TOPICS OF THE DAY
A BIRDSEYE VIEW OF THE SITUATION.
IF a second Mon talembert could now visit England, and give us the same sort of view of our present political situation which the great French orator gave us in 1858, what would be the elements in it which would strike him most ? This has been the question which we have been asking our- selves this week, and to which we are going to attempt a reply, as free as possible from anything like a mere partisan's view of the present crisis.
Of course, the first thing that would strike him would be the vast proportions of the Irish difficulty ; but in studying this, he would soon discover that one of the most important elements of that difficulty, one of those terribly aggravating circumstances which render a very menacing situation in the highest degree critical, is the wrath, not to say the terror, with which, under the present trying circumstances of the time, the remedy which can alone save Ireland has inspired the hearts of the great caste of Peers and landowners, not only in Ireland, but in England, and here and there even in Scotland. He would remark that many things had combined to increase this wrath and terror. The long series of bad seasons, by reducing greatly the value of landed property, has greatly increased the sensi- tiveness of the landowning caste to any measure further threat- ening their position. The death of Lord Beaconsfield, by re- moving the Tory leader to whom " men acred up to the lips" meant no more, if so much as men " consolled up to the chin," removed one of the great securities for a " detached" view of the situation ; and the succession of Lord Salisbury to the vacant place, put at the head of the reactionary party the one man who could find scornful eloquence for the narrowest spirit of caste. Add to this, that the tremendous rebuke ad- ministered by the country at the general election to the aggres- sive foreign policy of the late Government, excited a fierce personal animosity against Mr. Gladstone which has never been equalled in the party struggles of our own time, and you have a situation in which everything concurs to make the Irish policy of the present Government the occasion for an outbreak of a quite exceptional character, and excessively dangerous, when taken in conjunction with the all but insuperable ob- stacles placed in the way of a sound land policy in Ireland. The new Montalembert would note, for instance, that the attitude of defiance, amounting almost to personal insult, taken up by so many of the young nobility towards Mr. Gladstone,—an attitude not only wholly unprovoked by him, but without the smallest excuse in any word that has ever fallen from his lips,— the attitude of Lord Randolph Churchill for many months back ; of Lord Claud Hamilton last week, in relation to the imaginary attack on Earl Grey ; of Lord George Hamilton, in speech after speech during the Recess ; of Lord Percy and Lord Eustace Cecil on Monday night ; and—with less of insult, but not less of fierce defiance—of Lord Salisbury in speech after speech and letter after letter,—was one of the signs of the times which it would be quite impossible to interpret as the result of accidental ill-temper or purely personal shortcomings. Such repeated instances of an intolerant and fierce vendetta amongst the young nobility towards Mr. Gladstone, a calm foreign ob- server would understand to imply something much more serious than personal ill-breeding or folly. He would see that it arose from a general cause, from the vehement fear and irritation of a whole caste, compromised, as that caste itself believes, by Mr. Gladstone's bold effort to apply both to Ireland and Great Britain, but especially to Ireland, popular remedies which the squirearchy and the nobility think detrimental to the influence of their Order, no less than to the value of their special pro- perty. Men like Lord E. Cecil, who have always been esteemed to be amiable as well as reasonable men,—men no longer very rash and young,—men of a certain standing in the House,— do not attempt to browbeat Mr. Gladstone from mere defici- ency of temper or lack of the courtesies of life. The only explanation of such repeated outbreaks as those of the young nobility within the last year, is one very much less dis- creditable to them than any personal deficiency. It is that they are overflowing with caste-pride and caste-fear. They think they see, in the large and statesmanlike measures adopted in Ireland, the beginning of the end of their privileges as a landed class ; and when Lord Salisbury sets them the example, they at once take it into their heads that Mr. Gladstone is the personal foe whom it becomes them to destroy, if they would save those privileges from the grasp of the people. But the new Mon talembert whom we have imagined, would,. we believe, add that, symptomatic as all these omens are of a
conjunction of forces between two most curiously ill-matched allies,—Irish denouncers of the present Government and Tory denouncers of the present Government,—there is not as yet so much evidence as you would expect of the rising of the popular feeling against this ill• starred alliance, partly because the Irish have not chosen to meet the popular sympathy evinced for them in England half-way, and partly because the people have not yet caught the full meaning of the defiance and insult hurled at the Prime Minister by the young scions of the aristocracy. Curiously enough, at the very time when men like Lord Randolph Churchill and his friends pass the utmost bounds of Parliamentary decency in denouncing Mr. Gladstone, the language of genuine Democrats has wonderfully mode- rated, and we find the best representatives of the working- classes discussing politics in a tone as calm and sober as that of the young aristocracy is excited and passionate. If you want true moderation, where can you go for a better type of it than to such men as Mr. Broadhurst and Mr. Burt, working-class representatives in the truest sense ? Indeed, these men have grown calm exactly in proportion as the young nobility have grown wild, and probably for the same reason. They see in Mr.. Gladstone's Government so true and courageous a consideration for the interests of the whole people, as distinguished from any one class, that they have gained fresh confidence in the pro- gress of events, just in proportion as panic has sown itself in the breasts of Lord Randolph Churchill and his allies. They see that the present Government is no respecter of classes, and the sight quiets them. They are not dismayed at the pas- sionate words they hear poured out in such torrents against their leader, because they have full confidence in that leader.. But though this is so at present, no impartial mind, looking at the situation as it is, would indulge any confidence, we believe, that this sobriety of temper would survive any real or virtual triumph for the arrogant party. A foreign statesman of insight, looking at the actual crisis, would think it, we believe, full of serious import to England, no less than
to Ireland. He would think it not unlikely that the aristocratic caste might before long gain some advantage which would seriously threaten the hopes of the people. He would judge that had the great issue of the moment not been an Irish, but an English issue, that point would have already been reached ; and that it will be reached, whenever it becomes clear to the people that the aristocratic violence against Mr. Gladstone is due to general and deeply-rooted causes, and not to the infirmities of individual tempers. So soon as that conviction dawns upon the English people, we believe that something very much larger will be seen to be at stake, than even the cause of popular justice in Ireland. The English and Scotch democracies are not likely to desert their great leader, simply because he cannot pacify the selfish fears of a caste which is—unfortunately, at one and the same moment—losing both political influence and material wealth. If the aristocracy and landed gentry of these Islands want to avert a collision much more formidable and far-reaching in its consequences than the collision between the Irish landlords and the Irish tenants, they will make a serious effort to restrain the foolish and angry loquacity of their own Order, and to. convince the people of this country that they are capable of working with a great and just statesman, even though his measures threaten them with some diminution of the wealth and influence which they have enjoyed so long, and have, on the whole, done so little to identify with the progress of the English people. We are not sure that Sir Stafford Northcote does not see all this, and is not pressing moderation on his party. The Conservative party-meeting of yesterday looks very like it.
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