L»'' 5^ 
 
 *; 
 
 'i.
 
 L I B R A RY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N 1 V LRS ITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 coNSERYiTisffi^r':;^ 
 
 ITS PEINCIPLE, POLICY, 'AND PRACTICE. 
 
 A REPLY TO 
 
 MR. GLADSTONES SPEECH AT WIG AN, 
 
 23iJ OCTOBER, 1868. 
 
 BY LOPtD LINDSAY. 
 
 8KC0NU KDITIO.X. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, 
 
 1868.
 
 LONDON : FEINTED BY W. CLOWES^AND SONS, PUKE STREET, STAMFOHD STREET, 
 AND ClIAliING CliOSS.
 
 CONSERVATISM; 
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 
 
 Mr. GtLADSTOXe, in his speech to my friends at Wigaii, 
 has made a grave charge against the Conservative 
 party. He questions the truthfuhiess and honesty of 
 their proceedings, their firmness in their principles, — 
 he is apprehensive that their '' great demoralisation " 
 may contaminate the Liberals. He charges them with 
 " an awkward affectation of Liberal methods ©f pro- 
 ceeding," as instanced by the '^ unparalleled manoeuvre 
 executed by the leaders of that party and by its 
 followers," to wit, the recent Reform Bill. He accuses 
 them of, first, being willing to establish the Roman- 
 Catholic and Presbyterian Churches alongside of the 
 Established Church in Ireland, and since, (if I under- 
 stand him rightly,) of opposing church-disestablishment 
 as promotive of Popery. He describes their policy as 
 dictated throughout by, " instead of enlightened con- 
 viction, a slavish fear." He justifies this imputation 
 by the supposed influence upon them of the demon- 
 stration of " the population of London, indignant at the 
 manner in which the subject" of reform "was dealt 
 with," when they made their "grievances" under- 
 stood by that political feat which " astounded the 
 world " — the pulling down the railings of Hyde Park. 
 He asserts that their conduct, generally, " strikes a 
 blow at the Constitution such as we have never (seen ?) 
 
 B 2
 
 4 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 dealt to it," " destroys faith, destroys confidence, 
 destroys the ties which bind man to man in pubhc as 
 well as in private life," and undermines the trust of 
 the people in their rulers, inasmuch as " we know from 
 a long and repeated experience that all which is 
 required of them is to be a little more violent, a little 
 more menacing to take steps to protect the laws of the 
 country, and then all that they (we ?) desire will be 
 conceded." — Grave charges these ; and, to sum up — 
 after demanding from the Conservatives " consistency 
 of creed," adding *' that is what they have not got," 
 and complaining of the opposition he has met with as 
 " half-hearted, indecisive," and " paltering," " watered 
 down to the extreme of debility," Mr. Gladstone con- 
 centrates his inculpation as follows: — "The Conserva- 
 tive or Constitutional creed is . . not to support any 
 one measure or any one institution ; it is, not to be 
 bound to the maintenance of any one principle ; it is 
 simply this — to this article I believe there will be a 
 rigid adherence ; it is to intend to vote for maintaining 
 Her Majesty's Government in power." 
 
 In the leading points of this indictment Mr. Glad- 
 stone touches the honour of a large body of the gentle- 
 men of England, and does injustice to the deliberate 
 convictions of one half at least of the thinking men of 
 this empire. I beg therefore, in opposition to these 
 charges to submit the three following propositions, — 
 
 I. That it is the duty of the patriot in the present 
 day to be a Conservative — in order to with- 
 stand the too rapid progress of Democracy in 
 England : — And on this point I would say at 
 once, in order to avoid misapprehension, that, 
 althougli I hate Democracy (in its accepted 
 and familiar sense) as cordially as I hate 
 
 /^'\
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 5 
 
 Absolutism, I clieerfully acknowledge tlie 
 democratic principle as a legitimate element 
 in the British Constitution. It is only against 
 its excess, its tendency to predominance, and 
 for the object of preserving unimpaired the 
 balance and harmony, the organic life of the 
 Constitution, that the enlightened Conserva- 
 tive protests and struggles : — 
 
 II. That the Conservative Government arc 
 
 honestly, wisely, and fearlessly doing their 
 best to fulfil this their duty : — 
 
 III. That the principles of the Conservative, 
 fundamentally opposed to those of the Liberal, 
 are as clear and decided now as ever ; and 
 that nothing can obliterate that distinction, 
 each of the two parties representing a counter 
 element of human nature. 
 
 I shall base a general negative to Mr. Gladstone's 
 charge upon my demonstration of these three pro- 
 positions. And I shall therefrom deduce a moral for 
 which I venture to request, from both parties, a candid 
 consideration. 
 
 My object is conciliation. My words will be, I trust, 
 words of moderation. I shall pass over, as lightly as I 
 can, expressions which, however calculated to prejudice 
 and irritate, may be attributed to the passionate flow of 
 oratory. But I will not compliment away what I 
 believe to be truth, — nor would any but those pre- 
 determined to difier wish me to do so. 
 
 I. That it is the duty of the patriot in the present day 
 to he a Conservative, — Patriotism, although scoffed at 
 by the political sceptic, is, like loyalty, a real thing, a 
 ruling motive of action with statesmen and with earnest
 
 6 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 and lionest men in every station of life. And tlie 
 rule for political adhesion is ascertained, historically, 
 as follows : — A nation of the highest type, like that 
 of Britain, passes through three distinct periods — of 
 growth, of maturity, and of decline. The period of 
 growth is marked by the struggle of the People, 
 aristocracy and commons acting in union, for Liberty 
 against the power of the Crown, — during this period 
 the patriot is the Liberal. The period of Maturity is 
 witnessed by the development of two great political 
 parties, springing from and representing the higher 
 intellect of the race ; represented by the national 
 Aristocracy, territorial and commercial; known by the 
 varying names of Tory and Whig, Conservative and 
 Liberal ; contending under the rival banners of Order 
 and Liberty ; each of nearly equal weight and power, 
 and alternately prevailing, the result of the successive 
 struggles being development (at once) and consolida- 
 tion of the political constitution of the country — so 
 long, that is to say, as neither of the two parties (for 
 tljis is the criterion) permanently prevails over and 
 depresses the other. The period of Decline commences 
 from the moment when one of these two great parties 
 begins to obtain a permanent ascendancy in the counsels 
 of the nation ; and it is always the Whig or Liberal 
 party that ultimately does so, supported and pushed 
 forward by the increasing influence of the masses of 
 the people, gradually sharing (as they have a right 
 to share) in the intellectual life diffused by education 
 from the central focus of the national intelligence. The 
 result of this undue exaltation of Liberty and depres- 
 sion of Order is that the ship of the State becomes 
 as it were lopsided ; the free play of political life is 
 checked ; the vigour that springs from opposition, from 
 the independent and sharj^ contention of champions
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 7 
 
 equally powerful, equally honoured by the people, in 
 the arena of public life gradually departs ; selfishness, 
 tyranny, political scepticism, the loss of the sense of 
 national obligation to the laws of Grod, indifference 
 to public honour, contempt for political enemies, and 
 general moral cowardice take the place of the corre- 
 sponding virtues of heroic self-sacrifice, respect for the 
 rights of others, faith, the grateful consciousness of 
 responsibility, jealousy for national credit, chivalrous 
 esteem for our opponents, and indifference to mere 
 popular applause which characterised the earlier life 
 of the community ; and, while private virtue languishes, 
 and Liberty, no longer protected by Order, vanishes 
 from the scene. Constitutional Government in its highest 
 form, as exhibited, for example, by the old Constitution 
 of England — monarchical, aristocratical, and democra- 
 tical in consummate harmony, each element in its place, 
 neither of them predominant — ultimately expires, — to 
 be replaced by Democracy pure and simple, the rule 
 of the mob, short and disastrous in its culmination, 
 born in licence, flowering in anarchy, and to be cut 
 down by Despotism — after which nations may (assisted 
 by others) recover liberty, and even virtue, but can 
 never influence the world as under the privileges 
 which they have once enjoyed, but forfeited. It is 
 many years now since Britain entered on this her Third 
 period, of Decline — the process is a work of time, and 
 she has yet, I trust, a long lease of life and honour to 
 look forward to before the decline developes into that 
 confirmed disease which ends in political death ; but, 
 meanwhile, the gradual and systematic depression of 
 the party of Order in favour of that of Liberty — the 
 encouragement given to the encroachment of demo- 
 cratical influence upon private rights and the harmony 
 of the Constitution — the avowed sympathy with the
 
 8 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 United States of America as a political exemplar and 
 with the revolutionary movements on* the Continent — 
 Mr. Gladstone's very appeal in his recent speech to 
 that mob from whose too close embrace Mr. Bright is 
 endeavouring to escape, are symptoms too marked to 
 be misunderstood ; the test is infallible (if rightly ap- 
 plied) — Britain has entered upon her decline ; and the 
 duty and course of the patriot is thus prescribed and 
 determined as by the Shekineh in the wilderness, — it 
 is to adhere to the party of Order, the Conservative in 
 opposition to the Liberal party, for the purpose of pre- 
 serving the balance of the Constitution, the organic 
 life of the nation, in its highest intellectual range, from 
 overthrow so long as may be possible. And, with this 
 view, it is his province to protest in behalf of the 
 wisdom of our ancestors, to vindicate the presumption 
 that that which has worked well for a thousand years 
 ought not to be precipitately cast aside in a day — in 
 a word, to preach the lessons of past history and ex- 
 perience to a generation accustomed to live politically 
 from hand to mouth, and to a nation which has a 
 mortal aversion to those abstract principles which are 
 in reality the most practical of all things, and to that 
 historical consideration of the causes and recondite but 
 influential relations of things without appreciation of 
 which the present is Lethe and the future Erebus, — 
 a sad defect, if I may presume to say so, in the national 
 character, and a grievous public misfortune ; for there 
 are times in every man's life, and in the lives of 
 nations as at the present moment, when to shut the eye 
 against the testimony of the past and rush blindly on 
 the future would be to commit political suicide. 
 
 Such are my reasons in support of my first propo- 
 sition, viz., that the Conservative is the real patriot in 
 the nineteenth century ; and, in professing and com-
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLTOY, AND PRACTICE. 9 
 
 mendin<^ this faith, I do so on the same consistent 
 ]>rinciple on which, had I been living in the thirteenth, I 
 should have sought mj place of duty beneath the Liberal 
 banner of the barons at Runnymede and of Simon de 
 Montfort afterwards ; or, if in the seventeenth, I should 
 have been, like Montrose, a Covenanter and a Parlia- 
 mentarian till the balance between Order and Liberty, 
 between the rights of authority and the claims of free- 
 dom, had been adjusted — thereafter to resume my natural 
 place on the side of Order — all in the predominant 
 interest of the Constitution. 
 
 I spealv with strong conviction, although not, I 
 trust, with dogmatism, in all this ; but one thing, at 
 least, all candid opponents will confess, that his is not 
 a mean or ungenerous, a half-hearted or a paltering 
 spirit, who, as a patriot, throws in his lot with a strug- 
 gling but pre-eminently constitutional party either in 
 the stormy spring or the yellowing autumn of his nation's 
 history. The Conservative has neither support nor con- 
 solation to expect from popular favour. His su2:>port 
 is from God, and his consolation truly not of this world. 
 It lies in the consciousness of fulfilling what he believes 
 to be his duty, — and, while believing this, he gives full 
 credit to his political opponents for perfect sincerity in 
 viewing their duty differently. — I now proceed to the 
 establishment of my second proposition, to wit, 
 
 IL That the Conservative party are honestly^ wisely, 
 and fearlessly doing their best to fidjil their jMtriotic duty, 
 as above indicated. — The two points that prominently 
 suggest themselves at present as a test of their honesty 
 and wisdom are the fact of the recent Eeform Bill and 
 their policy with regard to the Irish Church, the 
 inquiry being, 1. Why the Conservatives have passed 
 a Keform Bill which some consider unduly deinocra-
 
 10 CONSERVATISM; 
 
 tical ? and 2. Why they refuse to be parties to the 
 disestablishment of the Protestant Estabhshed Church 
 in Ireland ? I submit that the Eeform Bill was from 
 its first conception a fundamentally Conservative and 
 Constitutional measure, and that there are reasons 
 amply sufficient to engage not only statesmen careful for 
 imperial interests, but Churchmen, Dissenters, and even 
 that considerable body of Roman-Catholics of the old 
 constitutional Gallican school who are opposed to ultra- 
 montanism, in support of the Conservative opposition to 
 Mr. Gladstone's proposed scheme of disestablishment. 
 
 1. The Conservative Reform Bill. — It is a fallacy to 
 suppose that because the Conservatives have passed a 
 large and generous measure, it must be in dereliction 
 from their principles. Those principles are essentially 
 large and generous, as well in what they concede as in 
 what, on imperial considerations, they deny ; and the 
 object they had in view in applying them in the case 
 before us was not party aggrandisement at the expense 
 of the Constitution, but the strengthening of the Consti- 
 tution itself in the interest of all — of their opponents, 
 the Liberals, no less than of themselves, — the present 
 danger being (as I would throughout inculcate) that, 
 through the decay and lapse of that Conservative prin- 
 ciple of Order, which the Constitutional Liberals in 
 reality value as highly as the Conservatives do the 
 counter principle of Liberty, the entire political machine 
 may rush into confusion. The question before the 
 Conservative Government was, which class of electors 
 would be most likely to value and support the ancient 
 Constitution of England, and thus return as their repre- 
 sentatives members — whether Liberal or Conservative 
 was comparatively matter of indifterence — worthy to 
 sit in, not a chamber of mere delegates, but an imperial 
 Parliament. That one stratum of society, a lower one
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 11 
 
 in the scale, might be through circumstances more dis- 
 passionate, more capable of exercising tlie franchise in 
 a Conservative, that is (at the present time) a Consti- 
 tutional sense, than another stratum more elevated in 
 social rank, was easily to be conceived. The Conserva- 
 tive Government believed, in a word, on a survey of 
 the entire political field before them, that the body of 
 men now admitted to the franchise were more likely, 
 from a thousand varied influences, to take a broad view 
 of the constitutional questions which would come before 
 them, and to return men of large, liberal, independent, 
 and thus truly conservative views as their representa- 
 tives to Parliament than a higher class^ intermediate 
 between the late and the present constituency, strongly 
 tinged with radical, if not democratic feeling, in whom 
 Mr. Grladstone and the more ardent Liberals would have 
 found strong, perhaps exclusive partisans — necessarily 
 to the enhancement of that impetus towards Democracy 
 which the patriot must, as I have shewn, necessarily 
 deprecate. The Conservative Government therefore 
 pierced through that sandy and unstable stratum to 
 descend to more firm and solid ground as the basis on 
 which — ^not to rebuild, far less to revolutionise, but to 
 underpin the broad and comprehensive but many-sided 
 fabric of the Constitution — that fabric which they 
 wish to conserve as far as possible unimpaired in its 
 beauty and harmony, its symmetry and its strength. 
 In this, I submit, they have acted wisely, honestly, and 
 fearlessly, — wisely, because everything that can retard 
 the permanent depression of the Conservative or Tory 
 clement, and, along with that depression, the incidental 
 depletion of the sister element of Constitutional Libe- 
 ralism as distinct from Radicalism, is a prolongation of 
 the political life and liberty of Eugland,aiid the present 
 measure offered (as the Conservatives thought) a fair
 
 12 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 prospect of this double result, — Itonestly, because, amidst 
 a thousand unexampled ditHculties, keeping the interest 
 of the country steadily in view, and disregarding every 
 meaner consideration, they nobly humbled themselves 
 to seek the co-operation of all parties in the House of 
 Commons towards the achievement of this great work, 
 which none could accomplish except themselves — a 
 humility which inferred not a particle of humiliation, 
 and which none but those incapable of such self-sacri- 
 fice would dare to qualify as such, — and in fine, fear- 
 lessly^ inasmuch as they have reposed a bold and gene- 
 rous trust in the loyalty and patriotic sentiments of the 
 people at large —confident that they would respond to 
 this trust with correspondent frankness and sincerity. 
 The measure was a bold, not a rash one ; it was a wise, 
 l)ecause a constitutional one ; and it remains for the 
 enfranchised classes to shew in future years that they 
 are worthy of the political virtue and discernment with 
 which the Conservatives have credited them. 
 
 2. The Conservative opposition to the Disestablishment 
 of the Irish Church. — That this opposition is not un- 
 warranted upon grounds involving the deepest interests 
 of the nation may appear from the following consi- 
 derations, — and it must not be supposed, because some 
 of the positions may appear to be antiquated, or even 
 novel, in an age (or rather during an interregnum) of 
 religious, philosophical, and political scepticism, that 
 they are the less sound. Some Conservatives may 
 assert less, some more than what is here given, but the 
 general argument m.ay be summarised, I think, as 
 follows : — 
 
 i. That the disestablishment of the Protestant Established 
 Church in Ireland involves in the issue (which is 
 aflirmed rather than denied by the Liberals) the dis- 
 establishment of the Protestant Established Churches
 
 ITS PlUNCirLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 13 
 
 ill England and Scotland. It is argnod that it does 
 not follow, because tlie one cliiircli is disestablished, 
 that the others should be so likewise. Mr. Gladstone, in 
 his speech at Ormskirk, contends to this effect with 
 reference to the Church of England, that that cliurch 
 "cannot" and "ought not" to be disestablished, — 
 *' cannot," because that " perfect regard for vested 
 riglits" which would require to be satisfied in her 
 deposition would cost the country from eiglity to 
 ninety millions; "ought not," because she is strong 
 through her merits in the affections of "the bulk of 
 tlie people." But the " cannot " proceeds on the 
 untenable assumption that Mr. Gla'l stone's sense of 
 justice would animate future parliaments, prone as 
 they will be to confiscation in exact proportion to 
 the prevalence of democratic ideas ; and the " ought 
 not " rests on mere sentiment, the vaguest, least stable, 
 and most fallacious of all things — the sentiment of 
 numbers, the will and pleasure ^ro tempore of a majority. 
 There is no security in such safeguards, 
 ii. That ancient wisdom and religious obligation alike 
 prescribe the public profession and inculcation of 
 religion by nations, that is, State-worship by Establish- 
 ments — the favour of the Almighty towards the nation, 
 as such, being understood to depend on this public 
 recognition of faith and dependence upon Him. The 
 worship of individuals, or of separate sects or com- 
 munions, is private, not public, not official, not national 
 worship. Mr. Disraeli's first proposal, Mr. Pitt's origi- 
 nally, to endow the Presbyterian and the Koman- 
 Catholic as well as the Established Church, did not 
 at least violate this obligation, or expose us to the 
 danger of the Divine displeasure. Mr. Gladstone's, 
 it is submitted, does. Our transatlantic kinsmen'' 
 have tried the experiment now recommended to us ; 
 it remains to be seen whether God's answer to the 
 challenge will nltimately warrant us in following 
 the example. x\ll authority, all experience hitherto, 
 is against it. Mr. Gladstone's scheme would, it is to 
 be apprehended, in its results secularise us as a nation.
 
 14 CONSEKVATISM ; 
 
 and cut us off as a State from the membership of 
 God's family on earth. 
 
 iii. That Christianity — and Catholic, (Ecumenical, or 
 Apostolic as distinguished from Dissenting or Sepa- 
 ratist Christianity — has a prior claim to national 
 recognition and establishment. The criterion of truth 
 is the same now as in the primitive ages, Apostolic 
 Catholicity. It is truth, not numbers, that the State 
 has in all ages looked to in establishing and maintain- 
 ing the national worship of God. To maintain that 
 national worship should veer about, like a weather- 
 cock, to every changing blast of doctrine — to hold 
 that the * vox populi,' the opinion of numbers, the 
 voice of a majority, should determine questions per- 
 taining, not to the World of Knowledge but to the 
 World of Faith — Avould be to assert the principle of 
 the sophist Thrasymachus that * Might makes Eight.' 
 The test of numbers, consistently carried out, would, 
 were we chusing a religion for the world, substitute 
 Buddhism for Christianity. " Gods such as guilt 
 makes welcome " have always been the popular deities 
 of mankind. 
 
 iv. That the present Irish Church, the Protestant Establish- 
 ment, is the ancient national Church of Ireland, which 
 remained Catholic, (Ecumenical, Apostolical, and in- 
 dependent of Kome from the primitive ages till the 
 twelfth century, when the Pope overthrew her in- 
 dependence (after making over Ireland by a bull to 
 the English crown), and maintained the usurpation 
 till the sixteenth, at which time the church in ques- 
 tion threw off the yoke, reclaimed her original inde- 
 pendence, and reformed her doctrine — protesting 
 against Eoman novelties in the exercise of the ancient 
 rights and according to the rule and standard of 
 (Ecumenical Catholicity. A majority dissented and 
 adhered to the Papacy, but this was on their own 
 responsibility, entailing consequences for which the 
 mother church which they abandoned is not respon- 
 sible. The Irish Church thus remains still what she 
 was — Catholic, Apostolical, and independent of Kome 
 now as she was previously to the invfision of the
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 15 
 
 English and the Papal usurpation in the twelfth 
 century ; in some places flourishing, in others a mere 
 lodge in the wilderness ; but still an altar set on every 
 hill, where, even if but two or three are gathered 
 together, prayers are put up and answered for the 
 common weal of the Church, of the empire, and of 
 mankind — still a witness in the land — still a beacon, 
 a land-mark, and a banner for her dissentient children 
 to rally to a\ hen education, freedom of thought, and 
 repentance shall have taught them to value and re- 
 claim their share in the heritage which at present 
 they undervalue. Meanwhile, those dissentient chil- 
 dren, the Eoman-Catholics, are not taxed for her 
 support. Descriptions of her by ultramontane advo- 
 cates as " an ecclesiastical establishment endowed with 
 the confiscated property of the ancient Church of 
 our fathers " — words in Cardinal Cullen's recent letter 
 — are mere flourishes of a very vicious rhetoric — 
 vicious in the true sense of vitium, hollowness and 
 deficiency, as wanting in historical accuracy, the 
 " ancient church " of Ireland having been always 
 (excej)t during the brief period of Papal usurpation) 
 Catholic, not Koman-Catholic. " The argument against 
 the Established Church," I quote the words of the 
 very anti-Conservative Dean of Elphin in his letter of 
 July last, " grounded on the alleged * injustice ' of 
 requiring Koman-Catholics to contribute to the sup- 
 port of a church of which they do not approve, is 
 without foundation; they do not, as Koman-Catholics, 
 contribute tow^ards the support of the Irish Establish- 
 ment ; they merely pay a charge, and that on a 
 greatly diminished scale, to which their property was 
 subject before they became possessed of it; and the 
 proof that this is the view taken of it by all parties is 
 to be found in the fact that no party proposes to 
 bestow the tithe rent-charge either on the landlord 
 or the tenant, — if either landlord or tenant had a just 
 claim on the tithe rent-charge no doubt there would 
 be found some party in Parliament to advocate their 
 claims." Add to this, that the Church before the 
 Reformation was chiefly served by the monasteries.
 
 16 CONSERVATISM; 
 
 and when those were abolished, none of the monastic 
 property was bestowed upon her, but, as in England 
 and Scotland, upon the laity. Her glebe-lands were 
 granted to her subsequently to the Keformation, and 
 never belonged to the Roman-Catholics. While, even 
 if everything the Church now holds could be proved 
 to have been held by her (as it was not) before the 
 Reformation, she would still, as above shewn, be 
 entitled to it all in simple right as the ancient, 
 national. Catholic, but protesting and emancipated 
 Church of Ireland — the Roman-Catholics being there, 
 as in England, dissenters from her Apostolical and 
 (Ecumenical rule and standard. No * injustice ' there- 
 fore attaches to the existence and maintenance of the 
 Irish Church on this ground. The real * injustice ' 
 would be to deprive the Roman-Catholics of their 
 ancient Church, their rallying-point and city of refuge 
 in the future. There would be unmistakable ' injustice ' 
 to the faithful few who remained staunch to their 
 church, were we to punish them by church-disestablish- 
 ment for the lapse of their less stable brethren — and 
 ' injustice ' too to the families of the English settlers 
 who have adopted Ireland as their home on the faith 
 of the maintenance of the Irish Church as the religious 
 establishment of the country. No consideration is 
 paid to the rightful claims of either of these bodies 
 of men in the Liberal scheme. 
 V. That, passing from the question of religious obligation, 
 disestablishment of the Established Church in Ireland 
 and England would lead to great moral evils by 
 throwing the clergy upon their spiritual weapons, the 
 artillery of terror, and betraying them and the laity 
 into the successive phases of Enthusiasm, Fanaticism, 
 and Spiritual Despotism. It was as a protection 
 against such evils, and generally against the aggres- 
 sive instincts of a priesthood, that the original estab- 
 lishment of the Catholic Church by Constantino and 
 his successors, and all other church-establishments 
 since, were designed, politic ally, to serve. This object 
 is attained in the case of the Churches of England 
 and Ireland by an arrangement or compact, binding
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PPACTICE. 17 
 
 alike on Clmrch and State so long as it continues; 
 the State establishing and endowing the Church ; the 
 Church submitting herself to a system of doctrine and 
 discipline agreed upon by herself in the first instance, 
 but defined, sanctioned, and enforced by the civil law 
 — which secures to each of the two great parties 
 known as High Church and Low Church its se^eral 
 independence — each being allowed a large latitude as 
 demanded by its constitutional importance, but each, 
 on the other hand, balanced and checked by the 
 other, and thus prevented from carrying its instinctive 
 principle and passionate views into injurious and un- 
 Catholic excess, the result being a sustained, healthy, 
 and organic general vitality. But, disestablish the 
 Church and thus terminate the compact — the Church 
 then re-enters into full possession of her original 
 powers, her spiritual sword; and — for, excellent of 
 the earth as they are, the clergy are but men — 
 nothing remains to prevent the excess of either party 
 in their instinctive directions beyond the bounds of 
 Cat]iolic and Constitutional moderation. The imme- 
 diate consequence of Disestablishment would be that 
 the two parties of High Church and Low Church 
 would start asunder in the inherent hostility of their 
 principles; the Common-Prayer-Book, its text and 
 Its rubrics, would no longer be a standard for both, 
 prescribed by law,— High Chm-ch and Low Church 
 \vould add, abridge, or excise at their pleasure; 
 Eitualism would press closer and closer to Kome, 
 ultra-Evangelicalism nearer and nearer towards Pro- 
 testant Dissent ; every church would have its separate 
 * use,' and Congregationalism would practically usurp 
 the place of " the Catholic and Apostolic Church " in 
 England. Deprived of the ttov arco provided by the 
 legal check on eccentricity, no room w ould be left for 
 the man of moderate views and temperate counsels, 
 the sound churchman, whether High Church or Low 
 Church, of the present time, who atone.-; by his 
 wisdom and his independence for the extravagance of 
 his more ardent brethren, — where competition is the 
 general rule, and the clergy live by their congrega- 
 
 C
 
 18 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 tions, the passions of those congrep^ations determine 
 the standard of their teachers ; where there is no 
 independence, men must be ultra^ must maintain 
 their influence by exciting and riding upon the storm 
 of those passions, although without governing them, — 
 otherwise they are left in the lurch. Men are not 
 goA^erned by temperate counsels in spiritual matters, 
 but by working on their enthusiasm, on their fanati- 
 cism, till voluntarily — laity and clergy acting and 
 reacting upon each other (and this would be pecu- 
 liarly the case in a country densely peopled and of 
 old traditions like England) — they submit themselves 
 to that spiritual thraldom which, whether exercised 
 in the halls of the Vatican or in a Presbyterian synod 
 of the seventeenth century is incompatible with 
 Liberty, either religious or civil. There is nothing 
 new in all this, — the wisdom of other days, thought 
 lightly of in the present, and that experience which 
 can only be gathered by watching the issues of prin- 
 ciples in events and investigating the causes which 
 have occasioned laws to be made, alike testify that it 
 is only in the alliance of Church and State on equal 
 terms, each yielding somewhat to the other on the 
 principle of ' give and take,' that either Church or 
 State flourishes, or that Liberty, civil and religious, 
 is secured. Liberty would be depressed by Church- 
 Disestablishment in the exact ratio in which Order 
 would be depressed through the prevalence of Demo- 
 cracy in the State ; and it is in defence of the 
 harmony and balance of the Constitution, thus 
 menaced on both sides, that the Conservatives are 
 consistently opposed to all such revolutionary inno- 
 vation. It is hardly necessary to remark that, with 
 a lower grade of clergy, which we must look for if 
 the principle of disestablishment be inaugurated in 
 L^eland and carried out in England, the temptations 
 to the abuse of spiritual influence, in the direction of 
 superstition, above pointed out, will be all the more 
 powerful, and the mischief done greater. 
 vi. That the present Establislied Church and other Presby- 
 terian communions of Scotland and the Dissenting
 
 ITS PrvlNCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 19 
 
 communions in England and Ireland would suffer 
 grievous deterioration from the disestablishment of the 
 Established Church in England and Ireland, which, as 
 a standard set on high and a witness in her Catholic 
 capacity to both sides of truth as of equal importance, 
 has contributed to their preservation from that mate- 
 rialistic and idealistic declension in the directions 
 either of Socinianism or Rationalism to which Dissent 
 naturally gravitates, and which their brethren, the Cal- 
 vinists in France and at Geneva and the Lutherans in 
 Germany had respectively reached by the close of last 
 century, — to revive undoubtedly in the present, but 
 mainly through the reaction to unintellectual mys- 
 ticism. 
 vii. That incidentally with the disappearance of a learned 
 clergy, consequent upon disestablishment and the 
 practical reduction of the Church to mere missionary 
 proportions, the whole tone of religious teaching in the 
 three kingdoms would degenerate ; the laity would be 
 deprived of the shield they have hitherto enjoyed 
 against the dogmatism of Rome on the one hand and 
 of Infidelity on the other through the controversial 
 training of the clergy ; the clergy, themselves, would, 
 in proportion to their want of depth in theology, tlieir 
 utter ignorance of any comprehensive philosophy, and 
 their nearer approximation in social rank to the masses 
 of the people, become more and more open to in- 
 fluences materialistic and idealistic, in either case 
 equally superstitious ; while in the Dissenting com- 
 munions this clerical degeneracy would indirectly pro- 
 mote the peculiar aberrations to which their several 
 idiosyncrasies render them liable, as noticed in the 
 preceding paragraph. Rome would thus be trebly 
 armed in the controversy against the Anglican Clnirch, 
 Anglican Protestantism ; Rationalism would become 
 rampant from the opposite quarter, — theirs would be 
 the gain, the triumph ; and thus Mr. Gladstone's pro- 
 posed measure would in its effects be the most fatal 
 blow to the Reformation and to Christianity ever struck 
 during the last throe hundred years. Add to tliese 
 considerations that Secular Education, an excellent 
 
 C 2
 
 20 CONSERVATISM; 
 
 thing so far as it goes, can offer no protection against 
 these results ; Denominational Education can but pre- 
 occupy the heart with personal piety, — it is only the 
 culture of a profound theology by a learned clergy, 
 from whom the working clergy (as they are called by 
 an invidious distinction) receive that daily bread of 
 doctrine wliich they dispense to their congregations, 
 that can guard the popular mind from superstition. 
 The seductions of error, the wiles of Duessa and 
 Armida, are usually stronger, through human w^eak- 
 ness and perversity, than the central path aud sober 
 attractions of truth. And, finally, 
 viii. That the sacrifice of the Established Church in Ireland 
 would be utterly thrown away ; it would not pacify 
 Ireland, that is, the Celtic and Eoman-Catholic popu- 
 lation of Ireland, their genuine demand being ior 
 autonomy, for separate government as an independent 
 nationality, in *' federal amity " with England, but (it 
 is hardly disguised) as a republic — to which the trea- 
 sonable cries of * Iso Queen ! No Queen ! ' heard the 
 other day at the Rotunda in Dublin and the avowed 
 proclivities of their leaders sufficiently testify, — \\ith 
 the ultimate view (as appears probable as well from 
 the analogy of history as from other indications) of 
 appropriating and apportioning the entire soil among 
 the native race, the American- Irish included. England 
 has as yet merely scratched the surface in attempting 
 to reach the roots of Irish discontent ; she must dig 
 deeper if she would discover them. It is the land and 
 not the church question that she has to deal with. 
 The political struggles between Celt and Teuton have 
 always turned fundamentally upon such matters as 
 the right to the soil, the rules of marriage and legiti- 
 macy, of succession, of tenure, and of allegiance, as con- 
 trasted in the varying codes and customs of Celtic versus 
 feudal and Teutonic law. The antagonism between the 
 native Celtic race and the Saxon and Norman settlers 
 who ultimately became dominant in Scotland was de- 
 bated upon these questions in an alternation of armed 
 insurrections and chronic discontent (gradually abating) 
 from the twelfth to the sixteenth century ; and the pro-
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, xiXD PRACTICE. 21 
 
 bability is, that dim traditions of a time when the hmd 
 was the common property of the tribe, and the chief — 
 represented now by the landlord — received merely a 
 provision or aliment out of it, having no proprietary 
 interest, linger on in the minds of a race so tenacious 
 of ancient memories as the Irish, and animate, uncon- 
 sciously to themselves, the present demands upon 
 England. But, stopping short of the extreme con- 
 clusion, England must ask, when required to concede 
 church-disestablishment, w^hat farther extent will she 
 be expected to go to in the effort to pacify her Celtic 
 sister ? It is above all things important to view this 
 matter calmly, and under a sense of justice to England 
 and the British Empire, generally, no less than to 
 Ireland, Celtic Ireland, in particular. Under a generous 
 abhorrence of what he believes Ireland to have unde- 
 servedly suffered at English hands during the last 
 seven centuries, Mr. Gladstone has pledged himself to 
 grant, not church-disestablishment only, but every- 
 thing the Irish may ask. In replying at Wigan to the 
 objection (tabled by himself) that " the Irish never will 
 be satisfied, that they invent one demand after the 
 other, and that any concession that is made to them 
 only makes them keener to agitate for the next," he 
 answers by paralleling Ireland to a just creditor and 
 England to a solvent debtor, and laying it down that 
 " Ireland is entitled, in my judgment, to ask of Eng- 
 land, not five shillings, nor ten, nor fifteen, but tw^enty 
 shillings in the pound" It remains to be seen whether 
 the Liberals, and beyond the Liberals the country, will 
 endorse this magnificent cheque upon the national 
 exchequer. The very extravagance of such a pledge 
 by a future premier renders it ])er se impossible that 
 the sacrifice of the Irish Church should, in terms of 
 the present point of the Conservative argument, pacify 
 Ireland. The Conservative Government will doubtless 
 (for I know nothing of its counsels) suggest what it 
 may consider wise and equitable towards removing 
 every just ground of complaint. But when the Irish 
 demands are based and vindicated upon a broad charge 
 of cruelty and injustice perpetrated and persevered in
 
 22 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 for seven hundred years by the stronger against the 
 weaker sister, it behoves England (for Scotland, I am 
 happy to say, has no responsibility in the matter) to 
 turn, thus upbraided, upon her accusers, and ask the 
 question boldly, with the history of Europe in her 
 hand, " Have I been so much to blame ? Has Ireland, 
 has the Irish race suffered more than other countries 
 and races similarly situated have suffered and must in- 
 evitably suffer in the process of their being welded into 
 nations ? Has not my policy in other respects been 
 that of self-defence, Ireland being the Pope's entrenched 
 camp within the limits of the British empire, perpetu- 
 ally threatening my independence ? I acted up to the 
 light of the civilisation of the times, and have been 
 neither better nor worse than my neighbours. For the 
 last eighty years, it is admitted that I have done much 
 for the good of Ireland." This is a point of view which 
 has not as yet been done justice to, and which, not the 
 Conservatives only, but Englishmen en masse (always 
 prone to write bitter and sometimes unjust things against 
 themselves) ought to take notice of. History, as usual, 
 supplies the explanation of the whole difficulty, and 
 suggests the remedy. The misfortune of Ireland, she 
 tells us, has been that, unlike Gallic France, Celti- 
 berian Spain, Cymraic England, and Gaelic Scotland, 
 all of them fundamentally Celtic countries, Ireland 
 was only half conquered, and that the native race has 
 never become amalgamated with the Teutonic. That 
 certain races, including the Celtic, only attain to the 
 highest development they are capable of through sub- 
 jection to and fusion with others stronger and more 
 energetic (though not more admirable otherwise) than 
 themselves, to the generation between them of a higher 
 and more progressive race than either of the parent 
 stocks, separately considered, is a law of nature ; and 
 till the Irishman ceases to fight against it — till he 
 lends himself to the process of amalgamation in blood, 
 in thought, and in common interest with his Teutonic 
 brethren — till he accepts a destiny which, as shewn by 
 the example of the kindred nations above enumerated, 
 offers him a glorious future of development and pro-
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PPACTICE. 23 
 
 gress, he must be content, according to the historical 
 analogies thus indicated, to remain what he is, an 
 anachronism in the nineteentli century — not a loving 
 and beloved member, but a thorn in the side of the 
 British empire. It is cruel to see a gallant people 
 deluded by such expectations as those held out at 
 Wigan into persistence in a recalcitration which, if 
 pushed beyond patience-point, would change the pre- 
 sent kindly spirit of the English people iuto bitter 
 hostility. Englishmen are very liberal with other 
 people's property, but, if touched in any tender point 
 themselves, their sentimental sympathies shrivel up 
 like a morning mist. There are no limits to human 
 inconsistency. Meanwhile, England may be assured 
 that nothing short of the subversion of the Anglo-Irish 
 interest in Ireland, on the cry of * Ireland for the Irish,* 
 would satisfy the present race of Irish agitators ; and 
 as for the disestablishment of the Established Church, 
 which Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals N\ould flini!: to 
 them as a peace-offering, the Celtic Cerberus would 
 barely smell at the sop. 
 
 Lord Russell observed, in his speech on the Irish 
 Church at St. James's Hall some months ago, that his 
 " difficulty " in speaking on the subject of that church 
 was " the difficulty of finding any arguments in defence 
 of it." The difficulty of the Conservative would be to 
 know where to stop, — so numerous are the contin- 
 gencies, so wide-spread the issues to which, in their 
 ramifications, these considerations point. Enough, at 
 least, has been said to show that the Conservatives do 
 not oppose the proposed disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church without reasonable cause ; that the Churchman, 
 the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the GaUican Eoman- 
 Catholic (in so far as he dreads ultramontane despotism), 
 and the tenderer of civil and religious liberty, are all 
 interested in her preservation ; and that, so far from 
 " Protestantism and Popery " having " nothing what- 
 ever to do with the question " of the Irish Church wlicn
 
 24 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 " we get rid of prejudices " and " simply look at the 
 pith and kernel " of the matter, as urged by Mr. Bright 
 at Edinburgh, the problem — like all such political 
 problems — is complicated and deep far beyond the 
 superficial or partial glance, and ought not to be dealt 
 with in the fury of popular passion or under the 
 influence of the softer seductions of sentiment, but on 
 the paramount and sole consideration of imperial in- 
 terest, — never forgetting that every member of a 
 composite nationality like ours is expected to abate 
 somewhat of its claims, real or supposed, towards the 
 common good in return for the benefits it receives, or 
 may receive, from cordial acceptance of an amalgama- 
 tion such as that through which England and Scotland, 
 at least, are content to coalesce into the undivided unity 
 of Britain. Would that Mr. Bright, who thinks so 
 lightly of the question as between " Protestantism and 
 Popery," could listen to what is being said around me 
 at this moment by Ultramontanes and liberal Eoman- 
 Catholics of Italy, — the former expressing their delight 
 at the near prospect of the Pope recovering in England 
 what he has lost in Italy and Spain — viewing the dis- 
 establishment of the Irish Church as the beginning of 
 the end of Anglican Protestantism ; the latter warning 
 us against the Papacy as a political far more than an 
 ecclesiastical 'governo,' but doubly to be dreaded on 
 that account ! The fate of the Irish Church is watched 
 with the deepest interest here as significative of the 
 future relations of England and Rome. 
 
 If then — to sum up my vindication of the second of 
 my three propositions, as stated at the commencement 
 of this letter — the Conservatives and their Government 
 have acted, as has been shewn, in the true interests of 
 the Constitution in passing a large and generous 
 measure of Reform, leasing the suffrage on the broadest
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 20 
 
 foundation compatible with political responsibility ; and 
 if they stand justified by the considerations above sum- 
 marised in opposing the proposal of Mr. Griadstonc to 
 disestablish the Irish Church, and thus inaugurate a 
 principle at variance (as has been shewn) with obligation 
 to God, with the interests of religion, with the dues of 
 civil (always bound up with religious) liberty, and 
 with the time-honoured policy of this great empire ; 
 then, I submit, they have acted at once wisely and 
 honestly, and fearlessly too, in every step they have 
 as yet taken — as true patriots — fulfilling an obligation 
 which nothing but a sense of duty would induce higli- 
 minded English gentlemen to undertake ; and I claim 
 for them, whether in office or out of office, the sympathy 
 and respect of the Liberals themselves as the due of 
 men who have devoted their time, their thoughts, their 
 experience, and their credit to the maintenance, as best 
 they might, of the landmarks of the Constitution against 
 the influx of democracy that threatens to overwhelm 
 and confound them. — My third proposition is as fol- 
 lows, — 
 
 III. That the principles of the Conservative^ fundamen- 
 tally opposed to those of the Liberal, are as clear and, 
 decided no^v as ever, and that nothing can obliterate that 
 distinction, each of the tvjo parties representing a counter 
 element of human nature. — This proposition has been 
 incidentally proved, I think, in every sentence of the 
 preceding paragraphs. Some further illustration may 
 however be added here, partly with a view to the moral 
 which I propose to point upon a review of the entire 
 argument, and partly with reference to the cliai"ge of 
 inconsistency and of varjnng and (as represented) 
 dishonest counsels constantly objected, and not by Mr. 
 Gladstone only, against the Conservative party. It is
 
 26 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 far better to face and to trample such attacks under 
 foot, once for all, than to give them the go by. 
 
 The Conservative represents the Imaginative as the 
 Liberal does the Reasoning element — I might call them 
 the Aristotelic and Platonic elements — in the Intellect 
 or higher life of the nation — the former (as I have pre- 
 viously said) struggling for the rights of Order, the 
 latter for those of Liberty — principles essentially distinct, 
 yet equally important to Constitutional Government, 
 which springs from their reconciliation or compromise. 
 There can but be approximation to an absolute ideal, 
 and Constitutional Government shares in the imperfec- 
 tion ; but the compromise is more equal and more just, 
 the ideal more nearly attained to, in the British Consti- 
 tution than in any other hitherto developed among man- 
 kind ; and thus the nations of the Continent have been 
 wont to point to it as the supreme expression of polity, 
 the proudest national heritage on earth. The prominent 
 distinction between the two parties through whose an- 
 tagonism this constitutional compromise has been gene- 
 rated lies in their contrary views of Power. To the 
 Conservative, and especially to the British Conservative, 
 Power, as proceeding and delegated from God to Man, 
 accepted and ratified by Man in law, and expressed in 
 the political constitution of his country, is a sacred 
 trust ; and, while fully recognising the rule of growth, 
 maturity, and decay inherent in all sublunary things, 
 he stands (as I have already stated) upon the presump- 
 tion that institutions which have upon the whole worked 
 well, to the general good, from antiquity to the present 
 time bear the stamp of excellence and, although not 
 unsusceptible of improvement, ought not to be carelessly 
 tampered with or set aside. With the Liberal, and 
 especially the British Liberal, Power ascends from the 
 People. There is to him small sanctity in prescription ;
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 27 
 
 the wisdom of age is of little account beside the enthu- 
 siasm, the generous but somewhat presumptuous enthu- 
 siasm of youtli ; prepossessions to him are prejudices ; 
 the notions of the hour, lightly taken up, run away 
 with his judgment ; he marches with airy step where 
 angels might fear to tread ; and he refers all things, 
 like German philosophers, to the criterion of his inner 
 consciousness_, of his individual sense of what is just and 
 light, judging of matters by the light of the moment 
 and in the interest of the hour, treating everything (it 
 is his boast) on its own merits, and those its superficial 
 merits, in neglect of the deeply interlaced relations of 
 things below the surface, with but little regard to the 
 experience of the past, and apparently in indifference 
 (it would be hard to say, wilful blindness) to the long 
 train of consequences which must follow upon adoption 
 of the measures he advocates. In his gilded barge, 
 hope at the prow and fortune at the wheel, he speeds 
 gaily along on the political Nile, amid the applause of 
 the millions that crowd its banks, easily reconciling 
 himself to the situation wherever circumstances compel 
 him to shoot a more decided rapid towards the cataract 
 of democracy — never, in fact, seriously realising the 
 bourne to which he is tending. There is something 
 suggestive at once of pleasure and sorrow in watching 
 such a course ; it is impossible not to sympathise with 
 all that is generous, free, and hopeful in the enthusiastic 
 Liberal, his zeal for progress, his faith in the perfecti- 
 bility of man^ his confidence in the ultimate victory of 
 good over evil. But the calmer eye, the more chastened 
 heart, the broader view of the Conservative — an elder, 
 if not a wiser man — cannot consent to yield to the 
 impulse of the hour and risk on the chances of a throw 
 principles and institutions which, once forfeited, can 
 never, he knows, be re-vindicated or re-estabhshed. He
 
 28 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 may be too cautious, as the Liberal may be too bold, — 
 it is for the two Houses of Parliament and the Sove- 
 reign, as representing the National Unity, to strike the 
 wise and equitable medium ; but the presumption of 
 right — this much I may say with confidence — must 
 always, in the third and declining epoch of a country, 
 be on the side of the Conservative with respect to each 
 great constitutional question that emerges from debate, 
 till the national fiat has been pronounced, for good or 
 for evil. He must then review his ground, and make 
 his dispositions anew, in the interest of the trust con- 
 fided to him, the defence of things as they are, of the 
 Constitution d^^ pro teiwpore it is. 
 
 It is at such moments of constitutional crisis, when 
 parties occasionally appear to the superficial observer 
 to have changed sides — when a Tory ministry, for 
 example, concedes political emancipation to the Boman- 
 Catholics — when, as the other day, a Conservative 
 ministry terminates a period of protracted agitation, 
 a political dead-lock, by passing a measure of Reform 
 at which the Whigs from their peculiar point of view 
 stand aghast through the distrust they feel of those 
 classes in whom the Conservatives repose confidence 
 as loyal to the Constitution — or when, as in a case 
 instanced by Mr. Gladstone, an individual member of 
 the Conservative party, bewildered by the situation, 
 appears to have started strange heresies in the excite- 
 ment of the moment, unworthy in truth of serious notice 
 — it is at such times that the questions are often asked 
 in broader terms than even Mr. Gladstone has used, 
 ' What difference is there practically between Conserva- 
 tive and Liberal ? Have the Conservatives any prin- 
 ciple at all ?' The answer to such questions is easily 
 given, and Mr. Gladstone has himself anticipated it in 
 his picture to the Wigan Liberals of " the great Liberal
 
 ITS PRIXCIPLE, rOLICY, AND PRACTICE. 29 
 
 army of tlie country " pressing its way with determina- 
 tion, strength, and courage, "from stage to stage," 
 through what he believes to be the " disordered ranks " 
 of tlie Conservative l^Jarty, towards the object they aim 
 at — Wliat ? While the Whigs are, in a j^olitical point 
 of view, an attacking and a stronger army, menacing the 
 citadel of the Constitution, the Conservatives are an 
 army of defence, weaker, and fighting in these latter 
 days at a disadvantage. The tactics of the two parties 
 are thus of a wholly different character, in the one case 
 simplicity itself, in the other very complex — the latter 
 consequently more prone to error, more liable to mis- 
 construction when right, more difficult at all times to 
 be understood. The policy and action of the Liberal 
 leader is consistent, in one direction, impelled onward 
 by a motive power such as the floods that are at pre- 
 sent sweeping away the bridges, destroying the roads, 
 and desolating the pleasant vineyards amongst which I 
 am writing. But while the policy, or rather principle, 
 of a Conservative leader is j)lain, as a defender of the 
 Constitution, his action is hampered by every difficulty 
 and his path beset by every peril, — it needs the stra- 
 tegic skill of a consummate general to maintain his 
 ground. Sometimes he has to seize a position in ad- 
 vance, or carry the war boldly into the enemy's quar- 
 ters — more often he has to fall back, like a Fabius or 
 a Wellington, from post to post — when a measure is 
 carried against his will, he must acquiesce, and he 
 honestly acquiesces, in the accomplished cliange ; but 
 the modifications thus successively efiected, in spite of 
 his better judgment, in the territory which, by common 
 consent, becomes after every such change the still fur- 
 ther restricted and thus the more disadvantageous area 
 of contention constantly necessitate a change of tactics ; 
 what he struggled against yesterday may become under
 
 30 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 altered circumstances the necessity of to-day, what was 
 inexpedient then may be expedient now, for the pro- 
 tection of the Lares and Penates under his charge. He 
 must, in a word, in military phrase, adopt a fresh and 
 broader basis of operations on every such occasion. 
 Were this essential distinction between the political 
 warfare of Whig and Tory appreciated there would be 
 less misconstruction of the action of the Conservative 
 party, less surprise at superficial inconsistencies, appa- 
 rent variations, in their policy ; nor would any but 
 political novices ask such questions as those above indi- 
 cated. To such, and on the general subject of the pro- 
 position which is my present thesis, and which I trust I 
 have sufficiently vindicated, I reply in one word thus : — 
 The question between Whig and Tory is decided and 
 distinct as heaven from earth — warfare sharp and unre- 
 mitting, but in all courtesy and honesty, for honour, in 
 the discharge of duty — the watchword of the former 
 being Liberty, of the latter Order — each equally eager 
 for the public good ; the Sovereign, as representing 
 the entire nation, presiding over the field of contest. 
 Nothing can obliterate these essential distinctions. 
 
 Such are my three propositions and their 23roof, to 
 wit, I. That it is the duty of the patriot to be a Con- 
 servative in this third stage of England's history; 
 II. That the present Government are doing their best, 
 honestly, wisely, and fearlessly, to fulfil this patriotic 
 duty ; and. III. That the difference between Con- 
 servative and Liberal is one, not of degree in similarity, 
 but of principle in contrast, each of them representing 
 an antagonistic force of nature — the object and struggle 
 of the Conservatives being, broadly, to withstand that 
 too rapid advance of the tide of democracy which, in 
 their opinion, threatens to swamp the Constitution.
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 31 
 
 And on a review of these propositions I submit that I 
 am justified in meeting Mr. Gladstone's sweeping 
 charge of want of principle — his assertion that " the 
 Conservative or Constitutional creed . . is . . not to 
 support any one measure or any one institution ; it is 
 not to be bound to the maintenance of any one prin- 
 ciple ; it is simply this — to this article I believe there 
 will be a rigid adherence — it is to intend to vote for 
 maintaining Her Majesty's Government in power" — 
 with an emphatic negative. 
 
 The moral, a threefold one, which I would draw fi'om 
 the preceding considerations and commend to the atten- 
 tion of both parties in the State, but more especially to 
 the Liberal party, is as follows : — 
 
 (1.) The vitality of the Conservative party, the 
 recognition of their patriotism, and their support by 
 the nation in full and co-equal strength and esteem 
 with the Liberal party, are matter of life and death to 
 England at all times, but pre-eminently so at the present 
 day. These two great parties are like two fair and 
 symmetrical columns which support the British Consti- 
 tution, — like blind Sampson at Gaza, you may pull 
 either of them down, but you will die with the Philis- 
 tines in doing so. In the present lengthening evening, 
 as yet a calm and placid one, of England's glory, the 
 Conservative column is the weaker of the two, not 
 through its own fault but the nation's constitutional 
 defect in the inevitable tendency of her decline ; and if 
 I urge therefore with anxiety and earnestness that, 
 having an onerous and unpopular duty to fulfil, the 
 Conservatives have a claim to national gratitude for 
 their constancy, and to the sympathy and support of 
 the people at large, and of the Whigs or Constitutional
 
 32 CONSERVATISM ; 
 
 Liberals in particular, in their struggle to do their 
 prescribed duty, I say so — or rather a Conservative 
 leader would say so — in no tone of deprecation or 
 apology, but on equal terms of dignity and right. 
 
 (2.) If such wise mutual understanding between the 
 two parties ought in reason to be expected, especially 
 in days like these, and is in fact demanded of them in 
 the interest of the entire nation by moderate men, 
 nothing, it is evident, can tend more to defeat such 
 mutual understanding than imputations — I would give 
 worlds to think that the final clause of Mr. Gladstone's 
 charge, as just quoted, did not infer such — unworthy 
 imputations of sordid motives by the leaders and 
 spokesmen of the one party to the rank and file if not 
 to the leaders of the other. Here too it is better to 
 take the bull by the horns, and explain in what sense 
 the Conservatives, leaders and followers, aspire to 
 office. If the Conservative leaders, as the leaders of 
 every political party must in turn do, aspire to office, 
 or, when in office, seek by the national suffrage to be 
 maintained there, it is, broadly speaking, for the honour 
 of serving their Queen and country, for the opportunity 
 of usefulness afforded them by ministerial power to 
 promote the public good — not for personal aggrandise- 
 ment, and least of all for the loaves and fishes of the 
 official dining-table, — although, be it remembered, if 
 the rank and file of the Conservative party have no 
 share, for ever so short a sitting, in those same loaves 
 and fishes, many of the young and able men who would 
 naturally belong to it will, take part with the popular 
 side — a contingency to be deprecated by the wiser 
 Liberals themselves as further weakening the cause of 
 Order, depriving them of the main let to their own 
 democratisation, and thus double-wise precipitating the 
 national decay. Such imputations, in fact, cut two
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 33 
 
 ways, and cannot be vented without great risk of 
 sapping tlie confidence reposed in those who utter tliem 
 by the temperate men of a party, without whose support 
 the strength of a leader is often found but as a rope of 
 sand. Would the Conservatives, I would ask of such 
 intemperates, be worth their salt if they did not 
 believe in themselves, if they did not fearlessly say to 
 the nation, ' Our rule would be more for the public 
 interest than that of the Liberals ? ' And if so, if you 
 allow this, why impute degrading motives ? Demo- 
 cratise the country if you will — and can; dispense with 
 a Queen, abolish the Lords, disown the Church, reduce 
 your defensibility to that of a hermit-crab, without a 
 shell, be an United States of Lilliput — every man out 
 of Bedlam has the power to cut his own throat if he 
 pleases — but if such be not your objects, speak not, I 
 would entreat you, evil of dignities, of the representa- 
 tives of great national trusts which exist but for the 
 public good, and who would scorn to ask for respect or 
 deference on any meaner consideration. Meanwhile, 
 till that nadir of national debasement be reached, the 
 predominant, unselfish anxiety of the Conservatives — 
 seldom likely now-a-days, in the very nature of their 
 position, to attain to office — will be, when there, to 
 contribute by their counsels and measures to maintain 
 the crown on the Queen's head, to preserve our ancient 
 institutions from destruction, to vindicate old prin- 
 ciples, old truths, from careless dispraise — in short, to 
 stave off as long as possible the engulfment of this 
 grand old British empire in the earthquake of licence 
 and anarchy that awaits her — I do not say to-day or 
 to-morrow, or next day, but ultimately, — and this is no 
 imaginary or alarmist prospect, for the true statesman's 
 eye ranges over, not seventy but a thousand years ; he 
 is in every respect the contemporary of his nation's 
 
 D
 
 CONSERVATISM 
 
 history. This is the plain issue before us at the present 
 moment, at the election and meeting of this new Par- 
 liament — not the mere personal struggle between two 
 leaders, to which those who fawn on America would 
 fain reduce ihe dimensions of the present contest. My 
 words and warning extend far beyond such limited 
 bounds; nor do they apply merely to the particular 
 question which just now divides the counsels of the 
 nation. — Lastly, 
 
 (3.) If the existence and vitality of the Conservative 
 party be, as I have shewn, a matter of life and death 
 to Britain in the present day — and if the tendency of 
 the Liberal leaders be, as now manifested, to betray 
 their followers into a state of things in which the 
 traditional courtesies of political life are forgotten, im- 
 putations are flung out which touch the honour of 
 gentlemen, and amount in fact to an indictment against 
 half a nation, half, at least, of the inteUigence of the 
 British nation ; and if, at the back of all this, the mob 
 are to be called in as referees and arbiters — if such 
 be the premonitory symptoms of the turn affairs are 
 taking in the downward direction under the present 
 Liberal leaders — then, I say, that it has indeed become 
 high time for the honest and independent Liberal to 
 ask himself the question whether, in the face of all 
 this — in the view of what is going on in Europe, and 
 of what recent revelations have shewn to be festering 
 oeneath the surface of English society and breaking 
 out into foul ulcers on the face of British life — it has 
 not become his duty to transfer his allegiance and side 
 with the party which has become identified with the 
 cause of national salvation ? I address this as to one 
 man in five hundred, or five thousand, each such man 
 being worth millions to the cause of Order through 
 the qualities of thoughtfulness, principle, and moral
 
 ITS PRINCIPLE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE. 35 
 
 courage which such transfer of party allegiance in 
 deference to the superior law of duty to the Consti- 
 tution would testify to. The time will come at last. 
 — God forbid that I should see it in my day ! — the 
 ' Cave ' was a foreshadowing of it — when the Liberals, 
 as a body, will learn too late the lessons they at present 
 despise ; and then the remnant of the Conservatives 
 and the Liberals will coalesce at last into one con- 
 stitutional party — but it will be in opposition to 
 the Radicalism, if not the Red Republicanism which 
 the Liberals at present permit their leaders to coquet 
 with ; and when it has come to this, that the political 
 struggles of a nation are between, not the twin and 
 rival elements of its intellect, in the antagonism of 
 which lies the life, and progress, and glory of hu- 
 manity, but between its Intellect in the gross and the 
 brute force of its Mob, cen est fait — it may recover 
 after awhile ; it may enjoy a brief St. Martin's sum- 
 mer ; but, practically, the game is up for ever with 
 such a people. 
 
 What then, in conclusion, I would especially plead 
 for at the present moment, when this new House of 
 Commons is about to meet — is mutual respect between 
 the two great parties of Conservative and Liberal, the 
 growing dereliction from which, as manifested recently 
 both in leaders and subordinates, is a bad feature of 
 the time. One of the marks of a declining nation is 
 contempt, real or affected, for political opponents, re- 
 placing the generous and chivalric esteem for them 
 which characterised its better days. Language such 
 as we have not been accustomed to on this side the 
 Atlantic has been used, and epithets and reproaches 
 flung, in and out of Parliament — especially, I must
 
 36 CONSERVATISM, &c. 
 
 say, against the Conservative party — which are much 
 to be deprecated, which injure those who use them 
 far more in the long run than those to whom they are 
 apphed. The law of charity applies to politics as well 
 as to private life ; and the inculcation and practice of 
 that law as binding upon all sides should be coupled 
 with enforcement of the lesson (still to be learnt by 
 the * schoolmaster ' of this nineteenth century) that 
 Knowledge is mere force, brute and anarchical, but 
 Wisdom is Power, a living, healing, governing intelli- 
 gence — that Knowledge is from below, but Wisdom 
 from above — that Knowledge divides, to misery and 
 to death, but Wisdom combines, for happiness and im- 
 mortality — and that Political Wisdom consists, not in 
 party or self-seeking, not in setting man against man, 
 class against class, but in the pursuit of Harmony as 
 the law and end of national existence, and in the 
 furthering it by that charity of God which recognises 
 the equal claims of Conservative and Liberal in the 
 great account, and credits a Russell and a Gladstone no 
 less than a Derby or a Disraeli (Mr. Bright' s ultimate 
 place is as yet dubious) with honesty and sincerity as 
 statesmen in their contentions at Westminster. 
 
 Oh ! Gladstone, Gladstone ! born for better things ; 
 Why 'mong vile potsherds soil thy silver wings ? 
 Fling off Democracy's ignoble chain, 
 And, soaring, seek thy native skies again ! 
 
 Florence, 11th November, 1868.
 
 
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