by John Buchan
“Where shall we discover the path of the Statesman?” asked the Stranger in the ‘Politicus,’ and the question has often returned to pull up the hasty politician. We hear much about administrative reform, the clearing out of this office or that, but our political charwomen give us no clue to the constructive principles of statecraft We see both our traditional parties seeking the will-o’-the-wisp of the moment, making their bow to the Dagon of to-day and the Baal of to-morrow, till it is hard for the unprejudiced spectator to detect wherein lies the difference in the articles of their faith. Tet the difference exists, we are told by Liberal writers. The Liberal party is conspicuously the possessor of a creed, of principles; if they accept a new doctrine it is because in some occult way it is part of their historic policy, and if they reject it the reason is the same. They are the party of a continuous intellectual development, while Conservatives are hand-to-mouth office-seekers, attendant upon the movements of the traditional cat.
“It is this current and facile view of Conservatism which I wish to combat. The old creed of the party is by universal consent no longer binding. The Tory country gentleman who believed as his fathers taught him and held all reform the invention of the devil is an extinct being, though he may maintain a shadowy subjective existence in the minds of a few Liberal journalists. But if this belief be gone, have we anything to take its place? Are our principles invented in the morning and discarded at the going down of the sun? Are our tenets bound up with no rational philosophy of human society, but merely the hasty maxims of clever adventurers? Mr Morley, in his book ‘On Compromise,’ has granted us some shadow of a creed, but our gratitude is moderated by the fact that it is not the creed of modern Conservatism. Those principles to which he bids us be true, if we would call ourselves honest men and women, are so archaic, so tenderly romantic, that not even Disraeli in his youth could have wholly accepted them. But unless we are to court the charge of frivolity, it is necessary to provide some theory of Conservative statesmanship and the Conservative attitude. On us lies the burden of definition. The fact of the Conservative temper in the nation is beyond cavil: it is for its upholders to show that it is not unreasonable. If we shrink from a noisy confession of faith, there is all the more need for a recognition of the meaning of our attitude. We decline to dogmatise about politics, but we are compelled to dogmatise about our attitude towards them. We must define our critical standpoint, though we hazard no further definitions, lest we fall into the old silliness and erect in our market-places altars to an Unknown God.
“My first remark concerns the vexed question of the relation of ethics and politics. Liberalism may be said to have devoted itself to the special cult of the political moralist. Now, to my mind, there is a vast distinction between conscience and conscientiousness, and that distinction is based upon the calibre of the accompanying intellect. If a man appeals to his conscience, I am entitled to inquire if it be the conscience of a man or the conscientiousness of a fool. Moral earnestness, if accompanied by intelligence, is worthy of all respect; but, if not so attended, it is merely a pathological state, like hysteria or delirium. I find, however, that the moralist in politics is apt to put a value upon conscience in itself. He pleads for a kind of finisse in ethics, a terrible finicking consistency, an abstract devotion to a very abstract creed. He refuses to allow the conscience to be ruled and directed by the mind: intellectual considerations, he says in effect, have no relevance in this sphere. We maintain, on the other hand, that the primary condition of statesmanship is what Hilda Wangel calls a ‘robust conscience.’ By this I do not mean an obtuse mind, and still less a dishonest one. I mean the temper which allows the sense of right and the practical intelligence to go hand in hand, never subserving the former to the latter, but interpreting the one by the other. It is the temper which looks at the essentials of virtue and not at its trappings. ‘No great country,’ Horace Walpole wrote, ‘was ever saved by its good men, because good men will not go the lengths that are necessary.’
“Now mark what the word ‘good’ means. This is no plea for the unscrupulous man who sinks morality in statecraft. But it is a plea for the statesman who can sink himself in his people, who is less concerned with trying to save his soul than with trying to save his country, who can look at the great issues of life with eyes undimmed by any metaphysic of morality. It is a protest against the saint in politics, that worthy, hypercritical, and useless type of mind which is incapable of single-hearted action. ‘La petite morale,’ in Mirabeau’s words, ‘est l’ennemi de la grande.’ When the Emperor Charles the Fifth, as we are told on good authority, appeared before the Throne of God, the Devil’s Advocate had a long list of burnings, sackings, and slaughterings to bring against him. But his Guardian Angel argued thus: ‘This man has lived a hard life among men, and not in the cloister or in the desert. He must be judged by fitting standards, and if on the whole he followed righteousness we must forget his stumblings.’ And history adds that this view was accepted and Charles permitted to enter Paradise.
“The first point, then, in the Conservative attitude is that it insists upon a robust and practical mind. The second is that such a mind must think and feel in accord with the traditions of the national character. In this character there are certain clearly defined features. It is a temper naturally conservative, prone to keep up the form of things, though the spirit has gone, till they crumble to pieces from sheer age; slow to think; distrustful of novelties; intolerant of brilliance — the temper which in the individual spells mediocrity, but in the mass a kind of greatness. Against this great rock of English conservatism the spirits of a Bacon, a Cromwell, a Bolingbroke, a Canning, a Disraeli, like so many ineffectual angels, have beaten their wings in vain. But the majority of them, being wise in their generation, recognised their barriers and turned their prison-house into a wall of defence. It is not like the conservatism of the Liberal, an absorption in a barren dogma; it is the conservatism of a national temperament, and therefore upon it true statesmanship must build as upon its foundation. Ultimately, as most political thinkers have urged, the people in a blind, dumb way work out their own ideas, and these ideas are always right. There is a cant maxim among Liberal politicians that the statesman is the servant of democracy. So be it. But let a statesman serve the people by penetrating to their real interests and their real desires, and not by obeying any casual knot of agitators who clamour that their unintelligible patois is the voice of God.
“The third item in our definition is that Conservative statesmanship must be positive. When the great wave of reaction produced by the French Revolution had subsided, the era of Industrialism set in. New inventions lessened the cost of production. Manufacturers and mine-owners saw wealth, colossal wealth, in the near future. But there was the labouring class to be considered, a class to some extent tainted with the French restlessness, demanding better pay, shorter hours, happier conditions of life. It was a unique chance for a constructive statesman, but Canning died and the Manchester school succeeded. With a creed made up of a few tags from dissenting ethics and a few dubious economic maxims, this school was in the main composed of capitalists and employers of labour. To secure a free development for the new industrialism was their aim, but in the meantime sops must be thrown to the Cerberus of the proletariat. So they passed the Reform Bill of 1832, that harmless excursion in academic reform, and they repealed the Corn Laws, which put money in their pockets, silenced for a moment the cries of labour, and effectually ruined agricultural England. Against Chartism, which was a crude but genuine scheme of reform, they fought with tooth and nail! Reform for reform’s sake, provided it be not radical, change for change’s sake, provided it be unnecessary — such has been the lofty tradition of this vicious and destructive theorising. And thus the so-called Radicalism has advanced, professing a high ethical purpose, pandering to every fad of every clique of agitators, taking in vain the sacred name of Progress. And Conservatism? It, too, has forgotten at times that doctrine of positiveness which Canning tau
ght, but throughout its moments of error and forgetfulness it has never quite lost sight of its ideal. As the party which professes no abstract creed, but bases its duty upon a knowledge of national character and a conception of practical good, it has maintained that reform when it comes must be real, and that a trifling with change for its own sake is the last and fatalest heresy.
“In ‘positiveness’ then the true raison d’etre of Conservatism is to be found. But, indeed, I object to the word Conservative. I should prefer to call myself a Tory. The former word implies that the centre of gravity lies in a dull conserving of institutions and creeds which may have outgrown their usefulness. ‘Tory,’ I am told, meant in the beginning an Irish robber, and the attitude of the Irish robber in life seems to me preferable to that of the hide-bound formalist who worships a Church and State which are no more than names to him. Toryism is not the path of least resistance, but a living and militant creed, offering tangible results and based upon the vital needs of the nation. I have read many ‘Pleas for Unprincipled Toryism,’ which were attempts to defend our supposed lack of a theoretical basis. But we have no need of such a defence. We have our basis, we have our principles, and they are none the less principles because we are not so arrogant as to confuse them with the laws of Sinai.
“One word in conclusion. It seems to me that there is another duty incumbent upon the Tory party, which is perhaps of all its tasks the most arduous and the most vital. In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility. Old simple faiths have been discredited, a spirit of minor criticism has gone abroad, and the beliefs of centuries are now in a state of solution. It is not a promising mood. ‘Provincial arrogance and precipitate self-complacency ‘ are not the stuff of which a strong nation is made. National prejudices, deep inborn convictions for which no copy-book justifications can be found, are after all the conquering forces of the world. The French Revolution destroyed the cult of Church and King; but it inspired an equally blind and passionate worship of certain civic ideals, and with these in their soul the raw levies of France conquered Europe. To the Tory the instincts of the people must always seem truer in the long-run than the little-reasoned disquisitions of a few professors. To the Liberal this is heresy; he demands a creed which shall approve itself to his superb intellect, for Liberalism is essentially the faith of the intellectuel. Against such an attitude it is the duty and the highest privilege of Tory statesmanship to wage implacable war. It may take many forms — attacks upon institutions which still fulfil their purpose though in a narrow way their basis may seem irrational, dogmas in economics and theories of reform which have only a speculative validity, a system of ethics made in the study or the lecture-room. I know of few finer words in literature than those in which Burke swept away the sophistries which sought to abolish patriotism and defend certain vague cosmopolitan rights of man, or those in which Disraeli in the theatre at Oxford in ‘64 scourged the money-changers of popular science. And so in our analysis of Conservatism we come back to something which is not unlike the beliefs of our grandfathers. Conservatism in their view was sworn to defend Church and Throne, in our view it is sworn to defend the things which lie at the back of Church and Throne, the instincts of a people, the character of a nation. It is conservative, this attitude, but it is also reforming. A people develops unconsciously, and this development is on far other lines than the progress of Liberal illuminati. It is its duty to foster this popular development as against the vagaries of a clique or a caucus. It is its duty to conserve, while there is reason, and to destroy ruthlessly and finally when the justification has passed. And it has a right to this attitude, for it bases its conduct upon the ‘instant need of things’ and upon no a priori creed. Its opponents, fixing their eyes npon falling stars, have no leisure to study the ground they walk on. Mistaking their own clientèle for the nation and themselves for Omnipotence, they wander like children in the dark, and instead of the narrow path to the Celestial City follow the primrose path to that sinister personage who, as a great authority has told us, was the first Whig.”
Lady Amysfort’s cool accents had scarcely ceased before Mr Wakefield, who had listened with some attention, said loudly, “My dear lady, there is a great deal of sound sense in that and a great deal of nonsense. I detest your obscurantism, but on the main point I entirely agree with you. We must be positive and practical in our work, and the metaphysician is every bit as bad as the Liberal doctrinaire.” The Duchess had had her temper considerably ruffled by the matter, and still more by the manner of Lady Amysfort’s discourse. She had an intense dislike of the Primrose League, and a suspicion of Disraeli, who had once said of her husband that his air suggested an “inspired rabbit.” Looking round the circle she saw no one disposed to take up the cudgels for her much-abused party, and Lady Amysfort’s attitude, as, slim and exquisite, she leaned over a lamp to light a cigarette, annoyed her by its suggestion of the supercilious. She therefore fixed her opponent with an austere eye, and advanced to the attack.
“There is much that I could say, Caroline,” she began, “but I will confine myself to one point which is common to you and the writer of Bob’s second extract. You both maintain that we Liberals are hag-ridden by formulas, and declare that the Conservatives are the only people who can look squarely at facts. To begin with, I think that you very much overstate your case. Heaven is my witness that I do not love the style of the Radical press. I detest its loudmouthed generalities, and I think the way it drags the most sacred words of Scripture into its arguments simply blasphemous. It resorts so consistently to immense appeals on trivial occasions, that when the great occasion arises it has nothing further to say. But in spite of all this folly you cannot maintain that you can do without dogma altogether, or that the dogmatism of the two factions differs otherwise than in degree. Take again this question of facing facts. I think the Liberal point is a perfectly good one. Things have gone hideously wrong under a Conservative Government, simply because it did not look at facts. We may choose — foolishly, I think — to cloak our return to common-sense in Nonconformist language, but what we really mean is that our opponents did not understand their data, and we are going to try to understand them. We are not really quarrelling about principles but about facts, and it is only a bad debating trick to pretend otherwise. I do not say that we shall read the facts correctly, any more than you did, but our sole justification is that we intend to try. When you maintain that the Conservatives look at facts, and the Liberal clings to principles, all you mean is that the different sides have different arts for capturing the popular fancy. We are apt to claim a monopoly of the purer virtues, you of practical common-sense; but we both aim at common-sense, though my side invests it with the glamour of high principles, yours with the charm of an historic past. I honestly think that is the fairest way to look at our political records. I quite agree with you that the difference at bottom is one of temperament. I have heard Bob’s voice shake with emotion when he spoke of Chatham, and I have seen tears in Mr Calderwood’s eyes when he spoke of Eternal Justice. I will confess that I would rather have politicians pat a little history book familiarly than the New Testament, but both are legitimate forms of appeal. Our faiths spring from the same source. You think us foolish; we think you stupid; while the truth is that we are both rather foolish, rather stupid, and in the last resort rather wise.”
The Duchess’s remarks met with the strong approbation of Lord Launceston, who had been crossing and uncrossing his long legs nervously while Lady Amysfort read.
“I think what you say is most true,” he said. “All parties have a common basis now. They preach the same faith though in different accents. And all parties tend simply to shuffle the old cards at any crisis, instead of making a new analysis of the facts. It is the business of cleareyed people to prevent this natural inclination. Our common basis I should call democracy — English democ
racy, that is, with all its historical and racial colouring. It is not a dogma, but a fact, or rather the recognition of a fact — that under modern conditions Everyman governs. Now democracy is the great destroyer of shams. It clears out the rubbish and leaves the truth tolerably plain to the single-minded inquirer. Besides, it opens up the way for superiority. I do not say that it means always an enlightened rule, but it gives scope at any rate for the true enlightener when he arrives. It is the best, indeed the only, basis for building anew on.
And here, curiously enough, it reaches the same result as Toryism. It used to be the old boast of the Tory party that it was loyal, and would always render faithful service to any leader who could capture it. The Liberal party, it was said, was too individualistic, too split up by the differences which come from honest but incomplete thinking independently, ever to make a good following. Democracy does the work of Toryism on a wider basis. The people have no intellectual arrogance. They think slowly, not very clearly, and always on broad and simple lines, but when they once grasp a conception they are invincible.”
“We are agreed, then, on one important point,” Carey took up the conversation. “Both of our great parties purport to look at facts, but both tend to get into conventional grooves and neglect their duty. However, in the democracy which lies behind them both, there is a permanent instinct under proper guidance to revise the data of policy. And here I may anticipate what I think Lord Appin intends to say. The new Labour party, which claims to be specially in touch with democracy, urges as its chief raison d’être the duty of revision. We may differ from them on what constitutes the data, we may differ still more profoundly on the interpretation, but our general attitude is exactly theirs.”
