THE POLITICAL LULL, AND WHAT WILL BREAK IT. GROWN men know that the sea is currentless when the tide is at the turn, that there is ever a calm before currents shift, and set in another direction. But the child building his first castles on the sand may wonder at the phenomenon. The mobile tide that for the whole of his short day he has seen advancing resistlessly ever onward, up and up on the stable Land, comes at length to a stand-still; and the first indication of this that strikes his eye is the disappearance of the line of foamy strife that marked the meeting of the antagonistic powers, and the cessation of the dull or lashing roar that hitherto had filled his ear. How is this? he asks. The sea has grown stagnant, the tides have expired! His occupation of castle-building, with which he fancied he was stopping the progress of the tide, seems now hopelessly at an end: and, having haply heard older lips explaining how the tides and currents keep the sea fresh and its shores healthy, the boy concludes that henceforth all is to be stagnation and corruption! Perhaps, with a vanity that makes foolishness more apparent, he fancies he has made a startling discovery,laments loudly the phenomenon as the in-setting of a mortal disease in the frame of things, and calls upon all to aid him in stirring the ocean with stick and shovel, in order to set the tides a-going again. Cease thine innocent wonder, O child!-stop thy vain lamentation and misplaced labour, O youth! A short hour will show you the currents again in motion; and longer observation will reveal that what seems stagnation in nature is but her transition-points to the development of new life and motion. National life has its tides as well as the sea. And its grander cyclical movements, whether in politics, science, or literary thought, transcend the regulating agency of individual men. At one time in the life of nations the tide of Innovation runs high, at another it ebbs into the counter-current of Reaction; still VOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCXCIV. oftener the public mind shifts from one line of action into another,-now it is Home politics, now it is Foreign, that engross the nation: and at each change there is a temporary lull,— the calm of the sea when the tide is turning. We are in one of those lulls now. The din of political parties is no longer heard in the land, and the work of legislation almost stands still. It is curious to observe the different lights in which the abeyance of Party is regarded by different sections of the press. Some rejoice over it,-proclaiming Party a thing of the past, a phase of national life doomed to disappear with the progress of civilisation. Others lament over it as a sign of national decay,holding Party to be the palladium of our liberties, and regarding its absence from the Parliamentary arena as they would the disappearance of salt from the sea, or the in-setting of that insensibility which marks the commencement of mortification in the human body, and approaching death. We will not stay to consider which of these views is the greater exaggeration, for the inquiry is needless. We would rather bid both sides spare their breath. The phenomenon over which they lament or rejoice is natural, and will be transient. Party is not dead, but sleepeth. In due time we shall see it walking amongst us again, shouting its rallying-cries. But we do not guarantee that its garb or its rallying-cries shall be the same as they have lately been. On the contrary, we believe they will not be so. Every half-century or so, the main features of the times undergo a change, giving prominence to new subjects, and consequently producing a rearrangement or modification of the antagonistic parties in the State. One of those cyclical revolutions is now in progress. Domestic politics, which have so long been the shaping power of our great parties, are at zero; and the antagonism of the innovating and conservative principles in the State has sank into a neutrality producing repose. Content with 3 D the rest which has thus, by no express act of its own, come to it, the country for the moment heeds not to inquire what is the cause of this lull, or what will be its end. But through the hush of the general quiet there is heard a voice, almost as spirit-like and bodyless as that which of old bewailed the death of Pan, lamenting that great Parties are dead!-and that the calm of the political waters betokens their settling down into a Dead Sea or a Slough of Despond. To our eyes, as they wander over the face of merry England, comes no such foreboding, We see the people politically contented, materially prosperous; and if the passion for legislative changes have become moderated from its recent intensity, we accept the phenomenon as one desirable in itself, and susceptible of natural explanation. But there is no stagnation in the national life. The heart of England beats as stoutly as everand, we believe, more warmly and nobly. If domestic politics are in abeyance, there is plainly visible to our eyes a crop of new ideas springing up, more elevating, because national not sectional, and more desirable because more called for by the aspect of the times. Many causes, not hard to perceive, have combined to produce the present lull. It is the natural result of our past thirty years' history. During the quarter-century of the great contest with France, it was the War and Peace parties that constituted the great divisions in Parliament; and the grand question ever at issue was -whether we should make peace with the overgrown power of conquering France, and supinely trust for future security to the moderation of our foe; or whether we should employ our strength in timely defence of our liberty and fortunes, and, by steadily continuing the contest, and support ing the states attacked by our enemy, strive to obtain that success which would be impossible if we allowed all Europe to be dominated by the foe and arrayed upon her side. But, once the war was over, Parties began to assume a new shape. Our liberties and wellbeing secured from external assault, the national mind addressed itself to the consideration of our internal condition. Domestic politics thenceforth furnished the subjects of contention in the Legis lature. Parties remodelled themselves. Huskisson began the work of commercial reform. Wellington, as Premier, gave political equality to the Roman Catholics. Grey and the Whigs then took in hand the work of political reform, and carried it out with more zeal than discretion or discrimination. Next Peel began his sweeping measures of commercial reform, which have been carried to the farthest verge demanded by the party of innovation. Lastly, for a brief season arose a question of bud gets and taxation; but no principle was at issue here,--it was a question of details, and so this also died away. In fact, an exhaustive process has been going on. For the last thirty years the national mind has been engrossed with the work of internal reform and domestic legislation, and it has done so much that it has left little to do, what remains, too, being of that neutral tint (such as Legal and Educational measures) which excites no party-rivalry, and allows of the measures being sup ported by men of either side. For a whole generation the nation has been labouring (we do not say always wisely) to renovate and make comely the interior of the palace of the State. We have not altered its goodly dome, but we have scrubbed and chiselled with bold hands at its supporting pillars; we have replaced the vener able tapestries on the walls with freshest oil-paint; we have even "had up" some of the flooring, to remove antiquated inequalities, and have assigned apartments like the rest to members of the family who formerly lived in an outhouse. There has been great strife and keen disputing while all this was a-doing. The majority, of course, have had their way in the main; but in not a few points they have restrained their over-hasty hands at the bidding of the minority, and are now content that it should be so. A good deal, it is true, remains to be done in the house. There will be questions about the dusting and polishing of the furniture, or about the placing of it so as to be most com x. modious, or as to whether certain articles ought not to be sold off, and new ones got in their stead. But these are mere normal wants, which beset all times and places; and the Family, thankful that they have got over the fierce contention on the main points, see no necessity for fighting with the same fury about what remains to be done. Nor could they, though they desired it. A revival of the old partyfeuds at present is as impossible as it would be unnatural. In order to have great parties you must have great principles. None such are at issue: the old ones are used up, the new are but germinating. We need not wonder, then, that there should be a loosening of party-ties, and a paling of party-distinctions, in the arena of Parliament. Parties will rally again and close their ranks when there are great principles to rally round; but it is vain to seek to accomplish this by a factitious excitement. Party cannot be galvanised into activity. Parliament is but a reflex of the nation; and to hope to stir up Party in the Legislature when all is calm and neutral in the country, is as idle as for a child to stir with his stick the slumbering tide of the ocean. The temporary slackening in the career of legislation does not alarm us. -we We wonder how it should disquiet anybody. For the last generation the legislative car has been proceeding with Jehu-like speed,feared, indeed, at times that the rash haste of the drivers would Phaetonlike set our world on fire. That was because, for generations previous, Government had done almost nothing in the way of internal reform. Now the domestic work, the putting of the house in order, has been done pretty thoroughly,-in some respects, we think, only too thoroughly. More has been done within the last thirty years than for generations before. But it is obvious that such a furious remodelment of our institutions must have an end. It cannot be carried on ad infinitum, no more than a man can be employed for ever in overhauling the same ledger or checking the same accounts. Arrears must be cleared off some time; and thereafter there but remain the normal wants of the hour, which, having full time to consider, it behoves us to provide for with amplest deliberation. The late burst of innovating legislation has much resembled the famous furor with which Lord Brougham set himself to clear off the huge arrears of work which he found on his accession to the Woolsack. Many of his deci sions then would not bear scrutiny, but more of them were right; so that, on the whole, it was probably better that he should have made this mad rush, than that the Augean stable should have been left uncleared. But what was pardoned to him in the exceptional circumstances then, would justly be regarded as totally inadmissible in a judge who has ample time to try his cases and consider his verdicts. In this latter position is the British Parliament now. There is nothing so pressing as to make it reasonable that we should take an illconsidered measure rather than wait till it is mended, or till a better be forthcoming; neither is party-spirit so fervid as to unite the stronger side in forcing through their measures, for prestige' sake, whether good or bad. The nation is contented, and on the whole prosperous, surely now if ever we ought to be scrutinising and deliberate in our acts of legislation. This is no excuse for a Ministry bringing forward ill-concocted measures,-of which sin the present Cabinet were guilty last session; but be it known to all men that if the Bills which were defeated last session had been brought forward by the Liberals when the innovation-fever was at its height, the force of party would have been invoked to carry them—reluctant members would have voted with the Ayes rather than oust their party, and ten to one the Bills would have passed with all their imperfections. So that Party is no unmingled good. A country cannot be in a state of health when legislation is so excessive as it has been with us for the last thirty years. Take all the States of Europe (exclusive of Turkey), and the American Union to boot, and we question if their records during that period will show so many important legislative acts as have obtained the sanction of the British Parliament. In truth,. the work of change had continued so long, that it was engen- Ought not Conservatives to be changes never. a facile princeps in this difficult but important department of statesmanship. A Conservative may advocate Legal Reform as well as a Liberal, and has done it better. He may support the Protestant character of our insti tutions as well as a Liberal, and for a long time past has done it better. He may advocate Commercial Reform, and did so earlier and better than the Liberals. Indeed, what names are to be found among the Liberal Ministers that will match as commercial reformers with those of Pitt, Huskisson, and Peel? In these various departments of legislation, the Conservative walks as boldly as, and has distinguished himself fully more than, his Liberal rivals. But in Political Reform, in all matters affect ing our governmental institutions, he maintains an attitude of extreme wariness. Not indeed that his principles debar him from putting forth his hand to modify at times the governmental fabric. On the contrary, Pitt was the first to conceive the project of Parliamentary reform, at a time when the Whig oligarchs had no relish for the change; and it was only when they found themselves wholly excluded from office that the descendants of the latter, as a means of regaining public favour, took up the project which the outburst of the Revolutionary War had caused the great Conservative statesman to postpone. But in later times-owing to the undue fervour of the reformpassion-the Conservative has ever maintained a negative attitude in all such discussions. We think the Conservatives erred in 1830, in resisting all reform; for by so doing they left the country no choice between adopting the crude and sweeping measures of the Liberals, or declaring that it wished no reform at all. Assuredly Pitt would not have so acted. In regard to the present, we trust that Lord John Russell, who has of late discredited himself by his failures alike in home and in foreign politics, will not, from a desire of reviving his faded honours, do violence to the spirit of the times by introducing a third edition of his already "withdrawn and re-withdrawn" Bill for altering the Franchise and Representation; but if he do so, we trust མ་ ཁ་ མ །ས་ ་ the Conservative element in Parliament will be sufficiently powerful to veto any idle tampering with the Constitution. - We repeat, the distinguishing characteristic of Conservatism is the principle, that all changes affecting the governmental institutions of the country be conducted with extreme caution and deliberation. He does not say there shall be no change, and that in all time, whatever be the changes in other things, the franchise and other parts of the Constitution shall remain stereotyped in their present form-unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. But he recognises the truth, that the first requirement of a Government is stability; and that without this, Government is but an organised anarchy,—a hap-hazard phenomenon, which commands no respect, a thing of yesterday, which every one is encouraged to knock down and reconstruct. It is Time that surrounds institutions with a halo of veneration, it is Prescription that makes the rights and usages of society sacred. Time may be a small authority in the sight of a doctrinaire or logician, who idly fancies that humanity should be ruled by what appeals to a mere fraction of their nature, and that men and nations are to be treated as if they had neither habits nor hearts. The oftrepeated revolutions of France tell more terribly than words the futility of all such creations of mere logic. Cæteris paribus, an institution is always more stable the longer it has stood; and there is a loyalty to the Past instinctive in the hearts of all nations, which is the best safeguard of Government against the gusts of reckless innovation, or the violence of usurping tyranny. Moreover, institutions which have stood long, which have been approved by many generations, and under which the country has greatly prospered, must have many excellences, and been well fitted to the times; and the Conservative needs well-assured proof before he will proceed to act on the belief that the times have outgrown them. In all questions relating to governmental institutions, he prefers to walk by the light of Experience rather than of Theory; and believes that in dealing with the venerable fabric of the Constitution, hallowed and fortified by so many august memories, it is a thousandfold safer to take down too little than too much. But Conservatism is not Reaction; it is as averse to a sudden change backwards as forwards. It has sometimes been boasted by Liberals, as a proof of the superior wisdom of their party and of the errors of their opponents, that almost all the changes opposed by the Conservatives have ultimately been carried,-forgetting that this is in great part a necessity of the different positions of the two parties, and that the ultimate triumph of measures once opposed by the Conservatives does not necessarily infer error on their part or wisdom in the Liberals. The maxim of Conservatism being, not that changes shall not be made at all, but that they shall not be made prematurely, it is obvious that they virtually gain their point in proportion as they can delay the adoption of the change until the country become ready for it. The question of Parliamentary Reform was discussed for a generation before it was passed,— was there no benefit in this? And the other great governmental innovation - the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament was approved by Pitt, though postponed as unseasonable; again by Canning; and was ultimately carried by a Tory Ministry. In all countries in a state of progress, these two parties, the Innovating and the Conservative, must exist, the one ever thinking that changes are made too slowly, the other that they are made too fast. The latter venerates and upholds the Constitution; the former is ever thinking how to renovate it. The one is animated by that deep wisdom which expresses itself, more or less in all men, in loyalty to the Past; the others are pre-eminently worshippers of Theory, and are ever ready to faunch the country into the sea of the future under no better tutelage than that of their own logic. Like acid and alkali, the two rival parties in the State have for the moment neutralised each other. The acid of innovation may preponderate |