10 FEBRUARY 1872, Page 8

IMMEDIATE POLITICAL PROSPECTS.

THE Meeting of Parliament often seems to disperse the political clouds. Questions which looked large daring the Recess suddenly become small ; people who were of im- portance subside into the crowd ; and criticism on failures which has become acidulated is superseded by temperate discus- sion of new events, measures, and disputes. This time, however, none of these pleasant things have occurred. Members have come up to town as sullen or as concerned as the journalists have been during the Recess. The Queen's Speech has pleased nobody except those who fancy that the less there is in a Queen's Speech the better for the prosperity of the country, and they are not precisely the people who are enthusiastic for Mr. Gladstone. The early talk of the Session in the lobbies and clubs has been a good deal about "constituents' prejudices"—never a good sign—and no question discussed in the Recess has grown perceptibly lighter, unless it be the Collier scandal. Men who must at all events know what they are saying, say about this that Lord Hatherley's defence will be better than the public imagine,—will, at all events, supply partizans with quite sufficient excuse for fidelity, and impossible as the statement seems, it momentarily brightens the horizon. But, on the other hand, the new cloud which has arisen and which overshadows the country, the possible rupture with America, is full of danger for the Ministry. Strong Liberals, men who in their hearts not only disbelieve in their oppon- ents, but dislike them, talk sullenly upon the subject, say openly that be the result what it will the Ministry is discredited, and-say secretly that only incapacity for the business of life could have produced such a muddle. If we were not cheated we blundered, and if we were cheated we had no business to be. The sense of annoyance with the Government is as universal as the sense of annoyance with America, and a Government with which everybody is annoyed on a first- class matter is in this country a government exposed to permanent danger. Then the West Riding election tells badly for the Ministry in an indirect, but intel- ligible way. Mr. Powell is on the great question of Edu- cation on their side and Mr. Holden is not, and the event is, in one way, almost a victory for them ; but unfortunately, it gives the waverers such an opportunity of going over. There is a whole class of influential persons, possessed of balances at their bankers, which has been worried and affected by recent events, which sees in the whole German war proof of the strength of aristocratic and kingly government, which has been disgusted by the Commune and frightened by Sir Charles Dilke,—let anybody who doubts that last watch the proceedings at Bolton, and see how much justice Republicans get —and has been irritated past all reason by what they think a spiteful increase of the income-tax, who are quite ready to rat, and caring nothing or very little about education, are delighted to be able to excuse themselves by a profession of devotion to the Church. The medium boroughs are choked with such people, who look to the election in the Riding as a signal that they may go without loss of their townsmen's respect. Then it would seem that we are not to be rid of any one burning question. The Ministry—quite rightly, as we think, but quite wrongly, as a party of their own supporters will say—makes no sign on the Education matter, takes up impossibly lofty ground on the Collier business, and, to judge from Mr. Bruce's short speech of Wednesday, does not care one straw whether Licensed Victuallers approve its conduct or not. There are pitfalls everywhere, and Mr. Disraeli, who always exaggerates the results of single elections, is evidently full of " go," and intends to give the Cabinet just as many pushes as he can, while by a miracle of good luck he has been enabled to pose before the country in his very best attitude,—that of the statesman who for the sake of the country refrains from comment on a blunder while letting it be believed that he foresaw it, and would have avoided it. Not hating Republicanism, or anything else, he has seldom made mistakes as to the course of events in America, and was perhaps the only man in his party with self-restraint enough to see that even if the North were wrong and the South right, the North, with an annual immigration exceeding its losses in war, must nevertheless prevail.

We see very little ground of hope for the Ministry indeed. An impression prevails that the menace of dissolution will keep the party in power together, and that the avowed reluct- ance of the Tory leaders to allow of any critical vote will prevent any immediate explosion, but we confess we distrust

both those sources of consolation. Men's minds are too hot for strategy to be certain of success. The Tories can prevent a dissolution on Education, the point on which it is most expedient to ascertain the national will, by constantly giving Government the victory on that subject, and a good cause other than that, a cause for which Mr. Gladstone could exert his personal magic over the electors, though it may be found, is not yet before the country. On the other hand, the Tory rank and file is eager, rash, and angry ; neither Mr. Disraeli nor anybody else can tell who will or will not join it on any given occasion, and some almost unexpected occurrence, some division on an insignificant question, like the appointment to the rectory of Ewelme, may give the shock which will compel the gathered electricity to discharge itself. Nobody

doubts that it has accumulated. Nobody doubts, for example, that if Mr. Disraeli were either in Heaven or the House of Peers the duration of this Government would be measurable by days, .that but for the diffi- culty of finding an acceptable alternative the fight would be over before it has well begun. That is not a position in which a great Government can long remain, and be it remembered this Government is one with sound and just pretentious to be great. Mr. Gladstone is not Lord Palmerston, any more than he is Lord Sidmouth, is not the man whom the country would select to govern during an inter- regnum to keep things nice and smooth, give no perman- ent offence, and abstain from action as completely as if he were asleep. His raison d'etre as a ruler is that there is work to be done which it takes a political genius to do, and once within his role—the greatest, as we think, man can play —he never fails ; but to suppose that he has any especial hold over the country merely as helmsman is erroneous. He ought to have. Not only ought he to be an object of political gratitude, such, for example, as the Dissenters once felt towards Lord John Russell ; but the country ought to be aware that it is not in little things that mistakes are important, and not in great things that a political genius makes mistakes. Oughts, however, are cyphers in politics, and we do but record a patent fact when we say that this is not the Government the country would select if it wanted quiescence, that when it ceases to be strenuous it ceases to have a mean- ing. All that may not be perceptible to the great body of the electors, probably is not perceptible ; but it is neverthe- less a truth that in free States governments which get from circumstances out of relation to their raison d'être cease very rapidly to exist.

We look forward therefore, speaking frankly to our readers, to an extremely stormy beginning of the Session, during which Government will be pricked with rhetorical pins, and irritated by petty defeats, and obstructed in its biggest measures, and deserted at critical moments, and urged into errors, and denied fair play, and will at last—and that at no very distant period, stumble heavily, and fall. What particular piece of timber it will stumble over we know no more than the horse which goes out whole to return home with broken knees ; but that a piece of timber will be met, that a catastrophe will occur, is not so much an apprehension as a conviction in our minds. And it is a very unwilling conviction. The best thing, as we believe, which could happen to the Liberal party would be a quiet, inglorious session, during which people who are now too much out of temper to think could consider themselves and make up their minds, during which the comparative relation of occurrences to each other could be more closely studied, and during which the individual members of the Ministry could have a chance they have scarcely yet enjoyed of making the unusual ability which most of them possess felt in the departments. One of the considerable difficulties of the Ministry, that it has had to manage departments unaccustomed to the "new men" and irritated by their exactitude, must tend to diminish with every fresh year. The grand danger of the next election, that it will be simply sterile, would then be avoided, and we should be able to calculate with some security on a national decision not on one point only, but on half-a-dozen on which nothing short of a national decision will suffice to compress fluid opinion into shape. A dissolution in March, 1873, would be infinitely better for the Liberals, for the Government, and for the country than a dissolution now, but of such a result we see little reasonable hope. The air is too full of discontents, there is too little devotion to the leader, and above all, there is too little confidence that this is a Ministry which can do daily business skilfully and well, make treaties, reform laws, and keep social order strong.