such a policy is at least as obvious as its morality, and we suspect has more to do with it. But however this may be, it is ridiculous to see the importance attached to this cant phrase of the day, which, even as interpreted by the former policy of our Liberal Ministries means, as Talleyrand said, pretty much the same as its opposite,-which, as a statement of the present position, is false, and as a principle has become delusive,-yet which is dinned into the ears of the country as something very novel and fine by a "liberal" Government, which has neither a policy nor the power to enforce it, and which has sunk to that lowest state of impotence in which it can only give words instead of acts, and hope to be believed simply on account of much speaking. The Ebb-tide of Democracy. T is an error of most generations to dream that their peculiarities will endure for ever, and that the old ebb and flow that has been wont to keep the balance of progression is to be brought to an end by them. But the temporary proclivities of society are only an aggregate of the vents of many little minds, whose egotism loves to take expression in an audacious assertion of finality. Here is the end, and we have achieved it! The truth being that there is no end; and that, if there were, its clamorous asserters would be but the passive creatures of its advent. The cycles of human politics are at least as old as the speculations of Plato, and every possible form of government, every possible phase of public opinion, shows in the day of its decay the first buds of that which shall succeed it. Aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism, are exhibited in relative priorities and an undeviating recurrence; but none of them are essentially primeval, and any one of them will be the final condition of a people by the accident alone of its duration. As a nation we are now passing through one of those periods which make the proofs of all this. The bent of our social course towards democracy had become so apparent since the year 1832, and the supposed affinity of this bent with the growth of science, of education, and of commerce, had become so generally taken for granted through the instigations of those who were mainly interested in preaching it, that right-feeling men began to accept, as a sort of baptism imposed by conquest, the self-sufficient political creed of the democratic party. No doubt the destiny of an elective franchise is to change its basis, by extension or contraction, according to the temper of the times. But the system of suffrage itself is but an intermediate link in the historic chain, one point in the political ecliptic; and the laws of its expansion and contraction are but secondary to that wider class of phenomena of which it does itself actually form one. The pretensions of sectional and ephemeral politicians are ridiculous enough to the more thoughtful and comprehensive student of history. They are as if the flies upon a wheel within a wheel should credit themselves with the appreciation and conduct of the revolutions of the outer one; or the dwellers upon the banks of some bubbling rivulet, whose fall into a larger but still tributary stream they were unable to see, should boast over their neighbours that their own was not only the true branch river, but the very Amazon itself at the head of its straight and stately course into the main ocean. Let the self-consequent advocates of democracy in this country take the trouble to inquire into the claims which the great political system, of which their peculiar tenets are but a sectional manifestation, has to be called either final or universal. Let them settle how far any phase of it at all has been spontaneously exhibited elsewhere in the world, not in Europe merely, but in the other, and, politically speaking, the older continents. Let them see in how few places it has been indigenous, and in how many its acclimatization has been tried. and failed. Let them, from the other point of view, trace its own native growth; let them study the laws of its progression; let them calculate from a point external to their own vanity and self-consciousness the true probabilities of its destiny. Let them conceive of it but for one moment as something which our race has produced, and something which our race may outlive. And having done all this, let them laugh at the silly and narrow notions that could regard a cyclical phase of a greater cyclical manifestation as the final order of something greater still. What place the parliamentary system of Great Britain may be found ages hence to have occupied in the great march of humanity is a matter as far beyond the scope of antecedent speculation as are the intermediate flux and reflux which will doubtless continue to be elements in its own history. The relative power of the Crown and the three Estates, as it has often altered hitherto, will often alter again, for the Nemesis of the preponderance of one is that it should beget that of another. These alternations have never been philosophically observed, and perhaps the existence of the system itself is hardly yet old enough to admit of a safe declaration of their sequence. But of this we may be sure, that the dominance of no one element is more final than that of either of the others; and that the Crown, the titular and landed aristocracies, the middle classes and the mass, have all had their turn of power, and in some succession or other, so long as the system lasts, will continue to have it. In the meantime it must not be understood that these changes and oscillations of preponderance are either morally or socially matters of indifference. There is a wrong in every excess, and looked at in its consequences, a greater wrong in democratic excess than in any other. It is this last alone that connotes demolition, that destroys what it cannot renew. Inaction is the far less dangerous and less effective fault of its correlatives. They may, and doubtless do, every now and then cramp the increase of the State's well-being; much that is desirable in change and progression they are sluggish to initiate; but they invent no new form of evil. They maintain many a plant of tares among the wheat, but the main crop of good corn they cannot uproot. They may hold to the maintenance of existing abuse, but this is only through the jealous grasp of their retention upon the good. Provided that the overplus in the existing state of things be one of benefit and purity, it is better that what has been endured should | party, in a sense to be interpreted according to the be endured still, in order that what has been enjoyed should be enjoyed the while. But whatever may be the relative innocuousness between one form of excess and another, the existence of some normal and ascertainable adjustment of power, is the only condition upon which the usefulness of our mixed political system can be made a tenable hypothesis. An excess on the side either of aristocracy or democracy, if it be defended on its merits, is a virtual abnegation of that condition, and a repudiation of all that depends upon it. The only solution of the political creed of "the Revolution families," as they loved to call themselves, in the reign of George III, was an intermediate oligarchy, tending to an ultimate despotism, which, had they seen it looming in the distance, they would themselves have counted their own ruin. Similarly a republic has been the outlook of the more consistent and outspoken modern Radical. The ascendancy of the Whig party has always been more unchallenged than that of the Radicals simply because its meaning was masked by an aristocratic tendency before the Monarchical party, and by a liberal bearing towards the Radical. For the time at least the antique Monarchical faction exists no longer. What the ascent of some ambitious master-spirit on to the throne might do towards its reconstruction, it would hardly be safe to say. At present, however, out of the spirit which of old imbued the best and wisest of its members, and the best and wisest of those from whom the original Whig party sprang, there has grown up a new political idea,-Conservancy. It is towards this idea,-for strictly speaking, its expressors are not a party, being something better,that the worthiest from all sections of political thinkers throughout the country, all those in fact who have not either formally or virtually given up the English system, have begun to gravitate. This movement is converting the epoch into a period of political arrest, of detection, of the repression of that excess, which being many-sided, is injurious from all points though permanently disastrous for the most part on one. From this convergence, this comparison and assimilation of convictions, this congression for the discovery of the true political mean, the oligarchist and the democrat alone stand aloof. Into it all constitutionalists, however divergent among themselves their peculiar proclivities or fears may have made them, must and do come. All such men alike are beginning to feel that the ancient State Edifice requires their combined attention. Some of them centre their consideration upon the ravages which it has suffered from time, others direct theirs to the accommodations that must be made in it to the changes of time; but all agree to the necessity of its preservation, and all have begun to recognize the fact that one section of the people who have grown up under its shelter is eager in sheer selfishness for the act of its demolition. Against this act there has been a combination of the best elements of the national character, and the result is the new manifestation of Conservatism. To call the exponents of this idea "a party" is to make use of a misnomer, until they are brought into a collision with that Democratic element of destruction which evoked them. It is true that for years past they have been called a interests of that faction whose business it has been to prevent accession to their ranks. It is also true that personal ambitions jealousies and attachments have done much to keep them circumscribed within the limits of a common political faction, and every now and then to thrust upon them the lower aims and acts of state craft as the price of their preservation. But personal ambitions, jealousies, and attachments are in their nature but transitory interpositions; and are barriers which must, as they are one by one removed, leave so many passages open for the free flow of opinion and sympathy towards their natural centre. "Liberalism" as a Creed. E trust that many of our readers may be acquainted with that excellent passage in Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning, where he dwells upon the power of words to lord it over the human mind, and to do violence even to the better judgment which is conscious of the fallacy they involve. "The idols of the marketplace," which are generated by the vulgar and undiscriminating use of words, are not, he says, to be expelled from the intellect without wounding as they fly. Driven out by definition, they hit us with a Parthian shot, and leave a mark behind them which is never perhaps wholly to be obliterated. Many apt illustrations of this truth might be discovered in the political and religious vocabularies of the present day; nor has the necessity of rescuing the public mind from the usurped authority of a false nomenclature been wholly overlooked of late years. Considerable good has been effected by the restoration of the word "catholic" to its legitimate position in the Church. Efforts are being made to break through the illusions which encompass the word Whiggism in the State. We purpose in the present article to challenge another political phrase, which has been abused perhaps even more than the above; which either monopolizes for a particular party attributes which are common to all; or else conceals behind a name which all have been accustomed to honour as a synonym for what is noble and elevating, the most sordid and debasing principles. We mean the modern party-title of Liberalism. It is difficult to estimate with exactness the injury which such abuses cause; so subtilely and imperceptibly do they operate. Probably not one man in five who divides the political world into Conservatives and Liberals, counting himself among the latter, is, as a rule, conscious of believing that he considers all the former to be il-liberal. Yet, seeing that he applies the word liberal to himself as a distinctive epithet, the idea of its contradictory, that is, of " not liberal," must lie dormant in his mind somewhere. And thus a great mass of latent prejudice is left slumbering in the popular brain until circumstances call it into action. There it remains as the material of a good party cry whenever such assistance may be wanted; while, even in the meantime, all persons who avow themselves Conservatives are liable to feel the effects of this lurking fal lacy, in a vague, vaporous kind of odium, which, as it were, sprinkles them with blacks, like the atmosphere of a smoky town. Not but what the word Liberal, as a party word, does imply the existence of a class of men, somewhere or other, whose views of things in general are not liberal. One might divide mankind at large into men of liberal and illiberal views by a line that should be cut pretty cleanly. But the question that we have to solve is this, whether it would be possible to identify that division with any of those other divisions which are known among men as religious, political, or social. That is to say, Can Liberalism be made the differentia of a creed? Can it be made applicable to what a man believes himself? And does it not rather indicate the mode in which he habitually regards the belief of other people? In order to answer these questions, we must endeavour to frame some conception of what real Liberalism is; and, though it would be needlessly pedantic to dwell upon the etymological meaning of the word, and its invariable significance among the Greeks and Romans, it may be advantageous to remind our readers that it never had any other meaning than this till about some thirty years ago. The Greek subépios, and the Latin liber, or liberalis, being only different forms of the same word, express the same idea which we express ourselves when we apply the term "liberal" to a profession. A liberal profession is that which a man is able to pursue without bringing down his mind from that level of contemplation where he sees humanity as a whole, and his own profession lying among others at his feet. It is a profession which leaves him free-homo liber. This, we say, is the fundamental idea of a liberal profession; that it is constantly departed from, abused, and misinterpreted is nothing to the purpose. An almost inseparable adjunct to this idea was that a liberal profession was not pursued for gain, but because it was honourable in itself. We see this truth curiously exemplified even now in the state of our liberal professions. Officers in the army were supposed to serve from feelings of honour. Their pay was a mere honorarium; otherwise it would never have been regulated on its present scale. The law knows nothing of a barrister's or physician's fees. They have no right of action if defrauded. Even the estates bestowed upon the Church were never given as a means of enriching individuals. Churchmen were supposed to have no worldly goods. It was the business of the faithful to provide them with the necessaries of life. But it was never supposed, till very bad times indeed, that any man took Holy Orders simply to obtain a good income. But a man who engages in trade or commerce does it obviously for no other reason. And, being bent on making money for himself, that being the beginning and the end of all his prospects, his mental gaze is naturally more contracted than that of the soldier, the jurist, or the priest. These, at all events, if they look no higher, have their respective societies to consider, which demand of them a certain self-sacrifice. The army, the law, the Church, are to them so many great ideas with which nothing sordid can be associated. But the trader has nothing of this kind to elevate and enlarge his mind, and draw it off from comparatively petty interests. This is the theory of the subject, held not only by the Greeks and Romans, but very generally among all modern nations down to the present day. Cicero was quite ready to admit as much as we admit about such professions as medicine, architecture, &c. They were not, he said, below the practice of a gentleman. Commerce, too, if conducted upon such a scale as to relieve it from the necessity of dishonesty, was not altogether to be censured. If undertaken with a view to subsequent retirement, and the enjoyment of cultivated leisure, it was worthy of the highest praise. We do not know that modern times have improved very much on these sentiments. We fancy they are generally entertained, if not invariably avowed, among the educated classes of this country. And they exactly embody as much as can be accurately expressed by the term "Liberalism." A certain elevation of mind, then, enabling us to see our own opinions and those of other people alongside of each other and a certain generosity of sentiment, leading us habitually to subordinate material interests to moral and intellectual beauty, are the distinguishing characteristics of Liberalism. It is the result of various constituent elements. Birth, nature, education, profession, all combine in its formation. The man in whom they do so combine is almost sure to be a gentleman. He will be tolerant of his fellows in society; open to conviction in argument; willing to listen to new ideas; courteous in his demeanour to all men; probably a man of taste in art, literature, and science. But of what particular creed, either in politics or religion, he will be is a matter which we submit is not of the essence of the question. But we need hardly point out that adherence to first principles is a necessary ingredient of a mind of this order, and it is sure to become more firm and lasting as time goes on. For it is part of a liberal education to teach the necessity of theory: and one of the best tests of a truly liberal mind is the adaptation of theory to practice without injuring the former. And here we may remind our readers that when this word was first introduced into politics it was done with a full consciousness that it was not a proper name for a party. The word first came into vogue when Mr. Canning was trying to lead his party along that narrow path which proved their ruin under Peel and Wellington. He was a Liberal. He had been educated in that earlier school of Toryism of which Pitt was the great master; and had he lived, the concession of the Roman Catholic claims would not have been followed by a revolution. The concession of them by Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington so shattered the confidence of the Tory party in their only remaining leaders that it wholly unnerved them for fighting the battle of the Reform Bill. But Canning had always been in favour of the Romish claims. Their concession by him would have involved no breach of faith. And this it was which made the whole difference. Canning and his party were Tories as much as Peel and Wellington were Tories. The political creed of all three was the same. Government by the Crown and the three Estates of the realm in Parliament, to the exclusion of the uneducated and inevitably indigent populace, was the common theory of all. The concession of the Romish claims did not infringe this theory in the slightest degree. With Peel and Wellington, however, the concession was compulsory, and proves nothing. But Canning had favoured it all his life. He had seen the propriety of it before the close of the eighteenth century. His mind had been flexible enough to understand that the Romish disabilities represented a worn-out state of things; and had they been removed then, it is highly probable that concession would not have disappointed us. Now the mind which can appreciate such truths as these by its own natural and spontaneous action is a liberal mind; and Canning and the Tories who adhered to him in 1829 chose to accept that designation not as the title of a new party, but merely to distinguish men of a certain mental organization in the old party. But the word was found to be so convenient to express either so much or so little, as the case might be: to be so excellent a cloak for opinions of the most unpopular or the most superficial character; that it was speedily appropriated as a common denomination by the Whigs and their new Radical allies, who have continued to use it ever since as the differential title of a distinct political party for which it is utterly unsuitable. The word, we repeat, is equally inappropriate whether applied to religion or to politics. Let us take the Church of Rome, for instance. Extravagant and unscriptural as some of her doctrines may be, there is nothing in them more "illiberal" than in many of the doctrines which all Christians accept. Nay, it is said, but the illiberalism consists in believing that there is no salvation for any one who denies these doctrines. But why is it more illiberal to say that there is no salvation for one who doubts about any given doctrine, than for one who doubts about any other given doctrine, when both are equally mysteries, and equally hard to human reason. Oh, but it is said the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church, and persecution is illiberal. But all religious bodies will persecute in a certain way, if they only possess the power. Is the Scotch Kirk not a persecuting Church? Was not Cromwell's little finger heavier than the loins of the Bishops? The argument will not stand. There are zealots in the Romish Church, as there are in all other churches, and zealots are usually illiberal. But their doctrine, their creed, is the same as that of their co-religionists. Liberalism and illiberalism make no difference in that. Let us turn to politics. Is there anything illiberal in those principles of policy which are commonly described as Conservative? or in that theory of government which belongs distinctively to the Tories? Set the Conservative creed against any other creed which describes itself simply as "Liberal." Is there any necessary difference? Observe what Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, keeping their Whiggism, which is something quite distinct, in abeyance, say on constitutional questions! Listen to Sir Cornewall Lewis, or to Mr. Gladstone! All these noblemen and gentlemen profess to speak the language of Liberals; to be distinguished from their opponents by their Liberalism. Yet, when they speak in this capacity, have they anything distinctive to say? Does Liberalism supply them with a single formula or a single doctrine to which their opponents would object? No: not one. As Liberals merely they have no doctrines, nor even nostrums. And why? Because, we repeat again, Liberalism, in the nature of things, cannot constitute a creed. It is a frame of mind, not an article of faith. Pursue this question to whatever length we may, the same conclusion will emerge. Carry the investigation through the professions, into social problems, wherever it is possible to find conflicting theories which furnish an appropriate test, and the same conviction will force itself upon us, that no one party can be found deserving the name of liberal or illiberal, on account of their peculiar tenets. If this, therefore, is the case, and we are thrown back after all upon the ancient signification of the word "Liberal," as the only one which makes it a practical line of demarcation between different descriptions of men, we may inquire, with considerable confidence, which deserve the title best, the Conservative party or their rivals? Among which party, as a rule, will be found those men who uphold the liberal arts and liberal education against the pressure of the cui bono philosophers? In which of the two parties will be found the most logic and the least empiricism; the greatest aptitude for taking broad views, and the least tendency towards selfish and sectarian ones? We apprehend that there cannot be a doubt on this point. But the other day we read a letter, in the columns of the Times, on the subject of the Lancashire distress. The letter was signed Scrutator. We are ignorant who Scrutator is. There was nothing whatever in his letter to betray his political opinions. Certainly there was no reason in the world to suppose he was a Conservative. Yet, what does he say? manufacturers as a class are cute,' but few of them like broad views-in fact, their want of education forbids it." That is, for Scrutator's own language is a little loose, forbids their liking broad views. Yet, are not the cotton manufacturers the very thews and sinews of the so-called great Liberal party? The fact is that "murder will out" at last. The manufacturers of this country have, for the last twenty years, been the spoiled children of the age. In a period of exceptional prosperity their defects have been but little seen. Occasionally it has been hinted, by writers entitled to respect, that their Liberalism was not very conspicuous in their dealings with those whom they employed. But the protest has usually been drowned in the clamour of the vast majority, and the manufacturers have been puffed into believing themselves something like the salt of this island. Yet, now we find an evidently competent observer stating of them, as a class, that they don't like broad views-that "their want of education forbids it." But, in the name of common sense, how can any man be a true Liberal who is incapable of taking broad views, and whose education has been so defective as to make him dislike broad views? Yet such men, we repeat, are the recognized yeomen of "Liberalism." "The cotton If, therefore, we are to take the word "liberal" in its ancient and accurate sense, we say that the true Liberal party of England is the Conservative party: the party which upholds liberal culture, scientific political principles, and takes an imperial and catho- | On the other hand, we have to consider that Liberalism is frequently predicated of a distinct set of political principles whose true tendency it conceals. As far as that party which sits upon the Speaker's right is liberal, in the true sense of the term, it merely discovers an attribute which it shows in common with the Conservatives, and which constitutes, therefore, no clear line of separation. But as far as that appellation points to a set of principles which do form a line of demarcation, it is not really Liberal but Radical. Liberalism, if we waive all our previous arguments, and consent to receive it as a political creed of itself, means simply Democracy in the State and Deism in the Church: means the overthrow of everything which the greatest minds of the past, and the educated intelligence of the present, has deemed worthy to be called liberal. Certainly, if we choose to turn the word upside down in this fashion, to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter, Liberalism is the designation of a party-creed, and a creed too, against which every real Liberal should fight. Of course, it is quite open to men like Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone to disavow the narrow views of Mr. Bright, and to deliver Liberalism from the impure caresses of its pseudo-disciples; but if they do this, they concede the point, and acknowledge the truth we are contending for. On the other hand it is quite open to Mr. Bright and Mr. Baines to disavow their more enlightened allies, and to maintain that they themselves are the only true and genuine Liberals. But then Liberalism at once becomes synonymous with all that is sordid and unspiritual; is robbed of all its fascination for the higher class of minds; and may be safely left to the operation of time and chance to reveal it in its true colours. No doubt between the Conservative-Liberals such as are some of the present ministry, and men like Mr. Bright and Mr. Williams there is a considerable intermediate class; men who grasp at the word liberal to save themselves the trouble of defining their opinions more rigidly, and who, under other circumstances, would with equal indifference have been Conservatives. These men have about the same idea of progress as Lord Dundreary had of maintaining his seniority over his brother. They have a vague idea that it ought to be maintained in some fashion; but having no consciousness that they themselves are moving forward, and not much liking the idea of being overtaken by the mob, secretly agree with themselves that it is "one of those things which no fellow can make out." The existence of this class of men does not affect our argument. The desire to overthrow existing governments, and sympathy with that desire on the part of spectators, may be liberal, or may be inexpressibly narrow-minded. Which it shall be depends on what is likely to be substituted for the existing Government if the revolution be successful. If it be only the exchange of one kind of brute force for another, the insurrectionists will merely have been gratifying the lowest of all human passions, namely, the hatred of authority, without the slightest advantage to their country. That is not a result for Liberals to rejoice over. Yet, unhappily, it is generally assumed among Englishmen that a sympathy with every kind of resistance to established order is a prominent sign of Liberality. Men forget that willing obedience to authority is one of the primitive and most deeply-rooted distinctions between civilization and barbarism. Such Liberalism as we speak of is cousin-german to that natural freedom familiar to us in the lines of Dryden-A genuine Liberal will not, indeed, be hoodwinked by worm-eaten traditions, or seduced into irrational servility. But as little will he allow himself to be convinced by the logic of the strongest lungs, or the facts of a half-informed press. He will be proof against all such utterly unphilosophic nonsense as a normal sympathy with rebellion; and will never allow himself to forget that Liberalism abroad may end, where Radicalism at home infallibly would end, in the destruction, and not in the advancement, of all that our higher nature feeds on—of reverence, of loyalty, and a belief in more than meets the eye. The designs of those who, under cover of promoting the dignity of the human race, are steadily bent on the subversion of what has hitherto been found to secure it, are the great danger of the age. A struggle is in progress between mock Liberality and real: in other words, between Truth and Falsehood. We have done, therefore, what we could to elucidate the nature of the contest and explain the characters of the combatants. Liberality, we repeat, is neither the creed nor the symbol of a party. It exists, and claims our homage, wherever respect for the ideal and the spiritual, and for culture in its highest sense, predominate over the phenomenal and material, and the pursuit of instrumental knowledge. Joseph Wolff. True NE of the largest-hearted and ablest-minded men of the time has just gone away from us. A powerful frame and vigorous constitution has given way at the age of sixty-six, under the wear and tear of impulses that would not suffer rest, and of unremitting exertions for others' good. Joseph Wolff died as he lived, a poor man; because, though continually before the public as a collector of money, no part of what he collected went to enrich himself. His last public act was an appeal on behalf of Paul Pierides, whose young life he saved in Cyprus. That life, after many years of active usefulness, has been visited with great distress. The same voice which saved it has made an appeal for aid. At Joseph Wolff's request, four of his near friends, one of whom is the Editor of this Review, allowed their names to be published as ready to receive subscriptions. About 80l. has been received, and much more, it is hoped, will be received. But it is not so much what he has done for others |