TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ELECTIONS.
ME new House of Commons will be the old one a little reinvigorated. The elections are not yet over, but this much may be said to be known from the results already declared : the Liberal Government will gain somewhat in the number and very greatly in the quality of its consistent sup- porters. Despite most unusual slaughter, which includes three subordinate members of Her Majesty's Government, Mr. Peel, Colonel Luke White, and Lord Bury, and extraordinary changes of personnel, the total result in the boroughs has been a gain of seven for Lord Palmerston, giving with his majority in the last Parliament a working majority of 27. This is exclu- sive of changes in the counties, which in Ireland especially will be considerable, and may be relied on, we think, to yield at least seven more Whigs, making a total gain in divisions of at least 28 votes, a number amply sufficient to change a weak Government into a strong one, and to enable one like that of Lord Palmerston to depart from its policy of in- action. This increase of working power is in itself an immense advantage, not only because it leaves Mr. Glad- stone, the inventive mind of the Ministry, a much wider scope, but because a weak Government in a constitutional country is always a squeezable Government, and in this country, and at this time, squeezable from the wrong side. Lord Palmerston has been compelled of late to summon his Tory reserve too often to the rescue, and his Cabinet, to conciliate them, have shrunk from facing questions upon which even he is not Tory, have, for instance, avoided Church questions with an adroitness which has made Liberals wince. Weakness, moreover, invites attack from every separate interest and every extreme party, and a change which reduces Ultramontanes, Reds, Teetotallers, and crotchetty men of all kinds to comparative insignificance, is in itself a good. So is the proof afforded by the elections that " reaction," if it ever existed, has exhausted its force. We believe that it was from the first almost confined to the House, that it scarcely penetrated the electoral body, and that but for the American war it would never have been visible to • the public at all. During that war undoubtedly many Liberals changed their tone, more especially those who hung on the outskirts of society. So intense was the feeling pro- duced in the upper middle-class by incessant misrepresentation and the hope of an American disruption, that had the war ended in the defeat of the North, reaction might have become real, and England handed over for years, as it was after 1815, to an administration resolved to resist all change as " dangerous to our institutions." With the hopes of the South, however, those of the Tories died away, and the return shows conclusively that even in county towns, where if anywhere the reaction really influenced votes, the Liberal party is as strong as ever. Many seats have been lost, but still more have been won, while in places like Ipswich, although there has been no change, the Liberals have shown an extra- ordinary increase both of energy and power. In the great towns, Leeds excepted, the Tories have received a severe defeat. The election for Westminster was in fact upon this point a crucial test. The Tories fought the battle with every advantage upon their side, complete organization and great enthusiasm, a resident candidate very wealthy and very ready to spend, personally popular, and almost exempt from attack, one opponent but little regarded by the educated Liberals, and another with little personal hold over any but them. They had on their side at once the ignorance of the humbler electors, who knew all about Mr. Smith, but had never read Mr. Mill, the feeling which calls itself " Church " and that which is styled most unjustly "evangelical," while Nonconformists were almost dismayed at being called on to vote for a ma who absolutely refused to profess any creed whatever. Had " reaction " been a reality even in the faintest degree, the Liberals, determined as they were, could not have carried Mr. Mill through without abandoning Captain Grosvenor, and would probably from the split votes have seen a Tory at the head of the poll. As it was they carried both candidates by a triumphant majority, and with numbers so close to each other as to prove that the electors really intended besides seating Mr. Mill to ensure a Liberal victory. The result was the more important because the quiet class, which rarely votes, and is supposed to have turned Conservative, was pre- cisely the one which plumped for Mr. Mill. In the City the triumph was not so significant, because the four candidates there represent Conservative wealth as well as Liberal intellect, the masses as well as the educated; but it was even more triumphant. Of all the candidates in Eng- land Mr. Goschen had issued the most incisive address, had spoken out the most clearly, had bidden the Tories defiance with the most epigrammatical hauteur. Of all he had the most recently and bitterly offended the Church, and of all he was the one who shared most that personal hatred which a section of the Tories pour upon Mr. Gladstone. The electors nevertheless returned him at the head of the poll, actually placing him above Mr. Crawford, who better perhaps than any man alive reflects the special feeling of the " City," as newspapers use the word. In all the London constituencies, the largest, wealthiest, and most popular boroughs in the kingdom, where the voting is really by household suffrage, yet wealth has its full effect, not one Tory has been returned. We cannot say we approve a result which entirely suppresses so vast a body of citizens as the Conservative inhabitants of the capital, but it at least proves beyond all question that re- action has died away.
The Government therefore, while rid of a vague but opera- tive fear which often paralyzed its courage, will be supported by a larger and more persistent majority, and this majority, again, is composed of very much better materials. In almost every instance, with the probable exception of Manchester, and the certain exception of Halifax, the Liberal who has superseded another, is the better man of the two. This is peculiarly the ease in London, where the constituencies have sent up at least seven men who would be distinguished for one quality or another in any assembly in the world, and have ejected two who would only be important when divisions were very close- Mr. Mill, who succeeds Sir John Shelley, is a distinct addition to the intellectual strength of the House, makes it, for instance,. far easier to exhaust such a question as reform, or Irish tenure, or the right of State interference in matters of creed or edu- cation, than it has ever been before. Mr. Goshen supersedes: no one, but then he comes back with all that additional power and freedom which a certainty of accord with his con- stituency gives to the least dependent member. Mr. Lawrence, of Lambeth, voted faithfully, but Mr. Huges, who succeeds him, will fill a place in the House hitherto absolutely unfilled, will represent in intellectual form but without intellectual modi- fication, the will, and the wants, and the views of the body of skilled artizans, will state, even when he cannot support, the ideas of the Trades' Unions, and tell the House what it ought to know and never knows, the thoughts, and hopes, and fears,. excited among handicraftsmen by its legislation. Mr.. Chambers is the intellectual superior of Lord Fermoy, and did not take half so many pledges, and Mr. Torrens, biographer and friend of Sir James Graham, has turned out Punch's butt, the person who slew Mr. Stansfeld from behind, and was always stumbling somehow or other into the TOry lobby. The metropolis instead of being, as before, illustrated only by the City members, sends up the precise roll which six weeks ago we suggested as an ideal, a local man for every consti- tuency to do the local work, and an intellectual man to add to the aggregate quantum of governing force existing within the House. Brighton, which is only a marine suburb, has followed the London example, replacing a common-place Tory by a blind professor with strongly popular views. The only losses of the kind as yet recorded are that of Mr. Leatham,, who, though too subservient to a set of fixed ideas, spoke some- times with a curious epigrammatic force ; of Mr. Bernal' Osborne, who is not apparently standing anywhere, and who served as the vinegar in the Parliamentary feast; Mr. Somerset Beaumont, who had an international influence just now very useful ; and Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, who although Tory added much to the vigour and brilliancy of debate. The young men, too, are crowding up—Lord Derby, Lord Taunton, and Mr. Gladstone having all seated their sons, and Mr. G. Trevelyan having seated himself. The roll of Cavendishes, too, will probably be enlarged, and the final muster of men all tinder thirty-five, all of some promise, and all more or less inclined to vote for restricted reform promises to be large. We must wait for the final returns, the poll from the counties, and the verdict of Oxford University, but as far as appears the new Parliament will be the old one improved.
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