The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-19 00:00:00

THE " SPECTATOR" ON KINDLY TORYISM.—Mr.
W. H. Smith, the Conservative candidate for
Westminster, has performed, and performed well,
a very difficult task. He has contrived, -while re-
jecting noisy Toryism, the creed of the Carlton
and the Standard, to reflect that very great and
influential body of English opinion which we may
describe in the words quiescent Toryism. There is
in almost every county and borough of England,
perhaps there exists even in -Westminster, a large
body of voters who usually vote on the Conservative
side, who have a strong repulsion from change, who
dread constitutional innovation, andwho are disposed
to look to the past rather than to the future, but who
nevertheless are not Tories in grain. Every now and
then, convinced by a catastrophe or a leader, they
sway heavily round to the Liberals and, when they
do, opposition disappears. They dislike reform pro-
posals not so much because they are " democratic,"
as because they think the old Constitution has worn
very well, and like an old garment has got easy, and
everybody under it seems very comfortable and con-
tent. If it is clear to them that anybody is not so,
then they are willing to abate the discomfort, are
sometimes as keenly sympathetic to material hard-
ship as they are indifferent to hardship of idea. They
shrink from a reduction of the suffrage, but will re-
organise the Civil Service, start at a fancy franchise,
but are quite willing to revolutionise the Poor-law,
shudder at a workman's demand for a vote, but press
into the lobby when asked to protect him from over
work. Naturally enough they are as Tories heretical
on the subject of education. Your hard Tory, the
man whose creed is of the intellect as well as of the
feeling, has at heart a dislike of education—doubts
whether it does not equalise men too much, questions
whether really good people would not be as content
with the culture of their station as with its income.
The kindly Tory, on the other hand, dislikes and
rather dreads ignorance—feels about as good clergy-
men's wives do about dirt in a cottage, as something
unpleasant, which ought to be done away with
not only for the sake of the cottager but of those
brought into contact with him. He would educate
everybody, and but for religious difficulties would
not be disinclined to make education compulsory,—
indeed has actually done so in all villages dependent
upon factories, that is, in half the villages of the
North. In ecclesiastical matters the class is, on the
whole, for the Church, but thinks a great deal too
much fuss is made about trifling differences, and
while it would on no account turn the Bishops out
of the House of Lords, has an odd but very pro-
found dislike to their making themselves very pro-
minent in it. Mr. Smith reflects these opinions,
which scarcely find expression in the Press,—the
Tory newspapers having been for years more violent
than their own leaders,—and reflects them very ac-
curately. He knows, he says, of "no great or
in England"—one-fifth of
while,st by Dr. Simon's account,
these serious o
populationu s grievance
theex existing
getting too little to eat—and likes power to be given
"to the man who has something to lose." He does
not in politics wish for " sudden or serious changes,"
but still he thinks that " the system of administra-
tion requires reform." " There are reforms in our
streets which need to be effected ; there are reforms
much needed in the dwellings of our poor ' • and if I
were asked for an opinion I would say that I would
much rather the poor should be educated before
they were admitted to the franchise than afterwards.
In that direction I believe some very useful reforms
may be effected ; but I know that the work will be
a long and laborious one, and one which cannot be
carried out with much eclat by the reformer."
In fact Mr. Smith is prepared, if he can, to
ignorance and pau-
perism, erassists in
m w h
jch extinguishingwe
take
it would involve a
very much greater innovation in this country
than even the introduction of manhood suffrage.
It is a kindly creed, it is held by large bodies of
Englishmen, and it is worth while to consider for a
moment whether the Tory party, as a political
party, can really claim credit for carrying out a
policy
yinpolicy that is which, while
with the franchise, will support
education, the social amelioration of the poor, and
refusing to
meddleas this,
administrative reform. We scarcely think so. As
a matter of fact, all measures for giving assistance
to national education have been carried not by them,
but by their rivals. It was Lord John Russell who
moved the first educational grant ; Liberals esta-
blished, and their Archbishop worked out, secular
education in Ireland ; and it is by Tory votes that
the conscience clause, without which education
would cease to be national, is endangered. That
party is said to be ready even now to give up the
national system in Ireland if only it could thereby
obtain Ultramontane support, and the more Con-
servative a Liberal may be the more certain he is to
talk of the " extravagance" of the very limited
grant for education. No doubt many Tories, as,
for example, Sir John Pakington, are sound on the
matter, but as a party it is the Liberals who have
carried out the ideas Mr. Smith professes, who
have forced education on the half-reluctant upper
class, and who have twice defied necessary
allies, the Catholics and the Nonconformists,
rather than surrender their plans for popular
enlightenment. So also with the condition of the
condition of the poor. It was the Reform party
which carried the new Poor Law, and so saved the
country from demoralisation ; which has substituted
Union for parochial rating, and so set the labourer
free ; which has carried lodging-house Acts, and
for hygeine, and which, above all, has accepted the
grand principle that the credit of the State may be
usefully strained to increase the thrift of the poor.
Nothing the Tories have done for a generation will
do so much in the end to raise the masses as the
opening of State savings' banks and the establish-
ment of State insurance-offices, both measures de-
vised and carried by the Minister whom of all
statesmen the Tories regard with the most loathing
respect. It is true the Tories have voted pretty
readily for the Ten Hour and Factory Acts, but we
have yet to learn how much class feeling and class
dislike had to do with their votes ; their opposition
to the Union Chargeability Bill, and to all sugges-
tions for the subjection of cottages to strict survey,
suggest that they had a good deal. When in 1845
Sir Robert Peel proposed in the interest of the
masses to take off that tax upon bread which now
seems so monstrous as to be almost incredible, the
Tories repudiated him, accepted as their leader the
most virulent of his opponents, and would have re-
jected his measures but for the enormous pressure
applied outside. As to administrative reform both