Contemporary Thought on Nineteenth Century Conservatism

1830-1850

Richard Gaunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781138052284
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351270588
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Conservative party remains the longest-established major political party in modern British history. This collection makes available 19th century documents illuminating aspects of Conservatism through a critical period in the party's history, from 1830 to 1874. It throws light on Conservative ideas, changing policies, party organisation and popular partisan support, showing how Conservatism evolved and responded to domestic and global change. It explores how certain clusters of ideas and beliefs comprised a Conservative view of political action and purposes, often reinforcing the importance of historic institutions such as the Anglican Church, the monarchy and the constitution. It also looks at the ways in which a broadening electorate required the marshalling of Conservative supporters through greater party organisation, and how the Conservative party became the embodiment and expression of durable popular political sentiment. The collection examines how the Conservative party became a body seeking to deliver progress combined with stability.

The documents brought together in this collection give direct voice to how Conservatives of the period perceived and extolled their aspirations, aims, and the values of Conservatism. Introductory essays highlight the main themes and nature of Conservatism in a dynamic age of change and how the Conservative axiom, in an imperfect world of successful adaptation, being essential to effective preservation informed and defined the Conservative party, the views of its leaders, the beliefs of its supporters, and the political outlook they espoused. This first volume covers the period 1830-1850.

Part 1
THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY, 1830–1834

1
‘OUR “CONFESSION OF FAITH”’

Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 1/1 (February 1830), 1–7

If we turn over the opening articles of periodical works, of all classes, ages, and durations, we shall find that an almost universal complaint of the awkwardness of self-introduction prevails among them. Many are the shifts and apologies resorted to in order to get over this preliminary difficulty; and in a thousand fashions is the comparison instituted between a bashful Magazine launching forth into the world, and a blushing maiden coming out in the tender prime of eighteen. Uncourteous readers have too often said, that the demeanour of the newly-introduced periodical was much more apt to remind them of the lumbering and floundering gestures of a young squire from the country, thrust into a drawing-room for the first time; and that its attempts, whether to be easy, or brilliant, or refined, or retiring,—to be dégagé or sentimental, witty or wise, polite or dignified, were all equally unhappy.

A hundred years ago, or a little more, in the days of the good Queen Anne, the first writers (and they were so in more than the literal sense of the word) who “obliged the town” with “occasional pieces” managed to cut the knot by inventing clubs of various kinds, and thus in a manner shifting off any individual responsibility. The “Craftsman” adopted another device, and made its début under the disguise of Caleb Danvers, Esq., an elderly member of Gray’s Inn, who brought the feelings and opinions of the country party of the days of King Charles the Second to bear upon the political feuds of the early times of the House of Hanover. We are afraid that no such devices would pass current now. From our clubs, it is too well known by the dismal experience of every day, nothing wise or witty can come; and we have already another Caleb Danvers in the field, in the person of a reverend elder of Edinburgh, the renowned Christopher North. It would be scrutinising these pleasant whimsies too curiously, were we to remark, that there is one inconvenience in starting with a very old gentleman as the eidolon of an editor; for, in process of time, he must become of a most Nestorian antiquity. Caleb Danvers was, we believe, seventy years old when he commenced his editorial labours, and must have been very near completing his century when the defeat of the Pretender put an end to them. What Mr. North’s age might have been when he began, we cannot say; but certainly the thirteen or fourteen additional years which have since elapsed have not given him an air of more advanced senility. Then there is Sylvanus Urban, who has now nearly concluded his hundred years of actual editorial existence; but we do not recollect that Sylvanus, at any period of his bland existence, ever pretended to personality: he was never any thing but a good-humoured and good-natured shadow.

The modern taste is, we fear, rather of a more tradesmanlike description, and trusts for introduction to the regular and well-understood means of advertisement and prospectus. The former of these instruments of notoriety is unquestionably most legitimate: it is no more than handing your card, ornamented, we admit, every now and then, with a little fancy embroidery. In the latter, alas! all faith has been long since given up. Like the tragedy-lady in Hamlet, they “always do protest too much,” and, still worse than other ladies in another tragedy, do not keep the word of promise, either to the ear or the hope. With a due knowledge, therefore, of all these circumstances, we think we consult our own interests and those of our readers best, by not promising any thing at all. Yet we must say something; and let us be permitted to put what we do say into the shape of a preface.

Well, then, we suppose it may be taken for granted, that all readers in this reading age and country so well understand what a Magazine is expected to contain, that it would be waste of time to say that we are to be a literary miscellany, embracing &c. &c. &c. &c.

That being thus satisfactorily arranged, the next question that arises is, What are to be our politics? We think the question is the fairest that can possibly be conceived. We should give up England as our country—should never recognise it as the hard-fighting and ever-contentious land of our birth, if we were not prepared to be, as Lord Goderich, somewhat uncourteously perhaps, but very truly, phrased it, badgered on the subject of our political opinions the moment we shewed our faces upon any public arena.

The only difficulty we feel in answering that question in one word is, the want of the word. Our great leading parties have lost their names. The Whigs have been un-whigged; the Tories un-toried. In former times, the friends of these parties were fond of designating the former as the asserters of liberty and popular rights,—the latter as the champions of religion and monarchy. By their enemies and ill-willers the Whigs were styled democrats and jacobins, levellers, and upsetters of church and king; while from hostile voices the Tories received the titles of bigots and oppressors, enemies of advancing civilisation, and sworn foes to the progress of the march of mind. Each party fought its battle by arms of all kinds, light or heavy, as befel. On the whole, however, of late years, gravity was the characteristic of the Whig—wit and sarcasm of the Tory. Exceptions will of course be found. One Whig wit will immediately occur to the mind; but we believe that he is the only one of the party. But, exceptio probat regulam; and it was only to be expected that long years of power should make Tories “triumphant,” and long years of exclusion from office should tend to render Whigs “desponding.” Both parties had certainly more claim upon those appellations in the last years of George III. and the first years of George IV., than when Dean Swift bestowed them in the days of Queen Anne;¹ and it is therefore not to be wondered at, that one should see the bright, and the other the gloomy side of things, and tinge their compositions accordingly.

But abstract principles in politics are mere dreams—they are nothing. For the creed of politicians, you must look to their practice. The watchwords of party survive long, very long indeed, after the meaning imposed upon them by those who originally adopted them has passed away. The Whigs, for example, toasted during many a long year—“The King! may he never forget the principles which put his family upon the throne;” and by this toast it was intended originally, and even down to our own times, to express admiration of the principles of the revolution of 1688; nay, gentlemen are still alive, who, from the chairs of Whig clubs, have given the “glorious, pious, and immortal memory” of him by whom that revolution was consummated. Yet, while those toasts were duly honoured—while William III. “was in their bowls freshly remembered,” the gentlemen speeching and quaffing were insensibly but inevitably linking themselves to the party which was put down in the days of the revolution, the party which professed principles that would have kept His Majesty’s family off the throne, and in whose eyes “the hero William” was a combination of all that was abominable;—and now, when the same toasts are proposed by the more consistent descendants of the men of the revolution, the Whigs are the first to denounce them as invasions of liberty, as outrages upon freedom, on the liberticide plea that they are not to be tolerated, because they give offence to an opposite faction. Careful observers will find something of the same kind among the Tories, though perhaps not altogether so glaring. They, too, however, have tacitly yielded to principles which they formerly denounced. There is some truth in what an acute writer of the day says, that the Whigs, of late years, have always acted below their professions, and the Tories above theirs.

To speak the truth, the factions are gone. When the un-whigging and un-torying commenced, it is immaterial to say; but it was consummated by Mr. Canning. He was something of both parties—a sort of eclectic. Opposed to the general body of Tories on the Roman Catholic question, and on many points of foreign and domestic policy, he went beyond them in his systematic opposition to any approach towards reform, and in studied contempt for popular opinion in England. His pro-Catholicism rendered him a favourite with the Whig party—his anti-reform spirit conciliated the Tories.

He died, after having for a moment, and an uneasy moment, grasped the object of his ambition—the Premiership. Of his immediate successors, little need be said;—of those who are now in power, little can be said. There is one great man among them; but if we dare to say that he is sole minister, we bring ourselves within the jeopardy of libel, as it is interpreted by the Attorney-General, selected from that party whose favourite expression it was, that “the liberty of the press is like the air we breathe—without it we die.”

In short,—for there is little use of wasting words on what every body in the kingdom knows,—we have seen, within a couple of years, the Roman Catholic question carried by a ministry which got into power on the avowed grounds of opposing it. We have seen the freedom-loving patriots of Covent Garden and elsewhere, supple servants of the ministry, and rebuking the people for daring to express their opinion against any measure coming from authority. We have seen a tribune² of the populace, who had once vowed that he held his office of representative in the House of Commons on the tenure of speaking the will of his constituents, rising to declare, that he would desire they never had the privilege of returning members to Parliament, unless they agreed with him on certain measures of state policy. We have seen a colleague of his,³ who resisted a Speaker’s warrant, and set London in an uproar, about twenty years ago, on the propriety of resisting the orders of “the bad House that kept late hours in Palace Yard,” maintaining that nothing could be more improper than to dissolve a Parliament, in order to appeal to the sentiments of those who returned them, when it was probable that such appeal would have a contrary result to what “the representatives” had determined upon. We have seen bishops defending what they had sworn to be idolatry, and ministers loudly urging the adoption of measures which they had, within six months, declared to be pregnant with ruin. And how can we pretend to say what is party at present? We can understand the merits of a struggle for place and power; but we do not at present discern even the elements of what were once the so sharply marked distinctions of Whig and Tory.

Our political tendencies will be sufficiently apparent to the intelligent from what we have said already;—to the non-intelligent it would be useless to address ourselves. During the late struggle for Roman Catholic emancipation, we should have been amongst its most decided opponents; but as we think that it is now improbable in the highest degree that the measure of last session will be repealed—as, in short, Protestant ascendancy, as understood by our fathers, is a matter of history—we shall not moot a question which, for the present, is as useless in practice as the famous schoolboy controversy of ancient times, whether Hannibal ought to have marched upon Rome after the battle of Cannæ. Reserving our opinions upon the theological and political questions connected with the Romish church, as it exerts its influence here and on the continent, we willingly excuse ourselves from fighting over again upon paper a battle which has been lost in the field. We shall keep our attention steadfastly fixed upon the movements of the party now called into power, and sedulously watch whether they attempt to do all the mischief which they desire; but as we do not for the present see how they can be dislodged from the station which they have obtained, we must even let them stay there, without any angry inquiry on our part how or why they have won it.

In other matters of domestic policy we are not very anxious to pledge ourselves. We have no respect for the political economists—men who, in general, blunder on in blind subjection to theories hastily adopted upon partial inductions, and perpetually contradicted in practice; but, at the same time, our reverence is just as slight for the soi-disant practical gentlemen, who, on the strength of having been clerks, in one capacity or another, in public offices, where the portion of intellect required is not more than that of a dog in a wheel, talk of the “mystery” of their avocations, as if public business were a sort of Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry, to be understood only by the adepts; and affect to sneer, or perhaps do actually sneer without affectation, at those who have not had the advantage of learning how to fold a note in a diplomatic manner, or to tie a parcel with appropriate tape. Both these classes of men are equally absurd and ridiculous (we have much to say hereafter about them); but there is a small sect, compounded of both, who are not to be laughed at. Your trading political economists, dry-baked in office, are no matter of jest. It would not be difficult to prove, that they have inflicted almost as much calamity upon the country as a foreign conqueror could have done,—more, indeed, than foreign conquerors, in civilised days, in general, ever think of doing. We believe that public opinion, dazzled or blinded for a while by the affected precision and mock-mathematical accuracy of this tribe of philosophers, is gradually becoming undeceived; and we shall endeavour to assist it in returning into the right path, and teaching it to look with something more of respect on maxims and principles which, in all countries, but especially in this country, have been the parents of wealth and power; and with suspicion, at least, on mushroom doctrines, which have rarely been acted upon, for any period, without involving those who followed them in misfortune, and inducing the necessity of a hasty retreat.

Sufficient has been here said to make it perfectly well understood that we are not of liberal principles. We have only a few words more to add. The history of this country bears us out in saying, that meddling with foreign affairs (except in extreme cases, which we here of course purposely refrain from discussing, even in the slightest manner,) has been always a mistake of the first magnitude. We do not admit—for that is not the word which we would use—that the victories of the Edwards and the Henrys, the Marlboroughs and the Wellingtons, and the still more national glories of the Drakes and Blakes, the Rodneys and the Nelsons, have raised the feeling, and animated the courage, and lit the blood of our country. We do not admit it. No! we boast it. Perish the cold word of logical controversy! We make it our boast, that to Cressy and Poitiers and Agincourt—to Blenheim and Ramilies and Oudenarde—to Salamanca, Toulouse, and Waterloo; still more—let us say it without disparagement to these fields of fame—still more, because it is our own, our own by the inherited valour of the warriors of the wooden walls, by the inheritance of freedom, of free Athens, free Carthage, free Rome, free Scandinavia, free Venice, free England, and, if Old England’s descendants, when she has become effete, prove worthy of their mother, free America,—by the mastery of the sea, won in many a glorious fight, from the days of Elizabeth and the Armada to those of Nelson and Trafalgar,—we have obtained that truest safeguard of national independence—the perfect certainty, on the part of our enemies, that any attempt to insult us is such an experiment as “drawing a tooth from an angry lion.” That, however, being sufficiently proved, we think we may now, for a generation at least, rest content under the shade of our laurels. “We have supt full of honors;” and as we need not go to war to prove that we know how to fight, we cannot conceive that there is any other necessity pressing upon us just at present. Our business, then, in this our Magazine shall be to preach the necessity of peace, the absolute duty of noninterference in foreign politics, whether to assist distressed princes and disconsolate princesses on one hand, or runaway patriots and craven constitutionalists on the other. Let the nations of the continent arrange their internal affairs as they please; provided they do not bear upon us, we need not intermeddle. The French newspapers are very busy just now with some fancies about a comité directeur, of which such eminent statesmen as Mr. Gally Knight (victim as he is of Lord Byron’s exquisite ridicule) and poor Lord Palmerston are the heads, and which is described as having for its purpose the regeneration of the continent. The folly of this is apparent; but it is not greater, nor more absurd than the pretensions which a noisy class of politicians in this country set up to our being the arbiters of every quarrel, from the North Pole to the South. There are people daily and hourly writing and speaking here about the eternal disgrace which England suffers, because Don Pedro’s brother, and not Don Pedro’s daughter, is sovereign of Portugal. It may be wrong; but

What’s Miguel to us, or we to Miguel!

Others lament that Ferdinand the Seventh continues to play leap-frog with his attendants, to break various oaths, in which the animus imponentis differed most astonishingly from the animus jurantis, and to marry at least half as many wives as Harry the Eighth. Bad taste and bad conscience, perhaps; but

To Spain be all the woes of Spain,

While we, in Britain’s happier reign,

Live undisturbed in peace.

With whom, or for whom, else have we to quarrel? Naples and their Pepes? Vix. Or are we called upon by the Pope? Are we to have no reformers in Rome? Is the spirit of liberalism to keep away from the eternal city? Is the Popery of Irish Carbonarism to except the Romans from the revolutionary benefits of their sect? While Turin, and Naples, and Genoa, and Venice, and Florence, groan under the devastating yoke of their kings and princes, is there nobody to talk of the sorrows of the S. P. Q. R.—

The steady Romans who enslaved the world?

No! not one. The cry of Irish liberalism is base, and of the base: it is the blended cry of Jacobinism and Jesuitry. The Jacobins have emancipated the Irish Roman Catholics, because they thought it would weaken and injure the great rock on which the cause of order and true religion throughout Europe rests—the Church of England. The Jesuits, busy in restoring despotism all over the continent, are delighted to find their real antagonist defeated. If either party had the least pretensions to freedom of mind, ROME would now be free. Another Rienzi, very different from Miss Mitford’s namby-pamby hero, would, ere long, have started. But mention in that assembly of those very free-minded men, viz. the Catholic Association of Dublin, that Rome, a town in which certain human beings live, might be governed as they (the said association) were governed,—that it might be some sort of convenience to the Romans that a degree of liberty, equal to something half in amount to what the penal laws gave the Irish Catholics, was grant...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• General introduction
• Introduction to Volumes I and II
• Part 1 The Conservative Party, 1830–1834
• Part 2 Tamworth Conservatism, 1834–1835
• Part 3 Governing in Opposition, 1835–1841
• Part 4 The Year of Victory, 1841