Tory (British politics)

“ The Tory foresaw an easier mode of gaining money for the government he abhorred, with a firmer hold on the people for the monarch he despised, and his antagonism bore all the energy of political partisanship. ”

“ The most consistent of all the Tories was Windham, a country gentleman of considerable learning and practical good sense, and the intimate friend of Pitt. He began his political {47}career as a Whig, but turned Tory after the outbreak of the Revolution, and died without a shred of Whiggery left to him, except a qualified dislike of the Slave Trade. He seldom lost an opportunity of depreciating the common people, and of excluding them from politics. ”

“ As certainly as the despot remains a despot, whether his motives are good or bad, so certainly does the Tory remain a Tory, whether he has egoistic or altruistic motives for using state-power to restrict individual liberty, beyond the degree required for maintaining the liberties of other individuals. ”

“ The dislike, be it greater or less in fact, appears to me to rest upon two main foundations.
In the first place, the Englishman is a born Conservative, or, to use the old phrase, a Tory. Toryism is of two kinds,—political and social. The majority of the nation is certainly not, at the present day, Tory in political preferences, though there is still a large leaven of that feeling also. But very many persons who are political Liberals are social Tories: they venerate the aristocracy ”

“ A system originally sound and good could well become corrupt and bad under a changed condition of affairs, and if Tories were pledged to resist any sort of change, bad or good—well, they at once placed themselves in a false position, and made their own extinction only a matter of time. He maintained that the true Tory aimed always for the best and soundest policy, the policy that would make England respected abroad and prosperous at home. ”

“ Where the Liberal emphasizes the responsibility of the State to the subject, and requires that every act of its ministers shall be done in the interest of the subject, the Tory emphasizes the duty of the subject to submit to the State, and by a process of argument which is as illogical as it is politically vicious, leaves it to the State to decide even to what persons it shall be responsible. ”

“ To the Tory, if he believes in it at all, it is a piece of efficient political machinery. "What use can the State make of this man?" asks the Tory. "What use can this man make of himself?" asks the Liberal. The Tory theory is expressed in terms of duties, the Liberal in terms of rights. The disposing mind is at the back of the one, the encouraging mind at the back of the other. ”

“ On every account it was a good thing that the old Tory rule was broken up, but chiefly for this that when the thing was done by strong compulsion of fact, of necessity men were beginning to look for the principle of the change, and thereby to obtain some insight into the views of the parties that had governed, or would or might govern, the country. ”

“ The Tory reverses the dogma, and even when he pursues the good of individuals, he pursues it rather in order to make them better soldiers or workers, that is to say, better servants of the State, than to make them better in themselves. Democratic government to the Liberal is an essential condition of the free growth of the individual soul. To the Tory, if he believes in it at all, it is a piece of efficient political machinery. ”

“ It has been a frequent subject of complaint against the Tory government, both before the Revolution of 1832, and on their return to power in 1841, that they were too liberal to their opponents, and forgetful of their friends, in the dispensing of the public patronage; and we have only to take up the Red Book, to see that this praise or imputation justly belongs to them. But no man alive ever heard of a Whig, during the ten years they were in power, being accused of giving any thing to a Tory. ”

“ To the Tory, the Empire seems to be something in itself; he is impressed with its size, its wealth, its population; the mere existence of such a huge fabric, efficiently maintained, under the national flag, satisfies him. The Liberal is more concerned with what the Empire represents, with its maintenance of individual liberty, with its development of the subject peoples which it contains, with its encouragement to exploitation, with its implied antagonism to foreign peoples, with its increase of the cost of armaments, and with its effect upon the temper of domestic government. ”

“ No: from whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain that the attempt to reconstruct the Tory party on a Democratic basis cannot succeed. The open avowal of such an aim would deprive Toryism of all backbone and reduce it to the condition of a moribund jelly-fish. It is not given to any creature to change its nature and yet continue to discharge its old functions. It is true that Toryism in order to get on at all with the present age is obliged occasionally to act on Liberal principles. ”

“ The term “Tory” has in fact never quite fallen out of use, and has been commonly retained by many modern Conservatives who wish to emphasize that theirs is a constructive and positive policy of constitutional as opposed to radical reform, and not merely one of letting things remain simply “as they are.” ”

“ Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to Reform, but broad is the way that leadeth to Corruption, and multitudes there are that walk therein. The Tory is sure to be in the thickest of them. His principle is to follow the leader; and this is the infallible rule to have numbers and success on your side, to be on the side of success and numbers. Power is the rock of his salvation; priestcraft is the second article of his implicit creed. He does not trouble himself to inquire which is the best form of government—but he knows that the reigning monarch is "the best of kings." ”

“ The Liberal conception of the State makes the development of the individual an end in itself. The Tory conception makes it a means of public advantage, of obtaining workers for national industries and soldiers for national armies, and it is accompanied by proposals for conscription, protection, and the maintenance of popular education at a low level, which are redolent of restriction and subordination. ”

“ The Tory damns the Whig, for maintaining a resistance, which he himself never fails to practice; and the Whig reproaches the Tory with slavish principles, yet calls him rebel if he do not practice them. The truth is, all men dread the power of oppression out of their own hands, and almost all men wish it irresistible when it is there.
We change sides every day, yet keep the same names for ever. I have known a man a staunch Whig for a year together, yet thought and called a Tory by all the Whigs, and by the Tories themselves. ”

“ This Toryism is the habit of mind which refuses to concede to others that right of free expression which it requires for itself. It is the egoistic mind which regards all others as at its disposition. Its opinions are of superior worth, and others must give way. As the Liberal temper is extended, so is the Tory. The ego includes the Church, the occupation, the nation, and the sex of the individual. It thinks of human beings in classes, as distinguished from itself. ”

“ Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me political?
Touch. I do, truly; for they swear to me thou art true Tory, parson-and-squire-ridden Tory. Now, if thou wert political, I might have some hope thou didst feign—to them!
Aud. Would you not have me Tory?
Touch. No, truly, unless thou wert fortune-favoured; for Toryism coupled to poverty is to have folly a sauce to misery.
Jaq. (aside) . A shrewd fool!
Aud. Well, I am not rich; and therefore I pray the gods to make me Liberal. ”

“ Some who will not venture to assert, that the real difference between Whig and Tory, was lost at the Revolution, seem inclined to think that the difference is now abolished, and that affairs are so far returned to their natural state, that there are at present no other parties amongst us but Court and Country; that is, men who, by interest or principle, are attached either to Monarchy or to Liberty. It must indeed be confessed, that the Tory party seem of late to have decayed much in their numbers, still more in their zeal, and I may venture to say, still more in their credit and authority. ”

“ Were the Tory party led by genuine Tories it would have been extinct long ago. It lives and looks upon the earth, it has its triumphs and its gains, its present and its future, only because by very virtue of its own dulness it has allowed itself to be led by men whom it ought to detest, whom it sometimes does distrust, but who have the wit to sell principle in the dearest market, and buy reputation in the cheapest. ”

“ We have to take into account, too, that even dust is not raised without a cause; and so in public we sit, Radicals all, in solemn inquiry into things, with plenty of Westminster stage thunder, while behind the scenes we get in good old Tory heavy work, not necessarily [Pg 260] because we are Tories, but because Toryism serves a useful purpose just at present. Once or twice lately I have disobeyed my doctor, and stayed at the office for tea, so closely in touch have I had to keep with various Committees and Conferences ”

“ His hero-worship gave no little encouragement to the more brutal sort of Toryism, and there are still many English people who believe that the history of a nation is only the biography of its great men. But his insistence upon the direct responsibility of the social organization for the happiness of every one within it was in the line of a reaction against crude individualism, which by 1850 was strongly marked outside Tory philanthropy. ”

“ Is not England, with spinning-jenny PEEL at the head of its affairs, in this precise predicament? England may live; but inactive, torpid; unfitted for all healthful exertion,—deprived of its grandest functions—paralyzed in its noblest strength. We have a Tory Cabinet, but where is the brain of statesmanship?
Now, however, there are no Tories. Oh, no! Sir ROBERT PEEL is a Conservative—LYNDHURST is a Conservative—all are Conservative. Toryism has sloughed its old skin, and rejoices in a new coat of many colours ”

“ He gibed at the Tories; but the Tories forgave him because he was half a Tory at heart,--he utterly distrusted popular instincts and was afraid of popular ignorance. He was rarely warm for the actual measures of the Liberals; but the Liberals knew that he intensely despised the pig-headed obstructiveness of the typical Tory, and had no kinship with the blind worshipers of the status quo. ”

“ Men began to have some practical conception that the Tories thought it their duty to govern the people (for their good) as a disposable property; that the Whigs thought it their duty to govern as trustees of the nation, according to their own discretion; and that there were persons living, and effectually moving in the world of politics, who thought that the people ought to govern themselves through the House of Commons. ”

“ Why are Tories, as a rule, pleasanter companions than Radicals? I am a Radical; but I always prefer dining with a Tory?"
"Is the Count a Tory?" asked the Schulmeister.
"Yes. Men who have been in business and earned, or gained, a lot of money, almost invariably become fierce Tories. It is their first passport to respectability; and there is no step one can take so cheaply as that of changing one's political theories."
"What a singular social life you have in England!" cried Gersbach, blinking with a curious sort of humour behind his big spectacles. ”

“ Now, I don’t mean to say but that at the back of this ancient name of Tory there lies a great mass of genuine Conservative feeling, held by people who, if they had their own way, would play some rather fantastic tricks, I fancy ”

“ How do they continue to believe themselves to be Tories, and speak of themselves as Tories, when they have surrendered all, or nearly all, the great principles which are the creed and faith, and business of Toryism? Because they have, in our times, never had Tories for leaders. A man is not a Tory merely because he fights the Tory battles, any more than a captain of the Irish Brigade was a Frenchman because he fought for King Louis, or Hobart Pasha is a Turk because he commands the [Pg 128] Ottoman navy. ”

“ The gravity with which such remedial measures as this were proposed shows how utterly the Tories had failed to understand their business. It is always the habit of a Tory to suppose that popular discontent is a matter of preaching. It is always preached up, and it can always be preached down. The people ask for bread, and the Tories offer them a dogma. The Government of 1819 was no wiser than its predecessors, and it applied itself with great diligence to convert the people by words from a disposition which arose directly out of a combination of low wages and high prices. ”

“ A Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries Long Life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side—the side of corruption and prerogative. ”

“ Modern Toryism is identified with Imperialism, and, except for the relics of old controversies between sects, most of the antagonism of Liberal and Tory centres to-day about the Empire. The most definite opposition is to be observed in original conceptions. ”