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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 , ! Dord 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 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 suj > posed to be the height of liberalism , they so cordially reviled . This move , as well as some other aspects in our
present situation , offers a sinister parallel to that which has been going on in Trance , 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 .
Heathcote , do not Avant to carry on the war at all . Only a few weeks ago , Mr . Disraem 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 them at the head of tho nation in this struggle ; and , as wo said tho other day , there is nothing in its leaders They aro both men who have been chosen for their post by the very poor test of rhetoric , and not only
rhetoric , but that most unmanly and paltry kind of rhetoric—the rhetoric of vituperation They arc the very incarnation of party trickery and' intrigue , arid tho very motion by which they try to ride into power iw an equivocation which even sympathising critics aro compelled to expose . If you want a heart that can really foci tho present dangern of the country , and a mind that will earnestly ( struggle with them , you will not gain much by exchanging even a Palmerbxon for a Derby or a DISRAELI .
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 Eixenborotj&h 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 placesthe famous operation which , it was said all the Peeresses came to see . And , accordingly , no sooner is Mr . Phesw , who has risen by his own merits , and is not member for a rotten
borough , appointed to an office in the Admiralty , than Lord ELiETrBOROtrGH 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 Deebt ' s Cabinet : how , regardless of all party and family considerations , ! Lord I / onsdaIiE was placed at the head of education , Lord Malmesbury at the Foreign Office , the Duke of Northumberi-and at the Admiralty , Sir John Pakington at the Colonies , and the bitterest tongue in England at the . Exchequer . This is what Mr . Disraeli calls the Government
of a " free aristocracy , ' ? ' being himself , we suppose , a free aristocrat . But 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 JParliamentum indoctum of squires and Carlton clubists , devoid of troublesome intellect in which 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 great claim of the Derbyites to office , we have touched on tho point before . The grand source of disorganisation in parties is independent intellect ; and the Tories are completely defalcated of independent intellect by their rupture with their leaders on the question of Free Trade Men who have class interests to sorvo , and are inaccessible to reason , nro sure to stick together : and if organisation of th ^ s kind is to bo a claim to public confidence , tho most unmitigated bigotry and dishonesty will always be rowarded with the groat offices of State . No practical good whatever would rosult
from placing the Government in the hands of the Derbyites . The only consequence would be to make England , not an allyof the French people , but a Satrapy of the " French 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 Liberticide 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 the 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—of a tendency 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 nave 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 .
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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 be jealous , to doubt their friends , and to bring discredit on their principles by a rash , theatrical , and violent mode of asserting them . In substance the history is that of a vast crowd organised to follow despicable leaders , and led bv them into folly , into peril , into tiiworit
failure . The only moral being e - ing-classes must seek for now advocates , and conduct their movement upon now principles . From the first , tho men who put themselves forward as their representatives gave proofs of radical political incapacity . In thoir egotism they could not combine for a common purpose . In their violence they terrified in-Btond of conciliating tho middle-classes . Befusmn- to amalgamate themselves , they sopamtocAhcir party from all others in tho realm by tho frenzy and bittornoss of thoir demonstrations . . Tho Chartist body had not long boon in tho
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« . . j Mat 26 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER , 49 S
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 26, 1855, page 495, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2092/page/15/
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