TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT SHOULD MR GLADSTONE DO?
NATE sincerely trust that Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues will not be persuaded by any precedents into meeting
Parliament without having previously resigned their offices
into Her Majesty's hands. It may be allowed at once without controversy that all the precedents are in their favour except one, but that one will outweigh all the others in the popular mind. Mr. Disraeii did acknow- ledge at once in 1868 that he was defeated, and resigned before Parliament met, and whether he was right or wrong, nobody then raised any question against what struck the people as an act of generous promptitude. He probably felt such rapidity more binding upon him than usual because he had, in his own opinion, called up the new electorate ; but that reason applies also to Mr. Gladstone's Government in full
force. They passed the Ballot Bill which has for this election helped to ruin them, and are, in fact, precisely in Mr. Disraeli's position; and if they show less promptitude in making way for him, will infallibly be credited, rightly or wrongly, with less of public spirit. That is a very serious matter for the country as well as the party just now, more especially as all the acci- dental circumstances will seem to give colour to the charge. Mr. Gladstone chose his own time for dissolution, he made it as late as he could, he made it as hurried as he could, and as the whole operation has diminished greatly the time for public business, he should do his best to compensate the country for a deficiency of his own making. Of course, if there is any grave reason of State for delay, we are arguing in the dark ; but so far as appears, all the reasons of public convenience are on the other side. Till Mr. Disraeli has been summoned to Osborne he cannot form his Cabinet, and it is essential that the new Cabinet should be formed without delay. In one Department at least, and that one exceptionally im- portant, there will be a perfect paralysis of power until the new Secretary of State is fairly within its walls. This Bengal famine must be dealt with, if we do not want to be more dis- credited before Europe than we are already by its occurrence, in spite of our pans about our vivifying and civilising govern- ment of India, and it cannot be dealt with while everyone here and in India expects from Mr. Disraeli's speech a material change of pclicy, and while it is still doubtful whether or not Lord Salisbury will take such a task upon his shoulders. He is bound to take it, though failure should be imminent—is, in fact, a matter of days—or to stand before his countrymen as a man who, when the supreme hour for him arrived forgot his respon- sibilities ; •but that change, of course, it is not Mr. Gladstone's business to facilitate. It is his business, however, to remember that in one Department there is a danger so exceptional as to render a departure from rules no precedent, but an exceptional act dictated by evident and over-mastering necessities of State. The assertion that no time will be saved by resigning before Parliament meets, because no writ can be issued till a Speaker is elected, which seems here and there to find favour, is in this case visibly unfounded. The Secretaryship of India will be almost certainly given to a Peer, and if it be given to a Com- moner, he can hold it until Parliament meets, and the time for his re-election has arrived. Nothing binds the Crown to choose either a Peer or a Member for office, though un- doubtedly the latter could not hold power for any length of time if he could not obtain a seat. Even as it is, the loss of time will be most serious, and if cholera breaks out among the crowds on the relief works, will terribly increase the difficulties of any Government, and any extra delay, even of a few days, should, in the interests of the Empire, be most carefully avoided. It should also be avoided in the interests of justice. Mr. Gladstone chose his own moment for the struggle, and though had he won he would have been fully prepared, it is not fair to force Mr. Disraeli to clutter through the work of Cabinet- making—which cannot be really finished, or anything like finished, till the Queen has been consulted—to extemporise a Queen's Speech for a changed Parliament, to huddle up a Budget without time to use a slate, or to lay all his undigested plans before possible colleagues in a manner which, if not dangerous to the Constitution, would be most dangerous to its de- 1 corums. There will be worry enough anyway, but if the Cabinet I is not to be appointed till after Parliament has assembled, i after a Speaker has been elected, and after a vote of confidence I has been talked out,—just think of those 198 new Members 1 and their chatter for constituents,—there will be a direct loss of a week in talking, a week in Cabinet-making, and more 1 than a week in getting through new elections, which latter must no doubt be got through in any case, but can be as well got through, as resistance is improbable, while the candidates are in office. We shall, if the resignation is delayed beyond Tuesday,—that is, beyond the last elections,—lose half the year, as a year for legislation, and what is more important, all the time during which administrative changes can be made with a faint hope of doing good. The Famine alone is an answer to all pleas about precedent.
Nor can we perceive what benefit even in a party sense can be expected from delay. No doubt a bitter debate, lasting over a week, and in which the Liberal Members of the Cabinet would not be reduced to speak only of their Departments, might yield us some grand speeches, and enable the Premier to make one of those wonderful efforts which sometimes give new life and strength to the followers behind him ; but the debate could have only one of two results,—a confirmation of what everybody already knows, or an increase of the Conser- vative majority by the half-a-dozen waverers, who, think- ing themselves safe for five years, always join the Government in power. Besides, the Tory party is so discip- lined that it could actually stop debate by rigid silence, or prevent it by turning the election of the Speaker into a party- test. That must be the meaning of all the recent hints about retaining or dismissing Mr. Brand, who is acceptable to both parties and wants nothing, but whose expulsion could be converted into a party victory without giving any full oppor- tunity for debate. Except the speeches, which might, no doubt, in the prospect of losing office, be unusually frank and free, we can perceive nothing to be gained by delay except the re-establishment of a precedent which is constitutionally most valuable, but is not worth the sacrifice of one day in dealing with the famine in Bengal. It is most important to avoid plebiscites as substitutes for Parliamentary votes, but that great principle cannot be most gracefully asserted just now, when a Budget has just been submitted to a plebiscite by the Premier himself, and not accepted. The Tories are certain to reply to the argument of precedent by that counter- thrust, just as they are certain to declare that the delay was produced by the angry disappointment of the Liberal chiefs. It may be argued that the Cabinet can afford to disregard such nonsense, but we would put it to them very seriously whether this is true. It must be remembered that all leaders for the future stand face to face with a vast body of electors prone to- personal suspicion, doubtful of all motives not clearly apparent to themselves, and ignorant on some points to a degree sur- passing belief. There are hundreds of voters in England whom no evidence of any kind would convince that Mr. Glad- stone was not an Ultramontane—he having all the while an especial horror of the Infallibility dogma,—and hundreds of thousands who would believe that the Government stayed in power for an extra month for occult but selfish reasons. "Dizzy didn't," would be their short, but to themselves convincing answer to any explanation, which has not be- come the easier because the publican stands ready to- explain everything the other way. We question whether it is not worth the while of every leader on both sides to remember much more constantly than heretofore that he must henceforward stand clean in the sight not only of the club and the library, but of the tap-room and the workshop, and that a certain kind of misrepresentation, based on fact, yet contrary to fact, will henceforward be of more importance in politics than it has ever yet become. A charge like one of want of generosity is easily made, is one that will not bear its refutation on its face, and one which for a season may seriously affect the fortunes of Her Majesty's Opposition.
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