The Evening Star THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 1874

Evening Star, Issue 3472, 9 April 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 1874

The ‘Mail’ of January 26 publishes the addresses of Mr Gladstone to the electors of Greenwich and of Mr Disraeli to the constituency of the' County of Buckingham. They are worthy of careful perusal by all. They differ very materially in tone, spirit, and principle. Mr Gladstone’s is that of a man who “ foreseeth the evil,” and who therefore desires to overcome evil with good ; Mr Disraeli’s is that of a politician, blind to the changes that are going on around him, bound to a class, and seeking to retain power and influence in its hands. Mr Gladstone’s address takes in a wide range of subjects. It explains his reasons for resignation of his office, for the dissolution of Parliament, and, as we noticed yesterday, his views of changes necessary to be kept in view. There is an idea abroad that, the Liberal party at Home have been what is termed “ going too fast,” and that they have endangered the institutions of the country. As a matter of course, there are differences of opinion as to the value of the institutions said to be endangered. Ours is that nothing has as yet been attacked, but what was manifestly working detrimentally ; and on this point Mr Gladstone truly says :

As to the institutions of the country, gentlemen, the charge is the very same that you have been accustomed to hear urged against Liberal Governments in general for the last forty years. It is time to test by a general survey of the past this trite and vague allegation. Now, there has elapsed a period of forty, or more exactly forty-three years, since the Liberal Party acquired the main direction of public affairs. This followed another period of about forty years, beginning with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, during which, there had been an almost unbroken rule of their opponents, who claimed and were reputed to be the great preservers of the institutions of the country. But I ask you to judge the men by the general results. I fear we must admit that the term of forty years of Tory rule, which closed in 1830, and to which you are invited to return, left the institutions of the country weaker, aye, even in its peace and order less secure, than at the commencement of the period it had found them. lam confident that if now the present Government be dismissed from the service of their Gracious Mistress and of the country, the Liberal party, which they represent, may at least challenge contradiction when they say that their term of forty years leaves the Throne, the laws, Sand the institutions of the country not weaker, but stronger than it found them.

There are comparatively few amongst us who remember the State of England prior to the year 1830. Even its history has not been fairly written. It was a period of difficulty and distress. Very little of the sunshine of prosperity was there to cheer the working class. They were oppressed with taxes unequally apportioned; they were fettered by laSvs intended exclusively to prevent their advancement ; they were kept in ignorance as far as possible, under the idea that knowledge would render them dangerous; and there were risings among them put down by force. Foreign policy was conducted pretty much on the same principles. The influence of Great Britain consisted in the number of guns she could send to sea, and the number of bayonets she could pay for on shore. During the forty yeara of Tory rule, through war expenditure, either in direct payment of troops and navy, or through subsidising other countries, the national debt increased from L 244,000,000 in 1793 to L 840,000,000 in 1830, and now stands at some where about L 470,000,000 more or less. L 800,000,000 were spent in war between 1805 and 1817, both inclusive. Yet, every vestige of what the Tories arranged as advantageous to this country and Europe, as the return for this outlay, has been swept away and changed. It was the price paid for retaining the nationalities of Europe, as settled by the convention at Yienna in 1814. The unwarrantable assumption of the right to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations, with a view to the maintenance of certain forms of government, was the basis of this enormous outlay. The most striking comment upon the doctrine is- the proved uselessness of the effort: yet the Tories have not learned wisdom from experience. The old leaven crops out in the following sentence of Mr Disraeli’s address:— Gentlemen, —I have ever endeavored, and, if returned to Parliament, I shall, whether in or out of office, continue the endeavor, to propose or support all measures calculated to improve the condition of the people of this Kingdom. But I do not think this great end is advanced by incessant and harrassing legislation. The English people are governed by their customs as much as by their laws, and there is nothing they more dislike than unnecessary restraint and meddling interference in their affairs. Generally speaking, I should say of the Administration of the last five years that it would have been better for us all if there had been a little more energy in our foreign policy and a little less in our domestic legislation.

Translated into the language of fifty or sixty years ago it would mean, what we have heard from Tory lips thousands of times, “ It is necessary to engage in a foreign war in order to divert attention from affairs at Home.” Mr Gladstone, to our mind, puts foreign relations in the light in which alone a nation can justify its acts. His theory is alike applicable to the conduct of individuals as of nationalities. It is the application of the golden rule to men in the aggregate as well as to man the individual. Arrogance, injustice, oppression, become aggravated instead of standing excused when perpetrated by nations, societies, or companies ; although it is too much the fashion to say and to do under shelter of numbers, what a man would shrink from did he stand alone. Skilful men, like the late Lord Palmerston, may manage to array power against power in such well weighed balance as to preserve English influence, although always at the risk of being involved in very questionable quarrels. This is the Tory ideaof foreign

politics, which, just now, if reinstituted, is fraught with danger to European peace. There never was a period in the history of Europe move threatening of change than the present. What that change may be none can forsee. It may be effected without bloodshed, but that seems doubtful; and so far as we can read the signs of the times, the leading mouarchs are consulting together to make all snug against the rising storm. _ The struggle of Church against fetate in Germany, and the civil war in Spain, point to the nature of the quarrel. The issue can hardly be said to be doubtful, for it is essential to progress that the power of the Church must be kept within its proper limits, and the ability of governments to make a stand against ecclesiastical domination is an evidence of the strength of public opinion in that direction, England may be drawn into the quarrel, as was the case in 1853, on which, on very flimsy religious pretences, occasion was taken to pick a quarrel with Eussia. the only way to avoid a recurrence of such a folly with honor, is to adopt Mr Gladstone’s theory as expressed in his address—

I need not dwell on the elementary and everabidinc duties of the Ministry, such as the maintenance of the country’s honor, of the general peace, of the rights of all classes, of our insular seemty ; but I will state that we desire to found the credit and influence of our foreign policy upon a resolution to ask from foreign Powers nothing but what in like circumstances we should give ourselves, and as steadily to respect their lights as we would tenaciously uphold our own.