TOPICS OF THE DAY.
RETAIL POLITICS.
THE two candidates for West Yorkshire are proper representatives of English feeling. Mr. Beckett Denison, the favourite on the side of the gentry, has been known of old as a gentleman of most gentlemanly politics. He is an intelligent "Liberal Conserva- tive,"—so intelligent, that he can discern a political necessity when it is over-ripe ; so liberal, that he will obstruct nothing which is respectable enough in the numbers and station of its support to make assent judicious ; so conservative, that he will destroy nothing except what it is desirable to throw overboard to save the rest. Mr. Denison is a Conservative whom Whigs may like and Radicals support. Sir Culling Eardley is a younger and a newer man, known to Exeter Hall, but not to Parliament; yet he is far advanced in the transition state, having made consider- able progress in abating his opinions down to the Parliamentary level, so that really he would make a very fair representative, as men go, for almost any party. On most points of current politics he has learned to compete very creditably with the most approved slopsellers of opinion—dealers in doctrines which do not exactly fit anybody, but which anybody may wear. On the suffrage question, for example, he actually agrees with everybody. He glances at the probability of a latent preponderance of opinion in favour of universal suffrage: at present he is himself for house- hold or municipal suffrage, but he is prepared to accept any "instalment "; and as he does not propose to take the ini- tiative, he cannot be irresistibly impatient for anything—he will be quite content with any amount in that respect, from all to nothing. So in regard to the connexion of Church and State, he is in principle quite a Voluntary ; only he will make no aggression on the Established Church. Like the philosophical poet who was questioned as to his lunching needments, he is ready "to take anything that is going forward." It is quite delightful to think of the perfect immunity from care with which West Yorkshire must await the ultimate throw of the election between two candidates whose opinions differ so little except in the form of the statement—a Churchman whose tolerant rule Dissenters might take for that of a Dissenter; a Dissenter under whose unaggressive zeal Churchmen might live as securely as if he were an Archbishop. Election-agents may find it profit- able to be for the nonce in as great a pucker as Lawyer Dowling, and non-electors may shout for Roebuck, but practically very little hangs by the election beyond the name to be substituted in Mr. Dodd's Parliamentary Companion for that of " Morpeth (Vis- count)". This is one of the blessings conferred upon the country by the Reform Bill; which called into existence that great medium class for whose favour Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, have competed in a race of moderation, until excesses are nearly obliterated in one mean level of self-adjusting opinions gravitating towards nega- tion. It is a blessing, however, not wholly unmixed. The con- verting of political opinion from the form of aggressive doctrine into that of passive optimism is very convenient in quiet times ; and the great aptitude which our politicians have acquired in making professed opinions for every variety of demand in the retail market quite equals the industrious skill displayed in any other branch of domestic manufacture. The supply overruns the demand, and there is the usual effect—great cheapnessof opinion, immense cheapness of candidates. But we doubt whether this striking change in the general state of public feeling is altogether wholesome. There is a marked tendency to eschew positive opi- nions. Opinion is made up into a negative form. It is commi- nuted for the convenience of the market, until at last you can have the smallest possible dose of opinion in the most copious wash of neutral diluent. Politics are reduced to a retail system. It is a consequence which might have been foreseen, that anything in the way of national sentiment is almost gone—frittered away in small calculations. The universal tolerance or "good feeling " charms one, until it is viewed in the dangerous aspect of political indifferentism, a Cockney effeminacy in matters patriotic. It is saying too little to complain that the affairs of a country have dwindled to the scale of parish business, because even parish bu- siness is stricken with the bland paralysis of " good feeling." Now this frame of the public mind is all very well while the mat- ters in active discussion keep to the scale of parish business, and while revolution takes no shape but that in which it can be dealt with by the constable : but is such a state of the country perma- nently guaranteed 4 Again we doubt. Many a hazardous prob- lem stands for future solution.
And the great retail influence is not untried. Louis Philippe employed his whole kingly power to possess every corner of France with the great retail influence. He worshiped it, he ca- joled it, he took it into pay ; he filled the departments with paid officials of small calibre and trading connexions ; he filled the Chamber of Deputies with small legislators, dependent on small salaries for small duties in small places ; he erected the great re- tail interest into an army, as the "National Guard," and boasted of that respectable and immense body-guard for his throne. A day of trial came. Political corruption carried to the extreme defeated itself by destroying all allegiance. Financial difficulty forced on a reckoning. The overcrowded profession of states- manship, deprived of a fair field for its activity, intrigued against a government that was an organized stratagem. The unappropri- ated multitude, " le peuple," was hounded against constituted authority. It was revolution, and Louis Philippe's reliance was put to its test : it wavered, tried all sides, caught the humour of the day, and helped to advertize " the Republic"; which has since fallen below cost price. France was let loose, and found itself without a national sentiment. Not only so, but it has gone through eight months of revolution, and exhibits, as yet, no sign of having conceived a national sentiment. Even the reinsurrection of June could suggest no ideas to any but De La- martine, and to him none so distinct that he could body it forth and give to that airy nothing a local habitation. The gallant epiciers rally round the standard with admirable courage, but the standard means nothing : it is only a yard of bunting of three colours, assorted, value three-and-sixpence. The respectable patriots rally round the standard with the utmost punctuality ; they honour the demand of the generale as promptly as if it were a note of exchange : but they cannot muster a national sentiment; it is not among the articles in the list which they wrap round a new tooth-brush or fold up with an ounce of lozenges. It is partly an effect, partly a reactive cause, that the leading statesmen of the day, speaking generally, are men without ideas at once large and definite—without absolute devotion. They are patriots to measure, according to a calculation as to the value of the stake. The poetical Lamartine will not venture into the Pre- sidential contest without a guarantee against ridicule. His anti- podes, M. Thiers, cannot rise above the material part of statesman- ship : his highest philosophy is but political economy, at second- hand. There are few men of the class that would burn their ships behind them. Even the poet-patriot has an eye to the safety of his property. Hence, in the confusion of Europe no man equal to the time comes forth to lead the people—rallying them to his standard with an appeal to some great common feeling, and ready to perish in the enterprise—nay, not only to perish, but to incur the requisite expenses. There is no Curtius to be the propitiatory sacrifice. It is so not only in France but in Germany : the Ger- man leaders are thinking of themselves and their crotchets; each German prince is looking after what be can save for self and family. All has been undone, but nobody has a definite scheme of positive action ; or having it, he will not risk his all upon it. It was not so formerly. The earnest purpose, the strong will, the inexpugnable resolve, which make heroes immortal and lead peoples into great actions, were found in times not far remote. Napoleon knew how to throw kingdoms as stakes for empires. Before him, Robespierre stuck to his purpose through blood and hate. Nelson, having planned his attack, would risk a fleet for a victory. So, glance back at the history of any country, and you will see the great men risking, not only personal danger—every policeman does as much in every drunken squabble—but that bugbear of our day "consequences." No lion in the path stop- ped Cromwell ; Bible in one hand sword in the other. Victory is but the obverse of defeat ; triumph, of destruction. Brutus marched to Philippi, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, with the resolve that makes the hero—to win if possible, to go on at all events. Themistocles found safety in audacity ; Venice was saved at Chiozza by a lavish and spontaneous pouring out of blood and treasure against hope ; and, nearer our own day, Washington, when he recruited his army after all-but its skeleton had de- serted him, while he kept up the blockade of Boston by the mere effigy of a force, beat General Gage through the sheer strength of a will inflexible in defeat itself. Washington was a Colonel ri- sing in the British Army, a man of property, a "prudent" man: he risked person, commission, property—all : he went on— whatever happened, on : and thus, often without money, with- out an army, without even hope, he led his countrymen through the day of tribulation and founded a republic in spite of imperial England.
These are the virtues which seem scarcely to belong to our re- tail system. If we look for them now, it must be in places or classes not just now in vogue,—among the barbaric Croats ; the degenerate Italians, even yet unredeemed from the ancient and mediaeval tyranny of the dagger; the men of that army. of Algiers which was the vent for the dregs of France. One of the men most of the heroic stamp is the rough and soldierly Cavaignac. On great occasions—within his own province and independently of technical bureaucratic politics—he has shown himself to be
strictly a man of purpose. He sticks to his main object, through good and evil report. Ordered to defend Paris, he defends it ac- cording to rule, deaf to civilian vituperation. Calumniated, he challenges explanation, and marches up to the tribune as coolly as he would to the cannon. He is not afraid of " consequences." The
worst speaker in Europe bursts upon astonished Paris as " a great orator " ; the vulgar confounding the eloquence of events, of re- alities, of settled purpose, with the verbal skill of oratory. Ca- vaignac speaks deeds, and drives the vain breath down the throats of the mere orators who run at him agape. Where he chooses to takes his stand, there he remains, not to be exerted ; you may cut him to pieces, but not drive him away,—as Leonidas stands to this
day in the pass of the Thermopylae. But Cavaignac's strength lies in no excogitated niceties ; it is the facts of France that his antago- nists knock their heads against. If limited, his ideas are post- tive : his resolve he accounts worth all he can command ; if it is a resolve to abstain, no taunts can move him ; if it is to strike,
his whole heart is in the blow, and the sword cuts to the bone.
He does not calculate retail profits—it is all or nothing. He burns his ships behind him, and seeks safety in the rear of his enemy,
through victory alone. When his Ministry have got into the re- tail line of policy, it is evident that Cavaignac has not followed them : he is a soldier, not a tradesman. He it is who first brought order into anarchy : the gleam of his sword was the first ray of peace in that bloody storm ; his cannon overmastered chaos and thundered forth the restoration of a power in the state. In his straightforward and stayless career, the simpler soldier has arrived at an idea which lay beyond the scope of the cunning retail King, who scrupled not to use intrigue, but hesitated to use force ; thus provoking revolt, and permitting anarchy. Louis-Pbilippism is a very handy instrument for quiet thriving times ; but it will not serve for a time of great national crisis. Its paramount rule amongst us here in England is neither politic nor safe ; it is not consistent with national dignity and greatness.
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