Elie Kedourie

The Crossman Confessions and Other Essays

In the eighteenth century there was a system of checks and balances operating on and controlling the action of Ministers and of the Houses of Parliament. This is no longer the case, for the House of Commons has attained 'a supremacy in the State more decided than it ever possessed before.' But at the same time, Salisbury points out, it seems to 'be entirely losing one of the most necessary attributes of a ruler. The broad distinction between a civilized and an uncivilized community is this—' Salisbury goes on, 'that in a civilized community individuals or bodies of men who quarrel submit their difference to an arbitrator, while in a savage state they fight it out...It is of the essence of the civilized system that the arbitrator should be in the main impartial; and the kings or chiefs, to whom in ruder times the power of arbitration was confided, satisfied, or were believed to satisfy, the requirement...Assemblies have inherited the function of political arbitration where it has dropped from the hands of kings; and while their power was undeveloped, or while they were drawn from a limited portion of the community, their impartiality, though not quite unimpeachable, has sufficed for the preservation of their moral authorify, and of the confidence reposed in them. With us, as in other Anglo-Saxon societies, the Representative Assembly is no longer taken from a limited section of the community, and it has succeeded with us, far more than any assembly in America, in shaking itself free of all restrictions upon its power. But with this development of its character and strength, the loss of its fitness to arbitrate has become apparent. The movement of society is reversed; we are going back to the ancient method of deciding quarrels. Our ruler is no longer an impartial iudge between classes who bring their differences before him for adiustment; our ruler is an Assembly which is itself the very field of battle on which the contending classes fight out their feuds. The settlement by arbitration has given place again to the settlement by civil war; only it is civil war with gloves on. Of course the decisions thus given vary in their character without limit; and all confidence in fixed principles or a determinate policy is gone.' This precarious, unstable and arbitrary mode of government results from the fact that the House of Commons 'has come into its position, as it were, by accident. It is like the junior member of a great mercantile firm, who has suddenly become all-powerful, not in pursuance of any articles of the partnership, but simply because the senior partners have fallen into poor health, and have retired. No provision was made in the articles to meet such a contingency; and his power is absolutely unrestricted.'

It is in such terms, then, that Salisbury would describe, and condemn, the theory of the Constitution which became accepted in his day, and which is still dominant, the theory which—to borrow Dicey's description—holds that the (unrestricted) legal sovereignty belongs to the Queen-in-Parliament, and that it is in turn governed and controlled by the equally unrestricted political sovereignty of the electorate. On such a theory, the freedom of the individual, property and contract alike become precarious. Salisbury held that it was not the business of Conservatives to promote and lend authority to such a theory: 'An organic change proposed by Conservatives, with no one to check it except those who were by profession bound to aggravate it, was a phenomenon hitherto unknown to the Constitution.' For the Conservative Party to assume such a role aggravates the disorder and instability which the coming of democracy has introduced into the Constitution. It also demoralizes the Party and makes it unfit to pursue its role. Catholic Emancipation, Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Reform Bill of t867 were either good measures or bad measures. If bad, 'they ought not to have been passed at all; if good, they ought to have been passed by other men.' This, because just as the conservatism of Liberals will be hypocritical, so the liberalism of Conservatives will be 'clumsy and probably extravagant.' For the 'Conservatives have their special duties to the Constitution; and finding forced labour to assist in Radical demolitions is not among them.'

The special duties of the Conservatives lie in resistance to change because the 'perils of change are so great, the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.' Resistance to change is justified on two grounds, one which holds in every age, and another particularly relevant to the present day. In the first place, 'It is possible, as the celebrated dictum of Tacitus records, that a nation may not be strong enough to bear the immediate remedy of even intolerable evils. New wine will burst old bottles; a healthy diet will kill a sick man outright. Sir Robert Walpole's bribery saved his country; Necker's purity ruined his.' Again, 'a violent isolated artificial improvement in the institutions of a community, undertaken without regard to the condition of the other portions of the machinery in concert with which it is to work, is a danger so great that no improvement at all is almost to be preferred.'