necessary or held to be desirable in a party leader. He is a member of
the higher aristocracy. He can boast of ancestors who played a
distinguished part in the politics of Europe three centuries ago. This
circumstance appeals to the imagination and confers a legitimate
advantage. He served an apprenticeship in the House of Commons. On
succeeding to the peerage he did not lose a moment in making his
influence felt in the Upper House. In one of his earliest speeches he
startled the peers by telling them that if they did not choose to assert
their constitutional rights they would consult their dignity by ceasing
to be a House at all. He has had much experience in State affairs. What
he did at the India Office and as Foreign Secretary is too well known to
the world. Lord Salisbury's oratorical gifts are undeniable. He is one
of a select half-dozen taken from either House who stand first in the
power of moving a popular assembly. Lord Beaconsfield said that he
"wanted finish." The remark was more spiteful than true. Lord Salisbury
could not rival his chief in the neatness and polish of an epigram, but
just as little could Lord Beaconsfield rival him in the unstudied graces
of oratory. His speeches have a freedom and a rhythmical flow which
captivate the hearer. Though he gives full play to his imagination and
recklessly faces the risks to which an impetuous speaker is exposed, he
is seldom stilted, and rarely breaks the neck of a sentence. Here,
perhaps, the favourable side of the catalogue should end. His speeches
have the great blemish of insolence. They are wanting in geniality, and
apparently wanting in reflectiveness. They contain too little thought
and more than enough of gall. Perhaps their cleverness is too obtrusive.
His hearers are pleased, but they suspect a trick, and levy a discount
on his argument. The faults of his speeches are his faults as a
politician. He is headstrong and impulsive. He borrows his ideas from
his passions, and fancies he is sagacious when he is but following the
bent of his uppermost desire. He has but little sympathy with modern
life and but a narrow comprehension of its facts. He is under the spell
of long-descended traditions, and would prefer, if he could have it so,
the England of the Tudors to the England of Victoria. Of the people and
of the spirit which animates them he knows nothing. How should he? Save
the rustics of Hatfield, he has never seen them, except from a platform.
His occasional references to such a subject as English Nonconformity
shows the depth of his benightedness; and his ignorance, the voluntary
and superb ignorance of the aristocrat and the High Churchman, is the
source of many of his blunders. Knowing nothing of the ground in front,
he forces a leap and comes down in the ditch, and his friends with him.
Lord Salisbury is indispensable, and as nothing will cure him of his
faults the only plan is to keep him out of the path of temptation. The
way to do this, we are told, is to fill the front bench in the House of
Commons with the right sort of men. Thus his qualifications for the
leadership depend upon the choice which may be made of a leader for the
Lower House. Everything points to that as the one crucial business. The
"Two Conservatives" seem to have a special grudge against Mr. Gibson,
perhaps because, unlike Sir Stafford Northcote, he is not too amiable
for his ambition, and has lately been making a formidable bid for power.
Hence we are told how absurd it is to think for a moment of Mr. Gibson.
He is a member for the University of Dublin and might just as well be a
member of the House of Keys or of the States of Jersey. Lord Salisbury
would never have made such a humiliating display over the Arrears Bill
if he had not been misled by Mr. Gibson. Hence it is necessary to keep
the hon. and learned gentleman in the background if the party is not to
be doomed to endless blunders, and driven, sheer beyond the range of
English sympathies.
The attack on Sir Stafford Northcote is conducted with greater caution,
but with the same fell design. We are told that Lord Salisbury's
selection for the leadership on Lord Beaconsfield's death was opposed by
a near relative of Sir Stafford's, and lost by one vote. Then comes the
suggestion that Mr. Disraeli would not have left the House of Commons
for the Upper House if he had not believed that Mr. Gladstone had
finally retired from the leadership of the Opposition. In other words,
had he foreseen the course of events he would not have entrusted the
leadership of the House to Sir Stafford Northcote. There is a vicious
hit in the picture of Sir Stafford sitting between Mr. W. H. Smith and
Mr. Lowther, yielding by turns to the caution of the one and the daring
of the other, and showing himself unequal to the double part. Impartial
observers will, perhaps, admit that Sir Stafford Northcote's chief fault
is a want of backbone. He has not enough of confidence in himself. He
would be a better politician if he were not so good a man. He needs to
be armed either with the power of kicking out, or with imperturbable
composure. This latter is the more useful and more dignified endowment,
but it springs from a sense of self-sufficiency which fails him. If he
had but the gift of epigram he might escape from his tormentors. The
plague of it is that he never succeeds except when he reasons like a man
of sense, and weapons forged on this anvil are too blunt to pierce the
thick hide of impudence.
No evil has befallen Sir Stafford Northcote but such as is common to
men. It seems but the other day when Lord Robert Cecil was playing the
same freaks that Lord Randolph Churchill is playing now. Our friend
Fluellen would perhaps say, "the situations, look you, is both alike."
Either of the noble names would pass for the other if they were written
with initials and dashes in eighteenth century style. In those days the
late Lord Derby was the Conservative chief, and Mr. Disraeli led the
Opposition in the Commons as his lieutenant. This arrangement nettled
the young blood of the Conservative _noblesse_. Lord Robert Cecil's
outlook in the world was not then what it afterwards became. He was a
younger son with a career to make for himself. Ambition can supply
spurs, so can prudence, so can necessity, and so can all three combined.
The younger son of a great house enters upon political life at an
enormous advantage over humbler rivals. If there is any brilliancy about
him his fortune is made. Lord Robert Cecil's influence was sufficient to
produce a succession of small insurrectionary earthquakes on the
Opposition benches. Old members from the shires nudged each other in
their bucolic way and asked what was the matter, learning with puzzled
amusement that there were some who did not think it quite right for the
gentlemen of England to be led by a Semitic adventurer. But the Semitic
adventurer had the gifts of his race. He was primed to the throat with
contempt and scorn, too cold and measured withal for the slightest show
of insolence. As each hurly-burly ended and the dust settled, he was
found sitting where he always meant to sit, just as if nothing had
happened, with the same impassive look and the same indomitable calm. He
had one great advantage external to himself. He knew that he could place
unbounded confidence in the loyalty of his chief in the Upper House, and
so long as Lord Derby stood by him the insurgent school-boys on the
back-benches could do him no harm. Perhaps Sir Stafford Northcote
cannot count upon the same support, but then his own resources are
greater, if he did but know it.
The truth is that Sir Stafford Northcote represents the only type of
Conservatism that can survive in the present state of political thought
in England. It is not a brilliant type, but that is the fault of
history. Enough that it may be a useful one. Toryism has undergone a
process of inverse development which resembles decay, but which is
merely an accommodation to the existing conditions of life and health.
The figments which used to furnish it with sustenance are dead. The
divine right of kings, which nourished as a sentiment long after it was
disowned by the laws, has at last gone spark out. The divine rights of
the Church have followed suit. The legal abuses which were clung to as a
symbol of the unchangeableness of English institutions are being swept
away. The monopoly of political power which gave the right of governing
the realm as a perquisite to a few patrician families has been broken
down. The compromise which transferred the old privileges of the
aristocracy to the middle classes has had to be abandoned. The
"advancing tide of democracy" at which men looked through a telescope
twenty years ago, wondering at what comparatively remote period it would
reach our shores, has already reached us, and the waters are still
rising. The superstitions formerly attaching to the possession of land,
to hereditary descent, to ancestral titles, to the feudal pretensions of
the squirearchy, are all dissipating into thin air. If it is not yet
proved whether science is a democratic power, at any rate it asserts the
predominance of natural laws, and at their fiat artificial distinctions
must tend to disappear.
In such a state of things what part is left for Conservatism to play?
Mr. Disraeli asked and answered the same question when he began his
witches' dance. What have you to conserve? Nothing! The answer is not
true. There is much that may be conserved for a long time to come, and
when it can no longer be conserved in its present shape something will
have to be said as to the altered form it shall assume. One thing is
certain. Conservatism cannot emancipate itself from the conditions of
the age. It may indeed turn hermit and shut itself up in parsonages and
manor-houses, but if it is still to be a political power it can only
plan and achieve what is possible. It accepts, and cannot but accept,
the law of progress as the rule of legislation, and the only arbiter to
whom it can appeal is the national will. But you may advance slowly or
rapidly, you may resort to modifications and compromises instead of
sweeping things bodily away. In establishing a preference on these
questions there is abundant room for popular advocacy. The people are
not swayed by pure reason. They are actuated to a great extent by their
prejudices and their passions. They must be taken as they are, and
recent experience shows that it is difficult to say beforehand what and
how much may not be made out of them. Unorganized groups of men are so
helpless, oratory has so much power, the small vices of the mind have so
strong a tendency to pass into politics, that a wide field will long be
open to propagandists of every kind. It sometimes seems as if the
obstacles to be overcome might be too great for the reformers, and that
the "children of light" must adjourn their efforts till the millennium
is a little nearer. It is the spread of education and the silent working
of intellectual influences springing from the higher knowledge of the
age that puts the better chances on their side. But Conservatism has its
chances too, only it must not frighten the people with antiquated
nonsense. It must fall in with current ideas. It must set up on the
whole similar aims to those of its opponents, merely asking a preference
for other methods. Above all, it must be modest and sober and give up
bounce and slap-dash. The people are becoming more serious. They reason
more on politics and with better lights; a sense of power teaches them
self-respect, and they resent clap-trap. Perhaps I ought to ask pardon
for saying so, but they can see through a merely clever man, like Lord
Salisbury. A Liberal would find Sir Stafford Northcote a more formidable
antagonist. He might be more eloquent, but eloquence is not everything.
A gentle persuasiveness, even with a spice of puzzledom in it, will go
further in the end. The Conservative mutineers know not what they are
doing when they try to demolish this type of Conservatism. Or perhaps
they do know, but are bent upon objects which, from a personal point of
view, are attended with compensations. But the future of Conservatism
does not rest with them unless they change their ideas and manners. The
staying power and the fitness of things are on the side of those whom,
with the ribald audacity of youth, they deride as slow-coaches.
The "Two Conservatives" are not prepared to accept this humble _rôle_.
They meditate something heroic. They say that "if the Conservative party
is to continue to exist as a power in the State it must become a popular
party;" "that the days are past when an exclusive class, however great
its ability, wealth, and energy, can command a majority in the
electorate." "The liberties and interests of the people at large," they
say, "are the only things which it is possible now to conserve: the
rights of property, the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the
Crown itself, must be defended on the ground that they are institutions
necessary or useful to the preservation of civil and religious freedom,
and can be maintained only so far as the people take this view of their
subsistence." These are the principles of democracy. It is here laid
down that the people are the only legitimate court of appeal on
political questions, and that the decision rests, and ought to rest,
with the numerical majority. Before this court the most venerable
institutions of the realm may be brought to have their merits sifted,
and an adverse verdict is to be followed by a writ of execution. The
only test by which they are to be judged is their utility. If they
fail to stand it they are to be voted nuisances. The standard of utility
is not to be the interests or the supposed rights of any person or
class, but the interests of the whole people. The people themselves are
to decide what is meant by their liberties, how far they extend, and
what other interests shall be superadded in making out the standard
towards which our institutions shall approximate.
If these are the principles of Neo-conservatism, our case is made out
with a superfluity of proof. Of course there is a pretence of acting on
these principles already. When a measure is before Parliament it is
assumed that the sole issue in dispute is its utility. The Conservative
debater recognizes the decisiveness of this test just as freely as his
opponents. But these principles have not been openly avowed by the
Conservatives. The "hypocrisy" with which Mr. Disraeli taunted them
still flourishes in the form of amiable prepossessions. A vast mass of
mystic and traditional lumber still enters into the foundations of
Conservatism, and if all this "wood, hay, and stubble" were to be burnt
up it would fare ill with the frail fabric overhead. The practical
policy of Conservatism would not alter, and could not be altered much,
but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower key, and the
excessive modesty of the part which alone remains to it in the politics
of the future would be put beyond dispute.
It would be interesting to see this theory of Conservatism, quietly
admitted though it be into the working details of legislation, hawked
for acceptance among the Opposition benches, and note the result. What
is this new creed of yours? we can fancy the hon. and gallant member for
Loamshire ejaculating. That there must be no class influence in
politics? That any half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many
dukes? That the will of the people is the supreme political tribunal?
That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss the
Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient
servants? And you tell me that I can profess this horrible creed without
ceasing to be a Tory! Before I could with a spark of honesty so much as
parley with it I should have to crave a seat among the red-hot gentlemen
yonder below the gangway. And the hon. and gallant member would only say
the truth. Privilege is the mint mark of Toryism, exclusiveness is its
life and soul. The doctrine of equal rights must be in everlasting
repugnance to it. Toryism is the political expression of feudalized
society, with lords and squires at the top, subservient dependants
half-way down, and a mass of brutalized serfs at the bottom. It has been
comparatively humanized by modern influences, but nothing can change the
bent of its genius. With privilege vested interests of all sorts enter
into ready fellowship. All those good citizens who have reason to
suspect that if a public inquest sat upon them the verdict would not be
favourable hasten to edge themselves in as closely as possible towards
the privileged circle. The village rector, who does his duty with all
the conscientiousness of a beneficed Christian, but who prizes his glebe
and tithe, rushes to Cambridge to swell the majority for Mr. Raikes.
Gentlemen of the long robe who make politics a vocation gravitate for
some reason or other towards Liberalism; but the lower branch of the
profession displays an opposite tendency. The county lawyer, who makes
two-thirds of his income out of the mysteries of conveyancing, has
reason to dislike such things as the registration of titles, and the
transfer of estates by a few sentences extracted from a public record.
The licensed victuallers, tens of thousands strong and with more than a
hundred millions of invested capital, dread the change which would give
them a quiet Sunday in return for a seventh of their profits. The
strength of Toryism lies in this phalanx of vested interests and social
privileges. The golden chain reaches from squire to Boniface, and still
lower in the social scale, wherever some snug little peculium is found
to nestle. The principles of Neo-Conservatism would rend the structure
from top to bottom. The doctrine that the solution of all our political
problems and the fate of all our institutions are simply an affair of
numerical majorities at the ballot-box, and that the interests of the
people are the sole end of legislation, is enough of itself to smash the
party to atoms.
All sensible politicians admit that if the time should come when a large
majority of the people are adverse to monarchical institutions it will
be vain to think of maintaining them by force. It may be added that
sensible politicians seldom discuss such questions. They have too much
present work on hand to trouble themselves about the remote and the
unknown. "What thy hand findeth to do" is their motto, and out of the
faithful achievements of to-day will the better future spring.
Nevertheless bare possibilities sometimes present themselves as
conundrums to be unravelled, and to the conundrum in question there is
no second answer. But it is one thing to quietly accept a proposition
and then let it drop out of sight; it is another to run it up to the top
of the flag-staff as the symbol of a great party. This is what the
"Neo-conservatives" propose to do with their recent discovery. An
opinion of the Crown's utility is to determine whether it shall be
preserved or destroyed. When the majority of the people cry "Away with
it," away it is to go. As soon as the popular fiat is announced, the
Sovereign will depart from Windsor, the Life Guards will present arms to
the President of the Republic, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the
result of a contested election, the Monarchy of England is to be
decorously carried to the tomb. This is the doctrine which Tory lords
and squires are asked to proclaim with sound of trumpet as the
corner-stone of their political creed. "Only so far as the people take
this view of its subsistence"--this is to be the Tory patent for the
"subsistence" of the Crown. Rather different this from the old cry:--
"Ere the King's Crown go down there are crowns to be broke."
It is true that the peers no longer wear coats of mail, or lead their
vassals to the field of battle. Of most of them it is hardly
disrespectful to suppose that on critical occasions they would prefer
the rear of the army to the van. But the creed is not quite extinct that
there are things worth fighting for, and that among them are the
Monarchy of England and the rights of the Crown. For practical purposes,
perhaps, the creed is obsolete, but it lives in the imagination, and the
sentiments which spring from it are part of the cement of Toryism. The
solemn abjuration which is now proposed in the name of Neo-conservatism
resembles a charge of dynamite.
But in abandoning Tory principles the leaders of the new movement hope
perhaps to drive a roaring trade by defending Tory institutions. They
will say that they have been obliged to shift their ground, but that
they hope to work with better results from their new position. The
business of the party is to prevail upon Household Suffrage to accept
the survivals of feudalism, and a verdict in the new court of appeal
that shall ratify the old creed. It is a creditable enterprise. Will it
succeed? It seems but too likely that the efforts contemplated will only
serve to weaken the institutions they are meant to defend, and that
whatever is practicable or desirable in the objects aimed at will be
secured most easily and most effectually by the Liberal party.
Among the political institutions of an old country there are some which
certainly would not be set up if the past were obliterated, and the
nation were beginning afresh. They were suitable to the times in which
they originated, but they are out of harmony with the tendencies of the
present day. Perhaps they do some good; at any rate they do not do much
harm, and the people tolerate them for the sake of old associations.
From this point of view a great deal may be said in their behalf. They
make visible the continuity of our national existence, they connect us
with a distant and romantic past, they lend to the State something of
dignity and poetic charm. Institutions of this sort may be held in
veneration by those who can trace them to their origin, and see them in
perspective from the beginning. But there is one test they will not
stand. They will not pass unscathed through the crucible of modern
criticism. They are disfigured by anomalies, they shelter many abuses,
they involve an expenditure of public money out of proportion to the
services rendered in return, they consecrate a privileged descent, in
the transmission of property they violate the rules of natural equity,
while the principles on which they rest need only to be developed and
applied with logical consistency to overthrow the fabric of political
freedom. The best service that can be rendered to such institutions is
to say as little as possible about them. A wise friend will not utter a
word in their defence unless they are assailed, and the ground selected
for defence will then be carefully limited to the dimensions of the
attack. The next best service will be to remove from them as occasion
offers all unsightly excrescences, to put an end to any anomaly which is
beginning to excite remark, and to amend any faults of mechanism which
are likely to produce a jar. Such a policy of discriminating reserve may
lengthen out their existence indefinitely. But to force them to the
front, to exalt them as the ripest product of political wisdom, to hold
them forth as necessary to the maintenance of the civil and religious
liberties of the people,--this can only be the work of designing
adversaries or of blundering friends. As a basis of party action it
would be like sand. It would be levelled by the mocking tides of popular
criticism.
The programme of the "Two Conservatives" begins with a grand item, the
conservation of the liberties of the people. But why "conserve?" Why not
extend and advance them? Why should the present stage in the historical
growth of our liberties be selected as the point at which conservation
becomes a duty? Would not the party which undertakes the task to-day be
better pleased if there were fewer of them to conserve? The Tories have
always been adepts at conservation, but the things they have been most
willing to conserve were not our liberties but the restrictions put upon
our liberties. Since the liberties now proposed to be conserved are
assumed to be threatened by the Liberals, they must be liberties of a
special sort, such as liberty to spread infection, liberty to dispense
with vaccination, liberty to send uninspected ships to sea, to keep
children away from school, or to send them out at any age to work in the
fields, the factory, or the streets. "Personal rights" have good radical
sponsors in the hon. members for Stockport and Leicester. Perhaps
Parliament as a whole is the best sponsor. The Neo-conservative
programme should tell us what is meant by the liberties of the people.
The absence of definition may perhaps cover an imposture.