LORD SALISBURY ON AMBIGUOUS VERDICTS.
TORD SALISBURY, in his remarkable speech at the Covent Garden Opera House yesterday week, told his audience that the General Election would take place on several issues mixed up together. "Some people will vote on Disestablishment, some people will vote on the Eight-Hours Bill, and some people will vote on the integrity of the Empire ; and we have no means of dis- tinguishing between their verdicts, or knowing which of these subjects their opinions are to affect. It is often said that we are appealing to the verdict of the country. But just conceive what a state of things it would be if that metaphor were literally fulfilled. Can you imagine three trials taking place at once before the same jury ? Let us say, a trial for murder, a trial for libel, and a trial for a patent case, and that the jury were only allowed to say 'Yes' or 'No' in one verdict, and that that verdict was to affect all three cases. That is exactly the process by which a verdict is to be pronounced upon the organic institutions of this country." Nothing could be more effectively put. Of course the reply will be, that the verdict is a verdict of confidence or no confidence in her Majesty's Government ; that the persons acquitted or condemned are really the same in all three cases, whether they are acquitted of the murder, or acquitted of the libel, or acquitted of violating a patent that had been secured by law ; and that while one juror is chiefly influenced by their conduct as regards the murder, and is utterly indifferent as regards the libel and the patent case, another juror will be chiefly influenced by the libel and the patent case, and will be comparatively neutral on the question of the murder, while a third may be taken up wholly with the libel, and not give a thought to either the murder or the patent case ; but that each will say what he thinks on the whole to be the merits or demerits of the person who is the accused in all three cases. Thus, a man who votes for the Government because it is against Disestablishment may be disposed to think that it was wrong in rejecting Home-rule for Ireland, in spite of regarding the Established Church as so much the more important question of the two that he does not allow the Irish Question to affect his judgment. Another may think the Eight-Hours Bill so much the most important of the three issues, that he will condemn the Government for not conceding that measure, although he is unfavourable to either Disestablishment or Irish Home-rule ; while a third sustains the Government for resisting the Eight-Hours Bill, though he is doubtful or indifferent on the two other issues. Still, state it how you will, no one can deny that the popular verdict, even when given, is one which it is quite impossible to interpret clearly on any point but the personal point. We cannot say, after the verdict is pro- nounced, whether the people are favourable or unfavourable to Irish Home-rule ; whether they are favourable or un- favourable to the Eight-Hours Bill ; whether they are favourable or unfavourable to Disestablishment, and if to Disestablishment at all, to Disestablishment in part of the United Kingdom or in all sections of it. We can only say that the people, for various and extremely different reasons, either wish to retain the present Government in power, or wish to substitute Mr. Gladstone's Government for Lord Salisbury's. But whether they would have been more or less inclined to change the Government if, instead of taking the line it does on twenty different questions, it had taken the same line on sixteen of them, and a different line on the other four, no one has the chance of forming even a remote guess from the result of the elections.
Looking, for instance, to the turn discussion in England has recently taken, nothing could well be more likely than that the majority of the people may prefer the Irish policy of the present Government to Mr. Gladstone's, while they so much prefer the promises made by Mr. Gladstone in relation to the hours of labour and Welsh Disestablish- ment and other matters, that they may reluctantly swallow Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in order to obtain their wishes on the Labour question, the question of the Welsh Church, and other points of less importance. Yet if that were actually the case, there would be absolutely nothing in the condition of the polls throughout the country to give the faintest sign of it. And Mr. Glad- stone would come into power with the confident impres- sion that it was his Irish policy which had brought him into power, whereas in reality it might well be that his victory had been far less complete in England than it would have been if he had not weighted himself with under- taking to pull the Constitution to pieces by a virtual repeal of the Union.
Surely Lord Salisbury has here put his finger on a most important constitutional blot. Why should we entangle the issue as to the people's personal confidence in Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone with an apparently subordinate but in- finitely more important issue, as to the constitution of the Empire ? Surely it would and should be possible to put such issues as these separately to the people. Let them vote if they wish on the personal issue also ; but why should it not be possible for them first to settle the question of all questions, whether they desire a great con- stitutional revolution for its own sake ? As Lord Salis- bury pointed out, the most genuine of the Republics take this distinction. The United States put any alteration of the Constitution separately to the people, and do not allow it to be mixed up with any personal question. It is the same in Switzerland. If the Swiss had to propose a new law affecting the relation of the Swiss Cantons to each other., they would not mix it up with a question of personal pre- ferences, but publish the proposed constitutional amend- ment, and then take a popular vote upon it, "Aye" or "No." Why does not a great democracy like that of Great Britain follow this most rational and common- sense precedent ? Why in the world do we follow a happy-go-lucky method of deciding matters of the greatest possible moment to our whole future as a people ? Can any one exaggerate the folly of mixing up questions so radically different as the question of the Eight-Hours Bill and the question of the Union with Ireland, or the questiou of personal admiration for Mr. Gladstone (which probably influences one vote in every two, more than any of the ultimate political issues) with the question of political admiration for the conduct of Mr. Dillon or Mr. Healy ? We hold that Lord Salisbury has brought into the fore- ground quite the most important of all questions which the new democracy is bound to settle. Are we to continue to let great constitutional questions be mixed up with com- paratively insignificant questions with which they have no manner of real connection ? Are we to cast lots, as it were, on the most important issues on which our national future depends, instead of settling them deliberately, separately, with full consideration and full responsibility ? To take a verdict of " Yes " or " No " which one man means for his verdict on the conduct of a person accused of murder, another means for his verdict on a person accused of libel, and a third for his verdict on the question whether a patent- right has been violated or not by the same accused person, would be thought pure madness ; yet it would hardly be so mad as to take a popular verdict which one elector means for his verdict as to the relative claims of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone to popular admiration, another means for his verdict on the question whether the Church in Scotland or Wales should be disestablished, a third means for his verdict on the question of the Eight Hours Bill, and a fourth for his verdict on the disintegra- tion or integrity of the United Kingdom. Yet, in the present state of our constitutional arrangements, this is precisely what we do, and no one can defend it as a rational course of conduct on the part of a clear-headed, resolute, and sagacious people.
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