“There is among the English working classes,” once observed Sir Robert Peel, “too much suffering and too much perplexity. It is a disgrace and a danger to our civilization. It is absolutely necessary that we should render the condition of the manual labourer less hard and less precarious. We cannot do everything, but something may be effected, and something ought to be done.” Though nearly forty years have passed since that statesman’s death, we are still groping blindly for the something which ought to be done for the poor; and such strength as Socialism possesses is derived from the general spread of the feeling which Peel put into words, and which no politician—much more no statesman—can afford to neglect.
And that is why the politics of the future will be largely affected by the social questions now coming to the front. From the opinions of many who are pressing them forward one may profoundly differ, but justice demands that all they advance should be examined without prejudice, and with the determination to accept that which is good, from whatever quarter it may come.
XXXVII.—WHAT SHOULD BE THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME?
While the social problem, however, is developing, we have the political problem to face; and, therefore, the immediate programme of the Liberal party now demands consideration. In some detail have been presented the arguments from a Liberal point upon all the great public questions which are either ripe or ripening for settlement. It has not been possible to go minutely into every point involved; a broad outline of each subject has had to suffice; but it may be trusted that each has been sufficiently explained for us now to consider which should occupy the forefront in the Liberal platform.
Mr. Bright observed, in days not long since, when he was honoured by every man in the party as one of its most trusted leaders, that he disliked programmes. What he preferred, it was evident, was that when some great question—such as the repeal of the Corn Laws or the extension of the suffrage, with both of which his name will be ever identified—should thrust itself to the front by force of circumstances, it should be faced by the Liberal party and dealt with on its merits; and what he opposed, it was equally evident, was the formulation of any cut-and-dried programme, containing a number of points to be accepted as a shibboleth by every man calling himself Liberal or Radical, and by its hide-bound propensity tending to retard real progress.
The Irish question is one of those great matters which has thrust itself to the front by force of circumstances, which should be faced by the Liberal party and dealt with on its merits, and which, until it is so faced and dealt with, will stand in the path of any real reforms. The evil effects of the discontent of four millions of people at our very doors are not to be got rid of by shutting our eyes to them; and the intensification of those evil effects which is to-day going on is a matter which must engage the attention of every Liberal.
But, out of dislike for any cut-and-dried programme of several measures to be accepted wholesale and without question, the party must not be allowed to drift into aimlessness. As long as it exists it must exist for work, and its fruit must not be phrases but facts. Liberalism can never return to the days when it munched the dry remainder biscuit of worn-out Whiggery. A hide-bound programme may be a bad thing, but nothing worse can be imagined than the string of airy nothings which used to do duty for a policy among the latter-day Whigs. Take the addresses issued by them at the general election of 1852 as an instance, and which have been effectively summarized thus:—“They promised (in the words of Sir James Graham) ‘cautious but progressive reform,’ and (in those of Sir Charles Wood) ‘well-advised but certain progress.’ Lord Palmerston said he trusted the new Liberal Government would answer ‘the just expectation of the country,’ and Lord John Russell pledged it to ‘rational and enlightened progress.’”
Now, in these days, we want something decidedly more definite than that, and, if our leaders could offer us nothing better, we should have either to find other leaders or abandon our aims. Happily we need do neither, for the Liberal chiefs, with Mr. Gladstone at their head, are prepared to advance with the needs of the times, and to advocate those measures which the circumstances demand and their principles justify.