The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-10 00:00:00

11. 1111111.1.11.1.11111.111.11. MM, THE PRE S S, 3nty 10, 1858. 651 • ~ A WIDE AND SOLID BASIS." "Tr is the interest of the Government to ob tain the widest possible support." So says the Standard ; and the fact is undeniable, whoever may be the propounder. Our wish, too, is, that the Government may take that course which will secure for it " the widest possible support." Indeed, without a large amount of popular support, no Government in England can long continue to exist. To object to a Government's propitiating as far as possible the support of the people, is to recom mend it to commit suicide. There is no difference, then, between ourselves and the Standard as to the end in view; but we differ considerably as to the means. We both desire that the Ministry should pro pitiate public opinion. But how is this to be done? "By conceding the Jewish claims," says the Standard. Yet, in our view, the Government loses ten times as much popular support, by con ceding those claims, as it can possibly gain. If a question is to be conceded because some persons loudly and pertinaciously press it, the abolition of Church-rates had far greater recom mendations than the alteration of the Jewish oath. Not a score of petitions had been presented for the admission of Jews to Parliament, but the petitions for the total abolition of Church-rates were more than seventeen hundred! If concession is thought the surest way to popular support, it might have seemed more politic to concede to the seventeen hundred than to the seventeen. they, let us shut our eyes ;—walk, as much as possible, in his footsteps, and take our chance of falling as he fell. The favourite idea, in some quarters, seems to be that a policy of concession is a wise policy for a Conservative Government. A policy, we mean, of concession of principle. We are told to hope that such a policy will accord with " the wishes of the country," and will gain "the widest possible support." Now this notion, we boldly assert, is opposed to the whole experience of the last five and twenty years. The history of the Conservative party teaches an exactly opposite lesson. The Conservative party was formed, in 1834-5, expressly to maintain, and to defend. Lord MEL BOURNE'S Government had avowed its intention of " appropriating " some of the revenues of the Church of Ireland to educational purposes. The Conservative Leaders, Sir ROBERT PEE!., Lord DERBY, and Sir JAMES GRAHAM, united, for the first time, in withstanding that attempt. The first effort of the Conservative party was di rected to defend and maintain the Protestant Church in Ireland. PEEL, in his early days,—his reforming days,— and not in his later, is that which every Conser vative Minister would do well to follow. We are now told that the " descent before no is not precipitous." We have no doubt that it com mences gradually enough. It is all the more to be dreaded. But what alarms any discerning Con servative is, that we should be urged to begin any descent at all. We wish to make our Christi anity, as a nation, more emphatic, more decided, —not less so. We wish to make our National Churches more effective,—not less so. We wish to raise the tone of morals and of religion. We wish, in fine, to have no downward steps—no flirtations with democracy ; because we believe, upon the testimony of all experience, that the overthrow of a well-balanced and ancient consti tution leads, not to freedom, but to confusion, to anarchy, and, at last, to despotism. But again we ask, As we desire the Govern ment to gain popular support, by what means is that support to be gained ? And here we know no way of arriving at a just conclusion so safe or so sure as the old trodden path of experieZa docet. It is just five and twenty years since the Con servative party was firstformed. Sir ROBERT PEEL had ruined the good old name of Tory by his foolish weakness and his still more foolish stub bornness. He gave way on a question involving religious principle, and thereby offended all the earnest Protestants in the empire. He then made a firm stand for the rotten boroughs, whose preservation could involve nothing higher than expediency ; and by these two blunders he made the name of Tory thoroughly distasteful to the people. He had conceded when he ought to have been firm, and had stood firm when he ought to have conceded. He had acuteness enough to see the necessity of taking up new ground. Waiting two or three years, therefore, for an opportunity, he commenced a new party under the title of " Con servative." The history of that party is known to all men who have reached the middle of an ordinary life. We know when and how it bean, when and how it flourished, and when and how it drooped and declined. The causes of its pro sperity, and of its decline, are palpable, and entirely beyond all question. Commonplace men would say that this brief history ought to be of great use to us; and that the facts of the rise of the Conservative party, and of its decline, ought to regulate mainly our present course of politics. But some men who would hardly like to be thought commonplace, seem to consider that it is better to forget all the chief facts of the history of political parties since the passing of the Reform Bill, and to work out some new and ingenious scheme of politics, wholly inde pendent of the lessons of the past. It will be more expedient, they seem to think, to forget as much as possible the whole history of the last five and twenty years, and to act as if none of those facts or changes were of the least importance to us. Sir ROBERT PEEL reduced himself; in five short years, from being the leader of three hundred and eighty members of the House of Commons, to a condition of desertion, disregard, and almost contempt ; yet our would be tutors tell us that it is not worth while to ask how this wonderful fall came about, or what were the errors he committed. Rather, say TRANSPORT OF TROOPS TO INDIA. AT length we have before us the Report of the Parliamentary Committee, to whom so long ago as the Bth of February the House of Com mons delegated the task of ascertaining what measures might have been available, what were, and what for the future may be resorted to for insuring the rapid transmission of troops to India. It is no small nor important subject, for if it be a fact that it is impossible upon emergency to transmit reinforcements to India with greater promptitude and rapidity than was done at the commencement of the present war, it is clear that we must either maintain perma nent armies in India on a larger scale than we have ever hitherto contemplated, or we must submit to live under the perpetual chance of such desperate and unequal struggles as that which we have only got under command at fearful loss, and by exertions on the part of our officers and men that seem almost superhuman. We find, therefore, no fault with the Committee for the length of time which they have taken for their task : we only wish that their investigation had been more thorough; that they had not left. as they have done, important points in nearly their original obscurity; and that the expression of their conclusions had been more direct and decisive. Two years afterwards, the Whigs proposed to give up Church-rates in England, and to provide a substitute out of the revenues of the Church itself. The Conservative party withstood this proposal, and defeated it. Again, the function and office of that party was, to maintain and to defend. Two or three years more passed, and now the Whigs proposed to give up the Corn Laws. At once, Sir ROBERT PEEL brought forward a vote of want of confidence, and carried it, and was es corted back to his house in Whitehall-gardens by an applauding multitude. Thus, from the com mencement of the Conservative party, up to its final triumph in 1841, its whole course has been that of resistance. Its every vote was in main tenance and defence of some long-established principle or institution. And upon this leading characteristic its popularity was founded. So long as the Conservative party occupied this posit►on, it found no difficulty in rallying round it a decisive majority. All through 1839, 1840, and 1841, it carried every popular election. Those years saw, in every great constituency, a Conservative Association, embodying the elite of the electors. In Middlesex, 1,100 of the elec tors dined together; in London, 1,700; at Glas gow, 2,000 or 3,000. Every step of the Conser vative party marked it as a popular party ; and its policy everywhere was to maintain, to support; —but of concession it said nothing. Pass over a brief five years, and what a change do we remark ! The Conservative Associations are all dissolved. Colonel Woon, the Conserva tive candidate, is ejected from Middlesex ; Mr. LYALL from London; Captain Rous from West minster. And what has wrought this change? The new Peelite policy of concession. The Minister who was brought in to maintain Pro testant principles has endowed Maynooth ; he who was to provide for the wants of the Church has been passing Dissenters' Chapels Bills ; he who was to protect British industry has surren dered the Corn Laws and all other pro tective duties. The electors withdraw from the Conservative Associations by hundreds, saying, " We don't know what you mean by a Conservative now." Eleven hundred voters who supported Colonel Woon in Middlesex in 1837 refuse to vote for him in 1847, simply because the Conservative Ministry, brought into support and to maintain, has done nothing but concede. These are the facts which are deeply engraved upon the records of British history, and which nothing can ever efface. Ought such facts to he forgotten or disregarded ? Is it anything short of the most deplorable folly to forget or shut our eyes to the lessons of 1845-6, and to determine to follow the same course which Sir Ronparr PEEL then followed—a course which dissolved his party, broke up his Government, and con signed him to a silent disregard for the rest of his days. Do we mean, then, that the duty of the Con servative party is to stand still F Far from it, we say that, to amend, in order to maintain, is its plain duty ;—to advance within the limits of constitutional principle, which is true pro gress. We have repeated a dozen times that the law of Church-rates ought to be amended; — that the Reform Bill of 1832 ought to be re formed, and that the example of Sir ROBERT The Report of the Committee consists of ten Resolutions, and a large mass of evidence. Of these the former only are published, the latter being still in the hands of the printer. The Resolutions as regard the past refer to what was done, or what might have been done, and to the mode in which the Government and the Court of Directors respectively discharged their functions and fulfilled their duty to their country. Those that regard the future concern the use that may be made, and ought to be made, in times to come, of steamers and of the overland route to India. There arc, also, two important Resolutions which relate to our colonial resources, their value, and their availability. With regard to the conduct of the Court of Directors, the Committee express themselves with an explicitness that we wish they could have carried throughout their Report. They say that the Court of Directors from the first intel ligence of the mutiny at Meerut showed them selves sensible of the advantages of the Overland Route, and that they appear to have lost no time in recommending its adoption to Mr. VERNON SMITH and the Government of which he was a member. They express also a decided opinion, that, considering the suddenness of the danger and the distance to which the troops were to be sent, great credit is due to the Court of Directors for the promptitude and efficiency with which they discharged the difficult task of transmitting re inforcements to our army in India. Thus justice, somewhat tardy and after death, in deed, but still justice, will now be done to the Court of Directors by public opinion ; and the country will be able to judge, from the Report of a Committee evidently reluctant to pronounce judgment against the Cabinet of Lord PALMERSTON, how little justification. Mr. VERNON SmrrH had for his abnegation of responsibility; and how little truth there was in his flippant,