The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-09 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, NOV. 9, 1868.

The day after to-morrow, Wednesday, the 11th
inst., Parliament will have been formally dissolved
by Royal Proclamation. And now, before the Gene-
ral Election which will take place immediately after-
wards shall have actually commenced, it becomes
more than ever incumbent upon those entrusted with
the responsibility of exercising the rights of citizen-
ship through the use of the electoral franchise, to
consider for a moment more seriously than they have
ever done yet what it is that is really now
as a political alternative, before the country.
It would be nothing less than absurd to
begin to regard it as a personal matter between
Mr. DISRAELI and Mr. GLADSTO).7E. It would be

hardly less an absurdity to regard it as a choice be-
tween Liberalism and Conservatism. Those titles
are as distinctly obsolete nowadays as the old world
nomenclature of Whigs and Tories. The
last-mentioned are long since gone out as
utterly as the Dodo or the Mastodon. Mr.
HENLEY, even, is a specimen of the genus that
Lord ELDON would altogether have failed to
recognise. As to the Whigs it was only during the
course of last year that Lord DERBY himself amidst
the Homeric laughter of the whole country declared
them to have been " dished." With regard to Conser-
vatism, who is now a Conservative ? "With refe-
Jence to Liberalism, who is there who is not a Libe-
ral ? Who is there at any rate who does not assume
the virtue if he has it not? Who is there who does
not at the least affect Liberalism ? In point of fact
the Conservatives are as dead and gone and
buried away and forgotten as the Protectionists
of old—or as the Assyrians or as the Cartha-
genians. No affectation whatever of Conserva-
tism is there left, even in the [most sanguine,
after-dinner talk of heirs or successors—the
Constitutionalists ? If the more independent,
or, as their foes would say, the more
captious of the Liberals formed themselves into a se-
parate faction, inhabiting, or hailing from, a new
Cave of Adullam, the whole body of what once
constituted the political party of the Conserva-
tives simultaneously, it must be said, caved in.
We are, in reality, all of us—without any exception
whatever—Freetraders and Reformers. Who, in truth,
has the temerity to be the reverse of either? Where
is there a genuine specimen to be found anywhere now
living either of a veritable anti-Reformer or a tho-
roughgoing Protectionist? The notion of anything
of the kind is regardable only as simply preposterous.
We are arguing altogether, therefore, upon a false
premise if we maintain that the question
which is now being put to the country through the
General Election immediately to be commenced, is in
any way whatever one involving an alternative be-
tween Liberalism and Conservatism. It is simply a
question in degree between Liberals of more or less
advanced opinions. It is an alternative between
reformers of a more or less determined character.
It cannot be forgotten as yet —it will not
very soon, we believe, be lost to the popular re-
collection—how Lord SHAYITSBURYitI his great speech
in the House of Lords last year deprecated the sudden
adoption of the principle of household suffrage in-
volved in the Reform Bill of Mr. DISRAELI, by
saying that its acceptance by the Government
resembled, according to his notion of it, the
insensate conduct of those, who, declining to
walk down stairs, preferred to jump out of win-
dow. The leap in that instance, according to the
then Premier, Lord DERBY, having been made, as it
were in the night time or during the unnatural gloom
of something like a total eclipse —at any rate, being
a leap in the dark. Nowadays the advance proposed
to be made—whether by Mr. GLADSTONE or by Mr.
DisnaELl—whether by Mr. BRIGHT or by Lord
SALISBURY—is neither, so to express it, down the
staircase or out of the window. It is down an inclined
plane—here of a larger, there of a lesser gradient.
And it is an advance down this inclined plane that
one side proposes shall be taken rapidly, or at a rush
—the other slowly, deliberately, and in a manner pro-
cessionally. Whenever Mr GLADSTONE attains the sum-
mit of his ambition—next month or next year—during
the brief winter session now immediately before us, or
directly after Parliament shall; have reassembled
in the regular course, at the beginning of next
February, it is absolutely certain that conspicuous,
in fact supreme among his colleagues, second only in
administrative importance to the new Prime Minister
himself, will be Mr. BRIGHT, no matter what the
actual post may be that will be allotted to
the member for Birmingham among the
Cabinet Ministers. And any Cabinet (we may
be equally certain of this) that Mr. BRIGHT belongs
to will be active in its furtherance of the principles
and interests of reform. He will never consent to do
as other popular reformers have done before him—
namely, directly they have been installed in office
" keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to
to the hope." Mr. BRIGHT, we may rest per-
fectly well assured, will never degenerate into
a Mr. MILNER GIBSON. Once sworn in as a
Privy Councillor, once having kissed hands as Secre-
tary of State, or President of a Board, or what not,
Mr. BRIGHT will resolutely set to work carrying out
himself, and constraining the most reluctant among
his colleagues to help him in carrying out one after
another all those great reforms which yet remain to
be secured, and which he has for years been
urging as strongly as logic and eloquence could
urge, changes of so comprehensive a kind upon the
acceptance of the whole community. Of this we
might have been certain long since by reason of all
Mr. BRIGHT'S antecedents. But, as if to afford what
was nevertheless in no way required, a most positive
and conclusive guarantee as to his determination to
do what the whole country might have sworn quite
confidently without any such guarantee that he could
alone do under such abnormal and, for him, unprece-
dented circumstances—he has within these last few days
down at Edinburgh been most frankly and explicitly
foreshadowing the particular kind of reforms that ha
and his friends will now resolutely go in for. In
point of fact, he has raised a new cry, and inscribed
it, so to speak, upon the banner of his party—A Free
Breakfast Table! Meaning thereby the removal of
all the imposts yet left on Tea and Sugar and Coffee
Declaring at the same time that, to counterbalance
the falling off immediately thereupon in the national
revenue by some dozen millions or thereabouts, by
making plain as he undertakes to do hereafter (that
is when the time comes) the diminution by some
£10,000,000 i❑ our naval and military expenditure.
Foreshadowing at the same time some resolute re-
adjustment of revenue by imposing boldly a ttx
upon property. In any case the country is safe in
regard to this— that the resolute and comprehensive
advance of liberal and reforming principles must go
on now uninterruptedly. Under Mr. GLADSTONE'S
Premiership, it must go on, of course, all the more
rapidly and sweepingly. Under Mr. DISRAELI'S,
more slowly, deliberately, and tentatively.
And yet—slowly ? deliberately ? tentatively ?
The words read almost ironically in regard
to the Author of a Reform Bill so radical of its