• MR. GOSCHEN'S INTERVENTION.
MR. GOSCHEN is developing a certain talent for a paternal treatment of the House of Commons. His speeches on Friday and Tuesday, like his speech to the Liberal Party at the Foreign Office meeting last Session, were emin- ently paternal ; but the speeches of the last few days were great improvements on the Foreign-Office rehearsal of his new part. On the first attempt, he did not manage his new part well. It was hardly in good-taste to pose as the protector of the House of Lords against the just indignation of the Liberal Party. But his recent interventions in Parliament have been in perfectly good-taste, though hardly perhaps so efficient as we ourselves should have wished. When Edie Ochiltree has tried in vain to inter- vene between the duellists in" The Antiquary," he apostrophises them, if we remember rightly, as "Bairns, bairns !—Madmen, I should say," in his despair of doing any good. And Mr. Goschen's entreaties changed with something of the same pathos from the tender earnestness of the Friday's speech to the despairing warning of the Tuesday's. He sees that, do what he will, he cannot part the combatants. Lord Salisbury, who is acting the part of Hector MacIntyre, is too hot-headed to be denied his revenge, until he falls by the bullet which he has brought upon himself; and though in the duel of the romance the person challenged might, and should, have declined the combat, it is not open to Mr. Gladstone to give way on a political principle of so much importance as the claim of a Representative Assembly, supported by the country, to override the pretensions of an Assembly that has not a single element of representative weight. Mr. Goschen was well aware that his entreaties could produce a good effect only by any impression they might make on the Conservative Party, and to the Conservative Party consequently he addressed them. To the Liberals, he was fatherly only in recommending them to acquiesce in Mr. Gladstone 's proposals —the proposals of their true Leader,—and not to join hands with Lord Randolph Churchill. To the Conservatives, he could not give similar advice, for what their true Leader wished them to do he did not know. He only knew the principles which Sir Richard Cross appeared to favour, and with him he was quite agreed. But when Sir Richard Cross was explained by the Opposition Leader as having dropped only an °biter dictum, and when Sir Richard Cross himself humbly explained that he meant nothing which Mr. Lowther had not permitted him to mean, Mr. Goachen was aware that his entreaties would be of little use. It was hopeless for him to attempt to strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees of moderate Conservatives, who would not even stand by their own temperate counsels.
Mr. Goschen, then, has failed, in spite of the benignant wisdom of his speeches. We cannot help suggesting to him that, though he has certainly selected the true Moderates on the Conservative side for his confidence, it may well be that he has been mistaken in supposing that these true Moderates really advocate the measures which would yield what would to him appear the best results. Mr. Goschen is all for holding by the historical constituencies, for ignoring the basis of population as the fundamental test of Redistribution so far as it can be decently ignored, for resisting any great concession to the equalisation of electoral districts ; and he has found that the Conservatives who really agree with him, like Sir Richard Cross, have not the courage of theirconvictions and will make no sacri- fice to help his conciliatory designs. Now, there is a party in the Conservative ranks which certainly has the courage, nay, the audacity,—we will not say of its convictions only, but even of its most temporary and fleeting opinions; • and that party.obviously exerts far more influence over the helmsman of the Opposition than any other. Lord Randolph Churchill does everything with a light heart. There is not a cause which he takes up, even though it be only at a moment's notice, that he does not somehow manage to force into promin- ence. His own judgment is a negative quality. His style of advocacy is the worst in the world. But still he does now and then, by virtue of his ardent desire to express public opinion, take up a really deep-rooted conviction ; and when he does so, it cannot be denied that he does more for it than Moderate Conservatives ever contrive to do for their most cherished convictions. If Lord Randolph Churchill's wish to take a very great step towards equal elec- toral districts is a wise one—and we admit that his having adopted it is a very strong reason against its being a wise one— Lord Randolph will do avast deal more to bring the Conservatives round to it than ever Sir Stafford lsl'orthcote or Sir Richard Cross will do to keep them straight. Now, we want to press on Mr. Gosohen the careful reconsideration in his own sagacious mind of the question whether or not this great step towards a greater subdivision of electoral districts and a greater equalisation, is not in reality Conservative, instead of being, as Mr. Goschen evidently at present thinks it, dangerously Radical.
lathe first place, it is clear that whatever is done in this direc- tion will give permanence to the proposed Redistribution measure. If scores of small electorates of places containing only a popu- lation of 10,000 are to stand side by side with electorates containing populations of 50,000, is it not certain that a cry will very soon rise again against the paradox of allowing the opinions of a constituency of 10,000 to neutralise entirely the opinions of a constituency of 50,000 And it is a good Con- servative argument for any settlement that it should have a certain permanence about it, that it should not tend to give rise at once to a renewed agitation against the anomalies which it sanctions.
That, however, is but a small matter as compared with the real tendency of a large increase in the number of electorates, and of the allotment of but one Member to each electorate, to multiply largely the means which a minority has of ex- pressing its own convictions. It stands to reason that if you doable the number of electorates, and halve the number of Members given to each electorate, you double the oppor- tunities of the minority for obtaining a fair hearing in the Legislature. It may be that when an electorate of 10,000 is divided into two of 5,000 each, a politician of the same party will be returned by both; but, if so, it can only be because in both districts alike that party is in The ascendant, If it should happen, as it often must, that party opinion is not equally distributed through both districts, they will probably return men of different politics ; and so you will get the minority represented, without the slur of returning a repre- sentative of the party which has just been outvoted once, and can be outvoted again, in the very district for which the minority- Member is returned. Unquestionably, the further subdivision and greater equalisation of electoral districts does tend to the fair representation of minorities, and that in the only form in which the representatives they thus get can stand on a perfect equality with the representatives of the majority.
Once more, is not Mr. Gosehen, who feels so strongly the duty of giving due expression to the national and patriotic feel- ings of England, neglecting a considerable advantage, in dis- couraging the substitution of populous electorates for small electorates? Lord Beaconsfield had the merit of discovering that the great constituencies care a good deal more about matters of national sentiment than small constituencies ; and it was in this belief that he trusted when he embarked on his Jingo policy. Mr. Gosehen is no Jingo. He is far too wise and sober for that. But caring as he does for the national sentiment, we wonder he should not see that he will decidedly advance the strength of that cause in Parliament by sweeping away the minute constituencies and appealing to great electorates on all really national questions. We suggest these points to Mr. Goschen's impartial mind, because we cannot help thinking that he might effect more if he would join hands with Mr. Forster in seconding the views so recently adopted by Lord Randolph Churchill, than he can ever do by appealing to the timid Conservatives who have no heart to stand up boldly for their own beliefs.
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