BY-117.ROTIONS.
TT would be very unwise not to draw a lesson of warning against anything like carelessness in organisation from the hy-elections which have just gone against the Unionists ; but it would be still more unwise to draw the inference that the 'tide is turning against us, and that the auguries are in favour of a triumph for Home-rule whenever the General Election 'comes on. Nothing is more certain than that English electors allow themselves a latitude of caprice at by-elections which they do not allow themselves at General Elections. Take the case of Coventry itself, which is just causing so much searching of hearts to the Unionists. There was a by-election at ,Coventry in March, 1868, just eight months before the -General Election which gave Mr. Gladstone his first great majority ; and as it happens, the Irish Question was then as much in the ascendant as it is now, for Mr. Gladstone was then moving for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, which was the main subject of the General Election of the following November. It might, therefore, have been thought that Coventry would give no uncertain note in March of what the constituency intended to do at the General Election This was, however, not the case. In March, 1868, a Liberal (Mr. Carter) was returned for Coventry by a majority of 281. In November, two Conservatives were returned for Coventry, the lowest of "whom beat the highest Liberal by 168 votes, and beat Mr. 'Carter himself by 193. The by-election of March, 1868, in Coventry did not, then, give any just omen of the polling at the General Election which so soon succeeded. When we consider that at the poll last Saturday, Mr. Ballantine, the Gladatonian 'Liberal, did not obtain even as many votes as the Liberal candi- date who was beaten by Mr. Eaton in 1885, though he obtained a good many more than he received last July,—indeed, more than Mr. Eaton received last July,—we have no reason to despair of winning the next General Election at Coventry, as we won the election of 1886. Coventry has shown by its own history that it does not scruple to make a very marked difference between its voting at a by-election and its voting at a general contest between the two parties. We may expect the same at North Paddington. The Unionists lost considerable ground at the election on Friday week. Instead of carrying the election by 911 votes, as they did in 1886, they carried it by only 418 votes. Nevertheless, we must remember how the Southwark election of 1880 misled Lord Beaconsfield. On the death of Mr. Locke in February, 1880, the present Solicitor-General got in by a majority of 853 over his opponent, and would have carried the election even if all the votes of the Radical who divided the constituency had been added to those of the Liberal candidate. Yet at the General Election, only two months later, the Liberals beat their opponents by a majority of 1,400. Take another instance of the variability in the character of a by-election. All the older politicians will remember the contest in Bath in 1873 which elicited from Mr. Disraeli the famous letter to Lord Grey de Wilton about the " plundering and blundering " of Mr. Gladstone's Government. Well, there were no less than three by-elections in Bath in that year,— one in May, which led to the election of a Conservative, Lord Chelsea ; one in June, which led to Lord Grey de Wilton's election ; and one in November, which elicited the famous letter, but which led to the election of a Liberal, Captain Hayter. The first two elections resulted in a Conservative victory, and the last in a Liberal victory ; and when the General Election came in 1874, Bath neutralised itself by electing a Liberal at the head of the poll and a Conservative as his colleague. Any one of these by-elections would have been a misleading sign as to the scale into which Bath would throw its weight at the General Election. Indeed, the double Conservative victory was even more misleading than the single Liberal victory. The truth is undoubtedly that British electors give their private inclinations very much more scope at by-elections than they do when they intend to choose to which of the great parties they will commit the government of the State. Politicians imagine that it is always a matter of great political moment how an election shall go. But that is not, we are persuaded, the view of the great majority of the electors. No doubt they care a good deal about the result of a General Election. But they do not care much as to the give-and-take of each month or year. They think that in small matters of that kind they may please themselves ; and it often happens that they may please themselves best not by voting for the party which they think at the moment the safest for the country, but even by voting against it, supposing that in doing so they can give vent to some private political feeling to which they would yet not be inclined to assign any public weight. Un- doubtedly, in cases like the St. Austell election in Cornwall, and the Spalding election in Lincolnshire, where a very con- siderable vote changed sides, and not only a very considerable vote changed aides, but a very heavy vote was taken, a great deal of weight ought to be assigned to the polls. And they seem to us to show that while the Southern vote is turning in favour of the Unionists, the Northern vote is turning in the opposite direction. But for the moat part, these by- elections are not in the highest degree significant. And a dispassionate observer would, we think, have expected a swing of the pendulum against the present Government just at the moment when the Irish Crimes Bill had been made the subject of furious invective by the Leader of the Opposition. When that Bill has become an Act, and the people see, as we believe and hope they will, that it is temperately and fairly administered,— administered not to shut up or silence political opponents, but solely to prevent the disgraceful boycotting and intimidation by which Irish liberty has been extinguished,—we believe that the swing of the pendulum will go the other way.
At all events,no one who judges the situation calmly can think that the omens are as unfavourable to the present Government as the omens of 1872 and 1873 were to Mr. Gladstone's first Government. If there be serious warnings of the danger of the Unionists, there are also very encouraging symptoms. The by-election at St. George's, Hanover Square, by which Mr. Goschen was elected, was quite as hopeful in the Unionist direction as the by-election at North Paddington was dis- couraging. The ground gained at Bt. Austell was of quite as -good augury as the ground lost at Spalding was of evil augury ;
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