is not very easy to catch Mr. Disraeli's exact point of view. But certainly he was bent on bringing home to the minds of all who heard and read him, first, that Pitt and Grenville had never shared the blunders of the Tory party on the subjects of a narrow franchise, Protectionist finance, and a monopoly of privilege in the hands of a single creed ; next, that the Tory party of his own day had lost ground greatly by these blunders, and he himself, by casting in his lot with that party (in spite, perhaps, of the complete emancipation of his own personal intellect from their prepossessions); lastly, that he has no intention of allowing his followers to fall back into similar errors, now that their an- tagonists have cut the knot for them, but intends himself to develop the views of Pitt and Grenville on the new ground which the political successes of his opponents, and the collapse of those opponents in popular esteem, have at last secured for them. Whatever may have been his fidelity to his party, while his party was still in the bond of political ignorance or iniquity, he has shaken off these bonds at last, and is now free to declare himself a popular Tory or a Conservative Liberal, and his party a party of the people, which is to reconcile ancient traditions and historic forms with large sympathy for the masses, and a great catholicity of moral and spiritual appreciation. Perhaps Mr. Disraeli's pointed reference to his own share in organising that " party of Protection " in 1844, was intended as a graceful admission of his own in- feriority to Pitt and Grenville, and of his own consequent identi- fication, both in fortunes and in misfortunes, with the party in the House of Commons which he has now so long guided. While he wandered with them in the wilderness where there was no way, he had learned to appreciate the advantages of the beaten way which his opponents were slowly and pain- fully making for Liberals and Tories alike ; and now, how- ever he may wonder at the unfortunate predilection of his opponents for pushing an " essentially abstract doctrine " to its logical conclusion, he has no intention at all of robbing himself or his party of the advantage of inheriting those solu- tions of certain difficult problems which h: antagonists had arrived at, without inheriting any of the odium attending the official adoption of those solutions. Constitutional forms are in future to be made as elastic as possible to the pressure of popular demands. The party which has fought hard for half a cen- tury against what Mr. Disraeli regards as the principles of Pitt and Grenville, is now to adopt them frankly ; and Mr. Disraeli himself sets the example of the open acknowledgment of former errors, by recalling candidly the era when he was engaged in rallying on totally false principles " the fragments of a beaten, a broken, and a disheartened party." And then, as the Prime Minister puts it, with quite suffi- cient plainness, comes the critical question, " Will the Tory party be equal to the occasion ?" Certainly it is not very in- spiriting to be told that all their party traditions have, for half a century, been on the wrong track, and that only on one occasion, when Mr. Disraeli juggled them into doing what they did not intend to do, did they pursue the principles of Pitt and Grenville. Still Englishmen have no sympathy with Lot's wife. They do not look back with yearning on the Cities of the Plain which they have once abandoned, how- ever great the attractions ; and after an Administration which swept with so clean a broom as Mr. Gladstone's, there is obviously opportunity enough for a Ministry which prefers implicit to explicit innovations,—changes which are but changes of fact, and not of form, to changes which are visibly changes of form as well as of fact. Liberalism in the old Tory costumes, that is what Mr. Disraeli announces his wish to promote. How will he succeed ? We suspect, from his speech, that his immediate intention is to feel his way to an ecclesiastical policy of this kind, and that the Duke of Richmond's attempt on the Established Church of Scotland is a first tentative in this direction. The Bills introduced by private though eminent members of the Upper House, in relation to Public Worship and its Rubrics, are feelers by which Mr. Disraeli will judge of the mind of the House of Commons on a similar and even more important subject. The Prime Minister is evidently quite resolved to be comprehensiie. " I am told that the chief reason for believing in the danger of the Church is the existence of parties in it. But, gentlemen, there have always been parties in the Church. There were parties in the Church of Jerusalem, and as long as the various nature of man subsists, these parties will subsist also." " I believe that the three great parties in the Church may have fair play, with a due respect to the principles and practice of the Reformation." Mr. Disraeli would put down the eccentricity due to mere vanity,. " but to check and discourage without persecution is a wise course, in spiritual as well as temporal affairs." Will the Tory party be able to follow Mr. Disraeli in the policy he thus hints at, even in deference to the views of Pitt and Gren-
ville No one can say positively, but it is not very easy to conceive that the party which has for half a century been the party of privilege in political, financial, and religious concerns, should suddenly turn round and adopt frankly the principles and precedents of the party of comprehension. What is more, we do not think it likely that Mr. Disrreli is the leader who can guide them into such a policy. Principles of comprehension (or shall we say sentiments of indifference ?) are one thing ;—the art of so applying them to a practical policy as to curb the bigotry of a Church, and make it co- extensive with the growth of the people's mind, is quite another thing, and not by any means a thing which springs naturally out of sentiments of indifference. A statesman who proposes to himself the liberalisation of a Church, should have been long impregnated with the principles of a popular organi- sation, and how little the Tories seem to have of this, the Duke of Richmond's Scotch Church Patronage Bill appears to show very curiously. Belief in Privilege, in sectarian Privilege, is at the very root of that measure ; and nothing would be so little likely to secure fair play to the three great parties in the National Church as any measure modelled on a like basis.
Mr. Disraeli speaks with a better augury of success when he
leaves this delicate subject, and intimates that the principles of Pitt and Grenville were Imperial principles, and that "in order to maintain an empire, we must remember that we shall be called upon sometimes to increase it." There spoke the statesman who is neither Liberal nor Tory, but simply an observer of human nature. That which never expands is sure to contract. That --hich has lost all the vital force which tends to increase, is on the verge of dwindling. Here Mr. Disraeli shows, what we have often before observed, that the state of mind which has most sympathy with privilege and caste, has not unfrequently also the most sympathy with national and imperial ends. For, a nation, in relation to the world, is in a sense a privileged body, is indeed for some purposes a huge caste; and only that empty Cosmopolitanism which Mr. Disraeli once tried to identify with Liberalism, can throw aside this belief in great national and imperial ends of life, at the instance of some small financial or municipal scruple. It will be quite possible for Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues to make reverence for the Imperial weight and dignity of the United Kingdom, a cardinal feature of their policy, if they choose. But we doubt its being possible for them to develop the popular doc- trines of liberty and comprehension under the veil of the old Tory precedents and ideas. Tradition and precedent have more power to limit the action of a great party than Mr. Disraeli is inclined to admit. Though the Tories are rid for the present of their chief difficulties in this direction, the first new step they take, even on a Church reform, will raise the whole ques- tion of popular authority and democratic principle in all its scope, and then Mr. Disraeli will find even his own sympathies difficult enough to control in the right direction, let alone those of his colleagues and his party. The principles of Pitt and Grenville, or those which Mr. Disraeli gives out as the principles of Pitt and Grenville, are not yet embodied in the genius of the Tory party; or even in the genius of Mr. Disraeli himself. We greatly doubt whether they ever will be.
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