THE CONSERVATIVE MOTION AND THE LIBERAL AMENDMENT. T HE Conservative motion
which is to test the opinions of the House of Commons on the comparative merits of a Government which is bankrupt in national honour, and an Opposition which desires to succeed to the position of the bank- rupt firm and all the practical immunities of the bankruptcy without incurring its discredit, is undoubtedly well drawn. It is almost impossible for any one who reflects on the matter at all, to feel anything but "regret that while the course pur- sued by Her Majesty's Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and independ- ence of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of this- country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace." Still every one knows that the un- questionable truth of a party resolution will not secure, and ought not to secure, its success, unless the waverers between the two parties have made up their minds that it is a truth so relevant to the comparative merits of the two parties that it must turn the scales. We are not inclined to think that this. will be the case on the present occasion. The party of the- manufacturers will of course vote with the Government whom they have manceuvred or cowed into its present humiliated attitude. To force their hand and then censure them for their weakness would be a treachery of which there is no example. On the other hand, the very small party among the- Liberals which really feels the pangs of personal disgrace in the cynical desertion by England of the cause of Denmark, might fairly vote with the Conservatives,—not as trusting them more or thinking them better than their own friends, but on the plain ground that there are some political situa- tions so grave as to demand a scape-goat to mark the nation's disgust, even though there be no chance whatever of redeem- ing the past. Just as Lord Palmerston was turned out in 1858 on the Conspiracy Bill, simply to express a strong feeling of national indignation, though everybody knew that the Tories- had concurred in its policy up to the moment of the over- throw,—just so, members feeling honest indignation at the recent policy of the British Government should doubtless. express that feeling in the only symbolic act,—however clumsy the symbol may be,—left to them, by a vote which would no. doubt tend to put a Government as bad or worse in its place. Even if the only check on the bad is to replace it by the worse, there are occasions which will justify the measure, where it is the only means of preventing the bad from itself degenerating into the worse. Still there are but few, we fear, amongst the Liberal party who would take so just a view of the discredit attaching to the recent acts of the Government as this. The Conspiracy Bill, it is true, was a blunder that, in comparison to our recent policy, may be called almost honourable to the Government which introduced it ; but then it was a blunder that irritated the sensitive self-esteem of the British nation, which, while fuming under the faintest sign of dictation, is patient, pachydermatous, and even coMplacent,, under imputations of dishonour by no means baseless or trivial. On the whole, then, we doubt whether the Con- servative party can count upon any more important defection from the Liberal ranks than will compensate defections from its own. Mr. Horsmaii may probably seize the rhetorical opportu- nity for an invective against the Government; and possibly Mr. Roebuck may relieve in this way the pent-up vials of his Con- federate sympathies; but, on the whole, the Minister will be sup- ported by his own party, and it is questionable whether the Tories will be fully supported by theirs. The House is not savage or indignant; it is only sulky, and in the mood in which it finds something congenial in Lord Palmerston's mean and slipshod policy. He has acted like a man,' who, though he has menaced legal proceedings against an aggressive neighbour up to the last moment, yet when he comes to the point of instituting them feels the costs after all a more tangible con- sideration than the rights involved, and swallows down his sense of justice with a powerful gulp of self-interest. And what can be a more English course ?
On the whole, then, it seems at least probable that the Government will successfully repel the assault of the Opposi- tion. And it is perhaps as well that it should be so. If indeed the Conservatives, while reproaching the Government with the false hopes they have held out to Denmark, were willing to redeem the honour of their country thus risked by their anta- gonists, it would be the duty of all Liberals who care more for England than for any party in it to sink personal distastes in the effort to strengthen a just cause. But we all know how far this is from being the truth. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli have both conveyed in no indistinct terms that they approve the pacific result, though they condemn the hostile threats which endangered it. No one who noticed Mr. Disraeli's face of almost ghastly anxiety to carry his party with him on Monday night, and his party's half indifference to the greater part of his speech, could doubt that there were other things they had much more at heart than a successful and damag- ing onslaught upon the Government. At the meeting at the Marquis of Salisbury's the only advocate of war was inter- rupted, postponed, and finally left speaking during the exit of his audience. Lord Robert Cecil, almost the only genuine Dane of his party, has long been gagged. Lord Derby himself, both in the House of Lords and at the Marquis of Salisbury's, took so much superfluous pains to show that he was not arguing against peace, that he left a strong impres- sion of half-heartedness even on the blame which he directed against the Government. He began his address, too, by a single abrupt sentence congratulating the Conservatives on their Church victories over the Liberals—the only topic except the Danish policy to which he alluded even momen- tarily. Was it that he wished to suggest as the true ideal of Conservative foreign policy that dead inertiaof and unreasoning resistance to influence from without, —that Conservatism not of principle but of the status quo,—which has so strongly marked the ecelesisatical policy of the party ? A party which has regarded it as its highest proof of attachment to the Anglican faith to ridicule the scruples of all who could not accept into their minds en masse the complex intellectual structure of its elaborate subscriptions, no doubt would not hesitate much over the delicate pressure of international obligations, or oppose anything more than a sullen apathy to the claims of those who have been guided almost implicitly by our counsels and stimulated to hope by our hints of aid. It is hard indeed for the nation to choose between the light Liberals, who will make no sacrifice for any liberty but their own, and the crass Conservatives who will make no sacrifice to protect from foreign aggression the constitutional traditions of any country but their own. For our own parts we prefer the former (though we should have been glad to see the nation mark its displeasure even at the cost of a change from bad to worse), because we believe, that a deep feeling for the national honour, a pride in the noble traditions of the past, is the salt of all true Con- servative feeling, and that when that salt has lost its savour Conservatism becomes nothing but political sloth, which soon means decrepitude, death, and decomposition.
Mr. Kinglake's amendment does not seem to us as well calculated for his purpose as Mr. Disraeli's motion is for the purpose of the Tories. Its idea evidently is to compete with the Tory motion in expressing the intensity of the English wish for peace. That that wish is very intense among the Northern manufacturers and amongst the Conservatives also, there can be no doubt, or we should not now be in our present disgrace- ful position. Still there are many, who would not hesitate for a moment to support the Government, who would feel a very natural aversion to compliment expressly its pacific timidity. As a nation we are not very sensitive ; but we are just alive to the sense of shame, and it may fairly be said that the words of Mr. Kinglake's amendment will stick in the throats of many who would feel no scruple at all in giving a direct party-negative to the truth so skilfully set down by Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Kinglake asks the House "to express the Satisfaction with which it has learned that at this conjuncture Her Majesty has been advised to abstain from armed inter- ference in the war now going on between Denmark and the German Powers." Now there are unquestionably many who would tamely accept Lord Palmerston's and Lord Russell's dictum that England is too weak to interfere, with- out feeling any shadow of satisfaction in that ignoble result, and who could scarcely persuade themselves by any effort of resolution to applaud directly the policy which has meekly given up the Danes to the wholesale plunder now in progress in Jutland. We do not mean to say that the House of Commons feel very deeply on the subject. They are evidently quite in the mood to enjoy thoroughly facetious debates on monkeys and brass bands, while every telegram brings news of some fresh act of German violence or rapacity against their abandoned and despondent ally. But there is a measure in all things, and though Mr. Kinglake may have a majority after all, we feel sure he will lose votes by the peculiarly nauseous form in which he has mixed his draught, with a distinct view, we presume, to the gratitude of the Radicals. There are men to whom the most nauseous medicines are delicacies. We have known men who were only deterred by its powerful medicinal properties from indulging in castor-oil as they would indulge in a liqueur. What will be nauseous to most politicians will be balm to the Radicals. But the House of Commons must be peculiarly constituted indeed, if it would prefer to parade its satisfaction in the desertion of the Danes to giving a silent negative to Mr. Disraeli's motion. No doubt the two votes come precisely to the same thing. Still among the scrupulous waverers there are always a few who are determined more or less by the form of words, and a more unpleasant form of . words than Mr. Kinglake's,to honourable men who have been studying the protocols and reading of the designs of the allies upon Jutland, it is not easy to conceive. On the whole, we should not regret, but do not in the least anticipate, the success of Mr. Disraeli's motion. We believe that, as regards the men, and even the hope for the future,—little hope as there is left for a policy worthy of England,—the change to a Tory Government would be a change for the worse; but yet that some emphatic expression of national displeasure for the weak, temporizing, and timid policy of the Government ought to be heard. We do not expect that it will be heard, and as it could only result in substituting a worse Government for a bad Government, it is not possible to feel keenly on the subject. One may say of Government and Opposition alike, with more than usual truth, "they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no not one;" and in spite of Mr. Kinglake's amendment we believe that, using a larger foresight than he conceives to be wise or politic, we might boldly add the emphatic conclusion, "the way, of peace have they not known."
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