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    THE CHARTISTS, OLD AND NEW. We perceive ...

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    Mjly 36, 1855.] THE LEADER. 405

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    What Are The Tories? Wu Have Rocoivod A ...

    from our usual independence . We can assure our correspondent that we regard the question between Whigs and Tories with perfect independence , as many and recent articles will show , though we should think it foolish and unpractical to regard it with indifference . " We look to something beyond both parties , but at present it is our fate to have to choose between them . Our correspondent and other Liberals who have fallen into the same trap , do not think their independence compromised by making a very decided choice , and openly playing the game of the Tories .

    Our correspondent will have it there is no such thing as Toryism in the present day . We will not quarrel with him . about a name , though it happens that the present leaders of the party have always boasted the name of Tory in contradistinction to that of Conservative , which they think implies too popular and reasonable a course . Be they Tories or Conservatives , Lord Derby ' s party are the party who " stem democracy , " , on all questions of political justice , liberality , and toleration , vote on the illiberal , intolerant , and exclusionist side—who hate and profess to hate all that liberals desire—and- whose

    practice has never yet on any one occasion deviated from their professions . Surely to go and invent a new character for this party , and to clothe them with it merely by your own imagination , is not only to fall into a trap but to bait it for yourself . It is true that some Tories seem to have found out that the old objects are not to be compassed quite in the old ways , and that it is absolutely necessary to varnish over the unbeloved form of the ancient serpent with a compound which seems to be made up of

    Jacobitism , Judaism , and Puseyism . Nay , more , we believe that by the help of their French patron ' s example they have found out the great fact that the cause of absolutism or oligarchy may be served by appealing to the present ignorance of the peasantry and operatives against the intelligence of the middle classes , and that for this noble purpose they are even inclined to try universal suffrage , which , when it was supposed to be the height of liberalism , they so cordially reviled . This moveas well as some other aspects in our

    , present situation , offers a sinister parallel to that which has been going on in France , and it ought to put every man of sense upon his guard . We quite acknowledge the paramount duty of carrying on the war with vigour till a decisive victory is obtained , though we do not feel very enthusiastic about the ill-defined objects of the struggle . But what reason is there to believe that the Derbyites would carry on the war with more vigour than the Whigs ? Some of the most respectable and influential of them , such as Sir W .

    Heatjicote , do not want to carry on tho war at all . Only a few weeks ago , Mr . Disraeli himself was palpably angling for the support of the extreme partisans of Peace . There is nothing in the party , as a whole , that should induce us to put thorn at the head of the nation in this struggle ; and , as wo said tho other day , there is nothing in its leaders . They are both men who have beon chosen for their post by the very poor test of rhetoric , and not only

    rhetoric , but that most unmanly and paltry kind of rhetoric—tho rhetoric of vituperation . They arc tho very incarnation of party trickery and * intrigue , and the very motion by which they try to rido into power is an equivocation which even sympathising critics are compelled to expose . If you want a heart that can really fool tho present dangers of tho country , and a mind that will earnestly strugglo with thorn , you will not gain much by exchanging even a Paxmeubton Ibr a Dekby or a Dis-ItAJBIiI .

    As to Administrative Reform , a pure administration must depend , in the long run , on the prevalence of right princi p les of government , and therefore it is suicidal to sink questions of principle , and cry out for nothing but " material improvements . " However , Lord EiiiiEKBOBOTJGH at once gives you his notions , as a Tory , of Administrative [ Reform —rotten boroughs and promotion by the merit of your ancestors , that is his way of getting the right men into the right places : —

    the famous operation which it was said all the Peeresses came to see . And , accordingly , no sooner is Mi * . Phiitn , who has risen by his own merits , and is not member for a rotten borough , appointed to an office in the Admiralty , than Lord BijIenboeough attacks the appointment on the ground that a civilian is out of place at the Admiralty , alluding incidentally to his own experience of the Admiralty as a civilian . We all know how the right men were put into the right places

    in Lord Derby ' s Cabinet : how , regardless of all party and family considerations , Lord LoirsDAtE was placed at the head of education , Lord M-axmesbttry at the Foreign Office , the Duke of Northumberland at the Admiralty , Sir John Pakington at the Colonies , and the bitterest tongue in England at the Exchequer . This is what Mr . Disraeh calls the Government of a " free aristocracy , " being himself , we suppose , a free aristocrat . Butr the revelations of the Dockyard Committee ought to be a

    sufficient answer to those who would go to the Derbyites for Administrative Reform . There we had a rule of promotion by merit which Whigs had enforced , actually set aside by a Derbyite official for the direct purpose of corruption—this corruption justified to the honest sailors who protested against it by the names of the two Whig chiefs , and defended by Mr . Disraeli before the Committee as necessary for the purpose of keeping the legislature in harmony with the executivethat is , of bribing members of the House of Commons . The use of Government vessels

    for electioneering cruises , and the payment of election dinners out of the public money , were comparatively trifling breaches of public duty . But what real reform can there be without purity of election ? And when was purity of election more grossly and systematically outraged than by the Derbyites in the case

    of the present Parliament ? Every species of corruption , by money , by intimidation , by club influence , by hypocritical appeals to fanaticism , by hustings lying of every kind , was used to prevent a fair representation of the intelligence of the people . No infamy was spared to produce a Parliamentum indoctum of squires and Carlton clubists , devoid of troublesome intellect in whicli Lord

    Derby and Mr . Disraeli might dominate at will . Members of the Government itself were found mixed up with the lowest agents of bribery . Any improvements which proceed from such a party as this , must bo " material" with a vengeance . As to the superior organisation which is put forward by our correspondent as the groat claim of tho Dorbyites to office , we have touched on tho point before . The grand source of disorganisation in parties is independent intellect ; and the Tories aro completely defalcated of independent intellect by their rupture with their loaders on tho question of Free Trade . Men who have class

    interests to sorvo , and aro inaccessible to reason , aro sure to stick together : and if organisation of this kind is to bo a claim to public coniidonco , tho most unmitigated bigotry and dishonosty will always bo rewarded with the groat ofllcoB of State No practical good whatever would result

    from placing the Government in the hands of the Derbyites . The only consequence would be to make England , not an ally oflthe French people , but a Satrapy of the Erench Empire—to increase the despondency of the Liberal party throughout Europe ,, and to entrust the liberties of our country to the keeping of the men whe made haste to placard themselves as the sycophants of the Libertieide of France . Surely the course , which -we pointed to some time ago , of reconstructing the Liberal party , and forcing the Whigs by direct and manly remonstrance to open ^ the Government to some men of tie people , ought at least to be tried before our enemies are called in , to

    punish the shortcomings of our friends .. There is one more remark which we must reluctantly make on our correspondent ' s letter . Its tone is one of the many symptoms of a growing indifference to political principle and disregard of political morality even among respectable men—ofatendency to take up with the most infamous politicians

    if they will serve the purpose of the hour , to condone political crime and applaud successful roguery and intrigue , to cast away those who have served you well directly you have used them , to hope more from ambition and cupidity than from consistency and honour . The country in which these tendencies have once prevailed is unworthy and unable to be free .

    The Chartists, Old And New. We Perceive ...

    THE CHARTISTS , OLD AND NEW . We perceive symptoms among the workingclasses of a return to political agitation " Chartism , " as a combining principle , is defunct ; but its old materials may be developed into new forms , and may yet lead the lower ranks of the people far on their way in search of practical justice . It is capable of modifications which may represent a powerful mass of [ opinion , and enlist no less powerful sympathies . But if ever it was necessary for all classes of the nation to survey and renounce their errors it is now . Each class has had its

    delusions , and has suffered the penalties of them ; greatest of all have been the blunders which reduced the Chartist body from a powerful , but unrecognised estate to a shadow , which dispersed it , rendered it obnoxious , and broke up a growing party into a number of impotent factions . If they would not repeat these blunders , the working-classes must study their own history , and profit by the explanation of their failures . Mr . Gammage —one of themselves—has compiled an honest and intelligent account of the Chartist

    agitation from its beginning to its close , and this narrative should set the unrepresented classes on their guard . It is a deplorable story , in many respects , but chiefly in that it exhibits " the people" taught by paltry agitators to be violent , to be suspicious , to bo jealous , to doubt their friends , and to bring 1 discredit on thoir principles by a rash , theatrical , and violent mode of assorting them . In substance the history is that of a vast crowd organised to follow desp icable loaders , into into

    and led by thorn into folly , peril , failure . The only moral being that the working-classes must seek for now advocates , and conduct their movement upon new principles . Prom the first , the men who put themselves forward as their representatives gave proofs of' radical political incapacity . In their egotism they could not combine for a common purpose In thoir violence they terrified instead of conciliating tho middle-classes . Refusing to amalgamate themselves , they separated thoir party from all others in the realm by tho frenzy and bitterness of their demonstrations . The Ghavbiol ) body linrl-nn +. lmiff been in tho

    Mjly 36, 1855.] The Leader. 405

    Mjly 36 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . 405

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 26, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_26051855/page/15/