TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MORAL OF THE LONDON ELECTION. Tire success of the Free Trade candidate for the representation of London City appears to surprise all parties. The Whig papers hail it as a triumph of Free Trade and a Ministerial defeat ; the mode-
rate Conservatives are fain to put up with it as a reverse incidental to the very moderation of their leader; the Tories reproach the
Conservative candidate with being too Ministerial. Strange, that it should be so difficult to judge, even after the event! That it is a triumph of Free Trade—that London has given its adhesion to the cause—cannot be denied ; but the Ministerial defeat, in the usual acceptation of the term, is not so clear. The friends of the Li- beral candidate professed to regard the contest as one, not of party, but between Free Frade and its opposite, and they conquered in the name of Free Trade. The absolute gain is to that cause ; but no direct antagonism to it was put in issue. Mr. BARING appeared not as an Anti-Free-trader, (though opposing the League as an agency,) but as a Ministerial candidate; and the high Tories as- sume, that bad he professed their politics, and avowed himself an " out-and-out Tory," be would have succeeded better—that the cause of his failure was apathy among the Tory electors, arising from the want of more decided opinions on his part. This notion is contradicted by the poll; on which the Conservatives, so far from losing, have gained—that is, they have polled a larger number than they polled before.* On the contrary, so far from assuming that Sir ROBERT PEEL has fewer supporters than the abstract and obsolescent principles of "Toryism," it is to be surmised that his adherents command a larger number of the electors, and that if Mr. BARING bad avowed himself a Tory in favour of a higher-handed style of government and extreme " protection " in trade, many who voted for him would have staid away or voted for the Liberal. If the Conservatives, then, are found to have lost nothing in the strength of their electoral forces, the Liberals must have gained something ; and their most obvious accession was the alliance of the Anti-Corn-law League: the League therefore gave the casting- vote, and disposed of London. There are those among the Con- servatives who affect to disparage the influence of the League; and they do it by comparing the numbers polled at the last and at the previous election, assuming the influence of the League to be mea- sured by the difference between the former Whig minority and the present Liberal majority. But there is no ground for limiting it to that extent : there is little doubt that Whiggery has fallen into in- creasing discredit • so that, if a new influence had not been intro- duced which might in its effects be confounded with Whiggery, the bundle of " principles" passing by that name would have shown a smaller number of votaries than ever. The League records Lon- don as the first constituency of which it has disposed in its new career of agitation. Alarm at this " new element in electioneering" makes some angry ; and it is hinted it should be " dealt with as the Repeal conspiracy has been dealt with in Ireland." The prejudice must be great indeed that can so confound the two agitations—Repeal of the Corn-laws with Repeal of the Legislative Union. In no one point do they agree. We have no blind partiality for the League— we have had occasion to dissent frankly from some of its proceed- ings, and have been abused for it : but we confess that we perceive nothing illegal or " unconstitutional " in what it is now doing ; whereas the Irish Repeal Association stands charged with conspiracy to alter the constitution of the realm by intimi- dation and force. The tribunals of justice will dispose of that charge according to law, but in the mean time the Government is gravely committed to make it good. The League was formerly blameable, in our opinion, for some of the language suffered at its meetings : the utterers of that language may have been obnoxious to be called to account ; but it had nothing to do with the plan of the League—it was an excrescence, not an essential. The exhibition of Dissenting preachers in the fray, we thought very objectionable : it violated the decorum which removes the ministers of religion from the mundane asperities of politics; it introduced a kind of odium theologicum into a question of political economy ; it may have been alien to a constitution which excludes clergymen— the working clergy recognized by the State—from the House of Commons : but it would have puzzled a lawyer to make it the peg for legal proceedings. In the present scheme of the League there is nothing to justify deliberate condemnation on "constitutional" grounds : it consists of argumentative hortation, a large ma- chinery for canvassing electors and other supporters, appeals to law for the punishment of those who break the law by bribing at elections, and the collection of funds to defray all its legal expenses ; a formidable, but surely not an unlawful project. The Irish Repealers seek what is considered in England a dismem- berment of the empire—the rupture of an incorporating treaty, more fundamental in its nature than even the settlement of the crown in the present line : as a means, they make a monstrous dis- * At the General Election in 1841, the numbers polled in the City of Lon- don were-
Conservatit es,
Liberals,
Masterman, 6,339 Wood, 6,315 Lysll 6,290 Russell, 6,221 Attwood, 6,212 Pattison, 6,070 Pine, 6,017 Crawford, 6,065
At the present election, the votes for the Conservative candidate, as declared by the Sheriff, at the Guildhall on Monday, were 6,367, being 28 more than the highest Conservative in 1841 ; for the Free-trader, 6,532, being 217 more thantee highest Liberal. play of physical force; they openly profess to set the Imperial Par- liament at nought ; they daily with the supposed foreign enemie of the country ; civil war and war abroad have been perpetually I their mouths ; and at last they went so far as to usurp some of the functions of executive government. The Corn-law Repeaters seek to alter an act of Parliament for the regulation of trade— a law transitory in its nature, which has been repeatedly altered, and is in perpetual flux. The Irish agitation is indefinite, and not an end but a means—Repeal consummated, would be but the first achievement in a series of other commotions. The agi- tation of the League is definite—Free Trade gained, the end is gained, and there is no more to ask. Then as to means, it may be said that the League is troublesomely and unpolitely intrusive ; but so are many other associations. The theory of the constitution regards each Member of Parliament as repre- senting the whole country : the League believes a certain course of policy in respect to a specific regulation of trade very desirable for the whole country ; its members go about the land labouring to spread their conviction by argument ; they endeavour to persuade other electors to do as they have done, and elect Free-traders, so that the law which they desire may be passed: there is no threat of war, no display of physical force, no defiance of Parliament ; but it is all a matter of argument—of persuasion—of importunity at the worst. Individual electors may feel the obtrusion and im- portunity to be offensive ; those who entertain opposite convictions may find the activity of the League inconvenient ; but the notion of going to law or issuing proclamations against such a movement is the wildest dream that ever consoled a losing party. When can- vassing is abandoned by " Tories " as vicious, when Reform Clubs and Reform Registration Societies are declared illegal, when the Carlton Club is proclaimed a treasonable "conspiracy," then may such a scheme as that so auspiciously commenced in London be unconstitutional and illegal, but hardly till then.
What would the country think of a Minister who could learn nothing from the London election but the necessity of "putting down" the Anti-Corn-law League ? and how long would he hold office ? Any Police Magistrate would at once commit him to safe custody as a dangerous lunatic. The conversion of the commer- cial metropolis of England to thorough free trade may teach a graver lesson to the statesman. Two propositions were submitted to the high mercantile constituency—the PEEL modified free trade, and real thoroughgoing free trade : the constituency have considered both; they have by no means hastily or contemptuously rejected the PEEL policy ; but on the whole, they have judged, it will not do— London is for genuine free trade. Some "fixed duty" notions mein to lurk among those on the confines of Peelism and Whiggery ; but London itself is for total repeal. Is it likely, then, that palliatives - will long defer that measure ? Is it probable that a Minister who could muster courage to adopt it would lack support from the "wealth and intelligence" of the country?
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