Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/318

 276 THE CECILS

or gives expression to the anxiety caused by attacks on landed property and appeals to class hatred : it is difficult to believe that he is writing of the current politics of thirty years ago.

In the article entitled " Disintegration," he sums up admirably what should be the aim of the Conservative party : ' The object of our party is not, and ought not to be, simply to keep things as they are. In the first place, the enterprise is impossible. In the next place, there is much in our present mode of thought and action which it is highly undesirable to conserve. What we require in the administration of public affairs, whether in the executive or the legislative depart- ment, is that spirit of the old constitution which held the nation together as a whole, and levelled its united force at objects of national import, instead of splitting it up into a bundle of unfriendly and distrustful fragments."

Another passage in the same article, written, be it remembered, before any prominent politician had advocated Home Rule, contains so wise and so prophetic a pronouncement on the subject that it deserves to be quoted :

V " The highest interests of the Empire, as well as the most sacred obligations of honour, forbid us to solve this question by conceding any species of independence to Ireland ; or, in other words, any licence to the majority in that country, to govern the rest of Irishmen as they please. To the minority, to those who have trusted us, and on the faith of our protection have done our work, it would be a sentence of exile or of ruin. All that is Protes- tant, nay, all that is loyal, all who have land or money to

�� �