PREMATURE POLITICAL PRECAUTION. T HE strong Parliamentary minority are already begin-
ning to fidget, very prematurely we think, as to the course they should take, when Mr. Gladstone's Home-rule Bill shall have been produced and defeated. They are very anxious, we are told, to avoid an early recurrence to the course of a dissolution, and are providing all sorts of excuses for giving the Gladstonians the means of escaping the natural consequences of a defeat. The country is poor, and anticipates being poorer. The sitting Members have only just begun to sit, and the political speakers have only just ceased speaking. Exhaustion is the main symptom of the day. No air-pump ever produced a more completely exhausted receiver than the oratory of the last seven years has produced in the minds of the various local bodies and Unions of Conservative and Unionist and Gladstonian opinion. Hence, no party ever trembled more at the pros- pect of a terrible defeat, than those who promise themselves an easy victory tremble at the prospect of their victory. The modesty and magnanimity with which the Unionist politicians declare their private reluctance to disturb their rivals so soon, are perfect models of sober and chastened desire. But we cannot help submitting to our Unionist friends that they are counting their chickens, not only before they are hatched, but before the eggs are laid. Who has assured them of this easy and early victory ? It is true that the old Parliamentary Hand has a supremely difficult task before him. But the task will not, perhaps, be so diffi- cult as it appears, if this is to be the spirit in which he is to be met by his opponents. If the minority are so much in terror of a victory, the majority are not at all anxious for a defeat. Mr. Labouchere and Sir E. Reed and Mr. Wallace may protest as eagerly as they please that they will not give the Irish Members the chance of inter- meddling in the local affairs of Great Britain while they refuse us the power of intermeddling in theirs, but it is well to remember that every one of them also takes care to protest that he is an enthusiastic Home-ruler, only not quite on the lines of the prevailing school of the present day. But what security have we that the prevalent Home- rule school of the present day may not efface itself ? The Pall Mall which preached so passionately the intolerable wickedness of removing Irishmen from the Parliament at Westminster, is no longer in existence. The new Pall Mall is Unionist, and perhaps, if it had not been so, Sir Edward Reed and Mr. Wallace might not have been so eager to proclaim their crypto-discontent with the policy, or the supposed policy, of the Government. What guarantee is there that the policy of 1886 may not be revived ? The Irishmen still protest that they do not care for double duties, for duties at Westminster as well as m Dublin, and they would probably not be sorry to see Mr. Gladstone's earlier scheme revived. Then, again, there is that more logical scheme of Home-rule All Round, which Mr. Asquith, indeed, seems to have abandoned, but which Mr. Labouchere has taken pity upon, and is causing Truth to proclaim from the housetops. We shall hardly have that as yet ; but who knows how soon it may be acknowledged as the ideal of all democratic hearts,—an ideal for which, in case any tolerable compromise can be hit upon, men are quite willing to wait patiently ? Nothing can be more unwise than to count on victory so confidently, and yet with so deprecatory an air as to invite defeat. Mr. Gladstone has not yet exhausted the resources ci science. it is absurd to persuade ourselves that all these announcements of half-and-half policies, which are hardly policies at all, represent any real agree- ment in the Gladstonian camp. It is quite right not to be taken by surprise ; but it is not quite right,—it is very foolish,—to discount our difficulties so freely as to be preparing to run away from the natural consequences of victory before any victory is won. After all our long Con- stitutional struggle, nothing would be more craven, nothing more disgraceful, than to throw away the results of a real victory just because a considerable number of Unionists are short of money., tired of talking, and eager for a little repoge. The -Union as it is, the Parliamentary Union of Great Britain and Ireland, is at least worth more than a little economy of resources, and a little political repose. If we are not fighting for a great principle, for a great historical tradition, we are poor creatures who do not deserve to win ; and to be already starting back from the prospect of our own victory, is an attitude of mind which seems to us almost despicably mean, as well as ridiculous. Our victory is as yet far from certain. We cannot be sure of any victory in the Commons ; and the veto of the Lords might easily be made very unprofitable to us, supposing the Old Parliamentary Hand has not lost its cunning. We entirely disapprove and repudiate this eagerness, of which we hear so much, to provide a modus vivendi with the Glad- stonians for the event of a victory which we have not yet gained, and, if we go on in this spirit, are not likely to gain. If the cause of the Union is worth no more than an ordinary political victory, we have been talking the most grandiloquent extravagance for the last seven years, and do not deserve to succeed.
Surely it should be evident to the most sober Unionist, that we have not yet scotched, much less killed, the policy of disintegration ; and that if we are not willing to avail ourselves heartily and im- mediately of the first opportunity of convincing Great Britain that the policy of Home-rule, so far as it goes beyond mere local government, is as impracticable as it is dangerous, we are not fit exponents of the cause we have taken up. What we have to bring about is a defeat of Mr. Gladstone's policy in the Commons. If we can in anage that, the greater the defeat and the more sensational it is, the better, and the more likely we are to get the final endorsement of the electorate for the death-warrant of Home-rule. How such a defeat can be whittled away into a compromise with the Gladstonians by which they shall be kept in power, and the constituencies at large shall be mystified as to whether there has been a great defeat or not, we do not know, and we should be ashamed to deliberate. But that event is still distant. We should be girding ourselves up for a great and decisive battle, not preparing to attenuate the significance of the engage- ment as much as possible, and to build golden bridges for the retreat of a foe whom we have not as yet either out- generalled, or engaged hand to hand. We confess ourselves more discouraged by this faint-hearted pre- paration for providing an escape for our opponents, in case they should be defeated, than we are by the difficulties of the contest itself. There is a pol- troonery in this dismay at the prospect of success, when we have told all the world that the course of English history depends upon our victory, which seems to us to indicate that we have been talking for years in a tone as unreal as that of the Gladstonians themselves. It may be that the victory, if we can win it, need not involve an im- mediate dissolution. If it resulted in the definite adhesion to the cause of the Union of a certain number of Glad- stonians who were convinced that they had been on the wrong tack, and who could carry their constituencies with them, it might not involve a dissolution. It may be, and may very likely be, that we shall not win a victory in the Commons at all, but shall have a long fight on various complex issues which will require great prudence and generalship. But if it proves that we can really win the battle by a coup de main, let us win it by all means, and win it with all our hearts in the fray, and not be RAI miserable patriots as to throw away the moral effect of a great victory, because we are in a panic as to the expense of a new dissolution and the fatigue of a new electoral cam- paign. Such proposals as these for attenuating the effects of a victory are the proposals of combatants who do not seem to know that they have a great cause behind them, who, indeed, are only fighting for their own hand.
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