There tinomies inherent in human nature. But Toryism is not a love merely of repose, nor of law and order, to the exclusion of progress; nor a devotion to Bagehot's "legality," to the exclusion of "variability." Croker was as far from comprehending his party as Cardinal Newman and the rest. A review of the history of parties will lead the hasty observer to confusion. Toryism is the national as well as the popular party; yet it is not to be identified, because of the Jingoes, with an aggressive foreign policy, any more than, because of Eldon and his comates, with a harsh repression of the masses at home. have been Tory peace Ministers since the age of Anne, as well as Whig Cabinets which were all for war. Pitt was for trade and peace; Liverpool, Peel, Aberdeen, were only too pacific; Palmerston was a Liberal, with the Whig tradition. It is in the word national that we get our first hint for a definition. The oldest Toryism was an expression of nationalism, a protest of the nation, under the leadership of the older gentry, against the dominance of the Whigs. Whiggery was a family conspiracy for place, a sort of oligarchical Plan of Campaign, pursued by a social caste, founded originally on the confiscation of Church lands, which settled its hold on its possessions in the Great Rebellion, seized control of the State at the Revolution, and used the cant of a democratic philosophy ----which resulted, abroad, in the establishment of the republics of France and America-to cover an attempt to put the English Crown into commission, and to convert the king into a Doge. But the the creed the Whigs adopted represented, after all, one aspect of eternal political truth, and it fundamentally, though insensibly, modified their ambitions. They had found it to their interest to profess a special devotion to progress: and progress made them its apostles malgré eux-mêmes. The balance was struck between two parties, each of which represented thenceforward one side of the basal antinomy existing in every English mind; and Whiggery, or the successive substitutes therefor which inherited its traditions, became, as the perennial Opposition, an essential factor in the British constitution a constitution which is not written, and which it is unnecessary to reduce to writing, because it has a psychological basis in the individual citizen. And if it be objected that the Opposition is not an Opposition, when it is in power, that is not to the point. The Whigs, Liberals, Radicals, and Home Rulers of the past; the inchoate congeries of fad-mongers of the present; and their Socialistic or other successors of the future, are all alike, on whichever benches their leaders may sit, in Opposition, in the sense in which the devil, as the first revolutionary and the first critic, was the first Whig. They represent the solvent, decomposing acid in the body politic, in opposition to Toryism, to the national spirit, to the party the party which conserves the unity and the To. MXII. "LE feu est tout, le reste Battles being won and lost, "est rien." So spoke that ab- and the fate of nations dependlute master of war, Napoleon. ing, under God, on this same uch words a hundred years fire so eulogised by Napoleon, o were rather more apposite I propose, at this time of na5 a genius, a seer, a prophet, tional stress, when all thoughts han to the eagle-eyed general are following those who are so ho had personally proved nobly contending for the em gain and again the power of pire, to set forth as briefly as I arme blanche in the hands of can certain facts explaining s trusty veterans. But the and illustrating the nature, me has now come when these character, and properties of the ords may be taken as soberly projectiles used at the present ating an undoubted and in- day. trovertible fact. Slowly but The first point to which it ely the missile, which always is necessary to call attention is, its place in war as long as that there is no special scien has existed, has asserted tific mystery veiling the be ascendancy until it liter- haviour and effect of the -occupies the whole field. modern fire-impelled projectile pether or no cold steel will It is quite true that its energy lose its moral power is not is imparted to it by blazing me to prophesy, but none gases, which start it on its jour deny that its material ney with much noise, flame et in battle has practically and shock; but the flight of the ed away. OL CLXVIL-NO. MXII, institutions of our organism. national to maintain their own oligarchical privileges. The Liberals battled in name for the liberties of the people, but in reality for the temporary economic predominance of certain sections of the middle class. The Radicals, through their archRadical, who is gone, showed their contempt for the populace, which they inflamed to intestine hatreds, by the very coinage of the phrase which sets "the classes in contrast to "the masses." The Tories, as the upholders of all classes alike, or all classes which are useful to the commonwealth, are the best doctors for the diseases, and the best adjusters of the inequalities, of the community. As such they knew themselves, and were recognised, before Waterloo; and as such, on the record of Conservatism since 1832, they would know themselves and be recognised now, by both the rural and the urban populations, if the air were cleared of the memories of Eldonism. The immobility which, though not inherent in Toryism, became characteristic of it in the early decades of this century, was itself the result of a national movement carried to an extreme. The national character, excited by its innate antipathy to the ideas of the French Revolution, crystallised in the sheer obstructiveness of a clique. Burke's "disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, as the standard of a statesman, expresses very fairly the Tory ideal: but it was spoken before the reaction had had time to set. It was said of Eldon that "no man, in the history of the universe, has the praise of having effected so much good for his fellowcreatures as Lord Eldon has thwarted." But Eldon was the evil genius of his party, as well as of the nation. His views represented nothing worse than the fanaticism born of a desperate struggle, in which England was pitted against the world. But they left Toryism under a stigma which has obscured its aims and hampered its usefulness-a stigma which, if those few years be left out of account, is entirely unmerited. This, of all parties, if its history before and after Eldon's time be considered, least deserves to be blamed either for obstructiveness or for oppression. The Tories were ever the popular party, in the sense in which populus may be opposed to plebs. The Whigs, though they flattered the mob and played with academic sedition, existed The Opposition is the party of Progress, with a capital P, and without any delicate principles;-the party of change for the sake of change, or for the sake of advertisement. The Tory party is for stability, good government, and national growth. The one would promote and foster the healthy exercise by all classes of their proper functions. The other would always rather sacrifice institutions to envy, or destroy privileges in a plausible passion for uniformity, than take any practical steps to further the national prosperity. National ism, then, or a due respect for our organic development, is the basic element of Toryism; and not a "spirited," or unnecessarily aggressive, foreign policy. A disposition to preserve and the ability to improve is the test of a Tory statesman, and we have no need for a domestic policy of sop. We cannot afford to indulge even the most patriotic desire to purchase a free hand in foreign affairs, nor the most eager determination to open new markets for our merchants, at the cost of a sacrifice of principle in the shape of bribes to the electors. But to convert a policy of sop into the social reconstruction, we have only to envisage our measures as what in the main they have been and what for the future they must be, as the essential outcome of Toryism; to let our own ideals, in a word, inspire the Unionist party, rather than the atrophied beliefs of our to be found by aiming directly to secure it. It is a sort of by-product of the healthy exercise of all the faculties, in conformity with the idea of duty. Bentham's doctrine was a deliberate reversal of the idea of devotion to the State, whereby civilisation was built up. The dictum implicitly contained not only the Declaration of Independence, but the Revolution of 1789; and not only the Revolution of 1789, but the doctrines of the Manchester School. It was Individualism as against Patriotism; it set the individual above and before his country. "The greatest number" assumed that most mischievous of all falsehoods, the equality of man ; and "the greatest happiness" covered an understanding that happiness was a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. The phrase, in short, was an extension of materialism-a kind of national sensuality. It is the gross mistake of the hedonist carried into the domain of politics. And it involved the whole of Liberalism, with its innate hostility to the national organism as such : with its corollaries within and without; of internationalism, or the desire to dispense with nations inter se; of the levelling of classes at home; and of Free Trade, by which both consummations were to be attained. It is doubtful if several of the most eminent of the Liberal statesmen who are now -fortunately-dead had a full conception of their duty to the State. Conscience they may have had, in the sense in which it is a trouble to certain sec |