MR. LOWE AGAIN. T HE House of Commons voted on Tuesday
night by 184 to 176 (including pairs) that it had no confidence what- ever in Mr. Lowe's tact or sense of fairness. That was the meaning of the division, though the debate drifted away from the true point till those who read it on the following morning almost fancied that the intellectual victory rested with Mr. Lowe. The resolution charged him with having broken the compact under which the inspectors were appointed by mutilating their reports, and speaker after speaker accused him of compelling inspectors to omit passages of which he or the permanent Secretary did not approve. Mr. Lowe's answer to this was ready and, as far as ordinary men can perceive, complete. His office, lie said, was a department as much as any other, and no department could preserve discip- line if its officers were ordered to report not to its chief but direct to the House of Commons. The head must exercise a discretion, and all he had done was to mark objectionable passages and send the reports back for expurgation. If the House wanted more it must have more, but if it had more the responsible Parliamentary officer would be compelled to act under a kind of council composed of the higher employe's in his own department. This defence, in the abstract, certainly seems unanswerable. No department could permit its officers to write anything they pleased,—to pen, for example, as one Inspector did, an elaborate thesis on the superior chastity secured by the Confessional, and print zo,that at the publio expense. Suppose an Inspector reports words. Lord Robert Cecil's motion might be unwarranted, or groundless, or demonstrably unsound, but it was entirely MR. HORSMAN'S DREAM.
within the forms of Parliamentary discussion, and to call its iirR. HORSMAN has crystallized a popular idea into a assertions " untrue" and its opinions 0° absurd," as Mr. 131 string of plausible resolutions. He intends to move on Lowe did twice over, showed want of the temper which chiefs " the first open day " that the House of Commons has heard of great departments ought either to possess or to affect. with regret of the assembling of a Conference to re-settle He ought to have remembered that even on the abstract already settled arrangements, and that " in the opinion of the question the position of the Inspectors is a little peculiar, for House Her Majesty ought not to be advised to give her the House has no means of deciding on the mode in which assent to any new engagements affecting the integrity or the educational revenue ought to be spent except through independence of Denmark until those engagements have been their reports, and is compelled therefore to choose between made known to Parliament." We all know how brilliantly weakening the department a little and leaving itself in igno- Mr. Horsman will treat the topic thus suggested, what strings ranee. It is true that Lord Robert Cecil did not allege of epigrams he will produce upon the failure of Earl Russell's, specific instances, firstly, as he said, because he did not wish diplomacy, how ably he will point out that the weakness of to bring on his informants the anger of a department with a Great Britain abroad is produced by the readiness of the very long memory,—witness Mr. MorelPs case,—and secondly, Government to enter into engagements which Parliament as he did not say, because he wanted to snatch a division before afterwards is unwilling to enforce. Doubtless, too, there is Mr. Brand's blunder could be rectified and the officials recalled a prima facie reason for his suggestion. If the Foreign from their dinners. But Mr. Walter gave one remarkable Secretary could be secure beforehand of the support of Podia- instance of unfairness, and Mr. Lowe might have heard fifty ment, he could address foreign States as Napoleon now does, more if he had chosen to attend to the talk going on outside. with a conviction on both sides that his words would, if neces- Instead of merely striking out surplusage, he had availed him- sary, be followed up by rapid and terrible action. It is the re- self of his discretion to strike out facts and opinions hostile to luctance of Parliament to enforce by violence the Treaty of 1852 his own ideas. In other words, he had used a legitimate which has produced the present complication, and Parliament,. power very unfairly, and so on a division the majority of if consulted beforehand, might be expected to act on its own• members voted. His argument that he only sent the votes. The notion, too, that Parliament ought to control our reports back for the Inspectors to re-tinker is on the face diplomacy is very widely diffused. What is the use, it is of it absurd. The Inspectors are most of them gentlemen, said, of the power to take off a million of taxation when a but they like their salaries, and the chance of promotion, and Minister can plunge us into a war which will cost forty, or pleasant words from head-o uarters just as much as other what is the value of a theory of self-government which on the people, and they knew very well that if refractory they stood most important of all contingencies is openly laid aside ? If . an excellent chance of losing them all. Indeed, they might lose you consult Parliament before you make a change in English yet more, for Mr. Lowe had just turned out an Inspector he did law, why not consult it before you make a change in English not approve of—whether justly or not as regarded his working foreign policy ? capacity—on a trumped-up charge of want of candour. There There is force in all those arguments, but nevertheless a are men, of course, who will defy their department, and lose more dangerous motion was never put on paper. We say their salaries, and run the risk of a moral accusation, rather nothing, though Ministers will say much, of its unconstitu- than suppress a few inconvenient facts; but Governments must tional character, for the House of Commons is in fact, if not act on the presumption that they are served by average people, in theory, the final authority within the Empire. If it in- and we do not wonder that this year " it has not been neces- sists on controlling all foreign relations directly it ultimately sary to send back a single report." Does Mr. Lowe sincerely will control them, prerogative notwithstanding, for it has believe that this large body of acute controversial thinkers is only to refuse to pay and all constitutional compromises. really unanimous, or is he not aware that he has produced his come at once to an end. What we desire to point out is " happy family," as other showmen do, by cruel pinches, and that direct Parliamentary control over our foreign rela- harsh words, and deprivation of food? He will hardly accuse tions, apart altogether from the constitutional difficulty, Mr. Walter of party animosity to himself, yet Mr. Walter told would and could be productive of nothing but mischief. him distinctly that he had cut out a fact, viz., the success of Indirect control it possesses already to the very fullest a particular school, because it told in favour of the system of extent. The Ministry are responsible for their treaties, and, unoertificated schoolmasters. Facts are not surplusage if if they sign bad treaties they can be dismissed, and knowing they be but true, and to cut out such things shows exactly this, Ministers are anxious to nervousness to keep their diplo- the animus imputed in Lord Robert Cecil's resolution. macy in accord with the well understood sense of the House. The truth is that Mr. Lowe's very considerable powers are in More than this it is impossible to secure, for the effort would his present office entirely lost to the country. The department land ud?n an incessant struggle in which the use of diplo- is one which more than any other needs tact, and he has no macy would disappear. Even if a committee of six hundred tact, only intellectual arrogance, which is of all qualities the could by any possibility manage negotiations at all, they must one most fatal to tact. The office requires the hearty assistance conduct them in comparative ignorance. For instance, in this of the country clergy, and he simply hates the country clergy, very Danish affair, the main facts are the disposition and and loses no opportunity of expressing his scorn of them and policy of two or three individuals over whom Parliament has their prejudices. A certain degree of intellectual hauteur is no sort of authority. Is Lord Palmerston to get up and essential in every office, but Mr. Lowe is like a martinet deliver a lecture on the character of the Emperor Napoleon, or colonel, most useful at the head of a regiment fallen into describe all the infinitesimal clues which Lord Cowley may have anarchy, but most injurious when the regiment is already caught as to the policy which the French Emperorhopes to carry in a high state of efficiency. He should be put to some post out? Or is he to publish CountApponyes confidential remarks that Dissenting schools are generally disorderly, and Church where the subordinates really require a sharp hand, set to bully schools given to superstition, and writes a small volume on dockyard officials, or directed to snub Irish unpaid mag,is- the a priori reasons for expecting those two results, is all that trates, or placed at the head of an audit office with to be published without remark ? There must be a line instructions to believe nobody and dock every sixpence that• drawn somewhere, and to exempt all Inspectors from con- looks doubtful. Placed where he is, he is simply an incon- densation is simply to invest two or three dozen gentlemen venience to the Government which protects him and the who are not responsible to Parliament, who are as jealous as party to which he belongs. If he were the first administrator poets and as fond of writing as Indian officials, with power in England the Whigs could not afford to keep up an inces- to publish any number of essays at the expense of the State, sant raw in every country village, and he is not a first-rate and to indulge in controversies as bitter and as endless as administrator by any means. He is inventive and clever to a those of theologians. No Minister with a sense of duty to high degree, but men must work with the tools they have, such his office would or could sanction any such practice, and the he always heats his till he cannot hold them. This country only point for discussion is the extent to which revision should has to be coaxed into educating itself, not kicked into it, and be carried. Mr. Lowe, who might make an admirable Minister of Educe- It was here that Mr. Lowe broke down. He had shown tion a hundred years hence, makes a very bad one now. We- that somebody must revise, he had demonstrated that the do not know if he will resign because the House has declared somebody must be the responsible chief, but he failed to prove him guilty of want of fairness, for he may despise the House- that he had exercised a power necessarily discretionary with too much to take its opinion upon any except a purely finan- either tact or fairness. His defect of tact was, indeed, con- cial question. But if he is wise he will resign before his in- clusively displayed by Mr. Lowe's own speech. He never evitable defeat upon the dismissal of Mr. Morell, and we can help showing his antagonists that he thinks them dis- earnestly hope his knowledge, courage, and faculty of inven- honest fools, and very seldom can help saying so in so many tiveness will not be lost to the present Administration.
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