TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. SMITH AS LEADER.
MR. SMITH is not a brilliant Leader, but he is a good Leader, and all the better because the exigencies of the time require a man who shall be good without being brilliant. His leadership reminds us of the excellent country gentleman who said, with a sigh of relief, after the brilliant ladies who had been filling the dining-room with laughter had left the table,—" Now let us be jolly, and not talk." Mr. Smith cannot lead the House of Commons without a certain very moderate amount of elocution ; but he not only reduces what is needed to a minimum, but he makes that minimum express the sincere desire of the Government to be straight- forward, unprovocative, business]ike, prudent, and prompt. His notice to the House on Tuesday that he should pro- bably have to take steps to secure the more rapid passing of the Irish Crimes Bill, followed by the notice which he gave on Thursday of his intention to move yesterday that at 10 p.m. next Friday the question under discussion shall be put, and all subsequent clauses shall be then put and voted on, was just what the country was looking for, and came neither too soon nor too late. It was right to let the country read for itself in the large letters of wasted weeks and months, what the obstructionists really mean ; and it was right, when the country had really spelled out its painful lesson, that the Government should act, as it was by that time more than evident that the people wished it to act. The whole thing was done soberly, without sensation or display, just as the quiet British citizen likes to have the public work done ; and the allowance of a full week for the consideration of the remainder of the Bill, shortened as it is by the dropping of the clause which allows a change of venue, in cases of serious crime, to England, is liberal, and even ample. It is true that the post- ponement to another measure of the procedure as regards more serious crime of which it is impossible to get a fair trial in Ireland, is in itself a misfortune, for nothing can be more undesirable than to secure justice on minor offenders, while the greater offenders may feel secure; and it is hardly possible to imagine that the Government can get a second Bill for amend- ing the Criminal Law through the House in the present Session without giving up remedial legislation of a more positive kind as absolutely hopeless. And this, we may be sure, they do not intend to do. Probably the Bill dealing with serious crime which cannot be punished summarily, will have to wait for another Session of Parliament. And so long as it is known that it will really be brought in and passed,— otherwise the moonlighters would have a motive for preferring murder and arson to slighter offences,—perhaps it may wait without much mischief. Of course, it is both a mischief and a mistake that the Government should have chosen a mode of dealing with serious crime which is so unpopular and clumsy. Still, that is hardly Mr. Smith's fault. He was guided by the best opinion he could get on the subject, and cannot be held responsible for a mistake which it was hardly in his province to veto. He seems to us to be doing the best he can in frankly acknowledging that the provision for dealing With more serious crime does not meet with public approval, and must be supplanted, as it can only be supplanted effectually, by a separate measure. In the meantime, the postponement of this difficult subject removes all excuse for any further dawdling over the remaining clauses of the Crimes Bill, and renders the demand for Parliamentary promptitude as moderate as it is urgent. Mr. Smith has embodied in his management of this difficult matter the best sense not only of all the Mr. Smiths of the nation, but of all the steady-going, sagacious men who, when they have a bad business to deal with, look the fact that it is a bad business full in the face, and while they take their measures for reducing the mischief to a minimum, make as little lamentation over it as possible. He endures the worst, and does the best in his power, with firmness, fortitude, and reticence ; waits till the people see the evil fully, and then, having their support, grapples with it quietly but boldly. It is a modest, unboastful kind of leader- ship, but it tells on the nation, who are just in the mood to appreciate a modest attempt to make the best of a bad busi- ness, instead of playing "double or quits," as Mr. Gladstone was so anxious to do.
And the same characteristics which mark Mr. Smith's de- meanour as Leader of the House of Commons, mark what he says, when he does, rather reluctantly and cursorily, open his
mouth outside the walls of Parliament. His speech to the Constitutional Union at St. James's Hall on Wednesday was the model of a speech for a Leader who wished to impress on the people of England how little good can be done in the present critical situation by words, how much must be left to silent constancy and steady sacrifice. He began by insisting, on the meritoriousness of those silent sacrifices to duty which are now being made by a great number of the Members of the House of Commons in trying to restore the authority of the law in Ireland ; he insisted that what the constitutional party have to do in the House is very like the weary routine duties which sailors and soldiers have to discharge during exhausting campaigns in the cause of the country they serve ; he re- pudiated in the warmest way the notion that he wished to put down or discourage combinations in Ireland in relation to. rent such as we permit in England in relation to wages ; the object of the Government, he said, is to punish crime, and crime only, such crime as would be punishable and punished. in any country of Europe and in the United States of America by the ordinary law, but which in Ireland is not punished under the existing law ; he pointed out that for twenty years Mr. Gladstone had been promising the regeneration of Ireland, and that at every step which he had made, whether rightly made or wrongly made, he had only elicited still bitterer complaints and still larger demands ; and he maintained that the greatest trouble and suffering now existing in Ireland; is due to the unchecked ascendency of lawless men, who frighten away industry, destroy credit, raise hopes in the lawless of getting spoil without work, and destroy the hopes of the honest and diligent man who wishes for liberty to toil where he can toil to greatest advantage, to buy where he can get the best goods, and to sell to those who will give him the best price. He appealed to English- men who like to be left at peace to attend to their own concerns, to pay at least so much attention to politics as would gain support for a Government whose chief object it is to secure this quietness and peace in all parts of her Majesty's dominions. And he paid a warm tribute to the Liberal Unionists, who, by resigning for themselves all prospects of power, have secured a chance for this modest and business- like policy, in place of the dangerous and desperate cast on which Mr. Gladstone proposed to risk the fortunes of the Empire.
That strikes us as precisely the tone which Mr. Smith ought to take, and which the country will support him in taking. Nobody can say that we have had a preponderance of hum- drum policy during the last twenty years. Neither Mr. Glad- stone nor Lord Beaconsfield were humdrum statesmen. Mr. Gladstone was sanguine even to rashness in going any lengths to propitiate Ireland ; Lord Beaconsfield was sanguine even to rashness in going any lengths to extend our influence in Asia. Both overdid their parts. And the country sighs now for a little interval of sure, modest, safe, businesslike, and just administration. Mr. Smith is leading the House of Commons in this direction, and leading it very well.
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