But if we have now laid a full share of blame upon the administration, must we not next turn to that side of the House with which this journal may be supposed to feel a peculiar sympathy, and ask, where is the Opposition all this time? Under our parliamentary system, is not this the quarter from which we should anticipate either the correction, or at least the faithful and stern exposure, of what is wrong in the proceedings of the administration? We cannot think it enough to say in reply, that the Government is Conservative. Has this word a positive, or has it only a negative meaning? Granted, that there are no indications in the ministry of a tendency to organic change; does this of itself constitute safety, or is it only one of a set of conditions, the rest of which are just as essential as the first to make the country prosperous and its institutions really secure? Deeming the state of public affairs to be wholly unsatisfactory, we on that account see in it the seeds of future danger and disturbance. We cannot afford to multiply sessions of Parliament, of which the best thing to be said is, that if they have done little good, they have done little harm. The elaborate machinery of constitutional Government was not constructed, nor were the triumphs of British freedom gained, for such a neutral end as this. Nor is the body politic, more than the body natural, ever really stationary. The hand of man may indeed be slack in the work of preservation and repair, but the tooth of time never ceases from its work, and that which is not waxing inevitably wanes. In this day of ours, Government and public institutions have no strength to spare. Great political genius is not the birth of every generation; the absence of it at the present day is often deplored; but diligence, and above all earnestness, we have a right, and necessity besides, to require. We cannot afford to be ruled by drones; and least of all by Administrations or Parliaments, whose noisy buzz mocks the reality of life and industry, but produces none of their fruits. Next to a revolutionary spirit in our rulers and representatives, we ought to view with suspicion and aversion any such crew in the vessel of State as, ceasing to row it steadily up the stream, lets it, as a necessary consequence, drift down among the rapids. We have striven, in what has hitherto been said, to be before all things intelligible. We have left, indeed, and we shall leave, much unsaid; but we have spoken with the conviction that evils must be seen in clear and bold outline, before remedies can be devised. Besides, it is the right and duty of all observers, as occasion offers and suits, to note for themselves, and to make known to others, the ill symptoms of the state. In a country like this, where the discovery and application of remedies depends mainly on a healthy freedom in the circulation of opinion, the very act of making them known, if it at all succeed in fastening public attention upon them, is the first and perhaps the most important step towards the cure. We have already indicated the opinion which we ourselves entertain of the cause to which the evils we have described are principally due. It is not the Premiership of Lord Palmerston; that Premiership itself is partly a result of the dislocation of the old forms of party connexion, and partly aggravates the evils of that disloca tion; for his normal manner of playing with the public business could not be tolerated in a Parliament, of which the component parts were rightly braced and marshalled for their duties: in return, by flattering indolence, and by baffling earnestness and putting it out of countenance, it tends to confirm the existing state of things, and prolong the period of parlia mentary demoralisation. It may indeed be said that party is not dissolved. There is still a Liberal party in power; there is still a Conservative party in the cold shade' of opposition. We grant that, numerically and nominally, by far the greater portion even of the House of Commons is attached to the recognised leaders on the one side or on the other. It may be urged that we are inconsistently complaining of the revival of those independent sections of the House of Commons, of which we have already lamented the extinction under the first action of the Reform Bill, and we may be told that outlying knots of men are precisely what were wanted to soften the too rude shock of principles and parties. We are far from disputing the existence and the great numerical strength of both a Liberal and a Conservative party in Parlia ment. We perceive, on the whole with satisfaction, that the local organisation of the constituencies still remains almost everywhere in its old and simple form of dualism. This division of local parties indeed be at present almost as much animal as intellectual, but it is dignified by traditional recollections, and it is probably the best or the only way, in which the communication of ideas between repre cover the discomfiture of the debate in the brilliant victory of the division. sentatives and constituents can be practi- the ordinary incentives to doing well, We do not ourselves share in the belief, that the present Opposition would flinch from the responsibility of assuming the government in the event of a ministerial crisis. But that belief exists and operates, at least so far, that when a case arises, like that of the Life Peerages or the American recruiting question, where the conduct of Ministers is wholly without defence, Parliament has not been able to punish, because it has not dared to displace; which means, in other words, that the whole essence of our Parliamentary system is in abeyance, since its working absolutely depends on the known responsibility of the Opposition, which again itself hangs wholly on their known readiness to take office. Without this the country has no adequate guarantee for either the honesty or the prudence of their criticisms and plans; the virtue of public discussion is lost, and ministers enjoy power, or what ought to be power, without Want of mutual confidence, want of defined profession of political opinion, the uncertain sound of the trumpet of leaders, the yet more uncertain movement of the followers who should obey, and the action and reaction of each of these causes of weakness and confusion on the other, seem to be the evils of which we ought, apart from all consideration of leanings in politics either this way or that, to desire the removal. But when we speak of the disorganisation of the old composition of political parties as an evil, and of the want of clear political profession, let us not conceal from ourselves the fact, that much of the inconvenience we suffer ought to be far outweighed by the satisfaction with which we may contemplate its cause. Twenty years ago the Liberal and Conservative parties had taken opposite ground on a multitude of great public questions. Most of those causes of difference have disappeared by the settlement of the questions to which they referred. It is not true that the triumphs have been all one way, and that the more Conservative part of the nation have disposed of the contest simply by surrendering the posts they defended. The great question of Protection and Frec Trade was at no time really a question between the Conservative and the Liberal parties. If franchises have been enlarged, if corporations have been reformed, if Dis-, senters have been relieved, if education has been more powerfully aided, mainly through the efforts of the Liberal party, on the other hand ecclesiastical property has been defended, the independence of the House of Lords upheld, the constitution of the House of Commons shielded from violent and organic changes, the relative rights and attitude of classes maintained, principally through the energy and determination of Conservative politicians. But the interval between the two parties. has, by the practical solution of so many contested questions, been very greatly narrowed. He who turns from Pall Mall towards the Park between the Reform and Carlton Clubs will perceive that each of those stately fabrics is mirrored in the windows of the other; and it may occur to him, with horror or amusement, according to his temper, that these mutual reflections of images set up in rank an tagonism to one another, constitute a kind of parable, that offers to us its meaning as we read with conscience and intelligence the history of the time. No man should quarrel with his own blessings on account of the incidental inconveniences with which they may be accompanied; and therefore, if we lament that the relaxed and divided state of political combinations paralyses the House of Commons for the time, we must thankfully record that, while this is an evil with reference to the duties of the future, it is itself a sign and a result of good achieved in the recent past. Had the decline of parties been owing to mere indifference or disgust, our regret for the fact would have been unattended with either hope or comfort; but this is not the case. It is due to the sobering lessons of experience which each party has received, and which have brought about a general abatement of extreme views and an abandonment of impracticable purposes; it is due to the increased degree in which considerations of the public good have ruled the mind and conduct of politicians; it is due to the patient and unwearied labour of Parliament, which has achieved since the Peace of 1815, and since the Reform Act of 1832, so many great legislative exploits. All this is true political and social progress; and it is progress, moreover, which it has been mercifully vouchsafed to England to secure during a period, the latter part of which has been disastrous in a high degree, on the continent of Europe, to the principles of orderly and regulated freedom. When before the Dissolution of 1852 the Government of Lord Derby was assailed by its antagonists as a Government withprinciple,' Mr. Disraeli ingeniously replied upon the opposition as an opposition without a cry.' It might not be difficult at this moment to puzzle either side of the House by asking the Government where and what is its principle, or the Opposition where and what is its cry. Undoubtedly the state of the Conservative party, as it has been exhibited on : many occasions during the last session of Parliament (let us give as instances the motion with respect to Kars, and the proceedings with regard to education in Ireland), cannot be satisfactory, either to its declared members, or to those who, aware that it represents an essential and governing element of British society, heartily desire to see it fulfil its proper political duty, whether in or out of power; namely, that of giving steadiness to the onward movement of society, and negotiating, as it were, terms of peace and union between the new wants, desires, necessities that are ever springing up in a highly vitalized society on the one hand, and those august institutions on the other, by which Eng land yet testifies to the true and far-sighted wisdom of the elder time, and exhibits to the world a solidity' of her political institutions, not less remarkable than that of her soldiers on the field of bloody battle. But if there be cause for dissatisfaction in Conservative quarters, what shall we say of the Liberal party? Graced with the spolia opima of the political arena, it is in luxurious possession of all the ensigns of power, and of all the machinery for beneficially ministering to the wants of the public service. It likewise, as well as its rival, represents a powerful tendency of the English mind; and, though its unchecked predominance would be full of danger, its health and activity are needed for the welfare of the body politic; and the only sacrifice we shall make to our own principles in qualifying this doctrine is, to express an opinion that, if we are to judge from the feeble and discreditable manner of its present working, it would be far more respectable, far more useful to the country, and of course, therefore, far more at ease in its own conscience, upon the benches of Opposition. Lord Aberdeen was bold enough, on assuming office, to propound the paradox, that any Govern ment, which in these days would obtain the confidence of the country, must with that view be both Conservative and Liberal: but we fearlessly put it to the members of both these political parties, that policy and proceedings such as those of the session of 1856 (and not of that session only) are neither Conservative nor Liberal; t'hey hold on to each of these only by its besetting vice; they have nothing of the Conserva tive character except its inertness, and nothing of a Liberal aspect except its restlessness. To the high-minded men of all parties the first object of anxiety must be, that they maintain their traditions, fulfil their promises, redeem in office the expec tations raised in opposition, transmit to the next generation the fame they have inhe rited from the last. But what if a Govern- | improvement. They perhaps think that, ment formed of members of the Liberal or after all, the simple cure lies in the reconMovement party holds place for several struction of what is called the old Coryears-and, for aught we know, it may be in servative party. Among the anomalies Lord Palmerston's power to retain the seals and solecisms in the Lower House in its of office till he has turned four-score-what present condition, one of the greatest, withif, when retiring, it is in a condition to out doubt, is the position of those gentle point to few useful laws enacted, while its men who pass by the appellation of Peelfailures are unnumbered in domestic legis-ites, and who, ejected from office by their lation while its diplomacy has kept the country in perpetual hot water, and has rendered necessary the maintenance of costly establishments, which a better state of foreign relations would have enabled Parliament to reduce; and while its administration of patronage, especially of ecclesiastical patronage, has been deeply tainted with the nepotism. which, not less than financial blundering and feebleness, appears to stick like a barnacle to all Whig, Whigling, and Whiglike administrations; and to mar the dignity and political virtues, to which that party is without doubt, historically at least, entitled to lay claim! We cannot indeed refuse to agree with Mr. Disraeli, as he is reported to have spoken on the 25th of July, in thinking that a party which is thus contented with the titles and the patronage of office, and which, on condition of enjoying them, allows its own professions to be forgotten, its principles to lie in abeyance, and its very name to become a by-word for weakness-slowly, perhaps, but infallibly, undermines the ultimate foundations of its power in their proper seat, namely, the public mind, and may hereafter have to pay, by whole decades of exclusion from power, for every single session of those during which the title to possession has not been fairly earned by diligence and success corresponding with its high respon sibilities and its great opportunities. The Radical and independent Liberal party has long practised what, to speak plainly, we must call an imposture on the country, by its annual sham-fight on the Ballot: it is now practising, perhaps unconsciously, a deceit not less gross upon itself: for, by standing before the country as primarily answerable for the feebleness and effeteness of parliamentary action, it will speedily lose the best part of whatever qualified hold it may have upon the public respect. Some of those observers of public affairs who might agree with us in lamenting the present decadence of Parliament, and even in perceiving a connexion between that decadence and the disorganised state of the old party connexions, may see a shorter way, than we ourselves do, to effectual scruples and difficulties in respect to the Sebastopol Committee, have since maintained an attitude which the country, as represented by its press, plainly considers to be equivocal. Moreover it is plain that, among all the outliers from the great parties, none, not even Lord John Russell, so powerfully tend to prolong the existing state of general weakness, and the relaxation in party organisation. Not that they are powerful either in their numbers or in the general favour, but that by their traditions, if not by their characters, they happen to have points of contact and of sympathy, rather marked in their character, with gentlemen sitting on both sides of the House who own no general political connexion with them. It was certainly characteristic of Sir Robert Peel to combine fearlessness in regard to administrative changes with no small dread of constitutional innovation. Whether governed by a superstitious adherence to the maxims of their leader, or whether really and conscientiously imbued with the same spirit, the Peelite ex-Ministers are seen to take a more forward place than the Government in regard to many questions of administrative reform; while on the other hand, in cases such as the resolutions of Lord John Russell on education, or the bill for the retirement of the two bishops, they are found among the loudest denouncers of change, as being dangerous, or undefined, or not warranted by the pleas that are urged in its favour. They thus operate as solvents of party connexion, in a manner and degree for which their mere numbers or personal qualities would not account: each of these kinds of occasion alternately seeming to place the Peelite politicians in relations with various members of the two parties as close as, or even for the moment closer than, those in which they may habitually stand to their own recognised leaders. Perceiving clearly, as we do, the evils of a position which cannot we apprehend be satisfactory either to those who observe or those who hold it, we shall not jump to the conclusion that it rests with these gentlemen, or with any one else, to abate the nuisance by any act of their volition. Of the jealousies and suspicions inevitably characteristic of a Parliament without parties thoroughly organised, a larger share perhaps alights on the party now supposed to be led by Lord Aberdeen, than on any other class, knot, or clique of politicians whatever. And it should be remembered that in general neither jealousy nor suspicion can be overcome by any measures taken for the purpose of overcoming them : they can only be disarmed by the more natural and spontaneous action of events moving in their own course, and by the slow and silent, but powerful, influence of considerations of the public interest upon judgment and conscience, which in the long run, though not always at the moment, determine the action of political party. It is plain that those who are now dissociated, either wholly or partially, and either on the one side of the House or on the other, from the leading parties, ought, if they are ever again to be found in the ranks, to be found in those ranks where their sympathies may principally lie; and the question which ranks those are must commonly receive its answer, partly indeed from the tempers of individuals, but chiefly from the course of public affairs, and from the tendency of this great question or of that to grow for the time to a paramount and commanding importance in its bearing on the interests of the country. Mindful, in one respect at least, of the modesty which befits our calling, we shall not presume to attempt pointing out particular modes in which the existing confusions can be cleared, and the motley mobs of the House of Commons restored to something more resembling the old, costumed, and regimental character of its accustomed organisation; but we shall throw together, in general terms, a few propositions which appear to us to be placed nearly beyond dispute. First of all then the constituencies, as we have intimated above, do not appear to feel, as their representatives have felt, the debilitating and disorganising influences so patent within the walls of Parliament. Whether they have or have not distinctive opinions-whether they seek or do not seek separate and opposite ends-whether the antagonist candidates can or cannot succeed in imparting to their respective speeches and addresses a decent amount of difference it is beyond all doubt that, as the constituencies have been, so they mean to continue, divided as Conservative and Liberal respectively; and none of the wizards of Peelism, or of Palmerstonism, or of Manchesterism, or of. Administrative Reform, or of Voluntaryism, or of any other personal, intermediate, sectional, or hybrid creed, will, at least in our day, dislodge them from the impregnable stronghold of their set electioneering habits and ideas, commonly as simple and homogeneous as the colours which, in the days when such things were, used to distinguish the flags and ribands of contending parties. Secondly, while the electioneering gear continues to be much in the same working order as it was, it is plain that a public opinion has for many years been forming itself both broad and deep-broader in some respects and deeper too than the limits of party organization. This public opinion is considerably adverse to specula tion or constitutional changes, but is disposed to view with great favour all active and efficient government, comparatively careless from which party such a boon to the country may proceed. Ballot is moonshine; even the Church Rate agitation seems to have reference principally to the hustings; nobody cares to try and turn the Bishops out of Parliament; the County Rate is still imposed and spent by a non-elective body; the unpaid magistracy, the law of succession to landed property, the hereditary peerage, the esta blished Church, are politically tranquilno storm whistles round their ears. That one of the two great parties, we venture to predict, will acquire the predominance in Parliament and in the country, which succeeds in impressing the public mind with the belief that it is most deeply and earnestly impressed with the right (a right not the less real because indeterminate) of the people to what is called good govern ment, and that it is also most largely gifted with the qualities necessary to enable it to satisfy that right and the reasonable desires which attend it. Thirdly, as respects the system of policy and conduct which we have endeavoured to express by the term good government, there never was a time when the Parliamentary field was more open, less thronged with labourers. Happily restored from war to peace, we want efficient establishments, with a just and strict economy; and this demand undoubtedly involves the searching and circumspect reconsideration of almost the whole of our military arrangements. At some period, we may be certain the merely demagogic cry for economy will arise, and we can only be well prepared to meet it when it comes by placing ourselves before its arrival in a condition to show that the public get value for the money which they are called upon to spend. We want, again, that high-minded |