The advice rather takes the form of recommending an abstinence from politics altogether with a view of conciliating the Liberals. Sometimes this course is urged on purely religious grounds, by appeals to the sanctity of the clerical office; as though politics, like hunting and dancing, are essentially secular pastimes. At other times it is advocated upon grounds which are rather darkly insinuated than broadly stated, which appear to have in them. more of personal preference or antipathy than of any other element. Upon closer examination it will be evident that this change of attitude towards the Conservative party which has been assumed by a few well-known divines, and by an active though not numerous section of Churchmen, is purely political in its origin. It does not result from any alteration in the mutual relations between Church and State, or between the ecclesiastical and political Conservatism of the country. It has been produced simply by the strangely erratic career of a knot of wayward politicians. When Sir Robert Peel broke away from his followers by suddenly renouncing principles which he had spent many years in persuading them to adopt, he took with him nearly all the formed administrative talents of his party. Unfortunately for themselves, and for those who relied upon them, these statesmen did not at once recognise the real hue of their own opinions, or take up their posts in the camp to which they properly belonged. They clung to the belief that they were still Conservatives; and though refusing to act with the Conservative party, they equally refused to give up calling themselves by its name. Of course this amphibious condition could not be lasting. Measures came up upon which it was necessary that they should vote; and as each test was successively applied, the result invariably was the surrender of some fresh portion of Conservative principle, the acceptance of some distinctive tenet of Liberalism. But their belief in their own Conservatism, baseless as it was, was a tenacious belief, and fought hard for its existence. Every step in the transaction was a struggle; and on each occasion their friends affected to doubt what the ultimate issue would be. It was not until thirteen years had elapsed after the great disruption that they were avowedly and permanently absorbed into the ranks of the Liberal party. It so happened that many of these politicians had, in the days of their Conservatism, been earnest supporters of the Established Church; and their atttachment to the Church was the last result of their early political training that deserted them. In more than one instance it clings by them still; but at first it was a very prominent feature of their eclectic creed, and perP 2 haps haps attracted all the more notice from its very contrast to the Liberalism which was slowly impregnating their opinions in other departments of thought. This simultaneous pursuit of incompatible ideals attracted a good deal of admiration from minds of the class that are fascinated by intellectual tours de force. Even now, when the practical fruit of this unnatural union has been fully developed, the newspaper which devotes itself to the support of Mr. Gladstone, bases its advocacy of him chiefly on the temptation to abandon the Church to which, as a Liberal statesman, he has been exposed, and which he has successfully resisted. Some minds appear to grow weary of the spectacle of homogeneous convictions; and they not only find a motley creed more agreeable to themselves to contemplate, but they come to admire it as a sort of virtue. Just as in ruder times insanity was looked upon as a mark of the protection of Heaven, so in these days the simultaneous belief in two or three inconsistent sets of opinions is held by many to be the sure sign of peculiar conscientiousness. Certain it is, that from one cause or another the political degeneration of this small knot of distinguished Churchmen was the origin of a marked change of feeling on the part of an active section of the clergy. They renounced the political predilections which have distinguished the clergy of the English Church ever since there has been a Church in England. At first they even gave indications of a desire to fraternise with the democracy. Such a wish appears to be cherished even now by some of the most eminent among them. A recent letter from Dr. Pusey, extracted out of him by Mr. Gladstone's election necessities, shows that there are still some persons who seriously believe that a system of universal suffrage would be favourable to the Anglican Church. But this is not a common view. Those who, on grounds of personal friendship or personal antipathy, desire to help Mr. Gladstone, avoid the error of counselling the clergy to turn radicals. Whatever may be the theoretic value of a democratic Christianity, the practical fact is, that whenever the Liberals triumph, the extreme Dissenters triumph also. The Liberal party behave with circumspection towards the Church when they are weak, and do their utmost to school their violent allies into only asking for a little at a time. But in proportion as they have been strong, in the same proportion the Church has fared ill at their hands. The Liberal leaders make professions of moderation in their views upon this subject; but, however sincere such professions may be, they offer no practical guarantee. The moderate opinions which serve to gain an instalment of any violent change, often disarm opposition at the time; but the security they seem to give is quite illusory. When they have served their turn they are thrown aside; and the speaker who gave utterance to them, if he values his consistency, is thrown aside with them, and new leaders appear, provided with opinions just one shade less moderate, fitted to push on the process of destruction one stage further. The Radical leaders are sufficiently necessary to Liberal supremacy to be sure that every change which they have at heart, will not long be neglected by any Liberal Government; and the Radical leaders are in deadly, irreconcilable hostility to the Church. An alliance between the Church and the Liberals can never be permanently the dream of more than a few very eccentric minds. Yet it is at this moment the policy to which an active and influential party are trying to bring the Church. Mr. Gladstone is less successful in persuading than in dazzling the House of Commons; but there is no doubt that he is a master of the art of persuasion with his friends. He has contrived to induce those who have given up everything else for the Church to give up the Church for him. Since he joined Lord Palmerston in 1859, there is no subject upon which he has given to the Church an effective and genuine support. He has voted against her upon the Burials Bill and the Oxford Tests Bill, in order to gratify his Radical friends; he has suffered the Government of which he is the chief support to harass and oppress the managers of Church schools with a pertinacious and untiring hostility; he has personally authorised the application of the Conscience Clause under which so many of them have suffered; and he has not exerted himself to induce his colleagues to refrain from abandoning the Church they had previously supported even upon such a question as Church Rates. These are in themselves exhibitions of the real strength of his attachment to the Church, which should have undeceived the most trustful and simple soul. Those who support him profess to prefer the interests of the Church to any other interests whatever. Nay, they go farther, and say that it is on account of that preference that they support Mr. Gladstone. It is at all events clear that they have selected for their representative a statesman who in this vital point diametrically differs from them. He may or may not care about the Church; but he certainly does not care about her so much as he does about certain questions of secular politics and certain objects of personal ambition. Had the Church been his first object, those would have been his allies who have been friendly to the Church, not those that have been hostile to her. In joining the Liberal Government he necessarily proclaimed that he agreed with them on the questions which he considered the most important of the day. But he did not agree with them on Church Church questions; for, except when he has voted against the Church, they have steadily voted against him. It follows inevitably that he did not consider the Church so important as the French Treaty or the Reform Bill. He deliberately resolved to give the whole support of his talents to increase the strength of a party who have uniformly used their strength for the injury of the Church of England. He may himself-in the face of an impending election-have made up his mind to vote against the Oxford Tests Bill; but the majority which carried that Bill was in a great degree of his own creation. Everyone who gives strength to the Liberal party increases their power at the hustings, and their consequent strength in the House of Commons. Therefore, in giving them his general support, no matter what his votes may be, he in reality supports every measure they propose, and shares the responsibility of every triumph they win. There is no limited liability in the responsibility of members of a Government for the acts of their colleagues or their party. Party strength is acquired as a whole, and party organization works as a whole. Mr. Gladstone is a great orator; he is a master of showy finance, and his skill in the political investment of a surplus is unrivalled. He never commits the error of making remissions which will not tell at the hustings. These are great gifts to place at the disposal of a Government. They operate on public opinion, and they influence constituencies. It is probable that in some constituencies members are returned to support the Government, who would not have been returned but for the assistance which Mr. Gladstone has given to the Government. In four or five divisions, during the last six years, the Government has been saved from expulsion by majorities ranging from seven to eighteen. In other words, they have been saved by the support of from four to nine members. It is conceivable enough that the value of the strength brought by Mr. Gladstone's talents to the assistance of the Government may be rated at a higher number of members than nine. If so, it is quite clear that Mr. Gladstone by joining them has kept them in office, and therefore that he is responsible for the mode in which they have exercised the departmental powers and Parliamentary weight which office gives. There can be no doubt that he has become so willingly, for he has strained every nerve to keep the present Government in power. Among other things, he is clearly responsible for the persistent aid which the Government has given to every Dissenting attack upon the Church, and for all the disastrous consequences those attacks would have entailed unless they had been foiled, not by the party which Mr. Gladstone befriends, but by the party to which he is bitterly opposed. It It is, of course, open to him to accept this responsibility, and to say that he supported the Government because he preferred their policy as a whole, though he differed with them in regard to their conduct towards the Church. This is the only plea open to him, and it is probably the one that he would select. But he cannot avail himself of that plea without admitting that he holds finance and reform, in which he agrees with the Government, to be matters of more importance than the Church upon which he disagrees with them. In order that the suffrage might be lowered, and certain goods admitted duty free, he was willing to contribute his political strength towards depriving the Church of her endowments in the shape of Church-rates--towards admitting Dissenters to officiate in her churchyards-towards allowing them to shape the studies of the Universities. There are people who think more of duty-free goods than they do of the maintenance of the Established Church or the preservation of religious teaching at the Universities. It is very intelligible that such persons should support Mr. Gladstone with enthusiasm. But there are other persons who think a good deal more of religious Establishments and religious teaching than they do of tariffs. And that any of these should still give their confidence to Mr. Gladstone, and should be willing to quarrel with the Conservative party in order to uphold him, is one of the political puzzles of the day. There is no greater fallacy than to estimate the store which any man sets by any particular cause, or the value of the aid he gives it, by the isolated votes that he records. By the votes a man gives he simply bears witness to the convictions of his constituency; by the party he supports he gives effect to his own. The fate of the Ballot is a good illustration of the difference between voting for a cause and supporting it. A very large number of members have pledged themselves to vote for the Ballot. Some of them are eminent men, members of the Cabinet, many of them are attached and trusted supporters of the Government, and, taking them as a whole, they form a large majority of the Liberal party. If they pleased, it would be absolutely in their power to impose their will as law upon their leaders, and make the Ballot a portion of the programme of any Liberal ministry. But, though they have freely given their pledges upon the subject, in their hearts they are not really in earnest about it. They attach far greater value to other measures which they hope that a Liberal Government will carry for them, or even to the gratification of personal ambition, than they do to the Ballot. The consequence is, that the Ballot, though backed by a larger number of votes than many a cause that has become speedily |