Sir when Sir Robert Peel took office in 1841. In 1845 Peel resigned, and his immediate followers, separating themselves with him from the party he had led, formed the group known as Peelites, and continued in isolation for six years, when they coalesced with Lord Aberdeen. It is not necessary for our present purpose to chronicle the Parliamentary history of England from that time until the present, when the original Radical party has split into three well-marked sections,—an English, a Scotch, and a Welsh, and the Irish party into as many apparently irreconcilable factions; while a Labour party has arisen, as 'a rival candidate with Liberalism for the support of Democracy,' to take charge of the revolution which economic conditions are leading us towards.'* Erskine May, writing of the restoration of Lord Derby to power in 1858, observes, 'The events of the last few years had accomplished the fusion of parties in the Government, and their combination, on particular occasions, in opposition. The relations of all parties were disturbed and unsettled. It was now to be seen that their principles were no less undetermined. The broad distinctions between them had been almost effaced; and all alike deferred to public opinion rather than to a distinctive policy of their own.'† Who that considers candidly the facts can deny that these words may also be applied, with substantial correctness, to the last four decades of our Parliamentary history? Lord Salisbury-then Lord Robert Cecilwriting in the same year 1858, observed, 'In politics. . . no one acts on principles or reasons from them.' Is it possible to attribute the great legislative changes, by whichever party introduced, that have so largely transformed the political order of our country, to any other motive than the desire of acquiring or retaining place and power? Is it possible to imagine any wider departure from old Toryism or Whiggism than the destruction effected by the Third Reform Act (1884-5) of the ancient franchises of counties and boroughs,§ and the vesting of *We are quoting from Mr. Keir Hardie's interesting article, The Case for an Independent Labour Party,' in the New Review' of June 1894. Mr. Hardie, after remarking 'Liberals had gone on denouncing Tories for generations, and Tories, Liberals, the Independent Labour Party denounces both,' affirms that there is a growing feeling of uneasiness among politicians at the growth of the Independent Labour Party,' and adds, it is generally conceded that at the next General Election the Independent Labour Party will decide the fate of parties.' The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 221. 'Oxford Essays,' 1858, p. 52. On this subject see an interesting page (p. 164) of Herr von Gneist's 'Die nationale Rechtsidee von den Ständen und das preussische Dreiklassenwahlsystem.' The author justly remarks that this dispersion of the historical constituencies was the unavoidable consequence of universal and equal voting. predominant predominant political power in the hands of the numerical majority of the population, consisting of manual labourers,— hands, as Coleridge observed, the least fitted to exercise any authority'; or than the introduction of secret voting, whereby, as Mill pointed out, the sense of the fiduciary character of the suffrage is effaced, and the elector is enabled to yield himself up to personal interest, or class interest, or some mean feeling, free from all sense of shame or responsibility'; or than the gradual development of caucuses and their machinery, and the ever-increasing degradation, as Burke had prophesied, of our national representation into a confused scuffle of local agency'? Perhaps few of us really realize the magnitude of these changes. Herr von Gneist, in his important volume just published, truly says that they are more easily discerned by outsiders than by the society concerned.' He continues in a passage worth quoting— To outsiders, this mighty edifice [of the British Constitution] appears almost a ruin. The professional politician of the Continent might be tempted to regard with a certain malicious joy the present development of Parliamentary government in "the land of hereditary wisdom." There, too, is the old formation of the great Parliamentary parties torn into six or seven factions, which, again, exhibit in themselves points of difference whence will issue still further subdivisions. There, too, have Radical parties arisen, whose programme seems incompatible with the working of a constitutional ministry. There, too, extreme parties combine with their direct opposites for a factious opposition, which falls asunder as soon as there is question of assuming the responsibilities of government. There, too, the personal level of the representatives is declining, as is also the observance of Parliamentary manners and decencies. There, too, fortuitous alternations of party ministries seem likely soon to be the rule, as in France and Greece. There, too, appear unintelligible changes of opinion in the newly-constituted electoral districtsmore like changes of the weather than anything else--which place the existence of every Administration in question, and seem to make adherence to a settled policy impossible. In the place of the old Whigs and Tories with their programme-corresponding to what are called in Germany the middle parties-there have arisen in the Parliament new groups, with class interests (neue gesellschaftliche Interessengruppen), which gradually swell to majorities, and which have in common with one another only the negative characteristic that neither singly nor in coalition are they in a position to carry on Parliamentary government.'* *Die nationale Rechtsidee,' &c., p. 165. The whole section in which this passage occurs-it is entitled 'Die Zersetzung der englischen Parlamentsverfassung'-is well worthy of attentive perusal. It must not be supposed that this transformation of our Parliamentary system is the result of accident, or the outcome of superficial causes, or the product of external events. It is the necessary consequence of the new principle which the first Reform Act introduced into our political life. Mill, in one of his most suggestive essays, truly observes, 'The world's wisest political thinkers have, with one consent, regarded the democracy of numbers as the final form of degeneracy of all governments.' And it is natural that this degeneracy should be first manifested in political parties. Nay, if we employ the tests quoted from Herr Bluntschli in a previous page, must we not say that our English parties have largely degenerated into factions? Do not some of them manifest, only too legibly, what he esteems the distinctive mark' of a faction: 'that instead of serving the State, they seek to make the State serve them; that they follow, not political- that is, commonly beneficial-but selfish ends'? Consider Welsh Radicalism, for example. At the present moment its immediate object is the destruction of the Established Church within the Principality. It is doing its best to make the State serve it for the accomplishment of its aim. And can any candid man regard that aim as a commonly beneficial object, as anything else than a selfish object of the lowest type? Here it is eminently necessary to clear one's mind of cant, and to see facts as they are. The question is not whether, if we were excogitating a brand-new public order, or inditing a treatise De Republicâ,' we should make provision for the Established Church as it now exists, the outcome of the national history, shaped and moulded by national exigencies in successive generations. No; the question, the political question—we are not concerned just now with the religious question properly so called the political question, the question for statesmen, is whether, having such an institution among us, the common good, the national welfare, would be promoted by its destruction. Now we venture to affirm very strongly that any mind, not blinded through sectarian hatred, will find the advantages derived by the country, in Wales and elsewhere, from the Established Church, vastly to outweigh any that would accrue from overthrowing it. In the first place, the Established Church is a vast instrument of charity. The amount of money which finds its way to the relief of the poor, the sick, the helpless, through the hands of its clergy-no inconsiderable portion of it contributed from their own narrow incomes-is *Discussions and Dissertations,' vol. i. p. 57. enormous. enormous. And it is charity of the best kind: not the charity of the State, which too often wounds the soul while it nourishes the body, but charity which blesses him that gives and him that takes. Again, the clergy form a great system of moral and social police. Carlyle, in whom the prejudices of the Scotch peasant were always masterful, was constrained to allow that' the [Anglican] bishop does really diffuse around him an influence of decorum, courteous patience, solid adherence to what is settled, teaches practically the necessity of burning one's own smoke,'surely a lesson much needed in the present age- and does, in his own case, burn said smoke, making lambent flame and mild illumination out of it, for the good of men.'* And this is true of the inferior clergy as a body; criminous and disreputable clerks are the very infrequent exceptions which prove the rule. Once more. There is no positive religion in the world which does not do something to idealize life, to raise men's thoughts above the seen and actual, to rivet the claims of duty. And is it possible for the philosophic mind to prize too highly the uses of the Established Church in this respect? The healing and elevating influences which it brings home to millions through its beautiful formularies and bright and melodious services, the lessons of self-denial and sacred aspiration taught by the eloquent lips of many of its clergy, and by the eloquent lives of many more, are surely forces for good which we can ill afford to dispense with or to weaken. And what is to be set off against all the loss which Disestablishment would certainly cause? Nothing, except the accrual to the State of that damnosa hereditas, a Church surplus, and the satisfaction of an insolent and aggressive faction' animated by sectarian hatred. We use these words advisedly; but we desire not to be misunderstood. We are far from denying the many excellences of Protestant Nonconformists, whether in Wales or elsewhere. They have maintained faithfully for many generations, according to their lights, the great principle that the State has no right to intrude into the domain of conscience. They have been, and are still, as a body, frugal, industrious, and, although in a sour and superstitious way, earnestly religious. They may truly claim the praise of having done much in the last century to keep alive in this nation the conception of Christianity as a spiritual power, when it was too generally regarded as little more than a system of morality and an adjunct to respectability. But against these merits must be set เ off off their narrowness, their ignorance, their uncouthness, their meanness, their vulgarity. It is not too much to say that the Radical Dissenter, especially in Wales, is animated largely by hatred of the clergyman. And the reason is that the clergyman is a constant reminder to him of social inferiority. He belongs, as a rule, to the lower middle class, for Dissent eschews the very poor, and a very little intellectual cultivation is usually sufficient to lead a man to eschew Dissent. The clergy of the Church of England represent that cultivation. Hence the Radical Dissenter's burning desire to disestablish them, and to level them down, as he fondly hopes, to the range of the Nonconformist ministry. We have elsewhere discussed the other feelings at work in the demand for Disestablishment. The desire for Home Rule, combined with sectarian hatred of the Church, are the dominant motives of Welsh Radicalism. Neither alone nor in combination do they raise the Welsh Radicals from the level of an 'insolent and aggressive faction' to that of a political party. But, indeed, must we not say that the same note of faction now adheres to official Liberalism itself? Mr. Gladstone, in a famous speech delivered in Edinburgh,*—which, often as it has been quoted, may, with advantage, be referred to again,— declared that it would not be safe for the Liberal party' 'to deal with the great constitutional question of the government of Ireland, in a position where it was a minority, dependent upon the Irish vote for converting it into a majority." Time has verified the correctness of this declaration. The Liberal party, led by Mr. Gladstone himself, has bargained to hand Ireland over to the irreconcilable enemies of England, the American Irish and the native Irish in their pay, as the price of power. It is a proceeding the significance of which Herr Bluntschli may enable us to appreciate. If,' he writes, in a passage already cited from him, 'parties combine with foreign enemies against their own country and the nation to which they belong, then so unpatriotic a course expels the essential idea of a political party, and the party becomes a faction.' The British Legislature is often called the mother of Parliaments. Most European countries have provided themselves, during the last half-century, with imitations of it, in order to replace the free institutions which, under one form or another, very generally prevailed until the close of the Middle Ages. And the Senate and House of Representatives in the United States are adaptations of our Houses of Lords and Commons. * On the 9th of November, 1885. Vol. 179.-No. 357. S It |