Theory and Practice of the Conservatives at Issue. 511

If the necessity of this alternative were not too clear to call for any auxiliary illustration, such an illustration might fairly be drawn from an analysis of that grotesque quaternion-represented by Mr. Gladstone, Lord John Russell, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Cobden-under whose momentary union Lord Palmerston's Government sustained an exceptional defeat. Now, it is well known that Lord John Russell was himself the organ, in the House of Commons, of the Government under which the Chinese war of 1840 and 1841 was instituted; and which, whether right or wrong in the adoption of that policy-and we firmly believe them to have been right-based their casus belli upon grounds of complaint virtually similar to those under which the present retaliation, on the part of our forces, has been taken. It will also be remembered that the war thus commenced by Lord Melbourne's Ministry was vehemently opposed by the leaders of the Conservative party up to the period of their accession to power in August, 1841, when they immediately were transformed into vigorous supporters of a belligerent policy. Lord Derby became Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and assumed the immediate responsibility-not of sending out, in the recent words of Mr. Gladstone, a message of mercy and peace-but of earnestly prosecuting hostilities. Lord Aberdeen, meanwhile, was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; nor did Sir James Graham fail to share the custody of the signet with those two Ministers. Mr. Gladstone, during the continuance of a war thus anticipating great commercial ends, was Vice President of the Board-we allude to the Board of Trade—as most directly interested in its prosecution. Mr. Disraeli, meanwhile, cordially voted with the Government. Finally, Mr. Herbert, as Secretary of the Admiralty, was himself the official organ for the direction of those naval operations which included the attack on Canton by the squadron of Sir William Parker.

Nor can it be alleged that this parallel is unjust, on the ground that we were then actually at war with China, and that it was the duty of a new Administration to maintain the honour of the country, however immoral they might profess to regard the original declaration of hostilities. For if the honour of the country were then involved in our withdrawal from a war alleged to be unjust, it would now be equally involved in a withdrawal from demands supported by military demonstration. Nor would the difficulty of obtaining terms, as arising from the implacability of the Chinese authorities, have been greater in the one instance than in the other. Two considerations are, therefore, obvious-the one, that the coalesced Opposition have not hesitated, in a closely parallel instance, to pursue military operations when in office which they

denounced as immoral when in opposition; the other, that this inconsistency totally destroys the value of their opinions.

It is clear, therefore, that the question of the Chinese disturbances has, in reality, little or no practical concern with the issue which the Dissolution of Parliament is now submitting to the constituencies of the country. That issue virtually is,-by which of two great and rival parties is the Government of England to be maintained? What those parties are is well known. We have an Administration resting rather on public opinion, than upon numerical support within the narrow arena of Parliament-which is pledged to progressive social improvement, but is ready to discountenance all rash innovation. On the other side, we have a combination constituted of two distinct parties, of which the one has been ostracised for its shortcomings in war, and the other for its electioneering corruptions.

Into the manner in which it is proposed to amalgamate a party led by the zealous defenders of the late Sir Robert Peel, with a party led by the malignant vituperator of that statesman, and differing from each other in every element of political character, we do not now propose to inquire. Indeed, the internal divisions of each of these two chief sections of the existing coalition are so vital as to render it very difficult to restore so much as the unity of each. The Peelite party in the House of Commons, for example, is represented by Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Herbert, and Mr. Cardwell. Of these four public men, Mr. Cardwell has become a convert to the Ministerial doctrines of finance, while Mr. Herbert has become an opponent of Parliamentary Reform. If we pass to the Conservative side of this Coalition camp, we find nearly equal distinctions of opinion between Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Walpole, Sir John Pakington, and Mr. Henley. It is clear that a party so constructed-and illustrating the familiar satire of Burke, 'such a tesselated pavement; here a bit of white, and there a bit of black'-could only exist, while clamouring for the necessity of avowed principles,' by consigning every subject of practical administration to the latitudinarianism of open questions.'

The expediency of the recent Dissolution had been apparent during a considerable period before the decision of the late House of Commons upon the Chinese question. The gradual and progressive dislocation of parties within the House itself had begun to compromise the stability of Government-so far, at least, as that stability could at all depend upon a Parliamentary verdict and, consequently, to render the progress of public business insecure. This Parliament, it will be remembered, was summoned by Lord Derby in 1852. It then recognised three

principal parties: these were, the Conservatives, who were in power-the Liberals, led by Lord John Russell-and the Liberal Conservatives, led by Sir James Graham and his friends. The two latter of these sections united in the same year to form a Government when the Conservative Ministry resigned. The Liberal Conservatives fell away in 1855, and re-established a third distinct element in the House. The subsequent division of the Liberals on questions of Finance-and that of the Conservatives on the question apparently of confidence in their own leadersincreased this dislocation at length in a degree wholly inconsis tent with the first principles of party government.

When, therefore, a narrow majority of sixteen voices, in a House of Commons comprising 654 members, became finally at issue with the policy of the Executive on a pressing question of the hour, it became immediately obvious that the Government and the House could no longer co-exist. Which, therefore, should give way? It must have been foreseen from the moment that this collision was anticipated that, on the present occasion, the Legislature must yield; both because the unprecedented majorities* which the same Ministry had commanded during the two previous Sessions had not ceased to indicate its possession of the general confidence of the House of Commons; and because that House had arrived at a vote upon a question of pressing importance, and which could not be acted upon without fatally dislocating the whole Eastern policy of the State, and without endangering the lives of those who had settled upon the Chinese coasts, on the faith of our jealous maintenance of stipulations which the Chinese authorities had repudiated.

Nothing can, in truth, be more strictly constitutional, in spite of all that has been asserted to the contrary, than the present antagonism between the Executive and the House of Commons, and the repudiation on the part of the former, pending an appeal to the country, of the vote at which the House arrived. It must be remembered, in the first place, that the balance of the Constitution-the Crown and the House of Lords-is already on the side of our Chinese policy. The case would have been somewhat different if Lord Derby had not solicited the verdict of the House of Lords on the same question with that on which Mr. Cobden obtained the decision of the House of Commons. We are perfectly ready to acknowledge the ascendency of the latter body in the Legislature; but we know of no doctrine of our constitu

These majorities were-on Mr. Disraeli's motion on the conduct of the war, 100; and on the Report of the Sebastopol Committee, 107, in the year 1855; and on the two corresponding questions of importance in 1856, these majorities were respectively 127 and 194.

tional law, nor of any precedent equivalent to a doctrine, by which the House of Commons is to be invested with a despotic supremacy over the other estates of the realm. Since our polity is not republican, on what possible ground can we advocate an absolute predominance in one of its elements altogether inconsistent with the nature of a monarchical constitution?

An appeal, therefore, is made to the country, rather, as we have said, upon the respective claims of rival parties than upon the merits of the question immediately and ostensibly at issue. That appeal must largely turn upon the history of the last two years, during which the one has been in power, and the otheror rather the parties which compose this combination-has been in opposition. Unless we are greatly mistaken, the history of that period has presented a record of success such as no other two years have ever experienced. In February, 1855, when Lord Palmerston's Ministry acceded to power, England was in a condition of disaster and depression, of which she had known no parallel since the period of the great American war. We were then clinging to a forlorn attempt to besiege the greatest fortress of the greatest military empire of Europe, with a force reduced to eight thousand men. Those eight thousand men were enduring hardships and privations which inverted the common relation of besiegers and besieged, and were beyond all parallel in a besieging army. Their position called for immediate support and vast reinforcement.

Lord Palmerston's Government, therefore, found themselves, on their accession to power, committed to the prosecution of a gigantic war, wholly without so much as the military resources of peace. It must never be forgotten that, before the close of the same year, they had arrayed an army of 50,000 British troops before Sebastopol, independently of 20,000 Asiatics, maintained from our purse, equipped, disciplined, and commanded by our countrymen-that in the same period Sebastopol had fallen-that the Russian fleet, so long the menace of Turkey, had been sunk in the Euxine-and that, before the year 1855 had passed away, an honourable peace with every element of durability in its provisions was already a fait accompli.

Nor must we forget that although the policy of the war was generally supported by the Conservative party, by reason of its agricultural popularity, the leaders of that party as well as those of the party which seceded from Lord Palmerstonlost heart in the contest. For not only was the national flag hauled down by Sir James Graham and his friends, but Mr. Disraeli himself declared, during the session of 1855, while

Desertion of the Russian War by Peelites and Conservatives. 515

the war was at its height, that the future of this country was too terrible for his imagination to contemplate.' We advert to this among other incidents, because it would be unjust to Mr. Gladstone and his friends to regard them as alone desirous of compromising the question on which we went to war with Russia. Similar sentiments did not fail to escape the Conservative leaders; and it will be remembered that, at the very time of Mr. Gladstone's secession from the cause of war, Mr. Disraeli openly charged Lord Palmerston with demanding too hard terms from Russia.' Sincerely as we believe Mr. Gladstone to have been actuated by the most conscientious motives upon that question, it is only just towards his conduct that the public should remember that the Conservative leaders sounded the same note of alarm with himself and his friends. Auspicious omen for the future unanimity of the existing Coalition!

Thus far we have dealt with antecedents at home. We now diverge to the merits of the Chinese question, because, although we have expressed our confident belief that the decision of the House of Commons was given upon grounds wholly independent of the real merits of the case, it continues still to attract public attention.

In the first place, it must be observed that the terms of Mr. Cobden's motion designedly eliminated a considerable proportion of the alleged grievance from the question on which the late House of Commons was called upon to record its opinion. That motion runs, Without expressing an opinion as to the extent to which the Government of China may have afforded this country cause of complaint respecting the non-fulfilment of the "Treaty of 1842,' &c. Now, if the House of Commons were to be called upon to record a decision entitled to the deference and respect of the country, that decision could only be founded upon the whole question. The speakers on the side of the resolution went out of their way to assert-and they asserted it in the most gratuitous manner that their votes were founded upon the simple basis of the resolution itself, and upon no other considerations. These circumstances did not, of course, in any way affect the fact of a collision between the Ministry and the House. But it is not less certain that they did materially affect the applicability of this decision to the whole matter in dispute, and that the decision was, upon its very face, an ex parte verdict. In proceeding to an impartial consideration of the merits of a case in which the nicest technical distinctions were put forward by the