THE NEW ALLIANCE. T HE Duke of Devonshire, in announcing formally
yesterday week the terms of the new Unionist Alliance, said very justly that it did not appear to him a matter of much importance what that alliance was to be called so long as the two Unionist parties were thoroughly agreed as to what it was really to be. If need were, he should not even shrink from " that terrible word, Coalition." Still the word does carry with it unfortunate associations, and associations that are unfortunate, because, as we think, they would be misleading. Coalition Governments have usually been Governments of which the separate con- stituents have seemed to renounce their own essential prin- ciples in order to express their distrust of some third party ; for example, in the Government of all the talents, as it was called, the Government of Lord Aberdeen in 1852-55, the Peelites subordinated their habitual caution in foreign policy, to their desire to advance a Free-trade policy, and the Liberals subordinated their wish for Reform to their determination to prevent any return to Protection on the part of Mr. Disraeli. The Coalition was very unfortunate for the simple reason that the whole policy of the Government turned on the conduct of a war for which they were not prepared, and as to the legitimate objects of which they were profoundly divided. The Peelites wanted to minimise it, and would not go into it boldly. The War Minister was not well chosen for his work. The Foreign Minister cared a great deal more about checking the ambition of Russia and defending Turkey than he did about sparing the resources and defining clearly the policy of England ; and, in short, the term Coalition turned out to mean a truce between ultimately irreconcilable tendencies for the purpose of keeping in office a number of men who, great as were their abilities, ought never to have attempted co-opera- tion on a great issue on which they differed so much. In fact, the object for which they had originally joined hands became, when the Crimean war broke out, quite sub- ordinate to very different objects on which they were not, and could not have been, at heart agreed, and on which the English people themselves were wholly in the dark, and could only follow leaders who did not themselves know where they wished to lead. Like most Coalitions, that Coalition came to grief, because the Ministers who composed it had no clear conception of what they must sacrifice in their own policy for the sake of the colleagues with whom they had consented to act, or what the common object had come to be, for the sake of obtaining which they had agreed to make a certain amount of political sacrifice. In fact, the defence of Free-trade, on which they were all united, had become quite secondary to the conduct of war, and on the true objects of the war they were not really united at all.
It is to be hoped that no confusion of this kind is likely to intervene in the case of the Unionist alliance which is announced as the practical consequence of a considerable victory at the polls for the Unionist party, if that very probable result should take place. In the first place, the nationstintegrity which is the great aim of both the allied parties of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, gives them a common object even in case of war. For one of the distinctive features of the Home-rulers is that they treat national integrity as quite secondary to local ambitions, and that a considerable section, both of the Irish Home- rulers and of the Radicals, avow their dislike to anything like national expansion. The Irish party wish to belittle England, and the Radical party wish to revolutionise England so much, that they deprecate any policy which distracts attention from their revolutionary objects. If, then, a serious issue between this country and other countries should arise,—as we earnestly hope it will not,—the Unionist allies will at least be in perfect sympathy as to the general tendency of their aims, and that sympathy will be principally due to their dread of the disintegrating drift alike of the Irish Home-rulers and of the revolutionary Radicals, against whose policy they have agreed to co-operate. And in the next place, the experience of the last nine years has cleared up effectually the minds of both sections of the allies as to what they must give up for the sake of the hearty co-operation they desire, and has shown them on what general principles they can heartily combine their efforts. Nor is that all, the same experience has taught each wing of the alliance that it will have plenty of popular support not only for pursuing these common objects, but even for resigning the special ends to which, but for that alliance, many of their party would have devoted themselves. The Conservatives, for instance, have discovered that the new constituencies have compelled them to modify very materially their old attitude of dis- trust towards working-class cries. The eagerness for some large measure impressing on the capitalists of the country that they must consider the welfare of the labourers at least as much as the profits of their own class, has pene- trated to the very heart of the most Conservative constitu- encies, and no Conservative Government could now stand which did not show the utmost sympathy with labour as well as the utmost steadiness in resisting reckless attacks on capital. Free education is as popular with Conservative as it is with Liberal constituencies, and the enforcing of employers' liability towards their workmen is as little discredited in the great Conservative constituencies of the home counties and the suburbs of Liverpool or Bristol, as it is in Leeds or Bradford or Manchester. On the other hand there are plenty of genuinely Con- servative cries which are profoundly popular in the most democratic constituencies. The determination not to let the country and nation be broken up into little bits just because the little bits prefer to have their own way, and not to conform to the nation's will,—the determination to keep in friendly relations with our Colonies and kindred over the seas,—the determination to keep a powerful de- fensive Navy and an effective and easily mobilised, though modest Army, with all the best and newest material of war,—all these are cries not less dear to the democracy of England, perhaps even dearer, than they are to the richer classes.
What the two allies must sedulously avoid, is any attempt to overrule each others' action on subjects near to the heart of either. The Liberal and Radical Unionists for instance, must resign altogether their dislike to such institutions as the great Established Church of either England or Scotland, and give up any other needless attempt to alter the traditional institutions of the United Kingdom. If any attempt is made to get rid of the con- stitutional anomalies of the House of Lords, then Liberals and Radicals must consult most carefully the bias of their Conservative allies, and must avoid sedulously the kind of changes which their iconoclastic traditions might have suggested. On the other hand, the Conservatives will do well to take counsel with their own most progressive con- stituencies on any popular proposal which the Liberal Unionists may propose. Conservatism has changed its very essence since the rural constituencies have been so much enlarged, and it will not do for Conservatives now to resist all change, but only such changes as offend the genius of what we may fairly call popular traditions. There are sympathies with our old institutions, with the Monarchy, with the Church, even with the aristocracy, that lie deep in the hearts of the people, and against sympathies of this kind there should be no wanton aggression. On the other hand, against the prepossessions of capitalists, simply as capitalists, or of privilege, simply as privilege, there may well be innovations which will carry the people with them, and against reforms of this kind, unless it be a question of plain justice, it would be very unwise for Conservatives to wage war. We are sure that these simple rules will be observed by both the parties to the alliance, and that the next Government, if it be a Unionist Government, will be as steady and strong as that of 1886-1892, and probably far more confident, because the clear responsibility of both parties for its policy will be far better understood.
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