LORD SALISBURY AT THE UNITED CLUB.
LORD SALISBURY is one of those politicians who, to modify the old epigram, often say a foolish thing and oftener do a wise one. He appears to us to have said at least three foolish things in his Wednesday's speech at the United Club. It was not wise to nail his colours to the mast of so mere a survival of a principle which has to all intents and purposes been practically abandoned, as the custom of voting in respect of property held outside the electoral district in which the voter resides. It was not wise to give notice that if the suffrage came to be seriously reconsidered, Lord Salisbury would be disposed to condition for the full consideration of the claims of women as electors. It was very foolish to describe the political influence of the priests in Ireland as con- stituting a " clerical conspiracy " against the freedom of the voters. On all these subjects we hold that Lord Salisbury did not show the full judgment which we naturally, look for in the chief of a great party at a critical moment. As regards his opposition to the principle of " One man, one vote," it seems to us that the proper time for declaring and urging that opposition is passed. In 1867, and even in 1884-5, such opposition would have been quite appropriate. It might have been very plausibly maintained at either of those periods that property should have an extra weight in determining the political policy of the country, and that either those constituencies or those individual voters who could show that they had a greater stake in the country than their neighbours, should also have a greater influence in determining the constitution of Parliament. We have nothing to say against such a principle in the abstract. But it seems to us that it was deliberately abandoned when it was determined that numbers should be the main test, and practically speaking the only test, of political weight. When Mr. Disraeli consented to concede this in regard to the boroughs in 1867, and Lord Salisbury sanctioned it in regard to the counties in 1885, the constitutional principle that property should also be taken into account concurrently with population was to all intents and pur- poses abandoned. It is true that the freehold qualifica- tion was, by way of compromise, retained, in order not to load a Bill which was otherwise only an enfranchising Bill, and which the Government did not wish to make in any respect a disfranchising Bill, with what might seem penal elements. But the retention of the freehold vote was not justified on principle. No attempt was made to give London, for instance, any additional weight in the political scale as a consequence of its enormous wealth. In fact, Ireland was practically permitted to retain a very much larger influence in proportion to its popu- lation than London ; so that it might have seemed that it was not wealth but poverty that was to be selected for special favour. There is no reason at all why Lord Salisbury should not plead for the anomaly of the freehold qualification, as he does plead for it, on the historic ground that it is the vestige of a political era when a property qualification really turned the scale, and turned it on the popular side. To that we do not object. As an antiquarian plea for an admitted anomaly which has no real weight in our present political system, unless it be to act as a reminder of the past, we do not object to the 40s. freehold qualification, though we should not be at all disposed to stickle for it. As a rule, when we give up a great principle, we had better recognise finally that we have given it up ; and it seems to us that we have given up the principle that property should have any legiti- mate and recognised weight in the election of our House of Commons. But though we have given up that principle, we might still do a great deal towards giving full weight to the more active and vigorous populations,—the populations which are really far more disposed to recognise the claims of property than are the scattered and feebler populations of very poor districts,—by insisting on that complete and exact redistribution of power in proportion to population which in 1867 and 1885 was not even approximately carried out. If London, for instance, had a considerably larger instead of a vastly smaller political representation than Ireland, Ireland would no longer command the adventitious influence in the House of Commons that it now does, and that would really have the indirect effect of giving larger influence to property, or at least to those energetic populations which by accumulating property have necessarily attracted numbers. Lord Salisbury would have been perfectly right, if he had declared against any revision of the suffrage which did not rectify the slur on the democratic principle involved in mulcting London and many other parts of the United Kingdom of their due influence. But in going back to the principle that property as property should have its due weight in the House of Commons, he went back to a principle which has been deliberately abandoned, and which the 40s. free- hold vote does not in any even tolerably adequate sense, embody.
We have no wish to argue again the question of the women's suffrage. We quite believe, with Lord Salisbury, that women exercise a very wholesome and a very sedative influence on politics, and we believe that they will lose and not gain influence by plunging bodily into the political arena. The only result of that would be, that the revolu- tionary women, who are almost more revolutionary than revolutionary men, would gain some additional influence ; while the quiet women, who would always object to be drawn into the war, would still keep out of the turmoil as they do now. We should have added a handful of screamers to every constituency, and have rendered women in general even less disposed than they now are to use their legitimate influence over their brothers and husbands in the direction of their own calmer and serener judgments.
But the greatest of Lord Salisbury's errors seems to us to have been the denunciation of the priests' influence in Ireland as that of a " clerical conspiracy." At the present moment all that the priests have really effected is the demoli- tion of Mr. Parnell's personal ascendency, and so far as we can judge, that is a result which no reasonable Unionist ought to regret. If we are to have Home-rule in Ireland,— which God forbid,—we do not think that it very much matters whether we have Home-rule under Mr. Parnell, or Home-rule under Mr. McCarthy or Mr. Sexton. Either the one leader or the other would be very much in the hands of the extreme party, and would be taunted with truckling to British influence if he were to attempt to ensure the safety and to enhance the power of the United King- dom. But if there be a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, we prefer Tweedledee. We know that Mr. Parnell is as vigorous as he is unscrupulous. We do not know this of Mr. McCarthy, and we might fairly assume that the sacerdotal power in Ireland, though it would not be very likely to deal fairly with the Protestant minority, would find it desirable to discourage the influence of any- thing like Fenian politicians. At any rate, we have no right at all to speak as we justly do of Mr. Parnell's political offences, and of those priestly apologies for them which for ten years we have denounced, and yet to accuse the priests who have now at last revolted against him of a " clerical conspiracy." A conspiracy surely implies a bad purpose, an evil or tyrannical aim. So far as we know, the priests who have defeated Mr. Parnell at Kilkenny, Sligo, and Carlow, have not revealed any bad purpose or any evil or tyrannical aim. We may not think, and do not think, that their future influence in Ireland will be the best that Ireland could secure, but such as it is, they have a fair right to it, and they could hardly use it for a better purpose than for the undermining of Mr. Parnell's power.
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