Welsh Newspapers

Search 15 million Welsh newspaper articles

Hide Articles List

16 articles on this Page

TSE STATE OF PARTIES.

News
Cite
Share

TSE STATE OF PARTIES. The stite of parties in Englanl just no'v is not very ex- traordinary, for we have seen frequently of late years some- thing much resembling it, but it is theoretically rather singular and practically very perplexing. The Government is weak and the opposition is yet weaker. All manner of stories as to possible causes of a political cri-is" are in circulation from time to time; "well-itifor,ned persons" will at any moment be ready to explain to you the dan- gerous results of this or that Ministerial speech in Parlia- ment, and if you will only listen long enough, they will foretell with more or less of confidence exactly when the Government will break up, by assault from without or from inaction within. These ominous conjectures are not, it is true, of any intrinsic value they are prophesies of what cannot be foreseen, and attempts to know what cannot be j known but though worthless in themselves, they are valu- able as indications of political feeling. A Government which is believed to be strong, becomes half strong thereby a Government which is believed to be weak, is deficient in a most effectual ingredient of power. J there are four participants, if we may use such a phrase, in the present political situation. The country at large and three parties in Parliament-the Conservatives, the satis fied Liberals, and the dissatisfied Liberals; and we shall venture to describe, in a few words, the position and tenets i The country, we believe, wishes no change of AJministra- tion on the contrary, it is well satisfied with the present. It is not, indeed, true that there is any strong personal attachment to Lord Palmerston; he is popular from his vigour, and his courage, and his pliability, and his age, and because no one else is popular; but he is supported by no warm enthusiasm, by no fast and firm affection. PossiMy it is not granted to successful, easy-minded men of the world to inspire any such feelings: they have their full share of other advantages and blessings in this world, and cannot, therefore, complain if they have not this one also. But after every necessary exception and allowance, it is certain that the country has at present much more confi- j dence in Lord Palmerston than it has in any competing statesman, and that the feeling is to be found in the inner minds of many of those who do not vote with him, as well as of those who do. The general disposition, too, of the country on domestic politics is identical with that of the present Cabinet, It is at once cautiously liberaf and criti cally conservative. The English people, taken as a whole, believe-whether rightly or wrongly is not now the ques- tion-that their political institutions are in the main good they are opposed to every organic change of primary im- portance or sweeping magnitude but, at the same time, they have no clinging attachment to the details of their laws they are ready to alter what can be proved to need alteration, and anxious to substitute whatever can be proved to be the most suitable and desirable substitute they are as far from the creed of Lord Eldon as from that of Mr. Bright—in a word, they criticise what exists, and, upon evidence, they will adopt what is proposed. And if this is a true description of the country, it is an almost equally true one of the present Ministry, speaking of them as a body, and not engaging in the discussion of minor differences. The extreme Tories say the present Government may alter anything: the extreme Radicals vow it wishes to alter nothing: and these are but the appropriate reflexes of a mental disposition at once scrupulously conservative and carefully improving. So much on domestic matters. Upon foreign policy it will be generally admitted that the opinions of the present Cabinet are much more in accordance with those of the nation than the published sentiments or feelings of any other persons who can by possibility replace them. The cause of Italy has been an excellent measurer of the natural sympathies and temperament of public men. The English people have been able to see which of them cor responded with and which of them were different from their own. They were themselves sincerely and heartily anxious for Italian freedom. They saw that Lord John Kussell and Mr, Gladstone were heartily anxious for it also, and they could not avoid seeing that Mr. Disraeli was anything but anxious. "lhe country, then, wishes no change of Government. Why, then, does any one wish it ? It is not very easy to say why the Conservative should covet office at the present moment. The wisest and calmest among them we know are not desirous of it, and there is an argument more impressive than any which they could suggest for their not being so. There is the lesson of recent experience. The Conserva- tives have twice tried the experiment of governing in a minority, and they have failed very ignominiously. No thinking Conservative looks back with anything like latis-I faction to the Conservative regime of 1852 and 1858. They know that though the Administration of those years were Conservative in name, they were not Conservative in fact; —they know that Mr. Disraeli, the ruling spirit of both those Governments, was ready to accept anything, to con- cede- anything, to carry anything;—they know that the only difference between those Cabinets and a Liberal Cabi- net was that every Liberal Administration professes to be- lieve in its own measures, and Mr. Disraeli professed, generally ostentatiously professed, to disbelieve in them. He paid a verbal homage to Conservatism, while he was in practical slavery to Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. Nt) wise Conservatism, no conscientious man of any opinion, can wish to see these scenes repeated. It may, however, be said that Mr. Disraeli will not be a third time permitted to play his favourite game. On the contrary, it is doubtless intended by many influential Con- servatives that he shall not play it. They will not, or they think they will not, be dragged through the mire for him or for any one. They intend to come in as true Conservatives if they come in at all; they hope to carry out the principle of the party both in policy and in legislation, if they should a third time be the occupiers of Downing-streot. But we are confident that these more rigid and sincere Conservatives would find upon trial that they had under- taken an impossible task. In foreign affairs the country would simply and unmistakeably repudiate and reject an anti-Italian and pro-Austrian policy,-tbe very po!icy, that is, which has been avowed by Lord Derby and Lord :\lalmes- bury as well as by lr. Disraeli; and in domestic aff-uis there would be a difficulty as great, though not perhaps as apparent. The English people would not now be content with mere Conservatism. Though not desirous of l,i-.e and perplexing innovations, they are sincerely desirous of mode- rate and progressive improvement. Some alterations a Con- servative Government, or any Government, must year by year make to satisfy the public mind. And the selection of these alterations would and must fall into the hands of Mr. Disraeli, the ablest, the quickest, the most ambitious, the most managing of all the Conservatives, he and Lord Stanley would arrange the innovations to be made. The policy would soon be the policy of 1852 and 185S The directing minds would be the same. and the characteristic measures would Dot be different. Changes would be pro- posed, not because the Cabinet thought them desirable, not because they were proved by principle, not because they were justified by preliminary investigation and approved experience, but simply and solely because the public mind desired them. In other words, the showy plans that happen to enjoy a fleeting and momentary popularity, the crude proposals that fleet before the undisciplined imagination, the loose schemcs of noisy agitators, would be caught at by a Conservative Government. As in 1852 and in 18.58, not professing to be convinced themselves, they would be at the mercy of the supposed convictions of others. They w!0 ld be obliged to alter, and yet would think they ought not to alter. To please their friends, they must avow lofty maxims of unmoved Conservatism to please their enemies, they mu.4, in fact, abandon these maxims to the winds. The Conservatives then should -not, we think, desire to turn out the present Government. Should any part of the Liberal party wish to do so ? The only persons who can have a p\lbl;c reason or motive for doing so are the ad- vanced Reformers. They may believe that they have a greater chance of obtaining a large measure of reform, or an enormous reduction in our military expenditure, or an important substitution of direct for indirect taxation, by aiding to destroy the present Government than by aiding to sustain it. They may say, we believe do say In 1858 we were not nominally in office, but we had real power. Now our party is nominally in office, but we have no power at all. Then we held the balance between the Whigs and the Coni, r,ative, Both of them were anxiously s'ling for our support on every important measure, and carefully con- sul'ing our wishes on every important occasion. Now Lord Palmerston is in power, and he does what he likes and he does not do anything which he dislikes. We are nobody and moreover his views are not our views, nor his wishes our wishes." Thoughts such as these are certainly in the minds, not perhaps of many, but of some members, and it is very necessary to explain concisely how far they are just. We believe that these opinions are wholly erroneous, and that a little examination will show that, regarding the sub- ject solely from their own point of view and with exciuiive reference to the attainment of their own conscientious aims, the extreme Liberals could scarcely comnit a more futile mistake than to turn out at this moment the present Go- vernment. We quite admit, indeed we have just maintained, that they might obtain from the stratagems anl the necessities of Mr. Disraeli some measures which they will not obtain so soon from Lord Palmerston. We concede that if the dis- satisfied Liberals were to act together in opposition,— which, however, no one who knows anything of the matter believes for an instant that they could or would,-they then would hold a critical position of peculiar though momentary strength, and would be able t% extort much that was of importance from the cringing weakness of an impotent Government. But at what price would the extreme Liberals buy this precarious ascendancy ? At the price, in plain and natural English, of disgusting the country. England would not en- dure that a series of measures which it did not think de- sirable should be stolen from it by a manceuvre and a stritijem. If the changes under discussion were really required by the country, no artificial alliance between the llsiiuals and the Conservatives would be required to obtain them and if that alliance did succeed in obtaining one or two such measures, the public mind would revolt at the unna!ural attainment of what it did not desire, would and some way out of the political dilemma, and would not iin probably be exasperated i,ito a rigid and bigoted Toryism It is to be remetnb"red that we have a great peculiarity in English politics, which gives a singular stability to our in- stitutions, and has left a remarkable trace on our political language. All our poli'ieal change, have been permanent; the public mind has been slow to acquiesce in their neces- sity, slow to apprehend their importance, slow to reconcile itself to the requisite disturbance. But the work so done is never iindone. The very term reactionary" has become a by-word of reproach. We assume that all that is past is right, "rod we refuse even to hear those who wish to re- establish any law which we have repealed, or any instituti m which we have abolished, We owe this great political advantage-ao advantage almost never p03>e-is?d in an equal degree by any other ) coun rv—to the fair, straightforward, so to say intellectual manner in which the great alterations of late years have without any exception been carried. They have been car- ried q the process by which the repeal of the Corn Laws was tarried,—by efficient penetrating argument, by con- tinued satisfying discussion. If the Reform party should depart from this policy, they will immediately titid that they lose its peculiar resalt. The repeal of the Corn Laws could not h i-e been a victory for ever, if it had been prematurely snatched by an unnatural combination of parliamentary parties, or a clever manipulation of passing circumstances. And if, disregar ling the good teaching of this great prece- dent, the advanced Liberals attempt to hurry on sweeping projec's for "hi'"h the public understanding is not prepared, they will find that a momentary advantage has been gained Î at the sacrifice of an inestimable lasting benefit-that what j they so hastily gain may very easily be as hastily retracted — that the Liberal party will have lost its most striking and efficient prestige-that it will no longer be the party whose defeats are transient but whose victories are immortal. We have said nothing of the "satisfied Liberals" in this long article, and it is not necessary to say anything. We do not altogether agree with them, or with some of them. The present Government may not be the best we can imagine; it is in many respects by no means the best. But we aree with the satisfied Liberals" that it is a good re- presentative of the mind of the country that its faults are the country's faults, and its merits the country s merits that it has far more tried and trusted ability in iti ranks than any other Cabinet which is likely to succeed it that, according to all the rules of plain good sense, we had better endure its defects, errors, and shortcomings, than again undergo the Government of a Conservative minority, casually aided and charitably strengthened by irregular contingents of Radical support.—Economist.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF WAR..!

I A RADICAL IN THE HOUSE.…

THE CHURCH. !

! SPAWNING FORCE.

[No title]

WEEKLY CALENDAR.

I SOUTH WALES RAILWAY.

[No title]

[No title]

SOUTH WALES, MIDLANDS, & NORTH…

I VALE OF NEATH RAILWAY.

LLANELLY, LLANDILO, LLANDOVERY,…

I TAFF VALE RAILWAY.

NEWPORT, ABERGAVENNY, & HEREFORD…

Advertising