The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-13 00:00:00

THE OLD TORY.

The real old Tory is amongst the best friends of the
poor, for he is a true Christian ; and however attached to
the outward hierarchy of civil society, he knows full well
that before the judgment-seat of God all men are equal.
He hates oppression, for He instinctively knows it to be
the very worst foe of reverence and authority. No one
will go farther than he to see the poor righted. He is the
best and fairest county magistrate ; and if he can swallow
down that disgust at the break up of the parochial system,
which has made him rail so often at the New Poor Law,
he is the best Poor-law guardian in the county.
On the other hand, he stands up for the Game-laws,
and is no friend to poachers. Not, however, for the sake
of his game, but on account of the sly, slinking, stealthy
nature of the offence. For he delights in field sports him-
self, and likes nothing better than to see other folks do
the same. Never did he refuse a right of sporting to a
tenant ; and many is the certificate that he has made a
present of to some strapping farmer's son whom he knew
to be a good shot. And if he has quite an army of game-
keepers, (a fact which he always boasts of in his Game-
law speeches,) it is at bottom only his way of keeping the
boldest country lads out of mischief. As to the game
itself, no man is ever so liberal of it as the old Tory, and
many a jug of hare soup has been sent out to the
poorest old village crone from his kitchen.
The old Tory is a good, but not a tip-top farmer. He
looks rather suspiciously still upon agricultural chemistry,
though not averse to a new manure. He has never given
way to the tallow-making mania. He loves a good
marbled baron of beef of his own feeding, but he likes
his beasts to be able to walk, and says that oxen were not
made to ride in carriages to the cattle-show, while poor
folks trudge on foot. He likes to see everything around
him sleek and happy ; never sells an old hack, nor ever
shoots an hound that can yet wag his tail for joy to see
him.
But the finest sight in the neighbourhood of the old
Tory are his tenants. Such substantial cottages—such
oak and walnut-tree tables and chests—such lots of
crockery—such apple and pear trees in the garden, and
flowers everywhere r The old gentleman knows every
human face and name within miles of his house : when
he rides out, the men all doff their hats to him with a
grin and a scrape, the women running after him to tell
of some great family event, bearing in his mind as well
as theirs the most direct and natural connection with his
purse and store-room. He never restricts the building
of cottages by his own people, and loves a roomful of
flaxen-polled children. As to buying out the small
land-owner, the thing is quite foreign to his nature.
He daily laments over the departed yeomanry of England,
is a zealous promoter of allotments, and has done more
than any one in the parish to put the common fields into
profitable cultivation.
At bottom, the old Tory rather likes a good Radical or
Chartist, so long as they do not become seditious. He
has a lurking consciousness that universal suffrage would
not do much harm, and that parliaments have already
been annual. Much as he hates the name of Cobbett,
you would think to hear Cobbett himself when he takes
to lamenting over the day when every labourer baked his
own bread and brewed his own ale. The ballot, indeed,
he cannot abide, and says it is un-English. He no more
understands that a tenant should be afraid of his land-
lord, than that he should vote against him. To be sure,
his own men would as soon think of eating snails as of
polling for a Whig.
The genuine old Tory is really one of the essential
elements in the English nation. He it is who shows in
practice how much good can be yielded by all existing
institutions when worked by good men who loved them.
As a type of character, I am aware of no other country
than England where he is to be found. The matter of
the old foreign noble, even to the lowest beggar, may be
perhaps more courteous, but it has far less cordiality. It
springs from civility, not from love ; it is a form, and not
a feeling. Rail though he may at Jacobins and their
watchwords, the real old Tory, of all others, is the man
who has most help to keep up amongst us the spirit of
freedom, of equality, of brotherhood. The familiarity
with which his neighbours approach him, the trustfulness
with which they look up to him, are, in fact, the feelings
of younger brothers towards an elder. The obedience
which is paid to him is freedom's self, for it hangs on no
coercion or fear, and is but the shape of harmonious co-
operation. And his is the feeling of true equality, for he
sees a man in every beggar. Had there been enough old
Tories, not in the manor-house alone, but in the councils
of Hanoverian kings, there would now be fewer Radicals.
—J.T.--Politics for the People.