STRONG AND WEAK GOVERNMENT.
IT is positively stated that the Government have determined, whenever it is possible to return to the resolutions on procedure, to consent to the compromise urged upon them by Sir John Lubbock and " the two-thirds Liberals," as they are called, that the Closure shall only be voted by a two-thirds majority. We need not say that we do not accept this state- ment on the authority on which it is given. Indeed, it is obvious that whatever may be the origin of the report, it is not published by the newspapers for benevolent purposes. No decision could be more injurious to the reputation of the Govern- ment for strength of purpose. We are well aware that on other grounds the Government has been branded as weak by politicians whose only criterion of strength is a certain sudden arbitrariness, such as marked the decision of the last Government to buy the Suez-Canal Shares, to go to war with Afghanistan, and to bring the Indian troops to Malta. That is not our test of strength. On the contrary, if Lord Granville can succeed in obtaining the sanction of the Great Powers, acting in concert, for any Egyptian policy which saves Egypt from anarchy, and the Suez Canal from the predominant influence of any one State, we shall call the delay, the apparent hesitation, the temporising with Arabi, the resolve to brave the appearance of weakness and vacillation, the forbearance with France, the patience with the Sultan, the seeming tardiness in repressing riot at Alexandria, a policy of genuine strength, because it adheres steadily to a principle long announced by the Government and successfully applied to other equally difficult crises, and because the principle so asserted is one of far greater scope for the purpose of bringing about a permanent solution of international difficulties than any other and more impatient course of action would be. In our opinion, true strength in a Government is tested not by the quali- ties which seem to suggest merely arbitrary and tenacious volition, but by the evidence of wisdom and maturity of purpose, and of patience in working for that purpose under heavy dis- couragement, which a Government can bring. If Lord Granville should succeed in securing " the conceit of Europe" for any tolerable solution of the Egyptian difficulty, it would show vastly more strength, in our sense of the word, than the adop- tion, mero ►note, of a policy of far more sensational vigour.
But, however we may define strength and weakness in a Govern- ment, no man in his senses will suppose that it shows strength, or anything but weakness, to deviate from the decision deli- berately adopted and announced and warmly approved by the country, with respect to the procedure of the House of Commons, and to do so on the invitation of a knot of politi- cians who, with one or two exceptions, have not by any means contributed effectively either to the support of the Administration, or to the unity of the party to which they belong. The result of such a course as the adoption of the two-thirds compromise, would be to withdraw from the Government all the hearty enthusiasm of the constituencies (who, whatever else they wish, wish with all their hearts to see the nervelessness of the House of Commons finally removed), and to win it anything but increased loyalty even from the party which had attained this triumph. Doubtful friends are never made less doubtful by discovering that they have frightened those whom they threatened to desert. We can imagine nothing less calculated to make the few vacillating Whigs return to their allegiance, than such a confession of weakness as the Press kindly imputes to the Government, and nothing more calculated to cool the cordiality of the great party which carried the Government into power, and now triumphantly sustains it there, to freezing-point. Tenacity in patience is often strength, when it looks to the superficial eye like weak- ness. But avowed change of purpose under a mere threat of desertion, without any assignable reason for such a change of purpose, can never look like anything but weakness, and is all the more dangerous, when the signs of genuine strength have been of a kind to be easily misunderstood by superficial observers, and even interpreted as indications of timidity or vacillation.
Nor is the Egyptian policy of the Government the only direc- tion in which that which has arisen from a wise and tenacious purpose lends itself to misconstruction by hasty observers. The decision to release Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, which excited so much angry controversy a few weeks ago, and in which we supported the Government most cordially, was noisily declared by all the opponents, as well as many of the doubtful friends of the Government, to be a mere act of surrender to insolent dictation. Our readers know well that in our belief this was not only not true, but the reverse of true. It required very great moral courage to release foes of the Government so bitter —and, worse still, foes who had unfortunately held out a prospect of altering their course which looked suspiciously like a bribe —solely because the reasons which justified their imprison- ment without a conviction had evidently ceased to exist. This, however, the Government boldly did, and we have always regarded their action in this matter as the truest evidence of moral strength. But just because it was so, it was an action capable of gross misconstruction,—and not only capable of it, but actu- ally and widely misconstrued by those who should have known better. We respect the Government all the more for its moral courage. But it is obvious that the duty of doing what is so capable of misconstruction on one occasion, adds indefi- nitely to the considerations which render it most imprudent, indeed quite fatal, to do that which would not be miscon- strued at all if it were construed as tending to sustain the two previous misconstructions of which we have spoken. The Government have none of that spare capital which a generally diffused confidence in the strength and tenacity of their purposes gives. Consequently they cannot draw on a capital which they do not possess to excuse themselves in doing anything that all the world would know to be an act of vacillation and timidity. Many Governments which have really shown no strength of purpose at all, many which have been as weak as water, whereas this Government has been generally inflexible in adhering to its avowed principles, have had far more popular credit for being strong than this Government, which has been really strong in the presence of great temptations to be weak. But all the more is it essential that it should not show itself undeniably weak in a matter in which tenacity of purpose is the only thing needed to obtain a great constitutional reform demanded by the nation and sorely needed by the House of Commons.
We have said that we do not believe in the state- ment that the two-thirds compromise is to be accepted,—a statement to the thought of which, no doubt, the wish was father. On the other hand, a prorogation in August and a separate autumn Session called for the very pur-
pose of dealing with procedure,—a plan now foreshadowed,
—would be a very wise step, so long as the policy proposed, and backed by the whole strength of the Government in that autumn Session, were a firm and consistent policy. To call an autumn Session for the purpose of beating'a retreat would be obviously impossible. If we are to have an autumn Ses- sion inflicted on Parliament, there must be something large and imposing, and worthy of considerable public sacrifices, in the purpose for which it is inflicted. It seems to us the first condition of such a reform of procedure as would be worth a great public sacrifice, that you should not put a pre- mium on the dilatory intrigues of party life. If you are really to trust the Speaker to judge of the real wish of the House for a division, the worst thing you can do would be to make it worth the while of a considerable section of the Opposition to put the Speaker apparently in the wrong, for the purpose of embarrassing the Govern- ment. Yet, unless you leave the ultimate decision as to the closure of debate in the hands of a simple majority, you will certainly offer the strongest possible temptation to the bitter section of an Opposition to vote against the motion at the last moment, so that a two-thirds majority shall not be obtained and a humiliation shall be inflicted—in the first instance on the Government, and in the second instance on the Speaker, who had seemed to play into the hands of the Government. To supply a direct temptation to such party- moves seems to us a folly so inexcusable, that any Rules of procedure with which such a blunder were bound up would be sure to fail; and not only to fail, but to bring genuine discredit on the Administration which had proposed them.
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