SIR HENRY FOWLER AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM.
SIR HENRY FOWLER'S advice to the Gladstoniau party last Saturday, in Alderman Mander's grounds, was on the whole wise advice, but it would have been wiser still if he had taken his share of the blame for not having adopted it sooner. No doubt his judgment was overruled. No doubt it was not due to his own personal judgment that the more advanced spirits of his party, Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Asquith, carried the Gladstonians with them, when, if Sir Henry Fowler's instincts had prevailed, that party would not have been led into the desert there to wander for at least one, and possibly even two, Parliaments. Still it is never well for a party-leader to reproach his party with the blunder they have committed unless he himself had publicly protested against it, and had taken the courageous course of separating himself from it before the disaster came. This Sir Henry Fowler did not do. It was easy to see by his attitude on the Parish Councils Bill, when Mr. Gladstone allowed him to be thrown over in an almost humiliating fashion, and by his policy in relation to the Indian Cotton-duties, that he was not with the advanced wing of his party ; that, indeed, he had in him the element of sagacious moderation which the English people love, and without which they seldom prosper. Still, as he had never declared against the drastic policy of the Newcastle programmists, and indeed would have shared the credit of that top-heavy policy had it succeeded, it was hardly chivalrous in him to point the moral against such overburdened programmes as he did last Saturday, without frankly acknowledging his own mistake in assenting to that programme. Statesmen have the alternative of either dividing their party when it takes what they think the wrong road, or of holding fast by it and sharing the blame, which they will certainly incur if they hold their tongues, of having judged wrongly ; but if they adopt the latter course, they should boldly accept the responsibility of the mistake made, even though they had privately dissuaded their colleagues from the course taken, and had been overruled. Sir Henry Fowler no doubt leaned to wiser counsels than his fighting com- rades. But as he did not protest at the time, he should have for ever held his peace, and should have expressed his own sorrow for the blunder of his party, without indicating that his own advice had been adverse to the Newcastle programme, since he submitted to it, and would have gained the advantage of his submission, had it succeeded. We admire his sagacity ; but we should have admired it more if he had frankly assumed his share of the blame for not lifting up his voice against the pro- gramme which he now condemns. A chivalric loyalty is as much the glory of a statesman as wisdom itself. Either let him take the risk of condemning the wrong course, or let him take the blame of not having pursued the right.
For the rest, we hold with Sir Henry Fowler that the Radicals who load themselves with a string of elaborate promises, and pledge themselves to the con- stituencies to make good, or attempt to make good, these promises, as the Gladstonians did in the last Parliament, are committing a great blunder and earning the wages, which they received at the General Election, of a prompt and almost contemptuous repudiation. They were led into that foolish course, no doubt, by the wish to sandwich their unpalatable Irish Home-rule policy between other recommendations more attractive to English constituen- cies. But it was bad advice,—because too crafty advice,— which led them into that line of action. They had much better have owned frankly that they were endeavouring to do what they knew was not altogether palatable to England because they thought it just to Ireland, and taken cheerfully the consequences of failure, rather than gone on ostentatiously "ploughing the sands" as a sort of public demonstration to all the world that they were bent on a Jesuitical policy and wished to tempt the English people into what they thought justice to Ireland, by an indirect and even tortuous path. For the present, we trust, a manoeuvre of this kind has become as ridiculous as it was obviously unpopular. "Ploughing the sands " will be a nickname for inviting failure for many years to come. And the consequence may, we hope, be to simplify for the future the policy of the Radicals, no less than to bring out in strong relief the more straight- forward policy of the Moderate party. The wirepullers of the caucus have ruined the prospects of the Radicals for some time to come, and we hope and believe that the lesson will really be taken to heart. If the Radicals were wise, we believe that they would now dissolve their partnership with the Irish Home-rulers, and boldly avow that they must stick to the Union and prosecute for the future a progressive policy within the conditions of that great constitutional principle. But if they are not bold enough to do penance for a gigantic mistake, even then their course should be plain. They ought to avow openly that they seek to convert England to a policy which at present "the predominant partner" peremptorily rejects, and are willing to wander in the wilderness until they can really effect that conversion. It is not a very hopeful course, but it is more hopeful a thousand times than the disingenuous policy of the New- castle programme, which brought upon them so much ridicule and so dramatic a collapse. There is always a certain dignity about a party which is willing to incur odium for an unpopular conviction. There can be no doubt that the belief in Irish Home-rule is a very un- popular, and a most justly unpopular, conviction. Still, besides the advantage of securing by it a solid phalanx of Irish votes, there is always a certain gallantry in sticking to what seems a lost cause ; and there is, at all events, twice as much prospect of regaining credit by doing so, as there is of regaining it by indirect means, such as those attacks on Churches and demonstrations against the House of Lords, which have brought so signal a disaster on the Radical party. It seems to us that if the Gladstonians do not feel equal to the wiser course of accepting as a final condemnation of the Irish Home-rule policy, the General Election of 1895, their true wisdom would be to assume the attitude of a party that is ready to make great sacrifices for a pre- mature conviction, to admit that they had been both wanting in courage and wanting in frankness in not putting that conviction in the very front of the battle, and to confess that they had been misled by that want of courage into exaggerating their Radicalism, in the hope of diverting attention from their blunder. If Sir Henry Fowler, for instance, were to proclaim that he was willing to be patient ; that he was willing to take ten or even twenty years in the attempt to convert the country to Irish Home-rule ; that in the meantime he should be moderate in all his other demands ; that if he could carry Disestablishment for instance, he would be very mag- nanimous in relation to the terms of Disendowment ; that if he could carry " One man, one vote," he would be quite willing to concede an honest and a self-adjusting rule for the redistribution of seats in proportion to population ; that if he could carry the Payment of Members who need an income to compensate them for giving up remunerative work, he would not insist on paying those who were both willing and anxious to give their time gratuitously to public life,—then he might gradually form a party of moderate and reasonable Radicals who might find a good deal of sympathy,—a good deal more sympathy than we could give them,—in this great Kingdom. For ourselves, we hold that Irish Home-rule is impossible, and that all the King's horses and all the King's men will never set Humpty-Dumpty up again. But if that be at all doubt- ful,—and we do not think it is,—the way to test the doubt is to base the cry for justice to Ireland on its justice alone, to separate it from all obvious extravagancies in relation to the other Radical cries with which it has been associated, to strip it of all the rhodomontade of Irish brag, and all the logical doctrinairism of " Home-rule all round," to give it, in short, the reasonable air of a thoroughly English policy, and try what that might do to turn the Home-rule party into a prudent and straight- forward English party. We do not believe that this would succeed, and we earnestly hope that it would utterly fail, but if there is any chance for Home-rule, that is the only possible direction in which to make a successful effort on its behalf. At present Irish Home-rule has suffered even more from the extravagant claims which have been associated with it, than from its own intrinsic dangers. If it can be made to look plausible at all, it is only by separating it severely from all the doctrinaire logic, and all the Jacobin policy, with which it has been associated and by which it has been made at once ignominious and absurd.
Previous page
