SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 111, 1 June 1844, Page 51

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

MEETING OF THE LEAGUE AT MANCHESTER.

[From the Atlas of Nov. 25.] On reading over the list of subscriptions the other day at the great Anti-Corn-Law League meeting at Manchester, we were much struck by the fact that at least every, third name was that of some leading merchant or manufacturer known to have belonged to the Conservative party, and to have taken an active part on the Conservative side on former occasions. This appears to us to indicate a new and very important state of things. The old denominations of party which have hitherto divided the more intelligent and respectable of the electoral body into two hostile camps are rapidly disappearing, and the time is fast approaching when public men will no longer be obliged to label themselves with the badge of either Whig or Tory. An independent party, who are neither Whig nor Tory, are springing up, and will soon be in a position to command, if not a majority, yet certainly an imposing and formidable minority in the House of Commons. The free-trade question has been mainly instrumental in bringing this state of things about, and the conviction which the events of the last five or six years have forced on the public mind, that each of the two great aristocratic parties was dealing with the most important practical questions affecting the commerce and industry of the country without any settled view and earnest conviction, and merely to suit the shifting exigencies of party tactics. The delay of the Whigs in bringing forward free-trade measures until Mr. Baring's budget became evidently the last desperate move of a defeated gamester, was, in every point of view, a deplorable error. It completely deprived them as a party of the confidence of the middle classes and industrial interests, and not merely paved the way for the accession of the Tories to power, but now, when the Tory power is in a state of utter decrepitude, constitutes the main difficulty in the way of their ejection from office. Sir Robert Peel, on the other hand, has completely forfeited the confidence of the intelligent middle classes, by stopping short at the very commencement of the career of commercial reform, in obedience, evidently not to his own convictions, but to the requirements of his party. ■The general opinion is, that if the Whigs are weak and wavering, the ultra-Tories are utterly impracticable, and the liberal Conservatives timid and insincere.

In this state of things, nothing appears more probable than that the two old-fashioned aristocratic parties will be ere long laid on the shelf, and that the next strong and popular Government will be formed by a junction between the more liberal and decided Whigs and the independent Liberals, strengthened by a few recruits from the better portion of the really sincere and conscientious Conservatives who may have the courage to emancipate themselves from party trammels. It is not too much to say that no stable Administration can be formed on the' Liberal interest which does not include a fair proportion of independent men practically conversant with the commercial affairs and interests of the country — men, for instance, of the stamp of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Macgregor. The presence of men of this sort in important and responsible situations is absolutely indispensable to give the nation confidence in the sincerity of the Whigs, and in their determination and ability to carry out useful practical reforms. There is a general feeling now-a-days that Governments composed exclusively of men of high aristocratic connexions and debating notoriety in the House of Commons, not only do not possess the sincerity and earnest conviction necessary to carry out important practical measures, but are deficient in the requisite knowledge and experience of the actual details of business. What can a young man, educated at Eton and Oxford, and thrown early in life into the vortex of London society and excitement of the great House of Commons' debating club, know practically of the vulgar details of cottonspinning and calico-printing? — what can he know of the practical wants and complaints of society, of the burdens on industry, of the way in which the middle and working classes live ? And yet it is of such young men that our Foreign and Home Secretaries, our Presidents of the Boaqtfjpf Trade and Colonial Ministers, are made. Why is our diplomatic service notoriously, the highest paid and worst conducted in the world ? — why were the enormous blunders of the Congress of Vienna perpetrated, and the commercial interests of England sacrificed in the hour of victory ? Because the diplomatists, the statesmen, and legislstors of Britain are selected exclusively from a class who have no practical acquaintance with the actual concerns of business and everyday life. The affairs of this " nation of shopkeepers" are managed by a set of men taken from a class whose pride it is to have souls above the shop. The market of Europe was sacrificed by Castlereagh in 1815, because the object of his ambition was not tc advance the commercial interests of the country — which he knew about as much of as a lady of the trade of Timbuctoo — but to be on terms of familiar intercourse with crowned heads and princes. Smollett's story of the Duke of Newcastle running out of his dressing-room with his face covered with soap-suds, to embrace the man who brought him the welcome news thut Cape Breton was an island t» America, is no bad type of (he way in which the affairs of the country have been administered under the regime of the Dukes of Dunderhead and Right Honourables Do-little and Do-less, who have succeeded one another in the periodical scrambles for place since the days of Walpole. This state of .things is manifestly coming to an end; the country is becoming every day more indifferent to the old party watchwords, and more intent on real practical reforms, which impera-

tively require the presence at the head of affairs of real practical men of business. The Ministry which succeeds the present tottering Administration of Sir Robert Peel must represent the Anti- Corn-Law League much more, and Holland or Lansdowne-house much less, than previous Whig Governments have done, or it requires no political prophet to foresee that it will be of itself but a rickety bantling. It must grapple boldly with great practical measures of internal reform, it must not shrink from carrying its theoretical principles with regard to free trade and justice to Ireland fully and fairly into effect, or else — all the Maids of Honour in the universe will not be able to save it.