best representative society, show that there is a vast body of public opinion which, where imperial interests are at stake, will not be bound by the ordinary rules of party allegiance. Party feeling and skilful intrigue may for the moment obscure the real issue from the national conscience; but the conscience is alive, and, when political necessity demands, will, we firmly believe, declare itself, by returning a body of representatives qualified to restore the reputation of Parliament as the Great Council of the Realm. There are many moderate men, however, who, while deploring the excesses of party spirit, consider party government an indispensable security of our liberties, as though our political mechanism were the cause, and not the effect, of our love of freedom. Government by party is the outgrowth of a particular set of historical circumstances; it has worked well for nearly two centuries, and no Englishman would wish under ordinary circumstances to disturb such a convenient form of Constitutional machinery. But if it degenerate into the mere instrument of despotic oligarchies, the same free spirit, which taught Englishmen to use it as a defence against tyranny, will enable them to replace it by some system more in harmony with the necessities of the State. A contingency of this sort it is at present superfluous to anticipate, but it is worth while to observe the existence of certain political conditions, which indicate that the English Constitution still possesses powers of expansion and development. The Duke of Somerset tells us that no other State was ever governed under such an anomalous mixture of monarchical and democratic institutions.' It is certain that during the last fifty years two distinct tendencies of self-government have been operating on our Constitution, one with a monarchical, the other with a democratic bias. Of these joint influences he notices only the first. The Crown,' says he, though apparently shorn of its ancient authority, has acquired greater influence in the conduct of public affairs.' But at the same time the powers of local self-government have been largely increased. The Municipal Corporations Act was a measure almost as important in its democratic effects as the first Reform Bill. Since 1832 all our chief colonies have by Act of Parliament been granted the power of regulating their internal affairs. The Church of England has recently been affected by the movement, as is seen by the reviving influence of Convocation. And at the present moment there is a growing feeling among men of all parties, that it will be advisable for the House of Commons to relegate to local bodies many of the less important duties with which it is now overburdened. Perhaps Perhaps the most momentous problem awaiting solution is the just definition of the limits of imperial and local self-government. What are the functions of the Government? asks the Duke of Somerset; but he does not supply any very satisfactory answer to his own question. He shows how, under the paternal system approved by Bacon, the State attempted to regulate religion, commerce, wages, and even dress; and how this method was completely reversed in the ideal of Adam Smith, by which 'freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of contract, freedom of trade, were declared to be the true principles of an enlightened Government.' Without expressly declaring himself an adherent of these doctrines, the Duke evidently considers that we are in great danger of reverting to the old Baconian principles. The spirit of modern legislation,' says he, has departed from the general principles propounded by Adam Smith; and, after much discussion, an opposite practice has gradually prevailed.' Is this really the case? It is no doubt true that the rigid principles of non-interference advocated by Adam Smith are to some extent infringed by such measures as the Factory and Mine Acts, the Merchant Shipping Act, and the Master and Servant Act. It is true, too, that the Radical party would carry much further than it has yet gone State interference, in behalf of the many, against what they call the selfishness of the few. For instance, Mr. Plimsoll would have thrown immediately upon the State, rather than on the ship-owner, the responsibility for the safety of the seamen in the merchant service; and Mr. John Morley wishes the State to interfere in the contract between landlord and tenant. But we do not think that the Radicals will find much support for their views in public opinion, nor is it very difficult to determine the motives which governed the Legislature in dealing with the measures we have mentioned. Experience has shown that the mixed nature of man is not adapted to enjoy unrestricted liberty. The system of laisser faire, approved by Adam Smith, had produced, in the growth of the lower orders of the population, conditions dangerous to the welfare of the community; and we venture to say that no civilized government could possibly have refused to interfere with a state of affairs like that disclosed by Lord Shaftesbury when, as Lord Ashley, he moved the Factory Bill of 1842. But the character of all our protective legislation shows the extreme jealousy which Englishmen entertain of State interference; it is prohibitive, not regulative; and, in spite of Mr. Gladstone's wild expressions in Scotland, we doubt if there is any responsible English statesman who is prepared س 250 Monarchy and Democracy. prepared to interfere with freedom of contract. Again, even in legislation which seems at first sight to be of the paternal order, the decentralizing tendency is plainly apparent. For instance, in the Artisans' Dwellings Act, and in the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876, the State does not intervene directly, but lodges certain compulsory powers in local bodies, to be applied at their own discretion, while it reserves to itself only a controlling function. All this appears to us to indicate sound political 'instinct. The interests of a vast empire like our own are so numerous and complex, that no central power could hope to regulate them all successfully, and it is advisable to allow each part to manage, as far as possible, its own private affairs. Independence and public spirit are thus kept alive wherever English institutions prevail, and a moral force is distributed through the scattered dominions of the Queen which will prove the best defence of the Empire against the attack of any centralized despotism. No doubt the principle may be overdone, if applied mechani cally; self-government, for instance, may be thrust on societies before they are fitted for it. No doubt, too, local liberty cannot be left altogether without supervision; municipal bodies are too apt to distinguish themselves by apathy, jobbery, and injustice; they therefore require a vigilant control on the part of the State. Nor is it possible for these local bodies to discharge all the functions of government that their security requires. As the structure of the Empire is consolidated, questions, connected with imperial defence, commercial intercourse, and doubtful jurisdiction, besides the entire range of foreign relations, will certainly arise, which, embracing the interests of the whole system, must necessarily be referred to a central tribunal. In these two movements, then, of local and imperial self-government, which oppose yet do not neutralize each other, it is possible that there may exist the germs of the Representative System of the future. The centre of the British Empire is the Sovereign in Council. The Sovereign is assisted by the deliberation of Parliament, which it is not unreasonable to hope may at some future time be recruited by representatives from all parts of his dominions, and which, as possessing the power of the purse, exercises a control over his central authority, analogous to that which he, through his servants, is empowered by statute to exert over the acts of the local authorities. We have thus endeavoured to indicate the points on which we are at issue both with Mr. Bright and the Duke of Somerset. For Mr. Bright's ideal of Democratic Equality we entertain no admiration. The Duke of Somerset has shown very effec tively the evils to which democracy in general is liable, and that it is utterly incompatible with the nature of our own constitution. On the other hand the Duke, we think, takes too gloomy a view of the power of democracy in England. For ourselves we are ready to trust in the common-sense of a people trained up in centuries of monarchical and aristocratic traditions. Such confidence, we allow, will only be justified if those will lead us who are born to lead. If our statesmen hold, like Lord Hartington and Mr. Gladstone, that all initiative comes immediately from the people, if with Lord Derby they await the instructions of their employers,' then no doubt the British Empire is doomed to a speedy disruption. But we hope better things. 'Imperium et Libertas' is a motto which Englishmen may apply more easily than the Romans, whose Liberty and Empire alike perished from over-centralization. If the hereditary descendants of those who helped to establish English liberty show that they have not lost their sympathy with popular freedom, the people will be equally ready to prove that they have not forgotten the virtues of loyalty. ART. VIII.- Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December, 1869. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. The Speeches revised by the Author. Edinburgh, 1879. HE year upon which we have just entered will scarcely be brought to a close without our witnessing the demise of the existing House of Commons. Its end has long been clamoured for; and to clamour its enemies have added what has been happily designated the most gratuitous form of error, prophecy. They have been perpetually predicting its death; but, like the milk-white hind, though "chased with horns and hounds and Scythian shafts," it still seems "fated not to die." Let us hasten to add, despite much reckless assertion to the contrary, that its dissolution, at any of those moments when the imminence of a General Election was affirmed, would have had the warrant neither of Constitutional obligation nor of public convenience. The only possible excuse, which the Liberal Party have had for supposing that an appeal to the country was meditated, is the notorious disposition of mankind to judge others by themselves. On the 28th day of January, 1874, Mr. Gladstone suddenly sprang a mine upon Parliament and the country, with the intention of driving back afresh the advancing lines of his rival; though, when the smoke had cleared away, it appeared that he had blown his own army into the air. Lord Beaconsfield's Beaconsfield's passion for surprises is a favourite theme with Liberal orators; and they have repeated the reproach so often, that perhaps by this time they have begun to believe it. But there certainly would have been ground for astonishment, at least for the ordinary mind, had Lord Beaconsfield, while firmly entrenched in power, wantonly sallied into the open to fight a gratuitous engagement with assailants, who had repeatedly demonstrated their incapacity to dislodge him; nor would the sense of amazement have been lessened by the recollection that this novel strategy was resorted to by his predecessor, with the result, as described at the time by an indignant follower, of 'having at one blow destroyed both his Administration and himself; and they are both wiped out of existence.'* Perhaps it is useless to quote for Radical ears, to which the words forefathers and fools probably sound synonymous, and the accumulated wisdom of generations seems mere foolishness, so trite a saying as Chi sta fermo non si muove.' But their experience of popular plaudits may enable them to understand that the chances of victory in a General Election are not improved by a preliminary confession of failure; and that constituencies are not so peculiarly constituted as to be ready to give a fresh majority to a Minister who avows, by a premature Dissolution and while his ranks remain unbroken, that his former majority was utterly useless to him. But, in truth, there is all the difference in the world betwixt the position into which Mr. Gladstone had gradually drifted by the beginning of 1874, and the situation in which the present Prime Minister finds himself at the expiration of six years of power. Nothing could justify the electoral ambuscade which, devised for prolonging, resulted in terminating Mr. Gladstone's Ministerial existence. But it must be allowed that, if the pernicious element of surprise and the still more reprehensible expedient of a wholesale bribe to the electors had been omitted from his tactics, the plea that the House of Commons had withdrawn from him its confidence would have been regarded as an ample justification for an appeal to the country. Though he still retained a nominal majority in the House of Commons, it was only by the survival of the unfittest that he did so. He had reduced his majority by one half; and, if the other half still remained to him, it was simply because the lives of men are longer than the lives of Parliaments. After little more than five years of office, Mr. Gladstone, to use the ingenious * Mr. Bouverie, in a letter to the 'Times,' March 4th, 1874, under the signature of E. P. B. euphemism |