The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-12 00:00:00

The Elections.

(From the Quarterly
Review.)
Contrary to modernmaxim maxims, men arc just now of
far more importance than measures. So far as the
elections votes at the ensuing are given from a poli-
tical motive at all,
nott of the vast majority of them will be
given in supporta policy, but of a statesman.
It is the personal question that must, therefore, take
precedence of any other in a discussion of political
probabilities. Who are the rulers whom we may
expect to have if the present election should result
xi
in favour of the Government? All the
Liberal papers are argeuitingugupon the hypothesis that
Lord Palmerston will continue to be Prime Minis-
ter. Most of the Liberal electors will probably go
to the poll under the influence of the same idea. We
sincerely hope that no further diminution of Lord
Palmerston's health or strength will take place for a
long time to come. His strong constitution holds
out every hope that he will live for many years to
enjoy the honour which
men of all opinions will
n
gladly pay to who has devoted so large a por-
tion of his life, and such unwearied assiduity to the
service of his country. But it is idle to expect that
he can continue to hold the position of First Minis-
ter and leader of the House of Commons. He would
probably have resigned it many months ago but for
the importunate entreaties of his colleagues that he
them would not forsake at this crisis of their fate.
No man less courageous or less robust could have
borne the exhausting burden of such an office at
the age at which the Psalmist has ascribed nothing s
but weakness and sorrow.
oa in
be ow. Not only is it a feat
that is unexampled English history, but no ap-
proach to it even found. Sir R. Peel used
to say that no man could perform 6 the duties of the
office with efficiency after All honour to the
vigour of mindra
anllferressthonnessoto. of feeling which have
induced Lord
good sacrifice to what he
believed to be his country'sso large a portion
of the repose which old ae ra
But it is obvious that such aayjustly claim.
marvellous strain
upon human powers must at last reach the limit
at which they would refuse to answer to the call ;
and it has been too evident, for many months past,
that that limit has been reached. Ever since Easter
Lord Palmerston's leadership in the House of Com-
mons has been little more than nominal. He has
appeared on a few occasions to answer important
questions, and has remained in his place for a short
time before dinner. Once or twice e has remained
But till late in the evening.
—lit with these scanty ex-
ceptions the practical leadership of the house has de-
I volved upon Sir G. Grey. Yet t,
ane actual presence
in the House of Commons—duty which in former
years Lord Palmerston used to perform with unre-
mitting diligdnee—is the lightest of all the labours
which the First Minister is called on to perform. If
this is beyond his power to accomplish satisfacto-
rily, all the other and more onerous portion of his
task must of necessity be laid aside
altogether.
The arduous duty by which alone a statesman-
keep abreast even with the progress can
of the most im-
portant public question is a toil compared to which
attendance in Parliament is repose. Yet without
this toil no Prime Minister can hold an unques-
tioned supremacy over his colleagues No man can
be master of those who act under him if his know-
ledge of the subject-matter of their labours is pal-
pably inferior to theirs. For two or three years
past it has been painfully apparent that Lord Pal-
merston no longer possessed any effective control
over his colleagues. The acts of the Government
have borne upon them little traces either of the old
spirit or the old sagacity. It is difficult to conceive
that Mr. Gladstone would have been permitted to
utter a manifesto in favour of manhood suffrage if
Lord Palmerston had been really master in his own
Ministry. It is still more difficult to imagine that if
the despatches of the Foreign-office had passed un-
der Lord Palmerston's eye, those ambiguous and in-
sincere intimations of support would have been made
, which betrayed the Danes to their ruin. But all this
administrative neglect mattered little, so long as the

That Lord Palmerston, during the years of life
which, we trust, are still in store for him, may by
his counsel render great service to his country no
one will deny. But it will be in some field of action
less laborious than the office of Prime Minister and
leader of the Home of Commons. In other words,
it is not in any case a contingency to be accepted
as lying within the limits of probability that he
should long retain even the nominal guidance of the
policy of the country. Any political action, there-
fore, based upon the assumption that he will continue
at the head of the Liberal party, and that any power
entrusted to their hands would be exercised under
his guidance, rests upon a mere delusion. Nowt
public opinion has always drawn a very broad dis-
tinction between Lord Palmerston and his colleagues.
Rightly or wrongly, he has been a universal favou-
rite. His long experience, his great services, his
popular manners, have all combined to recommend
rim to his countrymen : and he has enjoyed in eon-
sequence a popularity which has scarcely ever been
equalled in recent times, except in the case of men
who have won it by military achievements. Not the
least curious part of this feeling has been that it has
been cherished perhaps more strongly among his
professed opponents than among his friends. A
belief that, in his heart, he was a sincere Conserva-
tive—or, as Sir James Graham used to phrase it,
" the greatest Tory in the House"—and that his
position as Liberal leader conferred upon him a
power of giving effect to those opinions which, in
any other position, he would not have enjoyed,
naturally entitled him to the regard of the mass of
the Conservative party. They forgave the laxity
of the morality in the benefits of the results, espe-
cially at a time when Democracy seemed rather
nearer at hand than it does now.

The disinclination to oppose Lord Palmerston, so
long as he was in his vigour, was very strong both
among members themselves and among their consti-
tuents. It is only since it has become evident that
his name and popularity were being used to mask
the designs of far less trustworthy politicians that
any opposition in earnest to his Government has
commenced. But this popularity is far from being
extended to his colleagues; least of all among the
political opponents of the Government. No one sus-
pects either Lord Russell or Mr. Gladstone of being
animated by a secret Conservatism. Whenever the
whole power of the Government shall fall into their
.hands the battle for the Constitution will be hard
and serious work. Lord Palmerston, though he can
do little to govern them, is still able to obstruct
them. He may not be able to go very deeply into
business, or watch over the development of a policy.
He cannot do much to prevent his subordinates from
giving an indirect assistance to the Radicals; but no
important measure of government can be introduced
without his consent; and he is still able to put his
veto upon them if they directly aim at any object
which he has been accustomed to dislike. But when
he has reiired, as he inevitably must do in the course
of a few months, this restraint will be wholly re-
moved, and a Liberal Government under his suc-
cessor will be something very different from what
it has been during the last six years.
In the present state of the Liberal party it is no
easy task to forecast the name of the leader who will
take Lord Palmerston's plan. If talent alone were
to decide the choice, no doubt could be entertained,
for Mr. Gladstone is without a peer. But talent
alone is not sufficient to secure to him the unques-
tioned authority wielded by Lord Palmerston. The
Whigs have never taken kindly to their distinguished
convert. He was not born in the purple, nor do any
ties of blood or marriage draw him within the sacred
caste from among whom their leaders are tradition-
ally taken. There are other objections of a more
substantial kind. He is in earnest about reform,
which is a very unwholesome and unnatural frame
of mind for one who aspires in these days to lead
the great Whig party. He is one of those
awkward men who will take pledges upon such
subjects literally, and argues that, because his
party have loudly professed the desirability of re-
form, therefore a reform bill ought to be brought in.
No Whig following such a leader can feel safe fcr
a single moment. He never knows, when he pledges
himself to a "safe and satisfactory measure of re-
form" in the usual style, that he will not wake up
some morning and find that he has been taken at his
word. At the same time he is almost as dangerous
to discard as to follow. He commands the undivided
affections of the Radical section of the party. He
has been the first statesman for many years past—
perhaps the very first they have ever had—who has
been even a possible candidate for Prime Minister.
They sympathise with him very closely upon ques-
tions of finance ; and Church matters, which form
the only point of difference between them now, are
not likely to keep them very long apart. A time may
come when his refined and subtle intellect may find
their rough and ready dogmatism intolerable, and
he may break away from that as he has from every
other alliance he has ever formed. But for the pre-
sent there is no sign of discord between them. Their
affection for him has been steadily growing ever
since 1860, and no indication of its abatement has
yet become visible. With backers so powerful, and
at present so staunch, Mr. Gladstone is a candidate
for power whom it would be dangerous, if not fatal,
to offend. If he is slighted'by the offer of a position
inferior to that which he thinks himself entitled to
hold, it is in his power to split up his party to the

very base.
A Radical secession would give a palpable form to
that irreconcilable antagonism of opinion which sepa-
rates the Democrat from the Constitutional Whig,
and which even now is a cause of inextricable embar-
rassment to the party at many A borough election.
These serious consequences would certainly follow, if
the Whigs refused to take Mr. Gladstone for their
leader in the House of Commons ; and there is no
other man upon the Treasury bench sufficiently popu-
lar, or sufficiently qualified, for the post to induce
them to incur any risk of breaking up their party on.
his account. It may be assumed that, whatever their
feelings may be,the command, as soon as it drops from
the hands of the present venerable leader, will pass
without any open demur into the hands of Mr. Glad-
stone. Whether he will be Prime Minister or not,
does not of course depend wholly upon the House of
Commons ; but there can be little doubt that, if the
present Government obtain a majority, the leader-
ship
of the House of Commons, involving the sub-
stantial
control of the policy of the country, will de-
volve upon him.
If that be so, the futuie policy of the Liberal
party will not be difficult to forecast. The measures
which Parliament will be called upon to pass, if the
electors should be deluded, by the use of Lord Pal-
merston's name, into returning a Liberal majority,
will be those to which Mr. Gladstone has pledged
himself. They are by this timetolerably well known.
Upon his views in regard to the Church of England
we have spoken elsewhere. They are at present in a
state of transition, and cannot be described with
perfect accuracy. Upon the rights of the Irish
Church they have arrived at more maturity. He has
expressed his opinions upon this subject with a
frankness that will preclude him from receding from
them at any future period. He holds that the pro-
perty of the Irish Church, held as it is by an undis-
turbed title of 300 years, is yet unreservedly at the
disposal of Parliament to do with it what it thinks
best, and that Parliament ought to exercise that
power in favour of the religion of the majority of
the people. We may look, therefore, upon a formal
agitation for the spoliation of the Irish Church as

The real and pressing danger of Mr. Gladstone's
leadership will undoubtedly be his newly-formed
views upon reform. Or rather, to put it more gene-
rally, they will be the dangers arising from any Libe-
ral majority when once the restraining influence of
Lord Palmerston is taken away. It must not be for-
gotten that the Liberal party differs from the Con-
servative party in this, that it is not a homogeneous
body. In the Conservative party there may be here
and there individual eccentricities ; but the whole is
not divided into two strongly marked sections, dif-
fering diametrically upon points of the utmost mo-
ment, and viewing each other's movements with jea-
lous suspicion. It is an old remark that the Whigs
and the Radicals differ more from each other in point
of political opinion than the Whigs and the Conser-
vatives ; but the remark received new illustration
from the reform debate of the present year. The
Whig speakers who conducted the resistance to Mr.
Baines's bill scarcely fell short in anything of the
sentiments which the stoutest Conservative would
desire to express on such an occasion. On the other
hand, nothing could exceed the wrath expressed by
the Radicals at the desertion of their nominal allies.
If the expressions that were used by them towards
the Whigs and towards the Government, both in the
House of Commons and the press, are to be looked
upon as the utterances of political friends, political
friendship must be a very stormy kind of passion.
Mr. Bright's address, again, to his constituents at
Birmingham, is a composition that can scarcely be
called affectionate in its tone. " Betrayal,"
" treachery," " violation of solemn pledges,"
" neglect of first duties," are among the endear-
ments with which its few sentences are filled. It is
evident enough from many pregnant indications that
the Radicals are tired of the Whig alliance upon its
present terms. If they are again to form part of a
Liberal majority, they will require some other con-
sideration for their services than a seat in the Cabi-
net for Mr. Milner Gibson. They will insist upon a
hearty co-operation in some measure of reform,
which shall place Radicalism permauentlf in. power,
and supersede the necessity of begging for Whig
patronage for the future.

Will the Whigs consent to the demand ? If any
considerable number of them refuse the position of
affairs will be much simplified: for a Liberal majo-
rity will be impossible. But will their virtue be
equal to the trial when this result of it is fairly
before their eyes? Till the moment for decision
comes it will be impossible to predict whether
wounded pride or genuine fear for the constitution
will gain the mastery. The struggle will be a severe
one. That lowest form of partisanship which pre-
fers rather to change opinions than to change com-
panions is not extirpated from the House of Com-
mons, and perhaps prevails more strongly among the
Whigs than in any other part of it. It is impossible
to forget that in 1852, and again in 1859, rather
than sacrifice their majority, they yielded to pres-
sure upon this very point, and consented t 9
legislation to which they were notoriously
averse. Their weakness of conviction and their
intense tenacity of power are the great danger
of the present crisis. Neither of these weaknesses
can be imputed to the Radicals; and. it is from their
superiority in this respect that they derive their in-
fluence. But few of them have ever consented in
recent years to sacrifice their opinions for the sake
of office. The Whigs, first intent on place, and only
giving an afterthought to the Constitution, have
hitherto yielded easily to the bold, uncompromising
convictions of their allies. And the probability un-
happily is that under the same temptations they will
pursue the same course again. It may at all events
be taken for certain that the yielding will not come
from the other side. If, in the coming Parliament,
the Liberals form a strong and united party, it will
be with Mr. Gladstone for their leader and a Radical
policy for their programme. And if, with a Parlia-
mentary majority to back them, their leaders again
occupy the Treasury Bench, it will be under a pledge
—which this time cannot be bought off by the sac-
rifice of the paper duties—to effect the degradation
of the suffrage.
We need not dwell upon the evils of this change.
We have done so very recently, and those who have
read the admirable speeches of Mr. Lowe and Mr.
Horsman will find in them a perfect thesaurus of
arguments against democratic reform. We believe
that the covictions of the large majority of the elec-
tors throughout the country are in harmony with the
doctrines laid down in these speeches. But the urgent
need of the present moment is not to strengthen the
conviction by arguments, but to give effect to them by
acts. In the hands of the Conservatives the precious
deposit of the constitution may be safely trusted.
During the last five years all the questions of per-
manent importance that are likely to occupy public
attention have been discussed in the two Houses of
Parliament, and the opinions of the Conservative
leaders freely expressed in those discussions are con-
sequently well known. They have expressed them-
selves in opposition to all bare degradation of the
suffrage, to all alterations in it .that can in any de-
gree increase the democratic element in the constitu-
tion, with a frankness which leaves no room for mis-
construction. Upon every occasion they have stood
firmly by the interests of the Established Church,
from whatever quarter the attack against her may
have proceeded ; and to the energetic party action
taken under their guidance her rescue 'from more
than one enemy who seemed on the point of triumph-
ing is to be ascribed. It is of no use to attempt to
divide the men from the parties they lead or the
measures they support. It would be ridiculous for
a Liberal to support a Conservative candidate, be-
cause he happened to have a personal admiration
for Lord Derby or Mr. Disraeli; and it is equally
absurd to wish well to Conservative measures, to
desire the maintenance of the Church in her rights,
or to look ' with apprehension at the insidious ap-
proaches of democracy, and from some personal
preference or friendship to withhold political sup-
port from the statesmen who have devoted all their
powers to carrying these objects into effect. It is
evident from Mr. Bright's address that he has bated
neither heart nor hope. " I trust," he says, " the
result of the coming election will show that) not-

It is for us to show that " the cause of true free-
dom," as we understand it, that is to say, the Go-
vernment not of numbers, but of property and in-
telligence, is not missing its final triumph through
the languor and carelessness of those who know its
value. In this special juncture of affairs the atti-
tude assumed by England will do much to influence
the course of opinion throughout the world. The
delusion that the particular tyranny which consists
of the despotism of the multitude could be a source
of freedom is passing rapidly away. It has lain
heavily upon the world for more than a century.
It has blinded some of the acutest intellects,
some of the most earnest lovers of their kind who
have appeared on earth, while its power lasted.
It has furnished an instrument for the intrigues
of many arc unworthy ambition, and has fre-
quently served to disguise the greed of adven-
turers or the venom of disappointed pride. It
has been the pretext of more than one bloody
into the
thought
dust. But
that
at
th its e
revolution ; it has armed popular envy against those
run.otil The
d have
had no crime but that they had been born to
inherit wealth and honour ; by its help professional
politicians and professional conspirators have in
h
more than one country trampled free institutions
logic of events has demonstrated what one might
have
courselogi is almostcoftheory w
foretold; and has shown that
despotism in no hands,
least of all in the hands of the
most
ignorant and
the hungriest, can be otherwise than deadly
human freedom. Instructed by France and America,
men are awaking to the fact, which, under some
strange delusion, philosophers have sought to ignore,
that uncontrolled power is as fearful an instrument
of oppression when. it sulxi.aes the passions of a
class as when it executes the will of a sultan or a
czar. But at such a juncture the opinion of the
civilised world naturally turns to England. Reflect-
ing men instinctively ask how these events are in-
terpreted, how these problems are solved, in the
land where modern freedom was cradled, and has
produced the most marvellous fruits of prosperity,
and happiness, and peace. A great responsibility
lies upon the governing classes of this country at a
moment so critical in the history of political opinion.
If we, at such a moment, weakly yield to the
theories, now worn out and antiquated, which would
confer supreme power on the multitude, we may
throw back the cause of true freedom for half a cen-
tury. If, on the other hand, we can by our example
persuade those who to preserve the mere blessings of
social order have taken refuge in autocracy, or in
Caasarism, that regulated freedom does not mean
supremacy of ignorance and poverty, we may hope
to see the shackles removed which in many a land
lie upon thought, and speech, and industry. In
questions of politicalright England exercises an enor-
mous influence over the whole of the civilised world ;
and the question which England is called upon to
determine is whether those, who above all things
desire that industry shall have its free course, and
that trade shall not be disturbed by tumult, may
trust to free institutions to give them a security
which in some countries they are beginning to
imagine can only be conferred by military rule. If
England at such a moment is deluded enough so to
alter her franchise as to yield the government of the
country to the trades' unions, men will conclude
that constitutional systems are only part and parcel
of the delusion of the democratic theory, and that
strong governments are the only hope of those who
desire to pursue their own industry in peace.

This is the issue which the constituencies of this
country have to decide. They must judge between
the Conservatives and the Radicals. The Whigs
constitute only an accidental compromise due to the
matrimonial arrangements of a few great families,
with the peculiarity that many of them are willing
to sacrifice the interests of their class, in order to
promote the personal ambition of those who belong
to their family connection. But their number di-
minishes with every election. It is obvious that in
course of time those merely personal conditions of
association must be overruled ; and the members of
the party which tries to serve two masters must
take their place upon one side or other. The true
battle is not with them. It is not between them
and the Conservatives that the electors have to de-
cide. The issue is a far broader one, and cannot be
obscured by the paltry intrigues of parties, or the
selfish trimming of personal ambition. The question
is, -whether England shall be governed by property
and intelligence or by numbers. Those who prefer
the first alternative will vote for the Conservative
candidate ; those who prefer the last will vote for
the Liberal. There is no middle term between the
two. It is the great controversy of modern society,
the great issue upon which the hopes of freedom,
and order, and civilisation depend. To the electors
of Great Britain this issue is committed ; and may
God defend the right !