THE SUGGESTED CENTRAL PARTY.
MIDDLE-AGED lawyers in search of a political creed are I sometimes very felicitous in the infelicities of their invention. Mr. Montague Cookson, Q.C., is certainly a case in point. The main reason why he declines to contest Chi- chester as a Liberal is, that he differs so little from Lord Henry Lennox that he thinks it almost unfair to enter the lists against him. He could not give a better reason ; and, whether for his own sake or the sake of the Liberal party, it is obviously most undesirable that he should solicit the votes of the Liberals, when he much more than half agrees with the Conservatives. So far Mr. Montague Cookson has shown a sound judgment, though of a somewhat elementary kind ; for even a child might know that you can hardly find much satisfaction in opposing a party you mostly agree with, and asking for the support of one you widely differ from. But the sound judgment which he evidently has at his dis- posal in relation to personal conduct, fails him when he comes to touch the wider political field. It is exceedingly natural that a middle-aged lawyer, who has cared about law all his life, and hardly given, perhaps, many stray thoughts even to politics, should like to think that the main differences of the two great parties are unreal, and that it is true wisdom to strike a mean somewhere between them. Those who do not enter into either side of a discussion, very naturally propose to settle it on that principle of arbitration which decides that each must give way to some extent. We do not find fault with Mr. Montague Cookson for importing the only principle with which he was familiar into the political field, and trying to untie with it somewhat unfamiliar knots. But what was imprudent in Mr. Montague Cookson was to suggest that this very obvious resource of the indifferent, when compelled to manufacture for themselves a political creed of some kind, would be one of a nature to excite enthusiasm. Mr. Cookson proposes his great political recipe with the praiseworthy brevity of a much over- worked lawyer. "I am one of those," he says, "who look forward to the formation, at no distant date, of a great Central Party, which shall rouse a new political enthusiasm, by uniting the moderate men of both sides, to the exclusion of crotcheteers." Now, far be it from us to say that moderation is inconsistent with enthusiasm. St. Paul was an enthusiast, if ever there were one, and yet be told his disciples to let their moderation be known unto all men. Still, though moderation is consistent with enthusiasm, it is not usually a note of enthusiasm. The new party which should unite the most moderate men of the previously existing parties, would consist for the most part of rather lukewarm Liberals and rather lukewarm Conservatives. Mr. Montague Cookson might, possibly, himself feel a sort of enthusiasm in joining this party, but then his enthusiasm would be rather the enthusiasm of relief at finding that he had no political enthu- siasm to get up. A clever writer once described the enthusiasm with which, after many weeks of immersion in the witty epigrams of the French Press, he came upon a thoroughly dull article in the Standard, which described nothing, and wanted to describe nothing, beyond the stolid satisfaction in remain- ing as you are, which is the secret of true Conservatism. Well, that enthusiasm was, we suspect, very like the enthusiasm which Mr. Montague Cookson's Central Party would be likely to excite. Certain persons on both sides who were weary of positive political emotion, would take refuge in it, with a vivid satisfaction which they might for a moment, by a pardonable metaphor, de- scribe as enthusiasm. But it is hardly more possible to be really enthusiastic about negative qualities, than to exult in having nothing interesting to look forward to, nothing interesting to look back upon, and nothing interesting to do. No doubt there are beings in that condition, and beings who are so near the attitude of true Conservatism that they do not want to exchange it for any other. But then, even so, they can hardly be said to be enthusiastic about it. The real explanation of the satisfac- tion which a Central Party might under certain circumstances excite in England, is not at all that it would kindle political enthusiasm, but that when political enthusiasm of all kinds was out of the question, and the chief interests of life were intellectual, literary, social, commercial, or, at all events, non- political, people might be glad to have in the ascendant a party whose greyer and dimmer life fairly represented the fact of such a decline in political interest, of such a diversion of the interests of the day from the political to some other field. That is the condition of things which would favour the formation of such a party. But the notion of its exciting political enthusiasm is as absurd as the notion of exciting scientific enthusiasm by frankly recognising, if so it ever were, that scientific progress was for a time at a stand-still, or the notion of exciting literary enthusiasm by the publication of sensible works on dull themes, when genius, for the moment, happened to be in abeyance. That a Central Party of political Moderates might, however, be formed, and formed with success, for a time, though it could not by any possibility excite enthusiasm, we are not at all dis- posed to deny. If Lord Beaconsfield were to retire from the scene, without any other great change in the political conditions, this would, we think, be as likely a result of the apathy of the moment, as any other that now occurs to us. We do not mean, of course, that a coalition Government would necessarily be formed. The genius of party government in England seems to be unfavourable to coalitions, and the chances are that the way in which the result to be arrived at would be gained, would be either by the formation of a sober Whig Government, containing perhaps a few of the ablest of the dis- satisfied Liberal Conservatives, or by the formation of a Liberal- Conservative Government, supported, on the whole, by the Liberal Opposition. It would be impossible for any one but Lord Salisbury even to attempt the continuation of Lord Beaconsfield's showy, Tory-democratic policy ; and it would be impossible for Lord Salisbury to succeed in that attempt. Any Government of which he was the chief would break to pieces in a few weeks, even if it ever got itself together. No one but the great political mountebank himself could keep the English public sufficiently amused with his tricks and prestidigitat ions, to over- come the chagrin with which they are beginning to regard the growing burdens, the accumulating responsibilities, the occa- sional disasters, and the rapidly multiplying anxieties of the policy of brag. And as soon as Lord Salisbury had failed,— if he should rashly attempt,—to fill the place of Lord Beacons- field, the chances are that, whatever may be the result of the next General Election, the public feeling will favour a policy of modesty and tranquillity,—the greatest conceivable change from the policy of bounce and brag,—and that that policy of modesty and tranquillity will be confided to a Liberal Govern- ment of an unambitious character,—a Liberal Government of which Lord Hartington or Lord Derby, it matters little which, would be the best representative, and of which the policy of Lord Palmerston's last Government would be likely to pre- sent the type. So, at least, we should expect, unless the next appeal to the Constituencies be made, as regards the Liberals, by their old leader, Mr. Gladstone, in which case there might, no doubt, be a sufficient revival for a time of the former enthusiasm, to bring him back to power for the restoration of our finances, the reform of our county suffrage, and the redistri- bution of seats which must accompany it. But of this at present there appears to be no prospect. And assuredly, if the Liberals appeal to the country on behalf of a policy as tame and life- less as that which has been, on the whole, advocated by our present Liberal leaders, though they may perhaps succeed in eliciting a feeling of strong reaction against the flashy im- potence of the present Government, they will not succeed in eliciting any enthusiasm sufficient to carry even the County Franchise Bill with the supplementary Redistribution Bill to which in principle they are pledged. The chances are that if they get a majority at all, they will get only one that expresses the weariness of the country with the recent display of weak grandiosity, and not one ade- quate to stimulate Parliament to the always unwelcome and distasteful work of reforming itself. In 1859, Lord Palnierston came in pledged to a Reform Bill which, when he died in 1865, had never been carried. And that, we sup- pose, would be the kind of Liberal Government which the reaction now going on would produce, unless a leadership like Mr. Gladstone's were to give it unexpected life. But be the result what it may, one thing is certain,—that if the effect be to produce a Government satisfactory to the moderates of both parties, it will be one springing, not out of enthu- siasm, but out of the dearth of enthusiasm, and exciting in the minds of those who like it best, not enthusiasm, but that absence of all enthusiasm which is the very quality which recommends it to elderly and unpolitical lawyers, like the late candidate for Liberal suffrages in the borough of Chichester.
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