TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BRIGG ELECTION.
WE have never been great believers in the omens given by by-elections, and should not be now, in spite of the double omen of Forfarshire in Scotland and Brigg in Lincolnshire, were it not that Lord Rosebery, by his eager appeals at Preston and Glasgow for a great effort to inspire him and his followers with confidence, turned, as we think, the disposition of the electors to follow their private inclinations, into a disposition to gratify their private inclinations by letting their leaders know what they think of the general orders they have received. When a Prime Minister says publicly that every nerve must be strained if the field is to be won, even electors with a sneaking preference for the personal merits of a candidate who is not their party candidate, follow their leader, unless they really think that their leader is going wrong. Lord Rosebery took all the pains in the world to show his followers how hard he was putting the helm down, and on the whole we think that only those who thought he was making a mistake in putting it down so hard, voted for the Opposition, even when they happened to think highly of the Opposition candidate and not very highly of their own. Generally a by-election is a carnival of personal predilections. But the leader has the power to transform those personal predilections into party predilec- tions by making a sensational appeal to the party at large. Lord Rosebery did this with good effect, and the result was that the party at large replied "Don't care," which seems to us a very significant kind of reply. It meant that Lord Rosebery had not succeeded in touching the party pride, but that it remained just as determined to follow " the fancies in its head" as if the leaders had not spoken out at all. Unless Lord Rosebery can find something better than the House of Lords' question to go upon, the result of the next General Election will be a swing of the pendulum to the other side. At present, the " outs " are discontented, and the " ins " are not contented. And that always results in a change of policy on the side of that makeweight or balance of electors who pass from one Bide to the other without regard for party loyalty.
Nothing is more remarkable, as we have often observed before, than the tendency of the opposing parties to show a certain equality of strength even when great issues are at stake. We have never seen anything since 1832 like that crowding of the benches on the side of Reform, and that desertion of the Conservative benches which seemed to say that all the people were practically of one mind, that they were weary of the abuses of the old times, and in- tended to make a clean sweep of abuses. Since then, even after the most sensational victories,—even in 1869, when Mr. Gladstone first came into power,—the transfer of a com- paratively small number of votes would have turned the scales from one side to the other. And so it has been ever since; in 1874, when Mr. Disraeli secured his great majority ; in 1880, when his foreign policy alienated the nation ; and even in 1885 and 1886 and 1892, when the chief question was Mr. Gladstone's personal popularity, as it was affected by his sudden and vehement adoption of the cause of a separate Irish Parliament in Dublin. On all these great occasions, the make-weight which turned the scales of popular favour was comparatively insignificant. The parties maintained a very close equality, and the swingings of a few thousand votes out of hundreds of thousands or millions, really turned the scales from else side to the other, though it often made a much greater difference in the House of Commons than it did in the proportions of the popular vote. Since 1832 there has been no manifestation of true popular disgust for either side of the House. After the greatest victories, it has been easy to show that a relatively insignificant number of votes, properly distributed, would have given the victory to the other side, whether that side were the Liberal side or the Conservative. The Radical dream,—for it is nothing better,—that some particular nostrum would change all that, that the ballot, or the lowering of the suffrage, or the inclusion of the agricultural labourer, or the adoption of "One man, one vote," or even the further and most logical corollary, "One vote, one value," would change all this, and exhibit the democracy as all on one side, has been shown to be utterly baseless, time after time, and will be shown to be baseless even in those cases in which, it has as yet never been tried. No doubt some little change may be effected ; General Elections may be turned from one side to the other, by the adoption of one or more of these particular nostrums ; but they will be but very temporary in their effects, and will all be found to be quite secondary to that general tendency in the balance of popular feeling to swing, like the pendulum, from side to side, which all democratic countries show. The truth is, that when once the people have got the victory over their aristocratic caste, the Conservative tendencies of the democracy itself become visible, and keep up a perpetual ebb and flow, like the ebb and flow of the tides, which is fatal to anything like a secure possession of power for either reformers or Conservatives. The great democratic changes of 1867 and 1885, have made this even more conspicuous. Between 1832 and 1867, the Liberals did retain a very decisive, though not an overwhelming, majority. Since 1867, and still more, since 1885, that decisive majority has vanished, and we do not believe that we shall see it any more. Privilege is no longer in possession, but with privilege the secure preponderance of the party which makes an ostentatious profession of assailing privilege, has also disappeared.
And this change will never show itself more strikingly than in the failure of this sensational attack upon the House of Lords. We do not at all regard the House of Lords as a sacred and inviolable treasure which the Eng- lish people are determined to hand down, without change or modification, to all posterity. The people of this country like ornamental Lords, but they have no notion at all of letting ornamental Lords become serious hindrances to popular development. They will acquiesce cheerfully enough in any well considered scheme for so modifying the House of Lords as to keep it in tolerable harmony with the representative Assembly without depriving it of all checking and restraining power. But they know perfectly well that the House of Commons, without check, is much more likely to become a tyranny than the House of Lords. And while the appeal to them is really made on behalf of Mr. Labouchere and his fol- lowers,—though it may be couched in the blander accents of Lord Rosebery,—it will be received with all the cool- ness, and indeed coldness, which the electors in Forfar- shire and Brigg have so pointedly displayed. A great party will vote against the House of Lords. A. greater party will vote against those who are assailing it,' rather than in favour of the House as it is ; and the balance will be in favour of those who would like to keep the House of Lords, but not to ignore its patent defects. The Conservative feeling of this country is not sensitive and irritable, but it is solid. It will dwindle as it has often dwindled, when the Conserva- tive party has seemed too rampant. But it will increase again whenever the Radical screamers seem likely to have it their own way. Forfarshire and Brigg have their meaning. They do not mean that Lord Salis- bury is the hero of the hour. But they do mean that Lord Rosebery has altogether over-stepped the limits of popular favour when he asks for a great popular mandate to destroy the legislative character of an Assembly which is at present the only effective drag on the rashness and the dictatorial temper of the House of Commons.
Previous page
