TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CONDUCT OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION.
Wit rely on our readers for remembering that they have their duties as well as their rights ; and we call the fact to mind just now, not so much in our own vindication—we are willing to let the good name of our journal shift for itself—as in the desire to arouse in a class whom we are fain to believe most influential from their intelligence and independence, a more hopeful and courageous spirit than that which has dictated some strictures on our recent commentaries. Remonstrances, of which we recognize the manifest friendliness, have come to us from opposite sides,— from some who think we have been too explicit in admitting the political or social errors of the ruling and wealthy classes, and from others who cannot reconcile our admission of those short- comings with our vindication of order. We publish a letter by one in the latter category. It is satisfactory to deal with a writer BO honest, so forcible, and we are sure so capable of pushing the argument further. Our correspondent "W. S." says that our readers "at times appear fated to misunderstand us." Perhaps through some indis- tinctness of our own in idea or expression ; a fault which we are always glad to correct on ascertaining it. Possibly also through some neglect on the reader's part; in which case, we cannot sup- ply him with information and understanding too—we cannot per- form his part of the duty. "To err is human," and we are con- tent to assume the attribute of forgiveness towards "W. S." for neglecting a manifest duty. If the Spectator were prosecuted by the Attorney-General for any particular passage, the learned gen- tleman would be entitled to collate that passage with any others in the same number which might help him to establish his charge. We claim the like aids to favourable interpretation. Indeed, we
expect our readers to do more, and when they call us to account
on general political grounds, also to compare any particular paper or passage with the course which we maintain in general. We do not reprint a confession of faith on things in general in each weekly number. "\V. S." asks us to step forward with sug- gestions: newspapers are not bound to shape measures which they have no machinery to carry into action ; but "W. S." should observe, that in sketching "Our Own Revolution," we did indicate the nature of measures equal to the want of the times and not exceeding the opportunities of the times. He who compares our assertion that it seems impossible to get up a rational movement with our approval of the Go- vernment Security Bill and the Alien Bill, should note that, even in the absence of any " national " movement, factions may create disorder which demand effective control; that we commended the Security Bill, not as a shelter for panic—which we never shared—but as introducing a more rational treatment of a specific offence ; and that in approving of the police regulation sanctioned by the other bill, we glanced at its dangers from the want of effective responsibility. But there is a fourth reason for the dismay which we have had the honour to create among a few distinguished politicians by cer- tain of our recent papers : it is the tendency among all men to run on in the same track of ideas, so that any sudden turn of events which introduces new ideas distances them. Habit is second nature, and the minds which have grown familiar with the ideas of stagnant times are startled and discomforted by the intrusion of new and more stirring ideas. It is like the rough elements breaking into the warm, cosy, artificial unchangeable- fleas of a well-regulated family hearth. All "regular" men are most comfortable to have nothing in newspapers but what reflects their own not-to-be-unsettled ideas; they like to attend no public meetings but those from which every idea "foreign to the object of the meeting" is precluded. Hence, discussion at onesided meet- ings has become a farce and a mockery ; and faith in journals has been seriously impaired. Carry this out to the full, and they would cease to reflect the world as in a camera lucida ; leaving nothing but a mirror for the reader's own countenance, We have lived though times of crisis and doubt too rough and too many to take our friends' fears amiss. We have seen the doubts which we expressed of the all-sufficiency of "Reform" reechoed by those who stormed at our " Tory " scepticism ; we have seen the phrases in the Spectator concerning a living statesman denounced, and then almost rewritten some months latter by those very denoun- cers. Our readers will remember these things : they will re- member that criticisms on Sir Robert Peel, which the Spectator hazarded before other judgments on that subject had been com- pared, and which were made a scandal and a wonderment, be- came afterwards matter-of-course and of received common sense. Our readers know that these things are the reason why they are still our readers ; and yet a little later, some of them shall confess that the very things which now startle them have bound our con- nexion closer.
But the subject is larger than one between a journal and its
readers. Change of times, we say, makes change of discussion ; and great is the change which is taking place before our eyes at this moment. We will not consciously lag behind events. We Will not, amid the new and life-stirring elements of European politics, stay burrowing among the buried questions of the ante- diluvian sera—the fossil remains of "Reform," or the debris "Complete Suffrage." "W. S." wants us to entertain higher ex- vectations of the organized agitation set on foot by the Fifty-one. We cannot. "Give us those measures," he says, which the Fifty-one propound, "and we shall possess the means of attain. lug the end desiderated by all." Ay, "give us those measuresa and when they are given, we will render our thanks. But we see nothing in the measures, as announced, which differs from the standing wares that the political pedlar could produce from his pack any day these last seventeen years—the broken meats, the chips, and waste rags of" Reform." We see nothing in the men-... headed by Mr. Hume and adorned by Mr. Feargus O'Connor.... to kindle a nation's enthusiasm for the adoption of any policy. We see nothing in the whole scheme to awaken a people from the apathy into which it has been lulled by commonplaces. The English people will not move except to enforce immediate re- sults, and there is no promise of any near result in the move- ment of the Fifty-one. The Corn-law repealers were impelled by urgent self-interest, aided by urgent public wants, and they con- structed a machinery to apply those strong motives : the Fifty- one are getting up a movement to employ that vocationlese machinery.
When some man among us possessing a power of command feels that the necessity of his position dictates a particular course of action, and proclaims that he is about to act, then the people stirs, and he finds a support incited by the mere love of move- ment. So when the Duke of Wellington, aided by Mr. Peel, recognized Catholic Emancipation as the alternative of civil war in Ireland, and avowed that he was going to emancipate the Catholics, he found a Legislature to go through with him, and to anticipate the suffrage of the nation. When the Conservatives were split and beaten on the Civil List—when William the Fourth was Bing, and the Whigs came in—when Earl Grey was swayed by old memories, the pride of consistency, and the influence of his earnest son-in-law—Reform became their necessity—the next action ; and it was carried, to the amazement of a country startled from apathy. For all the perseverance of the Anti-Corn- law League, Mr. Cobden and his friends had sunk to despair : like Durandarte, seven long years the League had served its mistress, and now its apprenticeship was like to close in extinction. Bin there came the famine : Sir Robert Peel's slow conviction attained maturity : he began his pregnant inquiries: Lord John Russell, not uninspired by a surreptitious oracle, who told what was brewing in the mind of the Premier, indited his London letter from Edin- burgh: the abstract question became the standard for the fight between Treasury-bench and Anti-Treasury-bench : the bursting rosebud of Sir Robert's opinions expanded into glorious flower—. the action was decreed ; and in two months the despair of Cobden became the triumph of Peel. It is not the details of any measure—we might maunder for three or four more lustres over the merits and incidental doubts of " Household Suffrage" or "Complete Suffrage "—but the spirit and general scope of a political scheme, which would make it effi- cient to restore healthy action in the body politic. If any high and popular statesman—Sir Robert Peel, for instance—were to announce in a single sentence, that he was about to bring in a measure " for the revision of our system," or any other object equally large, but declared in a spirit of hearty conviction and proclaimed with the manner of present action, the whole country, without looking much to details, would rise on the moment, and would ring from one end to the other with the exulting cry- " The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill I" It is the spirit of vitality, the power of command, the energy for instant, sustained, and overmastering action,—these are the things wanted to make the blood move again, warm and quick, in the veins of the nation. It is not by anatomizing vain statistics, or picking about among the dry rubbish of old" bills," that the poli- tical chiffoniers can awaken the country. The times want a larger utterance than lies in the mouth of the Fifty-one, or suits the ears of effeminate old habit.
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