Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/472

 45 8 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1859- value of their reports." This resolution was carried by 101 to 93, and Mr. Lowe resigned his office. In doing this he so successfully vindicated the conduct which had been impugned that Lord R. Cecil said, if Mr. Lowe had, on the former occasion, given an explanation similar to that now given, the motion would probably not have been pressed to a division. In other words, he confessed that his action had not been based on such knowledge of the facts as could have alone justified his violent attack. On the motion of the Premier, a committee was appointed to consider the whole question. This committee having reported entirely exculpating Mr. Lowe, the resolution, which its own mover admitted to be indefensible, was formally rescinded. The Ministry thus lost the services of a man whose relations to party organizations have given a perhaps undue importance to his proceedings. He is what may be called an exotic or artificially produced Whig one, that is to say, who thinks that legislation ought to be based on what he holds as Liberal principles ; that the people should be well governed, but that they should always be governed, and not govern. He differs from the true historic Whig in this, that the qualifica- tion which he would substitute for popular election would be not family influence and traditional power, but an undefined intellectual status, which his set have almost deified under the term " culture." Some few of the elect, who have gone through a process of scholastic training, are gifted, according to their own view, with a sort of divine right to say to what extent the people of this country should be entrusted with a voice in the regulation of their own affairs. Mr. Lowe proved himself not a successful example of the strength of his theory, his failure as financial minister showing that some other test, besides the most entire self-confidence, is necessary to secure good administrators. Radicals say that the only safe test is an appeal to the suffrage of the whole nation. The time did not seem very appropriate for trying legis- lative experiments, but in this session the first attempt was made to introduce a measure which has since been the subject