The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-26 00:00:00

930 breast; but be understands not loyalty to a Company that fattens upon the spoils of his country ; his only idea of loyalty is loyalty to a chieftain, or loyalty to a Crown. Remove, then, the hated barrier whieh stands between our Sovereign and a hundred and fifty millions of her subjects. If we wish to attain, let us first deserve success. Then, indeed, may wo hope to triumph ; but vigour and valour alike are paralysed • while we remain tied to the carcase of a monopoly, that stinks in the nos trils of all, whether Europeans or natives, throughout the length and breadth of Hin dos tan. REFORM, AND THE RIGHTS OF CONSERVATIVES. THE remark of Lord BOUNGBROKE, that " his " tory is philosophy teaching by example," could in nowise be better illustrated than in a contemplation of the momentous results to Conservatism which arose in consequence of certain ever memorable political transactions that took place between the years 1820 and 1832. As journalists, and addressing ourselves to the exigencies of the ensuing twelvemonth, we have little to do with the retrospective view of the Reform Bill of 1832. Our object is solely to bring certain practical considera- tions prominently before the Conservative public mind so as that the remissness or in decision of past years should not occur again. The Conservative party has already suffered grievous injustice at the hands of the professed " Reformers ;" its property, its agricultural wealth, its professional respectability, and its high social vogue are not adequately repre sented in point of Parliamentary numbers. Socially, it is the strongest party in England ; but the Whigs, in the years 1831 and 1832, with great audacity had " recourse to the " able use of opportunities," which, according to EDMUND BURKE, has been their chief re source in politics. Let us mark well what was done subsequent to 1826, because we are still suffering from what occurred at that period. Our readers will see shortly that we glance backwards to practical experience in order to be secured against prospective dangers. There are men of the world, keen and Oliva d, and philosophers of the closet, acute and profound, who deride the idea that the great events in politics or in religious revolu tion are powerfully influenced by mere indivi duals. They believe entirely in "general causen,' and they say that too much causative force has been attributed to the Caesars, Luthers, Cromwells, Napoleons, and Mira beaus of history. Others, again, say that in dividuals are almost everything, and they cite some of the personages just named as evi dence. The question might be debated for ever, and we shall not enter upon it, believing as we do that there are sometimes ordained dispensations of providential circumstances which completely crush, and overwhelm, and rule events, while at other times extraordinary characters, at the right time in the right place, must themselves be classified under general causes. " This wonder-working word of cir cuntstancts," to quote Mme. do STAEL (one of the few speculative writers admired by the Duke of WELLINGTON), is just as applicable to a single agency of the highest class as to any aggregate of secondary powers. Those, however, who contend that indivi dual influences have enormous power over events might fairly point to what occurred in England between 1826 and 1830 as ill.Mifying their views. No one could have thought that the death of Lord LlVEttruot. could have been fraught with serious eventuality, but it saddled the Tory party with " the Canning schism." Lord LivimPoot. had ruled from 1812 to 1826 ; Lo was an excellent man, MI able Minister, an honest Tory, and he had much personal influence over Mr. CANNING, who owed much to him. Lord Livenroor. was the Ministerial bead of the Tory Cabinet for fourteen years, and when he died no public man was living who hail control over NI r. CANNING. That con- summate orator and brilliant politician thought that he could be Prime Minister without arrangements with the great chiefs of THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 26, 1857. the Tory party. Sooner than succumb to the Duke of WELLINGTON, Lord ELnON, and Mr. PEEL, Mr. CANNING made a coalition with a portion of the Whigs. In the meanwhile, the Duke of YORK (the next heir to the Throne died, and prodigious consequences hung upon that event. OltonoE IV. was then in serious ill health, and the next heir was the Duke of CLARENCE, who espoused the Canning views of Catholic nuancipation. Then CANNING died, and left a feeble Ministry behind him. The Whigs, also, had been weakened by the fact that they had split amongst themselves on th , , question of the support to be given to Mr. CANNING. The Duke of WELLINGTON and Mr. PEEL succeeded the Canningites as Pro testant and anti-Catholic Minister in 1828, and in 1829, acting no doubt on most honourable motives, and making personal sacrifices, those great personages carried the " Catholic Ques tion," and a great blow was given to the claims and honour of the Tory party by the mode in which that measure was passed. It was not because Romanists were admitted to the Legislature that the Tory party suffered in 1829, but because party considerations and natural political feelings were apparently con temned and held cheap by the. Ministers of the day. As we said before, we sincerely re spect the political memories of the Duke of WELLINGTON and Sir R. PEEL, but we think there can be no doubt but that they greatly weakened the Conservative connection by their peculiar mode of dealing with the " Catholic Question" in 1829 It would have been far better that it should have been carried by a Whig Cabinet than that a Protestant Ministry should have conceded it without securities. Above all, the spectacle of the victor of %Va.. terloo and the then Member for the Univer sity of Oxford, whose fame ha,l been chiefly founded on anti Catholic politics, being com pelled to succumb to an organised league of the Irish agitators, had the worst effect. Hence the English political unions ; hence, also, the organised professional agitations of subsequent years. But why do we retrace those causes now? Simply Lecause we desire to point plainly to the real reasons why the Conservatice party was able to offer so little effectual resistance to the measures of 1831 and 1832. The death of the Duke of YORE, the Canning schism, the un popularity of GEORGE IV., and, above all, the way in which " Emancipation" was resisted in 1828, and rapidly conceded in 1829, had in jured the power and prestige of the Tory party. The Duke of WELLINGTON carried things with a high hand in 1829, and it is not the least reflection on the memory of that illus trious personage to say that at that time his Grace did not understand " Government by Party " as well as he did in subsequent years, when at many a crisis the Sovereign in diffi culties " sent for the Duke of WELLINGTON." The Duke of RICHMOND, and many members of the high Protestant aristocracy, felt that the Government of England could not be carried on by a system savouring of military abso lutism ; and the result was that the Grey Ministry was formed, just after the Duke of WELLINGTON had delivered an intense pane gyric upon the then existing system of Par liamentary representation. The celebrated speech of the'Duke of WEL LINGTON against Reform, in 1830, was not BO much illtinied as incautioasly expressed. There were many waverers then upon the subject of Reform, even in Ministerial circles; the larger body of the Canningites were then detached frpm the Ministerial Tories, and it is within our own knowledge that there were then many thorough-going Church and State Tories who believed that PITT, if he were then living, would have given England a Reform Bill. It cannot be concealed that the mode in which the Catholic question was conceded was in itself a Parliamentary Reform. The forty shilling freeholders of Ireland were dis franchised, as a quasi security for Protestant interests in Ireland; a new Parliamentary franchise was enacted, and the Reformers of England were thereby furnished with a pre• eedent which they knew how to apply. Sir ROBERT PEEL had kept himself uncommitted upon " Reform." He had taken little part in its debates, and of all questions that could be agitated, it was that least suited to the character of his mind. Its discussion required reference to principles, an appreciation of original and constructive science, and qualities of another kiwi than are found in merely practical natures. Give Sir ROBERT PEEL a fixed and positive system, and no statesman could possibly wring froth it more practical advantages, and bring out more skilfully all its favourable points, lie was an admirab!o administrator; he wets ent a great originator. His temper of mind, his mental facult►es, and his personal resources exhibited all the cha racteristics of a Parliamentary Mazarin, and few of those which might have belonged to a Parliamentary Richelieu. The brilliant engineer who built the Eddystone Light house took his idea, as he has told the world, from observing the stem of an cak tree, and adopting its construction. Such a con ception, if Sir R. PEEL had been bred an engineer, would never have sprung up in his mind, which could understand anything by the most difficult demonstration, but never by the force of prescient genius could reach to results previously unapprehended. The lines of Torres Vedras were a most magnifi cent conception, and were enough to stamp their projector with the fame of original genius They showed rare anticipation of all possible emergencies. If Sir R. PEEL had been bred to military life, does any one sup pose that he ever could have thought before hand of the design of the Peninsula campaign, or invented the lines of Torres Vedras? We dwell on these considerations because the Conservative party suffers even now from the strategy, or, to speak more exactly, the want of strategy, of the Conservative leaders in 1830-1-2. Their mode of dealing with " Catholic Emancipation " had placed them in difficulties on " Reform " which they had not anticipated. The rapidity with which they struck the Protestant colours to O'CONNELL and the Clam electors in 1829, while at the same time they pertinaciously resisted every moderate measure of Reform, was the worst course that they could have adopted. Their own Parliament did not follow them. They were deserted on Sir HENRY PARNELL'S motion fur Financial Reform. But if the Tories were in difficulties about Reform in 1830, it is very unsatisfactory to us to know that the Whigs are in still greater diffi culties about Reform in 1858. There was a certain agreement and distinct understanding in 1832, to which the Whig Ministry was a contracting party, which cannot be overlooked in 1858. Lord PALMERSTON knows all about it; so does Lord JOHN RUSSELL ; so do other still living members of Lord GREY'S Cabinet. On another occasion we shall have to allude to that agreement, and we shall take care that its binding force be maintained for the preser vation of the " Rights of Conservatives." MIDDLE.CLA.SS SOLDIERS. IT would be highly advantageous in the pre sent emergency if, through all the cloud of writing and talking upon the value of the middle classes, some tolerably definite plan could be seen to shape itself. At present people seem to be at cross purposes with each other. Some want the " middle classes " to be volunteers and some regulars ; and then, some how, we find out that each means the other thing. And so we go on in a state of the most hopeless confusion, though it must be said that this samo " middle class " itself seems to take the whole thing wonderfully easy. A few letters hive appeared in the leading journal, written by persons not different in their station, we presume, from the rest of that well-known class whose differentia might ahnost be said to be " writing to the Times." And upon this a vast amount of journalistic ardour has been grounded. But beyond this we confess we see little signs of any great ." middle-class " movement. However, as the subj'•ct is undeniably one of great interest, we shall venture to lay before our readers certain reasons which induce us to question the pos sibility of recruiting from the middle class without at once raising the expenditure and