TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE STATE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
THE House of Commons is in a condition even more threatening than the weather. The perpetual thunder- storms are trying enough, but the perpetual effort of the House of Commons,—a House just fresh from the Con- stituencies,—not to do anything that the Government invite it to do, and the remarkable success of that effort, are more trying and more alarming still. Speaking generally, this condition of the House is due to two causes,—one being the violent efforts of a particular Irish party to unsettle alto- gether the laws of property in land in Ireland, and the other being the violent resistance of a particular English party to any kind of change which proposes even the most moderate limitations upon the rights of landed proprietors in either country. Mr. Parnell and his faction are angry with the Government, because they will not lend themselves to his plan for making the tenants all over Ireland the ultimate judges of what rent they ought to pay ; and Mr. Gibson, Lord G. Hamilton, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr. Gorst, with their allies, who are quite beyond the control of Sir Stafford Northcote, are, on their side, furious with the Government for threatening any interference between landlord and tenant of a kind favourable to the tenant either in Ireland or in this country. You have, in fact, in the House of Commons a revolutionary and a reactionary party, both in dread of the Government, and both unmanageable by their proper leaders. Mr. Parnell, indeed, hardly conceals the fact that he is going for what is virtually a revolutionary policy, and does not always attempt to disguise that the more fair and generous to Ireland the Ministerial party is, the less he likes it, so long as it firmly and steadily discourages his own revolu- tionary views ; for it would be easier to discredit a policy that was not fair and generous to Ireland. On the other hand, the reactionary party feel that if the social power of the landed interest in the United Kingdom is to be retained un- diminished, its battles must be fought now, and must be fought in no scrupulous way. What they expect to result from the present campaign it is hard to say. Probably they do not expect to roll back the political tide altogether. Probably they would themselves admit, if they were asked quietly and in a candid mood, that even if they succeed in discrediting the present Parliament and the present Govern- ment, as they are trying so passionately to do, they will only carry the democratic movement one step further, and render the changes even more imminent by which alone such re- sistance as theirs can be overcome. What wise Conservatives should consider is, that only prudent concession can avert much more drastic interference with the social, proprie- tory, and judicial position of the British landowner, than any the present Government are in the least likely to pro- pose ; and that only by accepting cordially Mr. Gladstone's efforts to mediate between the rights of bare property in land and the rights of those who turn the land to use, can the landowners of this country expect to retain for any great length of time the influential position they now occupy. But these aro not thoughts which occur to hot heads like Mr. Gibson's, Lord Randolph Churchill's, Lord George Hamilton's, and Mr. Gorst'a. They see in Mr. Gladstone and his Government only the representatives of the party which first assailed the caste to which they belong and broke down some of the outworks of its power. Even the fact that they themselves are now often found acting in concert with Mr. Parnell does not discourage them. The vindictive feeling has taken possession of them. And even if they could be suddenly convinced that they were playing into Mr. Parnell's hands by thwarting Mr. Gladstone's Government, we doubt if they could now endure to withdraw from their attack.
The result, how.ever, of the double disloyalty to the rule of a Parliamentary majority, is very serious. It is bringing, and cannot but bring Parliamentary Government itself into dis- credit. It is of the very essence of Parliamentary Govern- ment, that after all the objections to a measure have been fairly discussed, the majority shall decide. In the present Parlia- ment, the objections to the one or two measures which have occupied the greater part of this short Session have been discussed not merely fully, but with monstrous and intolerable reiterations, reiterations not intended or calculated to produce any effect on the reason, but solely to produce a sense of exhaus- tion in the majority of the House. For example, to take two illustrations from Mr. Forster's Compensation for Disturbance Bill. It was objected from the landlords' side, that the Bill might injure good landlords who had already paid adequate compensation to the tenant for disturbance, in the lowness of the rent demanded through many years of prosperity. An amendment was given notice of by the Attorney-General for Ireland calculated completely to dispose of this objec- tion, whereupon the opposition of the territorial party be- came fiercer and more captious than ever. Again, as to Mr.. Parnell and his supporters. They objected to the proposed_ amendment of the Attorney-General for Ireland, that it might end in sacrificing the protection offered by the original Bill to• rack-rented and high-rented tenants of small holdings. Mr.. Gladstone so far met that objection, that he consented to require proof, in case of ejectment without compensation during the period of distress, that the landlord had offered reasonable terms, proposing, however, to limit the action of the Bill to tenancies not over a given rental ; whereon Mr. Parnell and his party at first replied that they would resist the Bill more than ever, because this would give a new- motive to the landowner to get rid of these small tenancies,, and to consolidate them into larger holdings. Why, for the time during which the Bill operates at all,—just a year and a. half,—it will prevent such consolidations. And beyond that time this Bill will have no effect, being intended as a tempo- rary measure for times of pressure, and not as a permanent measure of land policy. Pressure from the constituencies of Ireland appears to have modified this resolve of Mr. Parnell's„ and on Thursday he and his party showed themselves more reasonable ; but it is obvious that they still desire to make the Bill a mere lever against the landlords of Ireland. In one word, nothing that the Government can do will really satisfy either party. The Land League desire to beat a Ministry not only hostile to the Land League, but so fair to the small farmers of Ireland, that their hostility to the Land League is doubly dangerous. The Tories thirst for the destruction of a Ministry which, instead of reversing the legislation of 1870, desires to see the small tenant, now suddenly struck by famine, protected in the posses- sion of the rights which the legislation of 1870 gave him. And this ill-omened alliance of most bitterly opposed factions, is making all moderate legislation for the exceptional season, all but impossible.
There is but one cure for the malady of Parliaments• whose majority indeed expresses the popular will, while the vociferousness of its minorities so far misrepresents the real power these minorities represent, that action becomes, generally, speaking, impossible, in consequence of the excess of obstruc- tive talk. If talk continues to prevent the necessary and the only possible action, talk must be curbed, and we know- of no effective curb for obstructive talk except giving the House the power by a majority to stop the talk, and come to action,—in other words, the cloture. We should see this. remedy resorted to with the greatest reluctance. No wise minority will so abuse the power it still possesses of indefinitely resisting the progress of a measure on which the House of Commons has made up its mind, as to make the demand for the eliiture general. But the demand will soon be general, if the rabid Irish party and the rabid Conservative party go on as they now do. Even in country parishes, you hear working-men who thirty years ago never thought about Par- liament at all, growling at the waste of public time which the Parliamentary minorities cause, and murmuring at the political machine as one which is at once costly and impotent. It is a most serious matter when the question comes to be one whether the right of the minority to resist what it may deem oppressive measures, shall be extin- guished. Once let us take the power to gag minorities,—and it will be essential to do so, if minorities continue to act in their present temper,—and no one can say that it may not be used so as to keep down discussion not merely useful, but necessary. The cliiture is a very drastic remedy indeed, and one no prudent statesman would willingly adopt. At the same time, it is much better than letting discussion discredit itself by the indefinite postponement of all final resolve. A Parliament which wastes all its time in failing to persuade the unpersuadable, had better not exist at all. But as the question of what is enough discussion and what is not enough, is always a matter of judg- ment, the only way of giving Parliament power to stop the talk when there has been enough, unfortunately also gives it the power of saying there has been enough when there has not been enough, and when the resolve that there has, represents only the arbitrary and intolerant temper of the
majority. But to this remedy we must come, if two distinct sections of minority opinion in the House abuse their privi- lege, as they are now doing, to defeat a Government which represents the large Liberal majority only just returned by the country, and returned avowedly for the purpose of sup- porting and developing the policy of Mr. Gladstone.
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