We have already pointed out on several occasions how temporary
and superficial is even the party gain achieved by Mr. Balfour. Though he appears for the moment to have placed the Government in a tight place, he has in. reality continued to provide them with the cement which alone keeps their party together. We venture to say that if the education controversy had been settled the Government's majority, not only in the country, but also in the House of Commons, would at once have begun to suffer a process of dis- solution. Embarrassing questions, social and financial, would very soon have distracted it in many ways ; and since, happily, the Tariff question has sunk into the background, there would have been practically no cause which would have united the Government's followers as a whole. Mr. Balfour has so arranged things that they still possess the nexus of a common resolve,—the resolve to alter the Edam'. Lion Act of 1902, and to vindicate the rights of the House of Commons and the democracy against the House of Lords. That we are not speaking without warrant is shown by the proceedings in the House of Commons on Thursday night. Not only did Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's immediate followers give him a united support, but the Leader of the Nationalists on the one hand, and the Leader of the Labour. Party on the other, both tendered him assurances of their confidence and loyalty, and in a tone which differed in a marked degree from that adopted by them, not only during the earlier part of the present Session, but in the spring and summer. Mr. Balfour has, in a word, retarded indefinitely those fissiparous tendencies to which the Liberal Party are peculiarly liable, and which a wise Leader of Opposition-would have done his best to develop and accentuate.
