fluence in
politics? That any half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many
dukes? That the will of the people is the supreme political tribunal?
That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss the
Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient
servants? And you tell me that I can profess this horrible creed without
ceasing to be a Tory! Before I could with a spark of honesty so much as
parley with it I should have to crave a seat among the red-hot gentlemen
yonder below the gangway. And the hon. and gallant member would only say
the truth. Privilege is the mint mark of Toryism, exclusiveness is its
life and soul. The doctrine of equal rights must be in everlasting
repugnance to it. Toryism is the political expression of feudalized
society, with lords and squires at the top, subservient dependants
half-way down, and a mass of brutalized serfs at the bottom. It has been
comparatively humanized by modern influences, but nothing can change the
bent of its genius. With privilege vested interests of all sorts enter
into ready fellowship. All those good citizens who have reason to
suspect that if a public inquest sat upon them the verdict would not be
favourable hasten to edge themselves in as closely as possible towards
the privileged circle. The village rector, who does his duty with all
the conscientiousness of a beneficed Christian, but who prizes his glebe
and tithe, rushes to Cambridge to swell the majority for Mr. Raikes.
Gentlemen of the long robe who make politics a vocation gravitate for
some reason or other towards Liberalism; but the lower branch of the
profession displays an opposite tendency. The county lawyer, who makes
two-thirds of his income out of the mysteries of conveyancing, has
reason to dislike such things as the registration of titles, and the
transfer of estates by a few sentences extracted from a public record.
The licensed victuallers, tens of thousands strong and with more than a
hundred millions of invested capital, dread the change which would give
them a quiet Sunday in return for a seventh of their profits. The
strength of Toryism lies in this phalanx of vested interests and social
privileges. The golden chain reaches from squire to Boniface, and still
lower in the social scale, wherever some snug little peculium is found
to nestle. The principles of Neo-Conservatism would rend the structure
from top to bottom. The doctrine that the solution of all our