assured that, during the last few months, much progress has
been made towards a thorough fusion of the two sections of the
Conservative party, upon clear and common grounds. All difficulties
would by this time probably have been removed, but for the scruples
of two or three gentlemen who are supposed to possess the private
confidence of Sir Robert Peel, and who have hitherto identified
themselves with his fortunes. Now, as it must be perfectly apparent
to any man of common reflection, that the bulk of the Conservatives
never can, under any circumstances, consent to act under the
leadership of Peel; as he himself has, over and over again, publicly
stated that no motive or consideration would induce him to return
to power--it is absolutely incomprehensible to us how such scruples
can exist in the minds of the individuals to whom we allude, if
they really believe in the sincerity of this last declaration of
their leader. No one wants him to take office, and he says that
he will not accept it. So far all are agreed. If we believed that
any one of these distinguished and honourable men is convinced
that the commercial policy of the last three years has been wise
and sound, and that, with any amount of trial, it can terminate
otherwise than fatally for the interests of the country, we should
have no right to address them upon a subject so momentous as this,
and certainly no desire for one moment to gain their co-operation.
But we can very well distinguish betwixt a feeling of strong
attachment to an individual whose talents they have been accustomed
to respect, but whose views they have only partially penetrated,
and a settled conviction in the soundness of the policy which it
has been his destiny to originate. We believe that, hitherto, the
former sentiment, and not the latter one, must be taken as the true
explanation of their conduct--that they are unwilling to abandon
the man, although they have lost their faith in the efficacy of his
measures. Now, if this be the case, how can they justify themselves
for opposing, upon such slender grounds, the reconstruction of the
Conservative party? They must be well aware that Sir Robert Peel has
forfeited for ever the confidence of a large majority of those who,
a few years ago, were his most steadfast and faithful followers,
and that far more through his own deliberate acknowledgment of
double-dealing, than from a mere change of opinion upon any one
point of commercial policy, however important it might appear. It
may be the misfortune of Peel, rather than his fault, that he cannot
estimate the proper value of plain manly confidence and unshrinking
candour; that he has invariably declined the straight for the
crooked path; and that an excess of ingenuity--a vast misfortune
for a statesman--has tempted him to meddle, repeatedly and almost
incessantly, with interests far too important to be approached except
with extreme deliberation. These are the considerations which must
preclude him from being restored to his former rank as leader of the
great Conservative party; and we notice them now, not as matter of
blame to him, but in explanation of the general feeling. And we go
further than this. We say that, in order to render the Conservative
union enduring, it will be absolutely necessary to reconstruct the
party upon clear, avowed, solid, and proclaimed principles, so that
no doubt whatever may be left as to the course which in future is to
be pursued. Instead of that shifting and wavering policy which has
paralysed our colonies, terrified our merchants, and depressed the
money market, we must resolve upon a definite plan for the future,
which shall restore confidence, and secure us, so far as may be,
against the recurrence of similar disasters. We must also determine
whether the present currency laws are to be maintained, or whether
they shall undergo such alterations as shall prevent them from
aggravating the pressure in circumstances of unforeseen difficulty.
On all these points Sir Robert Peel stands strongly and unfortunately
committed. Even since he has been in opposition, he has shown no
symptoms of the slightest relaxation of his last adopted ideas; and
it is quite impossible for us to forget that, through his influence,
the Whigs were enabled to carry that bill which is universally
acknowledged to be the death-warrant of our West Indian colonies.
Under these circumstances, the devotion of his few adherents is not
only an act of Quixotry, but a serious injury to the party which has
a right to expect their services and their aid; and, however much we
may respect the talents of the gentlemen to whom we have alluded, we
must tell them that the period for a definite selection has arrived,
and that, by standing in the way of Conservative reconciliation and
union, they are not performing their proper duty either to their
country or their Queen.
With such financiers as Goulburn and Herries in the Commons,--with
such eminent statesmen as Lords Stanley, Lyndhurst, and Aberdeen in
the House of Peers,--there can be no doubt of the strength and the
success of the Conservative party if once more thoroughly united.
We have always regarded the unfortunate division as one of the most
serious disasters that ever befell the country, not only because it
destroyed the cohesion and severed the councils of a body which,
under any circumstances, would have been strong enough to keep both
the Whigs and the Radicals in check, but also because it engendered
much apathy and some disgust amongst men who were the most valuable
supporters of Conservative principles, and who, in consequence,
ceased for a time to take any active interest in public affairs. The
unseemly election contests which repeatedly took place in England,
between parties mutually designating themselves Protectionists and
Peelites,--sometimes terminating in the defeat of both, or in the
triumph, through their idle rivalry, of a liberal candidate, who
otherwise never could have succeeded--did a great deal to widen the
breach, and to lessen the mass of the opposition; and we revert with
considerable pride and satisfaction to the fact, that in Scotland no
such unnatural dissension was exhibited, but that men belonging to
every shade of Conservatism were eager to act in concert, whenever a
candidate appeared. We can make allowance for some exasperation on
both sides, under such very peculiar and novel circumstances; but we
hope that we have seen the last of these discreditable and weakening
contests.
Let, then, the short period which is left between the present time
and the reassembling of Parliament be employed by all the friends
of the old Conservative cause for the promotion of union, and the
establishment of a thoroughly good understanding amongst ourselves.
Let all former causes of offence be cordially forgiven: let us
consider what we are to do, and whom we are to follow; and, these
dispositions made, let them be adhered to with integrity and honour.
The Whig faction is utterly effete and incapable of maintaining
its ground. The free-traders stand before the nation as detected
charlatans and impostors. There is no enemy to fear, if we only go
on boldly and do our duty. But if we hesitate and hang back at the
present crisis, and decline to assume a position which might soon
enable us to apply an effectual remedy to the most pressing disorders
of the country, can we be surprised if the masses, irritated and
provoked, seeing no one great party in the state ready to come to
their assistance, should begin to clamour for organic changes; or if
the colonies, weary of their suffering, and despairing of sympathy,
should question the worth of the bonds which bind them to the mother
country?
Thus far we have thought it our duty to speak in all sincerity and
plainness. We know well that these sentiments are far from being
confined to ourselves. We feel assured that many of the wisest and
best men who ever adorned her Majesty's councils, or those of her
royal predecessors, are deeply desirous that the present anomalous
state of party should be corrected, and unwholesome separation be
superseded by cordial union. This, we firmly believe, could be
effected without any sacrifice of principle, and the sooner it is
accomplished the better.
There is but one topic more to which we would fain allude before
concluding the present article. The late rebellious outbreaks in
Ireland seem, in certain quarters, to have revived the notion of the
expediency of a state endowment of the Roman Catholic priesthood.
We place very little faith in the sincerity of an announcement
which some time ago was put forth, on hierarchical authority, in
the public prints, to the effect that, even were such an endowment
to be offered, it would be peremptorily and indignantly refused.
But, sincere or not, that statement may serve as an answer to the
writer in the last Number of the _Quarterly Review_, who supports
the endowment scheme with an unction which we were certainly not
prepared to expect. His argument, from first to last, implies the
same unhappy yielding to agitation and terrorism, which, when applied
to civil matters, has ended in open rebellion, and which, if applied
to ecclesiastical affairs, would infallibly result in the total
overthrow and annihilation of the Protestant Church in Ireland. Does
he really believe that--to assume no argument of a graver nature--the
people of Great Britain will be ready, in the present desperate state
of their finances, to submit to additional taxation for the purpose
of establishing, in permanent comfort, the true instigators of the
disturbances which have caused us so much anxiety and pain? Why, if
such endowment can be vindicated upon any intelligible principle, is
it to be confined to the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland alone, and
not extended to the dissenting denominations throughout the width
and breadth of the land? On what plea could the Free and Episcopal
churches in Scotland, or the Wesleyan Methodists of England, be
excluded, if such a proposition were for a moment to be seriously
maintained? The reviewer professes to reject, _in toto_, any idea
of the confiscation of existing church property, and therefore he
must fall back, as his sole resource, upon government endowment,
which means simply a new tax on the people of Great Britain, for the
benefit of Ireland--a country which is already exempted from her
share of our heaviest burdens, and annually receiving eleemosynary
aid to an amount which has grievously contributed to increase our
late monetary pressure. It may be that some such project is in
contemplation, for we never have been able to comprehend, without
some such motive as this, the extraordinary anxiety exhibited by
the present Whig government in carrying through their bill for
the establishment of Diplomatic relations with Rome, at the very
moment when the last fragment of temporal power was passing from the
hands of the Pope. But whether this be so or not--whether this is a
mere private crotchet, or a prepared scheme, to come forth in due
season--we are perfectly satisfied that it will be met throughout
the country with a righteous storm of indignation. The Protestantism
of Britain has been its strength and its glory; and it was only when
called upon to choose between that sacred principle and the hardly
less revered one of loyalty, that our forefathers thought themselves
justified in summoning an alien to the British throne. What cost us
then both tears and blood is an operating principle now; and if,
through the grace of God, we have seen order maintained and rebellion
crushed at home, at a period when half of Europe is plunged in the
horrors of anarchy, we do not fear the charge of bigotry, if we
attribute our preservation as much to the religious establishments
of the land, as to the free institutions which Protestantism has
enabled us to maintain. Loyalty is not a thing to be bought: it is a
spontaneous feeling, unpurchaseable at any price; and if the Irish
Catholic clergy have it not now, the most liberal endowment will work
no change in their political feelings.
One of the arguments most commonly urged by those who advocate this
system of endowment, is, we think, both erroneous in its assumption
and weak in its application. They maintain that the Catholic clergy,
if in the pay of the state, would have less power over the peasantry
of Ireland than at present. Is that altogether a state of matters
which it would be desirable to bring about? Would it be well to sap
the influence of this moral police? There is not a Roman Catholic
priest in Ireland at this moment who does not know, that were he to
give open countenance to rebellion, he would not only be amenable
to the laws of his country, but, under a firm executive government,
would be selected as the earliest example. The situation of Ireland
is such, that we can never calculate upon the loyalty of a large
portion of its population. Centuries have rolled by, and still
the Celtic race persist in being aliens from our own. We cannot
tame them, cannot cultivate them, cannot win their hearts by any
imaginable sacrifice. They persist in their cry of Ireland for
the Irish, and will not see that the thing is as impossible as the
re-establishment of the Saxon heptarchy, and, were it possible,
would be tantamount to delivering them over to the horrors of a
barbarian war. It is no use disguising the fact--we must deal with
men as they are; and who can doubt that there does exist a great
amount of rooted disaffection among the peasantry of Ireland? And
now it is seriously proposed to cure that disaffection, by taking
means calculated to weaken the influence of the priesthood over the
peasantry! In other words, to give up the only hostages we hold, and
leave the most turbulent and uneducated population of Europe, freed
even from religious control, to be worked up to frenzy by the first
lay demagogue who has the art to make them believe that treason is a
synonymous term with patriotism. Even worldly wisdom would repudiate
such a surrender, and the argument is so weak, that it bears with it
its own refutation.
We have gained nothing whatever by tampering with Roman Catholicism
in Ireland. Neither the moral nor the social condition of the people
has been improved thereby; on the contrary, each successive step
towards conciliation has been met by augmented turbulence. We cannot
afford to push the experiment farther; and surely it would be a
strange thing, if, while the Romish clergy themselves distinctly
repudiate such an arrangement, and refuse to become the stipendiaries
of the British government, any body of men who may be called to the
responsible situation of her Majesty's advisers, should persist in
tendering the obnoxious and repugnant boon: least of all do we expect
that any such proposal can emanate from the Conservatives. We know
that upon this point various opinions have been expressed, and that
Lord George Bentinck was at one time supposed to be not unfavourable
to such a scheme. No man, we firmly believe, ever had the good of
Ireland more thoroughly at heart; and, had his plan for ameliorating
the Irish distress been adopted last year, and the money which was
uselessly squandered, been applied to the construction of permanent
works eminently calculated to open up and develop the resources of
the country, we might ere this time have seen the foundation laid of
a new era of social and industrial prosperity. But the Whig Cabinet,
perverse to the last, could not bring themselves to acknowledge that
the political sagacity of an opponent was greater than their own;
and, therefore the money which we gave with so lavish a hand, has
disappeared without leaving the smallest trace of its employment.
But, in ecclesiastical matters, Lord George Bentinck professed a
latitudinarianism which was not responded to by the great bulk of his
party. They were not disposed to unchristianise the high assembly of
Britain by the introduction of men who openly avowed their denial
of the faith of the Saviour; nor would they consent to put forth
their hands against the ark of the national churches. And therefore
it was that, upon more than one occasion, the Protestant party,
while cheerfully acknowledging the great public services of the late
departed nobleman, did not attempt to conceal that, upon points so
serious as these, there could be no sympathy of opinion between him
and them.
The single arrow may be easily splintered, but, to use the memorable
words of Genghis-Khan, "So long as the sheaf is bound together in
three places--in love, honesty, and good accord--no man can have
power to grieve us; but, if we be divided from these three places,
that one of us help not the other, we shall be destroyed and brought
to nothing." We recommend the moral contained in the apologue of the
old Asiatic chief to the serious consideration of all men belonging
to the Conservative party; for this they may rely upon, that, not
only is prolonged discord an act of egregious folly, but that any one
who refuses, in the present troublous times, to lend a hand to the
reknitting of the severed tie, cannot, in the estimation of good men,
be considered a friend to his country. And if this be so, what faith
can we repose in him who cut the cords asunder?
_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious typographical errors were repaired, but valid archaic
spellings were retained.
Hyphenation variants have been standardized.
P. 570, "summons to a sick funnel": original read "sick funuel."
P. 612, "and looking on the vigorous and growing": original showed
"oking" with extra space before it.