rights of property. Those rights are of no private interpretation, and
belong to sociology rather than to politics. Every man is interested in
them who has anything to lose, or who has a chance of acquiring
anything. Hence they cannot be claimed as an appanage of Toryism. They
are placed under the common championship of all parties. But the
exclusive claim set up must have some meaning. The rights of property
intended may perhaps be the rights of property as understood by the
landlords, in which sense they may include a right to the property of
other people; or as understood by the association of which Lord Elcho is
president, in which sense they stand in opposition to the rights of the
public. We know what is meant by the rights of landed proprietors, of
railway corporations, of publicans, of property owners, of shipowners,
of pawnbrokers and of corporate bodies, such as the guilds of the city
of London. They represent the pretensions of these classes to have their
interests preferred to those of the community. It is a case of
prescription against equity, of the license assumed by special callings
against the checks and guarantees which Parliament has found it
necessary to impose for the general welfare. This is a field in which
Neo-conservatism can reap no harvest. It will be vain to tell the
working man who is the owner of the house in which he lives, that his
rights are in the same boat with the right of London companies to
squander or misapply the wealth which has descended to them from the
Middle Ages. It will be useless to enter an appeal before the tribunal
of public opinion in defence of such rights as these on the pretence
that they are the rights of property. The unsophisticated reason of the
constituencies will resent the assumption as an attempted fraud.
The political institutions which are to be set forth as necessary to the
maintenance of the civil and religious liberties of the people are the
Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown. Of the Crown we
have already spoken. It is the least vulnerable of the three, and for
this reason it is the least fitted to furnish a party cry. The strength
of the Crown resides in its enormous historical _prestige_, and in the
constitutional device, old as the monarchy in principle, but modern in
its machinery, by which it is removed from the sphere of responsibility
and therefore from party assault. The Crown need not be defended for it
is not assailed. If it were assailed there are sufficient grounds for an
adequate, perhaps a triumphant, defence. But in mere truth it would be
difficult to defend it on the special ground that it is necessary to the
maintenance of our civil and religious liberties. Everybody knows that
these liberties were won in despite of the Crown, and in opposition to
its alleged prerogatives. We had to send a dynasty adrift before we
could regard our liberties as moderately secure. No greater disservice
can be done to any institution than to advance exaggerated or
ill-founded pretensions on its behalf, and this is what Neo-conservatism
proposes to do for the Crown. It will be well to keep this institution
off the hustings. To utilize it for party purposes seems like an
insidious form of treason. The Established Church is fairer game, but
absolutely worthless as a means of raising the wind for a forlorn party.
An institution which needs all the support it can get has none to share
with companions in distress. The Church may have a larger hold upon a
portion of the middle classes than it had thirty years ago, but the
working classes are separated from it by a wider gulf. Many who attend
its services and call themselves Churchmen are utterly indifferent to
its political fate. It is preposterous to represent the Established
Church as necessary to the maintenance of civil and religious freedom.
In the course of her history she has been the unrelenting foe of both,
and we have no more of either than she could help our having. The want
of disciplinary powers prevents her from interfering with the belief,
or, except in grave cases, with the moral conduct of her members, but
the paralysis of the authority necessary for internal discipline is not
the same thing as religious freedom. The bondage of the Church is not
the liberty of the State. Disestablishment has not yet come within the
range of practical politics, but if a popular statesman felt it his duty
to bring the question fairly before the electorate, it is at least
doubtful whether the verdict would not be hostile to the Church. No
doubt need be entertained as to the result of such an appeal in the case
of the House of Lords. The constitution of the House as an assembly of
hereditary legislators is admitted to be indefensible. Its theoretic
prerogatives are tolerated only on the understanding that they shall
never be exerted. It exists by virtue of habit and indifference, aided
by a conviction of its powerlessness. As a decorative institution there
is no great eagerness to pull it down, but whenever the House forgets
that its functions are ornamental, and commits itself to a serious issue
with the Commons, its last hour will be at hand. The step most likely to
precipitate its doom would be for the Tory party to glorify it as the
palladium of our liberties, and try to get up popular enthusiasm on its
behalf. The House of Lords would not long survive that treacherous
homage. It would be beaten in one campaign.
No: from whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain
that the attempt to reconstruct the Tory party on a Democratic basis
cannot succeed. The open avowal of such an aim would deprive Toryism of
all backbone and reduce it to the condition of a moribund jelly-fish. It
is not given to any creature to change its nature and yet continue to
discharge its old functions. It is true that Toryism in order to get on
at all with the present age is obliged occasionally to act on Liberal
principles. The device gives no offence so long as it is adopted
quietly, and if suspicions are awakened a few heart-stirring speeches in
the old orthodox vein suffice to allay them. A formal repudiation of old
ideas is quite another thing. Just as Utopian is the project of
defending Tory institutions on Democratic principles. There are two
arsenals from which political combatants may choose their weapons, the
historical and the scientific. It is from the former that the champion
equips himself who offers battle on behalf of institutions that have
descended to us from hoar antiquity. Weapons taken from the latter are
unfit for such a service. Every blow would recoil upon the institution
which it was the champion's aim to defend. To abandon the Established
Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown to the uncovenanted mercies of
modern political criticism is a rash experiment. The hope which sees in
such an experiment a fresh lease of life and new chances of ascendency
for Toryism is absurd.
Yet there is, and always will be, room for a Conservative party in
English politics, only it must move along the historic lines, and not
needlessly renounce its old watchwords. We need two brooms to keep our
constitutional mansion in a tidy state, one in use, the other undergoing
repairs, or put in pickle, and ready to be brought in when wanted.
Government by party requires the existence of two parties, and demand is
apt to generate supply. It is not necessary that the two parties should
be separated by an impassable gulf. It is only necessary that materials
for two separate connections should be provided, and in this emergency
Nature does much to help us. There are opposite moods of mind in
politics as in literature and art; there are antithetical differences of
intellect and temperament to be found among men of all countries and all
times; there is the standing opposition between what is and what ought
to be, between the actual and the ideal, between the desire of the poor
human wayfarer to sit down and rest, and the curiosity which ever lures
him on. Possession and the desire to possess, divine contentment and
still diviner discontent, self-centreing reflectiveness and impulses
whose proper object is the welfare of mankind,--here are agencies which
play their part in politics as well as in social life. These
multifarious forces tend to range themselves on opposite sides, the
sympathetic in each class readily finding out their kinsmen in the rest.
With such materials to work upon, a Conservatism which chooses to follow
the ordinary course of things can never be defunct. Extinction can only
come from an endeavour after some monstrous birth against which both
Nature and history have pronounced their ban.
HENRY DUNCKLEY.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Contemporary Review, January 1883, by Various