A CONSERVATIVE VIEW OF THE POSITION OF THE PRESENT
MINISTRY.
[Fro,' Blackuvod's Magazine fur August.] Restorations are proverbially attended with more or less of disappointment ; and, in the nature of things, they must ever be so, whether in the case of a Monarch or a Ministry. Hope is brighter than reality; practice is harder than speculation. Independently of those who, from personal disappointment, may say with the old Royalist-
.• Te meals optavit rediturum. Carole, nemo,
Et uemo sensit te rediisse minus,"
there must be many who, in the returning ascendancy of their friends, forget the inevitable changes that time and circumstances produce. A prince or a party restored, can never, even if they wished it, return to the status quo. They must bend more or less to the mixed feelings which have effected their recall, and which in general imply a departure from the extreme views of an antece- dent period. 'They cannot exclusively consult the interests or opinions of those who have followed their fortunes in adversity, but must look also to the com- plex character of the combined influences which have led to their recent suc- cess. The new convert and the repentant deserter have contributed to the victory that has been won, and cannot either in justice or in policy be excluded from a place in the triumph that is to follow. A restoration effected by moral influences is peculiary subject to these observations; and, if it is to be permanent, must be maintained by a fair and faithful regard to the feelings and interests of the majority who have brought it about, and who can alone maintain it.
In the present position of the Conservative party, the existence of such feelings is scarcely to be taken into account. It was inevitable that they should arise in some shape or other ; and their appearance may even be a promise of permanent stability, in so far as it is a proof of moderation and impartiality in those who have been replaced in power. The effect of influences such as we have described, is very different on different political parties. They tend to abate enthusiasm, even when they convince the understanding; and, according to the elements which constitute the vitality of a party, they will be innocent or injurious. 'Where a party depends for its existence on movement and agi- tation, the extinction of that excitement which is essential to its progress must be fatal to its continuance. But where the strength of a party rests on feelings of a calmer and more considerate kind, an abatement of the exaggerated feelings which some of its followers may have rashly indulged will still leave room for a qualified but decided approval of its measures, and for a less romantic but equally useful support of its ascendancy. The policy of the present Conservative Ministry is to be judged of in refer- ence to the position in which they are placed. They are called on to govern the country on Conservative principles, through the medium of a Parhament elected under the Reform Bill. These few words are full of meaning; they in- volve a bitter but a wholesome truth, and remind us of the difficult and delicate task imposed upon our rulers. We cannot have yet forgotten the fears with which a change in the system of representation was a few years ago regarded and resisted. We had reason to look upon it with the utmost suspicion and alarm, as disturbing the existing equilibrium of government, and introducing new elements of power, of which we either could not foresee the operation, or foresaw that it would be destructive. That momentous measure, facilitated at first by divisions among the Tory party, was ultimately passed, in spite of their united opposition to it. Its adoption as a part of the law of the land is now a fixed and irrevocable fact. Right or wrong, it stands in the statute-book, as unchangeable, for any thing we can now see, as Magna Charts or the Bill of Rights. Has this measure, then, from which we anticipated such hazardous consequences, produced none of the results which we apprehended ? Were we wholly in error in dreading its approach, or are we now, after its ac- complishment, in the same position as if it had never been proposed ? We deceive ourselves if we say so. The return of a Conservative Ministry to power has not repealed, and cannot repeal the Reform Act. It is inseparably engrafted on the constitution; and its most questionable effects, so far as they legitimately flow from it, must be submitted to as inevitable, and are even entitled to share in the respect which we owe to the constitution in all its component parts, and to the vested rights of classes and individuals, whether of early or of recent date. We cannot annul the Reform Act—we can at best restrain and regulate it ; but restrain or regulate it as we may, a change has come over the spirit of our policy, which is the necessary product of new principles, now as much a part of the constitution as its most ancient and venerable peculiarities. It was open to the Conservative party when Reform was carried, to retire from political life, or to renounce for ever the duties and responsibilities of office. But such a course would have been cowardly and selfish. They owed it to the Crown and the country not to despair of the republic, and not to shrink, when it became necessary, from governing according to those existing laws under which they were willing to live. But when they came to accept office, they found Reform as a fact from which they could not escape, and without which they could no more carry on the Government than they could do so without a Parliament. Conservatives they might and they must be. But Conservatives of the constitution as reformed, not opponents of past re- form, but defenders of the Reform Bill against the aggressions of its original promoters, against the barbarity of the unnatural Saturns who would devour their own offspring. This was the law and condition of their tenure, if they sought to save and benefit the country by rescuing it from the endless agitation of further reform or the blundering mismanagement of incapable mountebanks.
That the measures, therefore, of a Conservative Ministry under the Reform Bill should be in all respects what might have been wished by those who op- posed that measure, is a simple impossibility. Whatever change the Reform Bill has introduced into the constitution musts how itself in the Representative Assembly of the nation, and must extend to any measures which the majority of that assembly are likely to approve. The Conservative majority of the present, and of every future Parliament, must have its root in the principle of Reform, and
must partake more or less of the nature of the soil froin which it springs. If, as we apprehended, the population of great towns had an ascendency in the ar- rangements of the Reform Bill—if the secondary trading and monied classes were thereby admitted to a new preference over the larger interests of property, commerce, and agriculture—this redistribution of power must necessarily show itself by its effects in any measures adopted by a Reformed, Parliament, in the same proportion in which it luui been produced in the constituencies themselves. We may lament or we may repine at it ; but such will continue to be the ne- cessary operation of the representative system, as modified by means now un- alterable. We may adhere, if we please, to the precise ideas which we should have chosen in Unreformed times ; but if we do so, we must be content to sit in a Reformed House of Commons on the left hand of the Speaker instead of the right. The success, then, of the present Ministry in the task which they have at- tempted, is not affected by the circumstance that they may have made some con- cession to the coalition of principles under which we live, and some sacrifice to the interests or demands of the great consuming classes of our population, who have been admitted to an additional share in the representative portion of the con- stitution. To speak more correctly, it is essential to their success that some Each concession and sacrifice should have been made, provided it has been done with as little change as was practicable upon existing rights, and with no sur- render to Democratic encroachment of what might possibly be preserved.
We humbly but most confidently express our conviction, that the measures of the Peel Cabinet, independently of their consummate ability and admirable adaptation to the end in view, are calculated in a preeminent degree at once to do full justice to the legitimate principles of the late constitutional change, and to neutralize those dangerous tendencies of the Reformed system which made it an object of terror to its opponents and of anxious solicitude to its true friends.
We think it probable, even if Reform had not taken place, that many of the commercial changes which are now proposed would already have been brought about by the force of public opinion; and certainly that they should have oc- curred under a Reformed Parliament is neither to be wondered at nor regretted. The doctrines of what is called Free Trade, a phrase of very various and versatile signification, had made rapid progress before 1830; and their enforcement has, in the first instance, been rather retarded than advanced by the agitation and effects of Reform. The contest which that question produced, and the course which its supporters pursued, of seeking to conciliate the Movement party by further changes, suspended the consideration of almost all practical proposi- tions. The Whigs, during a ten years' continuance in office, originated no important measure of commercial reform, until their own financial blunders, and the desperation of their dying struggle, impelled them, like drowning men, to catch at the only hold which seemed within their reach. But the opponents of Free Trade have as little reason to thank them for so long leaving its prin- ciples in abeyance, as its advocates have for their tardy attempt to carry those principles into effect. The Whigs were not Free-traders at first, because they anticipated no advantage from such a course, and were too busy with projects of further constitutional change or personal aggrandizement. They became Free-traders at last, for a personal object, without understanding the principles which they professed, without providing any means for enforcing their views, without any attention to the safeguards that were required, and without a remnant of moral weight remaining to insure confidence either in their wisdom or their sincerity.
• Nothing can be more ludicrous or absurd than the complaint or boast of the 'Whigs, that the new Ministry have borrowed their principles. If it were so, it would be a severe satire upon themselves that they had damaged a good and a winning cause by their own want of character or want of skill. But the allegation is as groundless in itself as it is unjust to the British nation. Apart from the impossibility of borrowing any principles from men who had none to lend, the measures of the new Ministry are essentially different from those of their predecessors, both in the spirit in which they have been devised and in the manner in which they have been carried out. The Whigs neither knew what to do, nor how to do it. They shrank from difficulties where none ex- isted, and they discredited even innocent and eligible propositions by mixing them up with what was dangerous or destructive. They did not understand the inestimable value of mild and moderate remedies, particularly in a state of society where almost every advantage to one class of interests must be ob- tained at the expense of another. Nothing had a charm for them which did not excite extreme feelings of extravagant enthusiasm on the one hand and of serious alarm on the other. The Reform Bill had spoiled both the leaders and the followers of the Whig camp. It inspired a taste and created a necessity for popular excitement, without which they could neither act with confidence nor keep their forces together. Add to this, that they were essentially defi-
cient alike in genius and in skill, in courage and in character. • •
Believing, as we have already said, that the different measures which have been brought forward have been honestly, impartially, and skilfully managed, we can have no sympathy with the small portion of the Conservative party who seem to have been desirous of producing a split in the camp. We are no friends of schism either in Church or State. We believe it impossible that good can be done in national affairs, except by a general adherence to the prin- ciple which divides public men into large sections of political opinion, and by which individual crotchets are sunk and lost sight of in a broad line of common policy. It is impossible that three or four hundred constituencies, or their re- presentatives, can minutely agree on every public question, much leas on prac- tical details of protection or taxation. "Bear and forbear" must be the motto of their union, if they are to unite at all ; and without uniting cordially they must be powerless to effect even the objects on which they are agreed, and will fall an easy pray to the less scrupulous alliance of unprincipled opponents. We are tempted, therefore, to smile at those who, in questions of finance, would leave the party to which they belong on a dispute as to the odd sixpence, or who, in a season of such imminent danger as that which we are now passing through under the Reform Bill, would try to realize the boast of the worthy Welshman, whose family in the time of Noah's Rood kept aloof from the ark and had a boat of their own.
But assuredly it is no more than justice to the Conservative party to say, that never in the history of party politics was there less room for complaint on this score than has arisen since their accession to power. In the midst of many changes, some of them of an untried and startling nature, and rendered more alarming by artful devices to misrepresent their effects, the Conservative party have kept together with an exemplary fidelity and prudence, which was only to be expected from men of high principle and enlightened views. The Agricul- tural Members more especially, have displayed a remarkable degree of mode- ration and good feeling. Apprehensive as they obviously have been that the measures of Government were likely to be injurious to their interests, urged on by the panic which had spread among some of their constituents, and as- sailed by taunts and reproaches from malicious opponents for submitting to be deceived by their leaders, they have, with no noticeable exception, pursued the course which their own dignity and duty marked out for them. They neither suppressed the feelings of alarm which they honestly entertained, nor allowed those feelings to transport them beyond the limits of a judicious and temperate opposition to the Government measures, or induce them to withdraw their general support from an Administration which they knew to be able and desir- ous, if any one was, to save the country and constitution from the vital dangers which so recently threatened them, and from which they cannot yet be said to have finally escaped.
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