WINNING VOTES—AND LOSING THEM.
WE do not attempt to predict how the Election will go, though we think Mr. Gladstone confident beyond reason ; but we are convinced that the wirepullers behind him, whenever they indulge in predictions, make one very grave mistake. They look only before them, and not around them, and think that every vote secured by any promise is a vote gained at the polls ; whereas it may be that, and also a vote lost. Every pledge gains, they think, a class, but it may also irritate a class, and we believe often does. Sir William Harcourt, for example, thinks the democratic tide is running full, and that therefore it must be wise to promise manhood suffrage. That delights extreme Radicals, but if the pledge were fully understood, it would cost his party a hundred thousand votes. There are most energetic Liberals who dread nothing so much as the enfranchisement of the men without homes, who are not regular workers, and cannot feel as those feel who have houses to maintain and families to support. The cultivated, who remember the effect in America of the descent from household suffrage to manhood suffrage, may be few ; but the skilled workmen, who do not want to be swamped by the unskilled, are very many, and quite well aware where the true menace to the Unions lies. A proposal to regenerate the State by enfranchising all casual labourers will not attract them, or anybody else, Tory or Radical, who understands that even now the difficulty of governing England is the difficulty of informing multitudes so great that it is impossible ever to ascertain the feelings by which they are really stirred. One- half, at least, of the Newcastle programme will irritate whole classes, who will see in it much more of an attack on property than it really contains ; and though the pro- pertied may be comparatively few, those who hope to become propertied are a majority of the people. Every one of the projects for the benefit of the poor, which are said everywhere to be " in the air," and which Radicals patronise in the hope of votes, must be paid for out of rates, and rates are the one heavy burden remaining on the huge majority of voters. It is easy to ask that District Councils shall have power to buy land and redistribute it ; but every artisan in a village, and it is the artisans who lead, knows that such schemes, whether wise or un- wise, mean heavy taxation on all who are bard-working enough to pay the rates directly. It is thought the cleverest thing in the world to promise Disestablishment in Scotland and Wales ; but the Welsh Church interests the whole Church of England, which is admittedly too strong for attack, while in Scotland the greatest obstacle to universal Gladstonianism is the regard for. the old Establishment, which was once the bulwark of Scotland against the detested Episcopalians, and is now the most liberal and tolerant of all the Churches. Even the threats against the Lords, now exactly sixty years old, probably alienate nearly as many as they attract. There is a liking deep down in the hearts of the people for the ornamental parts of the Constitution, and a feeling deeper still, though, we fully admit, indefen- sible by reason, that " King, Lords, and Commons " form the natural, and as it were heaven-descended, method of government for Englishmen. The unfairness, too, of the attack from the democratic side, when the Lords are only proposing at the worst to take the democratic vote on a first-class Bill not explained to them before the Election, galls even politicians like Mr. Chamberlain or ourselves, who think that the House of Lords works less satisfactorily than any part of the Constitution. Thousands of workmen will say that a mass-vote is pre- cisely what is required to accept or reject Mr. Gladstone's scheme, and will think that to threaten the Lords for demanding that mass-vote is oppressive and undemocratic.
Let the wirepullers just test the effect of their multi- tudinous proposals by their effect upon Mr. Chamberlain. Except upon the Irish Question, Mr. Chamberlain remains pretty nearly what he always was, an English Radical of the old school, with no fear of the people, with no tolerance for privilege, and with a decided belief that Englishmen and Scotchmen would be all the better for the disestablishment of all Churches. He is, no doubt, an Imperialist ; but so are all Englishmen, Radical or otherwise, the moment the question before them is one which they even profess to understand. The Scotch are surely Gladstonian enough, and Radical enough for anything ; and the moment any- body proposes to cede an acre of British Africa, or even of African territory potentially British, all Scotland is up in arms. Mr. Chamberlain is as characteristic a Liberal in tendencies as is to be found anywhere, and has, moreover, as he shows in his scheme of pensions for the poor, a strong feeling that the lot of most workmen requires alle- viation ; and yet it is impossible to read his speech at Car- marthen without seeing that the new programme inspires him with nothing less than disgust. His very instincts are against it, and his speech is full, not so much of dis- taste as of a kind of loathing. Where is Mr. Schnad- horst's guarantee that what Mr. Chamberlain feels will not be felt by scores of thousands of hard-headed poor men who, apart from Ireland, would find in the Member for Birmingham the closest exponent of their general views ? Where, in short, is the guarantee against the reflex action of the Radical promises ? If the Gladstonian managers are right, and their programme is alluring to Liberals of sense, they ought to be making converts of Liberal Unionists by the thousand ; but where is the Liberal Unionist whom they have converted,—unless, indeed, it be Sir George Trevelyan, who converted himself P So far as evidence proves, the Liberal Unionists are more stiff-necked than ever ; yet there must be thousands among them all whose inherited or customary prejudices are on Mr. Schnadhorst's side, and who are therefore repelled, not by the Liberal Party, but by the Liberal Party's new doctrines and acts.
Doubtless the more frank of the wirepullers, if they answered us, would say that we mistook their position altogether ; that they were not trying to teach, much less to " offer " anything at all, but only to embody as clearly as they could in concrete proposals the wishes they found most prevalent among the community. Yes ; but what community ? The essence of our argument as to the possibility that they are in error, is that the only community they represent or understand is the com- munity of those who are already in agreement with them. They read their friends' letters from every district, and forget that their enemies are not likely to tell them their opinions. They find that at local meetings certain state- ments are applauded, and do not remember that few except those ready to applaud them have attended the meetings, and that a minority in any democratic country usually contents itself with silence. The best proof that they do not know the sentiments of the community is an election like that for East Manchester, where, up to the declaration of the poll, the Gladstonian managers thought that a vast change had taken place, and that they were fairly sure of winning. And they were right too, from their own point of view, for the new voters, from whom alone they had heard, would have reversed the majority but for the new voters on the other side, of whom, as usual, the Gladstonians had heard nothing. If we could ascertain the minds of these latter electors, we should find that many of them were men stirred into hostile action by the very promises upon which the party managers rely to bring a majority to their side. They, like Mr. Chamber- lain, had been disgusted. Nor, we must add, is the repellent effect of proposals in any way diminished by the fact that they emanate originally from the voters, and not from the party managers. That only makes them seem more formidable, and stirs up a fiercer spirit of resistance. It does not matter much if Sir William Harcourt suggests manhood suffrage as a cure for defective registration, for the proposal may not catch hold ; but if it comes originally from the body of voters behind him, there arises in all who dislike it a sense of the necessity of voting in order that it may be defeated. The proposal, in fact, ceases to be a proposal, and becomes a political action, with the usual result of political action in exciting both approval and disgust. The Gladstonian managers hear the former quickly enough, but the latter does not reach them, with the result that they steadily and unavoidably overrate their gains.
Previous page
