LIBERALS ON THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE.
WE must say frankly that we do not quite like the tone of the first Liberal speeches that have been delivered since Mr. Gladstone's resignation. There is a note of party bitterness in them which is natural but much to be regretted, and which will make the deeper impression because the -speakers are so obviously delighted with their emancipation. The Tories have obtained power through their own action, and after a severe struggle for it ; but they are fettered in an un precedented way by their inability to dissolve, and, until they have proposed something unendurable, they ought to have fair-play. It is hardly fair-play to ridicule them in advance, as Mr. Chamberlain did on Wednesday, for a Budget not yet -drawn up, and to promise them as the outside grace a "contemptuous toleration." The theory of the situation at all .events is that the Tories are, for the national convenience, to provide a Ministry of Affairs and carry on business till the next Parliament meets ; and, so long as it is a Ministry of 'Affairs and does not travel out of the tacit understanding, it should be quietly helped forward by abstention both from mordant criticism and from voting. If the understanding is broken, and the new Ministry go mad and propose to place a five-shilling duty on corn, or to tax tea heavily, or to sign, without Parliamentary sanction, a Treaty about Egypt, then, indeed, Liberals must act ; but until then they should abstain from making the Government weaker than it necessarily will be. The weakness of a Government is not an advantage, even if it be a Tory one. The situation is very grave ; and the old axiom that "the Queen's Government must be carried on," should be respected in spirit as well as letter. If this is not done, it will not lie in Liberal mouths to blame Lord Salisbury if, in utter hopelessness of managing the House of Commons, he resigns in July, and leaves the Liberals, utterly disorganised, to govern the best way they can. There is a time to be silent even from good words, and that time is now, and we do not believe that "a glorious flash of silence" will be misinterpreted by the country, which does not in the least need to be told that the Tory Administration is a stop-gap. Of course it is, just as an acquaintance asked at the eleventh hour to fill a vacant chair at the dinner-table is a atop-gap; but one does not make a point of pressing that fact on his attention. Indeed, the case is almost worse than we have said. The Tory Cabinet, -when formed, will be a Government under sentence of capital punishment in the immediate future, and so long as it does mere work, ought in decency to be allowed to ,do it without taunts about its approaching burial. Liberals should feel something of the spirit of the Scotch peasant -who, sitting under a Roman Catholic landlord, refused in the -writer's hearing to complain of a most oppressive increase of Tent. "He mann go to hell, ye ken, in the end, and I'll no add to his burden."
Nor can we approve the injudicious haste with which Sir W.Harcourt and Mr. Chamberlain are rushing forward to shadow out great policies and, as it were, to anticipate both cnemies and friends. The two heaviest difficulties just now of both parties are Egypt and Ireland ; and Sir W. Harcourt has no more right to give a sort of pledge that we shall quit Egypt, than Mr. Chamberlain has to denounce the maintenance of a military garrison in Ireland. They can do nothing by such language, except raise wild hopes, and make the adoption of an ultimate course of action more difficult. How are we to govern Egypt, if all enemies are told that in six months we shall go away or Ireland, if the withdrawal of the garrison is to be mentioned as within the range even of speculative politics Why, the very first proof that Ireland could be trusted to govern herself and yet support the Union would be an Irish declaration that she cared little whether the regiments went or stayed, and would as soon see them at the Curragh as at Aldershot. To call English soldiers " foreign" is to give up the whole question of the Union, and either make of Ireland a separate State, or a conquered dependency of Great Britain. We are quite aware that in neither case is the speaker enunciating a policy of the kind his words seem to imply. Sir W. Harcourt is quite prepared, if such a course is made necessary by circumstances, to stay in Egypt, as he has stayed there during the past two years ; and Mr. Chamberlain is as fixed in the belief that separation would ruin Ireland as any Whig in the United Kingdom. Each only wishes to display the direction of his sympathies,—Sir William for non-intervention, and Mr. -Chamberlain for sympathetic government in Ireland. But then they should not use such large words during an interregnum, and in face of an election which will bring a new constituency into power. Nobody knows better than Sir W. Harcourt that a premature departure from Egypt is in practice impossible, and that the proposal to effect it would seriously divide the Liberal Party ; while Mr. Chamberlain is well aware that to recall the garrison from Ireland would be to abandon the hope of power. Then why hamper the action of future Ministries, whether Tory or Liberal, by hints which, exaggerated as they will be by enemies, will spread through the whole country an impression that the advanced Liberals are dreamers rather than politicians, and dreamers who might some day dream most dangerous dreams? We shall evacuate Egypt when circumstances permit, and no sooner; and we shall not evacuate Ireland at all till Ireland is reconciled ; and the speaker who promises, or seems to promise, more than that, does but render government more difficult, and party politics more hopelessly chaotic. We speak the more frankly upon this subject because we recognise one great danger straight ahead. We desire not only to see the Liberal Party win at the next elections, and win so completely that both Toryism and Parnellism will be powerless, but to see it win on a definite, intelligible, and, above all, practicable programme. We do not want to see five hundred Liberal candidates elected on five hundred programmes, each rendered acceptable by some promise that will never be carried out. Yet that will be the result if the advanced leaders talk loosely, and express ideas which, like the idea of property ransoming itself, and the idea of quitting Egypt at once, and the idea of a prospective Ireland without a garrison, can be twisted and exaggerated into pledges, or used to diminish confidence in the statesmanship of the next Government. The new constituency wants to be taught, and taught clearly, not to be bemused with fancies which will never be measures, but which, if they do not become measures, will leave an impression of disappointment and deception behind. The new election will not give everybody everything, or create a millennium in Ireland, or unravel all knots in our foreign policy, or do anything else, except give Ministers with powers of leadership the support necessary to render such leadership effectual. Those leaders must have definite advice to give, and that advice must be something very different from a hint of vast change in policy, without reference to circumstance, or to those necessities which in politics so constantly overmaster even the most strenuous ideologues. If such ideas are to be laid before the people, it should be after they have been matured and accepted by the general leader, and not as obiter dicta flung out to see what reception they will obtain. We are always objecting to that course when it is pursued by Tories in their speeches upon Fair-trade, and it is not a bit less unadvisable when it is pursued by Liberals upon questions like the occupation of Egypt and the garrison of Ireland.
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