MR. HARDY ON DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. T HE custom which demands a
certain number of speeches during the autumn from Ministers and ex-Ministers has often been denounced as a waste of time and strength. That is not our opinion of it. Everything that brings the rank and file of a party into contact with their leaders is a benefit. It does something to advance political education. It lifts the elector a little way above that petty partisanship which sees nothing in the greatest public questions but occasions for a triumph of one local organisation over another. If Ministers and ex-Ministers kept silent throughout the Recess, it might be better for themselves, but it would not be better for their constituents and followers. There would be as much speech- making as there is now, but it would be of a more petty and personal kind. Any custom which helps to check the inevit- able tendency of political contests to become less and less political deserves to be maintained. At the same time, we greatly wish that Ministers and ex- Ministers would take a little more pains about what they say. If these autumnal speeches fill the place of political primers, the quality of them might be greatly improved. We should be sorry to see them withdrawn from circulation, but it is sometimes difficult to feel that any one would be the loser if they were. It would be useless to expect every man of Cabinet rank to make speeches so instructive as those political studios with which Mr. Grant Duff used to please and inform his constituents, but they might at least imitate him in devoting the bulk of their speech to some one subject, and in taking for choice a subject on which they have some- thing to say. It may be necessary for Sir Stafford North- cote and for Lord Hartington to take a general survey of the political horizon, because they are the leaders of their respective parties in the House of Commons, and in that capacity they must be comprehensive, or nothing. But it is not so with Departmental Ministers. They may leave gene- ralities to look after themselves, and try to make the functions of their Department and the place it holds in public affairs a little more intelligible. There is one Minister who sometimes does this. Mr. Cross tells you plainly what he wishes to do in the way of amendment of the law, and if his performance during the Session does not bear out his promises during the Recess, there are reasons probably for the discrepancy which do him no discredit. If Mr. Hardy would have followed his col- league's example he would have addressed the Edinburgh Con- servatives on Tuesday to very much better purpose. The reor- ganisation of the English Army is still in its infancy, and if the electors could be made to understand a little better the nature and limits of English military enterprise, what we can do with our present Army, what we might do if we had a larger Army, and at what sacrifices a larger Army would have to be obtained, they might give a more intelligent vote, if over a military ques- tion had to be decided at the polling-booth. Mr. Hardy could have spoken on these points, and have been really useful. He preferred to speak on general politics, and we saw the result in Wednesday's and Thursday's Times. It is difficult to imagine poorer speeches, considering the position of the speaker and the circumstances under which they were spoken. The best thing in two columns and a half of small print is a joke about Lord Harlington becoming managing director of the Liberal party, and finding that the late managing director retained a very considerable interest in the concern. It was hardly worth while to go all the way to Edinburgh to tell the Scotch Con- servatives this. It is a kind of joke that might have been for- warded by telegraph, without its quality being any way affected. The report would have read equally well if it had run,—' At this point of the proceedings a message arrived from the Secretary of War, a special wire having previously been intro- duced into the room, and the following witticism was read aloud by the chairman, amidst roars of laughter.'
One thing, however, we do owe to Mr. Hardy, and that is an admission that the Liberal party performs an absolutely essential function in the State. . " Conservatism," he said, "is not attempting to preserve by keeping everything as it was ; it is putting aside the worn-out parts, and replacing them by that which is calculated to revive the energies It is continually changing and continually improving." If this is the work of Conservatism, it is a work which it leaves the Liberals to do. What are the worn-out parts of the Constitu- tion that have been put aside and replaced ? It may be said, perhaps, that the Liberals have been so much in office of late years that they have not left the Conservatives anything to do in this way. But in that case, why have the Conservatives consistently opposed every change which the Liberals have introduced ? And why have they made so little use of their opportunities as regards matters which they admit to be imperfect ? Mr. Cross did a bold thing when he altered the law of conspiracy, but there are other parts of the criminal law which, on his own admission, stand in quite as much need of amendment as the law of conspiracy. Why has he not been able to force any one of these upon the attention of the Cabinet ? He has done something, again, towards remedying overcrowding by passing the Artisans' Dwellings Act, but the cottages of country labourers need multiplication and rebuilding just as urgently, though the machinery to be applied must be different from that which is appli- cable to towns. But why has this part of the subject been left altogether untouched ? This is precisely one of those worn-out parts which Conservatives profess to know more about than their opponents. Social improvement and country life are two provinces which they claim as specially their own, and yet a Conservative Government stops short just when it comes to carrying out social improvements in the country as well as in towns. It is the same with every- thing that this Government has touched. Their measures are always half-and-half, either in purpose or in execution. They leave half the work undone, or if they do the whole, they do it in a half-and-half sort of way. Conservatism, as they ex- hibit it, is always congratulating itself in private that the worn-out parts of the Constitution have been removed by the Liberals, and assuring the world in public that these same parts were not so worn out as the Liberals say.
In speaking to working-men on Wednesday, Mr. Hardy made an announcement of some importance. Apparently the charge of not caring for local government has touched the Con- servative Cabinet, for at length, in their fifth year of office, they are really going to take it in hand. Mr. Clam Read's motion about Country Boards has disclosed the interesting co- incidence that the subject is one which occupied the attention of Ministers for a very long time, and Mr. Hardy hopes that the Government will be able to submit to Parliament something that will show that they are not afraid to touch the question. We quite agree with Mr. Hardy that there is no more Conservative institution in England than the system of leaving men to manage their own local affairs, and we only regret that it should have received such scanty attention from the Conserva- tive Administrations, until Mr. Clare Read convinced the tenant-farmers that there can be no satisfactory readjustment of local taxation until there has been a reform of local ad- ministration. In spite of Mr. Hardy's assurances, however, we greatly doubt whether any real progress in this direction will be made under the present Government. Good county government means government by the county, just as good national government means government by the nation ; and if the Cabinet have really made up their minds to introduce a measure which shall secure county government in this sense, they must count upon having a bad time of it with some of their supporters. About the Scotch Establishment Mr. Hardy was unexpectedly and perhaps unintentionally candid. He is very anxious to keep the fire out of his neighbour's house, but he does not disguise that it is because he is afraid that if it once gets in it may make its way to his own. "Depend upon it," he said, " that if the Church of Scotland is consumed, the Church of England will be scorched." Probably his hearers were well aware of the force of self-interest, and were consequently quite content that so long as an English Minister will fight for a Scottish institution, he should do it with an exclusive eye to the effect which the destruction of that institution would have upon England. Consequently, the Church of Scotland is to be stoutly defended, and more than one Plevna will, Mr. Hardy prophesies, be found within her venerable walls. It was rather an un- fortunate simile, considering what had just happened to Plevna, but it is too much, perhaps, to expect a statesman's comparisons as well as his facts to be corrected up to date. Mr. Hardy remembered that Plevna had been taken while he was speaking on the Eastern Question, and he may be forgiven for forgetting it when he had travelled on to the remote subject of religious Establishments.
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