The "Two Conservatives" are not prepared to accept this humble rôle. They meditate something heroic. They say that "if the Conservative party is to continue to exist as a power in the State it must become a popular party;" "that the days are past when an exclusive class, however great its ability, wealth, and energy, can command a majority in the electorate." "The liberties and interests of the people at large," they say, "are the only things which it is possible now to conserve: the rights of property, the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown itself, must be defended on the ground that they are institutions necessary or useful to the preservation of civil and religious freedom, and can be maintained only so far as the people take this view of their subsistence." These are the principles of democracy. It is here laid down that the people are the only legitimate court of appeal on political questions, and that the decision rests, and ought to rest, with the numerical majority. Before this court the most venerable institutions of the realm may be brought to have their merits sifted, and an adverse verdict is to be followed by a writ of execution. The only test by which they are to be judged is their utility. If they fail to stand it they are to be voted nuisances. The standard of utility is not to be the interests or the supposed rights of any person or class, but the interests of the whole people. The people themselves are to decide what is meant by their liberties, how far they extend, and what other interests shall be superadded in making out the standard towards which our institutions shall approximate.
If these are the principles of Neo-conservatism, our case is made out with a superfluity of proof. Of course there is a pretence of acting on these principles already. When a measure is before Parliament it is assumed that the sole issue in dispute is its utility. The Conservative debater recognizes the decisiveness of this test just as freely as his opponents. But these principles have not been openly avowed by the Conservatives. The "hypocrisy" with which Mr. Disraeli taunted them still flourishes in the form of amiable prepossessions. A vast mass of mystic and traditional lumber still enters into the foundations of Conservatism, and if all this "wood, hay, and stubble" were to be burnt up it would fare ill with the frail fabric overhead. The practical policy of Conservatism would not alter, and could not be altered much, but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower key, and the excessive modesty of the part which alone remains to it in the politics of the future would be put beyond dispute.
It would be interesting to see this theory of Conservatism, quietly admitted though it be into the working details of legislation, hawked for acceptance among the Opposition benches, and note the result. What is this new creed of yours? we can fancy the hon. and gallant member for Loamshire ejaculating. That there must be no class influence in politics? That any half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many dukes? That the will of the people is the supreme political tribunal? That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss the Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient servants? And you tell me that I can profess this horrible creed without ceasing to be a Tory! Before I could with a spark of honesty so much as parley with it I should have to crave a seat among the red-hot gentlemen yonder below the gangway. And the hon. and gallant member would only say the truth. Privilege is the mint mark of Toryism, exclusiveness is its life and soul. The doctrine of equal rights must be in everlasting repugnance to it. Toryism is the political expression of feudalized society, with lords and squires at the top, subservient dependants half-way down, and a mass of brutalized serfs at the bottom. It has been comparatively humanized by modern influences, but nothing can change the bent of its genius. With privilege vested interests of all sorts enter into ready fellowship. All those good citizens who have reason to suspect that if a public inquest sat upon them the verdict would not be favourable hasten to edge themselves in as closely as possible towards the privileged circle. The village rector, who does his duty with all the conscientiousness of a beneficed Christian, but who prizes his glebe and tithe, rushes to Cambridge to swell the majority for Mr. Raikes. Gentlemen of the long robe who make politics a vocation gravitate for some reason or other towards Liberalism; but the lower branch of the profession displays an opposite tendency. The county lawyer, who makes two-thirds of his income out of the mysteries of conveyancing, has reason to dislike such things as the registration of titles, and the transfer of estates by a few sentences extracted from a public record. The licensed victuallers, tens of thousands strong and with more than a hundred millions of invested capital, dread the change which would give them a quiet Sunday in return for a seventh of their profits. The strength of Toryism lies in this phalanx of vested interests and social privileges. The golden chain reaches from squire to Boniface, and still lower in the social scale, wherever some snug little peculium is found to nestle. The principles of Neo-Conservatism would rend the structure from top to bottom. The doctrine that the solution of all our political problems and the fate of all our institutions are simply an affair of numerical majorities at the ballot-box, and that the interests of the people are the sole end of legislation, is enough of itself to smash the party to atoms.
All sensible politicians admit that if the time should come when a large majority of the people are adverse to monarchical institutions it will be vain to think of maintaining them by force. It may be added that sensible politicians seldom discuss such questions. They have too much present work on hand to trouble themselves about the remote and the unknown. "What thy hand findeth to do" is their motto, and out of the faithful achievements of to-day will the better future spring. Nevertheless bare possibilities sometimes present themselves as conundrums to be unravelled, and to the conundrum in question there is no second answer. But it is one thing to quietly accept a proposition and then let it drop out of sight; it is another to run it up to the top of the flag-staff as the symbol of a great party. This is what the "Neo-conservatives" propose to do with their recent discovery. An opinion of the Crown's utility is to determine whether it shall be preserved or destroyed. When the majority of the people cry "Away with it," away it is to go. As soon as the popular fiat is announced, the Sovereign will depart from Windsor, the Life Guards will present arms to the President of the Republic, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the result of a contested election, the Monarchy of England is to be decorously carried to the tomb. This is the doctrine which Tory lords and squires are asked to proclaim with sound of trumpet as the corner-stone of their political creed. "Only so far as the people take this view of its subsistence"—this is to be the Tory patent for the "subsistence" of the Crown. Rather different this from the old cry:—
"Ere the King's Crown go down there are crowns to be broke."
It is true that the peers no longer wear coats of mail, or lead their vassals to the field of battle. Of most of them it is hardly disrespectful to suppose that on critical occasions they would prefer the rear of the army to the van. But the creed is not quite extinct that there are things worth fighting for, and that among them are the Monarchy of England and the rights of the Crown. For practical purposes, perhaps, the creed is obsolete, but it lives in the imagination, and the sentiments which spring from it are part of the cement of Toryism. The solemn abjuration which is now proposed in the name of Neo-conservatism resembles a charge of dynamite.
But in abandoning Tory principles the leaders of the new movement hope perhaps to drive a roaring trade by defending Tory institutions. They will say that they have been obliged to shift their ground, but that they hope to work with better results from their new position. The business of the party is to prevail upon Household Suffrage to accept the survivals of feudalism, and a verdict in the new court of appeal that shall ratify the old creed. It is a creditable enterprise. Will it succeed? It seems but too likely that the efforts contemplated will only serve to weaken the institutions they are meant to defend, and that whatever is practicable or desirable in the objects aimed at will be secured most easily and most effectually by the Liberal party.
Among the political institutions of an old country there are some which certainly would not be set up if the past were obliterated, and the nation were beginning afresh. They were suitable to the times in which they originated, but they are out of harmony with the tendencies of the present day. Perhaps they do some good; at any rate they do not do much harm, and the people tolerate them for the sake of old associations. From this point of view a great deal may be said in their behalf. They make visible the continuity of our national existence, they connect us with a distant and romantic past, they lend to the State something of dignity and poetic charm. Institutions of this sort may be held in veneration by those who can trace them to their origin, and see them in perspective from the beginning. But there is one test they will not stand. They will not pass unscathed through the crucible of modern criticism. They are disfigured by anomalies, they shelter many abuses, they involve an expenditure of public money out of proportion to the services rendered in return, they consecrate a privileged descent, in the transmission of property they violate the rules of natural equity, while the principles on which they rest need only to be developed and applied with logical consistency to overthrow the fabric of political freedom. The best service that can be rendered to such institutions is to say as little as possible about them. A wise friend will not utter a word in their defence unless they are assailed, and the ground selected for defence will then be carefully limited to the dimensions of the attack. The next best service will be to remove from them as occasion offers all unsightly excrescences, to put an end to any anomaly which is beginning to excite remark, and to amend any faults of mechanism which are likely to produce a jar. Such a policy of discriminating reserve may lengthen out their existence indefinitely. But to force them to the front, to exalt them as the ripest product of political wisdom, to hold them forth as necessary to the maintenance of the civil and religious liberties of the people,—this can only be the work of designing adversaries or of blundering friends. As a basis of party action it would be like sand. It would be levelled by the mocking tides of popular criticism.
The programme of the "Two Conservatives" begins with a grand item, the conservation of the liberties of the people. But why "conserve?" Why not extend and advance them? Why should the present stage in the historical growth of our liberties be selected as the point at which conservation becomes a duty? Would not the party which undertakes the task to-day be better pleased if there were fewer of them to conserve? The Tories have always been adepts at conservation, but the things they have been most willing to conserve were not our liberties but the restrictions put upon our liberties. Since the liberties now proposed to be conserved are assumed to be threatened by the Liberals, they must be liberties of a special sort, such as liberty to spread infection, liberty to dispense with vaccination, liberty to send uninspected ships to sea, to keep children away from school, or to send them out at any age to work in the fields, the factory, or the streets. "Personal rights" have good radical sponsors in the hon. members for Stockport and Leicester. Perhaps Parliament as a whole is the best sponsor. The Neo-conservative programme should tell us what is meant by the liberties of the people. The absence of definition may perhaps cover an imposture.
The next object of Neo-conservative devotion is the maintenance of the rights of property. Those rights are of no private interpretation, and belong to sociology rather than to politics. Every man is interested in them who has anything to lose, or who has a chance of acquiring anything. Hence they cannot be claimed as an appanage of Toryism. They are placed under the common championship of all parties. But the exclusive claim set up must have some meaning. The rights of property intended may perhaps be the rights of property as understood by the landlords, in which sense they may include a right to the property of other people; or as understood by the association of which Lord Elcho is president, in which sense they stand in opposition to the rights of the public. We know what is meant by the rights of landed proprietors, of railway corporations, of publicans, of property owners, of shipowners, of pawnbrokers and of corporate bodies, such as the guilds of the city of London. They represent the pretensions of these classes to have their interests preferred to those of the community. It is a case of prescription against equity, of the license assumed by special callings against the checks and guarantees which Parliament has found it necessary to impose for the general welfare. This is a field in which Neo-conservatism can reap no harvest. It will be vain to tell the working man who is the owner of the house in which he lives, that his rights are in the same boat with the right of London companies to squander or misapply the wealth which has descended to them from the Middle Ages. It will be useless to enter an appeal before the tribunal of public opinion in defence of such rights as these on the pretence that they are the rights of property. The unsophisticated reason of the constituencies will resent the assumption as an attempted fraud.
The political institutions which are to be set forth as necessary to the maintenance of the civil and religious liberties of the people are the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown. Of the Crown we have already spoken. It is the least vulnerable of the three, and for this reason it is the least fitted to furnish a party cry. The strength of the Crown resides in its enormous historical prestige, and in the constitutional device, old as the monarchy in principle, but modern in its machinery, by which it is removed from the sphere of responsibility and therefore from party assault. The Crown need not be defended for it is not assailed. If it were assailed there are sufficient grounds for an adequate, perhaps a triumphant, defence. But in mere truth it would be difficult to defend it on the special ground that it is necessary to the maintenance of our civil and religious liberties. Everybody knows that these liberties were won in despite of the Crown, and in opposition to its alleged prerogatives. We had to send a dynasty adrift before we could regard our liberties as moderately secure. No greater disservice can be done to any institution than to advance exaggerated or ill-founded pretensions on its behalf, and this is what Neo-conservatism proposes to do for the Crown. It will be well to keep this institution off the hustings. To utilize it for party purposes seems like an insidious form of treason. The Established Church is fairer game, but absolutely worthless as a means of raising the wind for a forlorn party. An institution which needs all the support it can get has none to share with companions in distress. The Church may have a larger hold upon a portion of the middle classes than it had thirty years ago, but the working classes are separated from it by a wider gulf. Many who attend its services and call themselves Churchmen are utterly indifferent to its political fate. It is preposterous to represent the Established Church as necessary to the maintenance of civil and religious freedom. In the course of her history she has been the unrelenting foe of both, and we have no more of either than she could help our having. The want of disciplinary powers prevents her from interfering with the belief, or, except in grave cases, with the moral conduct of her members, but the paralysis of the authority necessary for internal discipline is not the same thing as religious freedom. The bondage of the Church is not the liberty of the State. Disestablishment has not yet come within the range of practical politics, but if a popular statesman felt it his duty to bring the question fairly before the electorate, it is at least doubtful whether the verdict would not be hostile to the Church. No doubt need be entertained as to the result of such an appeal in the case of the House of Lords. The constitution of the House as an assembly of hereditary legislators is admitted to be indefensible. Its theoretic prerogatives are tolerated only on the understanding that they shall never be exerted. It exists by virtue of habit and indifference, aided by a conviction of its powerlessness. As a decorative institution there is no great eagerness to pull it down, but whenever the House forgets that its functions are ornamental, and commits itself to a serious issue with the Commons, its last hour will be at hand. The step most likely to precipitate its doom would be for the Tory party to glorify it as the palladium of our liberties, and try to get up popular enthusiasm on its behalf. The House of Lords would not long survive that treacherous homage. It would be beaten in one campaign.
No: from whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain that the attempt to reconstruct the Tory party on a Democratic basis cannot succeed. The open avowal of such an aim would deprive Toryism of all backbone and reduce it to the condition of a moribund jelly-fish. It is not given to any creature to change its nature and yet continue to discharge its old functions. It is true that Toryism in order to get on at all with the present age is obliged occasionally to act on Liberal principles. The device gives no offence so long as it is adopted quietly, and if suspicions are awakened a few heart-stirring speeches in the old orthodox vein suffice to allay them. A formal repudiation of old ideas is quite another thing. Just as Utopian is the project of defending Tory institutions on Democratic principles. There are two arsenals from which political combatants may choose their weapons, the historical and the scientific. It is from the former that the champion equips himself who offers battle on behalf of institutions that have descended to us from hoar antiquity. Weapons taken from the latter are unfit for such a service. Every blow would recoil upon the institution which it was the champion's aim to defend. To abandon the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown to the uncovenanted mercies of modern political criticism is a rash experiment. The hope which sees in such an experiment a fresh lease of life and new chances of ascendency for Toryism is absurd.
Yet there is, and always will be, room for a Conservative party in English politics, only it must move along the historic lines, and not needlessly renounce its old watchwords. We need two brooms to keep our constitutional mansion in a tidy state, one in use, the other undergoing repairs, or put in pickle, and ready to be brought in when wanted. Government by party requires the existence of two parties, and demand is apt to generate supply. It is not necessary that the two parties should be separated by an impassable gulf. It is only necessary that materials for two separate connections should be provided, and in this emergency Nature does much to help us. There are opposite moods of mind in politics as in literature and art; there are antithetical differences of intellect and temperament to be found among men of all countries and all times; there is the standing opposition between what is and what ought to be, between the actual and the ideal, between the desire of the poor human wayfarer to sit down and rest, and the curiosity which ever lures him on. Possession and the desire to possess, divine contentment and still diviner discontent, self-centreing reflectiveness and impulses whose proper object is the welfare of mankind,—here are agencies which play their part in politics as well as in social life. These multifarious forces tend to range themselves on opposite sides, the sympathetic in each class readily finding out their kinsmen in the rest. With such materials to work upon, a Conservatism which chooses to follow the ordinary course of things can never be defunct. Extinction can only come from an endeavour after some monstrous birth against which both Nature and history have pronounced their ban.
Henry Dunckley.