LORD DERBY AS A LIBERAL STATESMAN.
TORD DERBY has not yet accepted office in the Liberal .1 Cabinet, but it is no secret that he is on the eve of doing so, and that his speech to the Liberal Club at Manchester was the speech of a statesman who had counted the cost of identi- fying himself with the present Government, and had deter- mined that the cost was overbalanced by the advantage. In reference to his change of party, he tells us himself, with a grimly humorous reference to his father's celebrated phrase, that " in connecting himself with the Liberal party, I did not take a leap in the dark ;" that " it was a step taken carefully and deeply considered, and once taken, it will not be retracted." What he thus openly avows as regards his change of party, he virtually avows as regards his intended accession to the Government, in the speech of Wednesday. That speech explains what in Lord Derby's opinion is the best defence for two bits of "heroic" statesmanship in Ireland and in Egypt, which he regards, as indeed he is disposed to regard all heroic statesmanship, as at the best risky and dubious ; and -what price the Government must pay for the adhesion which he is about to give. That price is that the Government shall not push on further on the same lines, but regard what has been done as the extreme limit of what it is safe to do. Thus at least we understand Lord Derby's extenuation of the Irish policy and the Egyptian policy of the Government. Of both he virtually says, You were in a cleft stick ; you had your choice of very unenviable alternatives ; you chose what you thought the best in each ease ; perhaps you were wrong, perhaps you were right ; but whether wrong or right, you would have had almost equal difficulty in defending any other course, and so long as you will make it clear that we have seen the worst of it, and have nothing more that is heroic before us, I will join you, and help you to make the best of a policy with which I am not delighted, though I can quite believe that you might have done much worse.' Such is Lord Derby's line, as we understand it. And it is worth considering what the alliance of a power like his will do for the Government, and what set-offs there are on the other side, for you can hardly obtain an alliance such as his, without looking for set-offs. Nor shall we have to look very far in the present case.
In our opinion, then, Lord Derby's accession means some- thing of this kind,—that in accepting his co-operation, Mr. Gladstone's Government will announce that it has passed through its stage of enterprise and daring, and has settled down to plodding Liberalism. From this time forth, its most weighty mouthpiece;--as the higher and the middle- classes of the nation, though not the nation itself, will regard Lord Derby,—will steadily deprecate anything like a sensational view of the doings of the Government, and will always find the aptest way of persuading the English people that what is done, is done because it is the only thing really practicable, not because there is any great 'merit in doing it, still less because there is anything very original in it, rather, indeed, because there would have been a perverse originality in doing anything else. Now, we are not for a moment going to deny that this view of what a Government does has more effect in disarming English middle-class opposition than any other you can conceive. It is greatly because Mr. Glad- stone's policy has been audacious, has been original, and has hardly been defensible on common-place grounds, that it has provoked the intellectual scorn of the comfortable classes. To them you cannot recommend a policy better than by saying, Yes, it is a common-place policy, but in long-established States like ours at all events, all wise policies are common- place.' You cannot say anything worse for a policy, in their eyes, than that it took. a great daring and a great imagination to conceive and execute it. Lord Derby's way of deprecating Compliments, and assuring every one that the course which he defends was almost the only one really open to us, was one from which it would have been a plain want of common-sense to deviate,—is, no doubt, the one way to get the richer classes in England to accept any policy without murmuring. From the moment that this line of apology—or shall we call it homely extenuation I—for any- thing that is done, as ' not, perhaps, what you would call an ideal course, but still as good as you could expect in a world of. Hobson's choices,' becomes the prevalent one, we shall cer- tainly find that the middle-class rage against the Government begins to diminish, even if the working-class enthusiasm for it begins to diminish too. We may, perhaps, have less wind in our sails, but we shall certainly have less head-sea against us. With Lord Derby's accession, the Government will have passed through its most perilous days, and will reach that steady-going phase in which, as the phrase goes, hostages are given to fortune. The adherence of Lord Derby will be to Mr. Gladstone's Government what marriage with a county heiress is to the career of an eccentric eldest son, a comfortable event, which renders formerly disturbed well-wishers easy in their minds, and able, for the first time, to forecast the future of a career previously not very well understood. Lord Derby will give, as it wore, a sort of certificate of respect- ability to a Government previously regarded by the comfort- able classes with more alarm, wonder, and fear than con- fidence. Like the lady who distrusted her now pastor so much that she never could go to sleep comfortably under him, lest sho should miss something reprehensible, English Villadom will feel for the future that it may now and then close an eye, since it has Lord Derby as guarantee that nothing startling will be done, or, at all events, that if anything startling should by accident be done, it will be accounted for by reasons so very much the reverse of startling that every susceptibility will be soothed.
But the Liberals will have something to pay for this new accession of confidence. Those of them, for instance, who, like ourselves, regard the intervention in Egypt as useful only on condition that it really and permanently improves the condition of the Egyptian people, and protects them against the organised plunder of their recent taxation, will not be comforted by Lord Derby's strong expression of hope that we shall get out of the entanglement as fast as ever we can. What, we may ask, is to be our reward for the great danger we have incurred, if we are to run away without reaping its chief fruits ? If English guidance is to be withdrawn at the very moment when it promises to give Egypt to the Egyptians,—a very different thing indeed from giving it merely to the Khedive, —we would much sooner that we had never interfered at all. Lord Derby, in his horror of entanglements, his nervous fear of squabbles with other nations, seems to us dangerously favourable to the policy so justly, though so offensively, described (and also advocated) by Mr. Courtney, as that of leaving Egypt to stew in its own gravy. Let us hope that in this respect, and also so far as regards the Government policy in Ireland, Lord Derby may not be potent enough to secure any shrinking-back till the great objects of the dead-heave which the Liberal party have applied, are adequately realised.
For the rest, is it possible to dissipate the misrepresenta- tions under which the present Government have suffered se much, with more effectiveness than Lord Derby's speech dissi- pates them ? What can be more final than this bit of lucid sense on the Caucus system I—" Then it is argued that the effect of this system will be to throw all the power into the hands of wire-pullers. I answer that any system will do that, if the electors themselves are inactive or indifferent. Where the master gives no orders, the servants will take authority on themselves ; and if electors will not look after their own affairs, the next best thing is that those affairs should be looked after by persons of their own choosing. But, after all, the discussion whether organisation and discipline in politics be good or bad things, is one of a very speculative character ; the plain fact is, that without them no political battle will be won. When shells were first introduced into warfare, they were objected to as unfair and barbarous, but they were used. nevertheless ; and when one side has got hold of an improved weapon, the other must very soon follow suit. Forty years ago, Sir Robert Peel said to his friends, as the practical sum of his political advice to them, Register, register, register 1' If he had lived till now, the words would have been, ' Organise, organise, organise I' An organised party against one that is not organised is a disciplined force against a mob." And what can be more absolutely decisive than this, on Tory attacks against the Procedure controversy ?—" Is it really that
they are so very zealous for the freedom of speech, or is it not rather that freedom of speech indefinitely protracted by a legis- lative body means incapacity of action ? Let Members talk as much as they please,—the more they talk, the less they will do.' That is the thought which underlies a good many of these loud professions. I grant it is a pity that rules such as the House of Commons has lately passed should be necessary ; but they are a part of the great social change which is going on. When Parliament was an upper-class club, it did not want written regulations, — there were unwritten, conventional understandings, which served as well. Now it is a mixed body, taken from all classes, and not amenable to the same extent as formerly to mere conventional rules ; and for that reason, definite restrictions are required." The sober voice of Reason herself could not speak for the Liberal Party with plainer or more convincing accents than these.
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