MR. FORWOOD ON THE FUTURE OF TORYISM.
" WE must have Tory men, and Liberal measures." That seems to us the sum-total of the advice which Mr. A. B. Forwood offers to his party, in this month's Contemporary Review. It is a remarkable paper, and well worth Liberal study, if only because of the position of its author. He is, or was till the last Election, the dictator of his party in Liver- pool. After years of active municipal life, Mr. Forwood was elected fourteen years ago to the Chairmanship of the Con- servative Association ; he has retained it ever since, and he was selected last year by the whole party as the one candidate for Lord Sandon's vacant seat certain to succeed. They waited weeks for him, and when he arrived, nominated him by accla- mation. He was beaten, partly at least, on account of his demo- cratic programme; and it is after that enlightening experience, as well as after the instruction derived from years of successful work in the interests of his party, that he repeats his firm convic- tion that old Toryism, the policy of resistance to progress, is dying out, and puts forward a programme which is in a large measure identical with that of moderate Liberals. " I have no hesita- tion in stating," he says, " that if, as a party, Conservatism is simply to be the brake on the wheel of legislation, having no enlightened or progressive policy of its own, it will soon cease, and deservedly so, to exercise any power in the city of Liver- pool." He then declares that the Conservatives must " trust the people, and they will reciprocate the sentiment ;" and that " as much regard must be paid to measures conceived in the interest of the working-classes, as to the wants of any other body of the community," and that in particular, the Master and Servant Statutes must be amended in
their interest. He is not opposed to another Reform Bill, making household suffrage universal, though he insists on gutting the counties of urban influence by grouping small boroughs, and he is for a large and really democratic measure of Redistribution. He actually lays down as a doctrine that all constituencies should be large, because " large constituencies are essential to purity of election,"—a doctrine which would have made the Tories, not only of 1832, but of 1867, gasp with indignation. He would make the Church of England " broad and comprehensive," would strengthen rather than weaken the ecclesiastical power of the lay judiciary, and would rearrange the revenues of the Church on a more democratic system, dividing, for instance, the income of overgrown or over-wealthy parishes among their poorer neighbours. He would grant to Ireland all the local self- government and all the franchises we grant to the remainder of the kingdom, would abolish the Lord-Lieutenancy, and in fact "would, as a principle, strive to place the two islands under one system of Government." He would encourage " such legal reforms as will make the sale of land as simple and in- expensive as that of other property," which involves, we need not say, restrictions upon settlement, that keystone of the aristocratic system ; and finally, he would in all things have the Party declare itself ready and eager to carry out " the firmly constructive and safely progressive policy of the future."
What is all this, but ordinary, moderate Liberalism, applied to the immediate problems before us ? It is true that we can just detect, by careful study, that Mr. Forwood's real policy in Ireland is very different from Mr. Gladstone's, and that he would oppose both in Ireland and England any conces- sions to tenant-farmers, he holding that all Land Acts every- where interfere with the principle of free contract, which he regards with as superstitious a reverence as if he had never been driven in a cab ; but, as regards Great Britain, where, except as to the Holdings Act, is there any difference between Mr. Forwood's views and Lord Hartington's I Both propose the same improvements, both are ready with the same concessions, both affirm as a cardinal principle that "the people "—meaning thereby the majority counted by heads—must be trusted, and must ultimately decide. It is again true that Mr. Forwood parades the Monarchy and the Constitution as objects weak enough to need the utmost care, and Lord Hartington does not, and that Mr. Forwood makes much of his love for Colonies, and. Lord Hartingtou does not ; but that difference consists only in. this,—that Lord Hartington will not take the trouble to dissi- pate unreal fears, while Mr. Forwood is at the trouble to exaggerate them. Nobody is going to dethrone Queen Victoria, or upset the Constitution, or dismiss the Colonies, and so Lord Hartington is silent about them ; but there is no other differ- ence, and if the Tory leaders adopted Mr. Forwood's pro- gramme, we should have two great parties in the State, differing only in their leaders' names, and perhaps in their intellectual ability, racing with each other to earn "the con- fidence of the people" by measures which, whether we call them Liberal or Tory, tend directly to make of the Democracy the ultimate directing and governing power. And this, it is past all doubt, is the policy of that section of the Tories which Mr. Forwood represents, and which is weary of a resistance that, however wise or however beneficial, leaves Tories, as they fancy, always in a minority and out of power. It is the policy which is paralysing the Party, for the leaders cannot denounce it, with Lord Salisbury as their chief and Lord Beaconsfield not yet forgotten ; and they cannot accept it, because the body of their immediate followers do not like it, and because they see that if the mass of the people want Liberal measures, they will ask Liberal men to carry them out. High Tories like Mr. Lowther will never vote for Comity Government on the "trust in the people" principle, while old Conservatives will look with sullen distrust on all the Liberal measures which Mr. Forwood presses on their acceptance. Why, then, ask the Tories, do we discuss Mr. Forwood's pro- positions ? If they will not be accepted, and only weaken the adversary's strength, why do not Liberals let them alone ? Is it not, they suggest, a superfluity of naughtiness in Liberal journals to be so much interested in Tory divisions, and is there not something of malice in their close watchfulness, while Conservatives do their thinking ? The answer to that jibe, in itself a fair one, is clear. It is as interesting to Generals to know what their enemies propose, as to know what they them- selves design ; while for ourselves, we confess to an additional and non-partisan interest in the inquiry. We have a strong conviction, amounting to a certainty, that in the internal fight in the Conservative camp, the old Conservatives, the men whose idea of their function is to apply the brake to the machine, will win, and have a deep intellectual interest, historic, not partisan interest, in watching for the signs of the coming victory, its men, and its method. We are not impressed by the Tory pessimists at all, shrewd as many of them are, and are more than half-amused with their present inability to trust in their own principles. We believe that Conservatism rests upon facts as indestructible as those which support Liberalism, upon the instinctive reluctance of half mankind to abandon the usual, upon their fear of all changes, and upon their natural, and, in many respects, admirable reverence for the past. A section of mankind will always be guided by those feelings, and in a country like this, where great numbers are honestly contented, where utopias, owing to the national character, have little influence, and where history inspires a lofty pride in the past, as being on the whole a noble past, that section will be a great one, and will, the moment it finds ade- quate expression, be seen to be a great one. It had no expression under Lord Beaconsfield, and it has none now ; but that it will find one, is as certain as that the Liberal party will one day commit blunders. All these feverish Tory-Democratic tenta- tives are but tentatives,—the efforts of impatient men to clutch at a popularity which never accrues to any party, unless it has its roots deep in human nature, and in the history of the country to be won. They are all made under a belief which is a pure delusion,—the belief that Lord Beaconsfield had a hold upon the country through his principles, his proposals, his policy, through something, in fact, other than his personal genius. He never had the slightest. Without his genius he never would have carried a dozen seats, and we seriously doubt whether, in spite of his genius, he was, after his policy was un- derstood, popular at all, whether a Dissolution on any day after 1877 would not have shattered his power. His imita- tors are spending their breath in vain, are alienating more people than they attract, and we watch their efforts, we admit, with the keenest interest, because when they have done, when they are exhausted, the old Conservative party will revive, and Liberalism will once more be challenged by an equal foe. They are, we think, growing exhausted now. So long as the " pony Disraelis " confined themselves to foreign policy, their powerlessness was never clear, the nation as to foreign policy distrusting its own ignorance ; and while they were vituperat- ing, they were comparatively safe ; but now that they avoid foreign policy, and have exhausted abuse, and are turning, like Mr. Forwood, to home affairs,, their principles become visible, and are by the majority of the people summarily
rejected. The true Conservatives, who include nearly half England, do not want to " trust the people " in the sense of making the people absolute, or to remedy all abuses, or to pass " safely-progressive" measures ; but to distrust the people, to find excuses for abuses, if only they are old, and to hold back Liberals hard, for fear that progress should be too fast. They will find their leaders, sooner or later, probably very soon ; and when they do, Conservatism will be a great power again, and Mr. Forwood either a forgotten man or a repentant one, who declares that, in spite of a momentary abjuration, ex- torted by impatience, his true, though deserted faith has always been expressed in the words, " Nolumus leges Anglian mutari."
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