THE GOVERNMENT AND ITS "BUSINESS."
THIS was to be the "business" Administration,—let us see how it does its business. The Government, from the first, promised to avoid sensational legislation, and although it has permitted itself to carry such trifles as the disestablishment of the Scotch Church and the abolition of all the ancient Courts of Justice, and has proposed to revolutionise a settled policy with respect to Endowed Schools and to the purchase and sale of offices in the Army, still the country is of opinion that its promise has in general been faithfully kept. The Government is as tiresome as it said it would be. If dullness be the sign of healthy political life, Mr. Disraeli's second reign has been marvellously invigorating. In the absence of sensations, however, the Government promised beneficial legislation ; and it brought in a crowd of "practical measures' to improve artisans' dwellings, to clean rivers, to amend the Merchant Shipping Laws, to make the law against adulteration more just, to place the State banking system in a safer position, to facilitate the transfer of land, to give more security to agricultural tenants, to increase the protection of the person, to abolish legal distinctions against handicraftsmen with re- spect to their contracts and their rights of combination, to. consolidate the Militia Laws, to modify the Patent Laws, and to improve the position of the National School Teachers in Ireland. Here, cried the admirers of the Government, in ecstasy at the evidence that Mr. Disraeli was not going to " educate " them once more, was an admirable programme, —a mass of real work, which could be got through, and would sensibly improve the position of everybody in the country. Here were administrators of the true, stamp, not revolutionists like Mr. Gladstone, or mean economists like Mr. Lowe, or philanthropic enthusiasts like Mr. Stansfeld, but governing men of the old English kind. The exultation rather- declined when it was found that one large section of the Bills was permissive, and another large section very weak, but still it was asserted that the very imperfections of the proposals. made them easier to carry, and that this time there would be no block in the legislative Temple Bar. Well, it is now mid-July, and ho vi do we stand ? Temple Bar is impassable for barrows. The Artisans Dwellings Bill has passed, and that is substan- tially all. The Merchant Shipping Bill, an object of hope to thousands, has been so weakly conducted through the House, Ministers caring only not to lose shipowners' votes, that its withdrawal had on Thursday become inevitable, and was accomplished. The great majority of the Bills proposed. are sticking in the road, and seem likely to stick. They have been
reduced to avoid opposition to so limp a condition, that they have no more "go" in them than so many stranded jelly-fish, and must be carried either on or off by actual imposition of hands. Nothing can be done with them without main force, and main force is most difficult to apply. The contractors scarcely care to spend strength upon moving such refuse. Here and there a Minister cares about a measure—for example, Lord Salis- bury would have liked to carry his Pollution of Rivers Bill, as it originally stood—but there is not a single one, unless it be the Agricultural Holdings Bill, which the Cabinet, as a whole, is resolute to save, and that one is detested by its following. Not only is the Cabinet, as a whole, not eager to advance any Bill, but if it could take its own way without discredit in the eyes of the constitu- encies it would probably abandon all. Every baby is a bore to everybody but its parent. So visible is this feeling, that on Monday the House of Commons fully expected to hear the Premier declare in his lightest and easiest way that he thought most of the Government Bills most excellent, but that con- sidering the lateness of the Session, and the factious opposition he had encountered, and the advantages of passing Bills un- mutilated, he would to conciliate the House throw overboard about one-half of his proposals. Instead of this, however, the Premier annoyed the House by telling it as little as he possibly could, and declaring in his jauntiest way that the Judicature Bill and the Land Transfer Bill "would of course be passed," that the Merchant Shipping Bill—which he had probably decided then to withdraw—and the Agricultural Holdings Bill and the Conspiracy Bill "would take much time," and that though there were other Bills not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and not made indispensable by the course of the Session, he was not hopeless about any one of them. He should totter on with all. He would take Private Members' Tuesdays away from them, and hoped he might after that oppression finish "in a satisfactory manner and a reasonable time." So utterly hopeless is it to pass all these Bills, that the House groaned once or twice at Mr. Disraeli's recital, and when he had finished the Marquis of Hartington delivered himself of a sort of angry stare in the shape of a speech, and Members have ever since been discussing what the Government could possibly mean. Were the Houses to sit till the partridges came? According to one theory, Mr. Disraeli means to wait 'till Members, unable to bear the heat, and the tedium of the House, and the accounts of the freshness of their woods any longer, begin to slip away, and then pass his measures in silence through a House filled mainly by officials. That is, he intends to do for the nonce without Parliamentary Government altogether, a trick worse than any display of Mr. Gladstone's "arrogance," a sort of sneaking dictatorship. According to the other, and we should say more probable, theory, he intends to go on through July, let the House talk as much as it likes, just to keep it out of mischief, and then, with a petulant remonstrance on the way time is wasted, announce that he is worn out and not well, and massacre all the Innocents at once. Either device will reveal fully the first defect of this Government, its want of momentum, of desire to do anything involving hard work, even within the narrow limits it has itself laid down. A Cabinet which cared for its measures would be ashamed of leaving them in a position where they must either be strangled, or passed by an administrative juggle always condemned by the Opposition when out of office. It would set itself to work with a will, as Mr. Cross, to do him justice, did with his Artisans Dwellings Bill, and either compel the House to pass its measures after fair discussion, or announce in decent time that it could not pass them. The truth is, it cares chiefly to introduce them, and so gain the credit of their introduction without further trouble. It looks vigorous to threaten kickers with the "cat," and if no whipping law passes, why, ruffians and their victims are only where they were. A Bill on Tenure gratifies farmers, and if it does not pass, why, they are only where they would be, under the free-contract clause, if it did. Sailors ask more protection, and it is promised to them, and having the promise, they cannot be so unreasonable as not to drown patiently a little longer. That would be being par- ticular to half an hour. What do the lives of non- electors matter ? As for the Savings Banks, they will not be insolvent to-morrow, and the Bill to make them secure was so troublesome that Sir Stafford will witness its death with no more remorse than any father of a puppy displays when it is drowned. Next year he will have a better Bill, and as to the one exposed this year, it will be only an historic document. As to the Labour-law Bills, they can be got through ; and if not, artisans need not riskpm' onment until next Session. They have only to work on comfortably. The Militia Consolidation Laws are a loss, but there will be no invasion this autumn, or if there is, the laws will not signify ; and national schoolmasters in Ireland will not die of hunger in one year sooner than another. If the Bills can be got through without discussion, well and good ; and if not, what matters ? Government will still have the credit of its good wishes. To make a fuss and excite the House and be in earnest is Gladstonian, and the country dismissed Mr. Glad- stone for those very qualities. And so the serene Government lets the ship float on. If it does not know its course, the sky is very blue ;,and if the engines are neglected, nobody wants to get anywhere ; and if the ship has lost her way, she is in open water, and there is no sign of a breeze.
The same absence of force, will, courage, is shown in the method of legislation as in its substance. The two greatest evils of detail with which legislators now have to contend are the mechanical difficulties of getting a Bill through the forms of the Houses, and the absurd manner in which Acts are drawn, so as never to be complete or even intelligible within themselves. The former grievance presses on Ministers, Mem- bers, and the country alike with great severity, and it might well have been attacked by an Administrative Ministry which had the time, the majority in both Houses, and presumably the will to assail a mischief which threatens sometimes to lock the wheels of Parliament. That was just one of the great, but not sensational grievances which this Government might have been expected to remove, more especially as it is most severe when an unusual number of "practical measures" are on hand. The forms of the Houses are not in the way when the country is clamouring for a grand Bill, and every Member's seat is dependent on his votes, but when states- men introduce or accept Bills to secure concrete improve- ments. We need not say this Government has shrunk from this bit of hard work as timidly as any previous Government, and without the excuse which previous Govern- ments might have urged, that they had more important business to attend to. Mr. Disraeli might have reinvigorated the Parliamentary machine, instead of which he has allowed it to become more clogged than ever, till at length the most promising course seems to be to evade its action. Passing Bills when the House is too thin to discuss, or after twelve o'clock, or at the fag-end of a Session, is like getting out of a railway train drawn by an over-taxed locomotive, to conclude the journey by a run on foot. One does not construct locomotives to show how nicely one can travel when they are brought to a stand. It is the same with the drafting of the laws. All Governments are more or less unwilling to make laws complete, lest private Members with crotchets should see a chance of attacking a settled principle ; but this Government has its Bills drawn as if on purpose to evade discussion, or even comprehension, and then alters, and weakens, and explains till, to use Mr. Lowe's expression, it is a humiliation to sit in a House which can pass such a law. Why cannot it, with its passion for " the practical," and its "administrative ability," and its confiding majority, insist on a rule that Bills shall be made complete ? Nobody would seriously oppose, the crotchetty Members would be put down, and legislation would all of a sudden become intelligible. Is it really beyond the power of a Government of workmen, as this claims to be, to have Amended Bills recast so as to be com- plete, but printed for the House so that the new matter can be seen easily, and new matter alone be subject of discussion? Is the Home Office so much " stronger " only to acknowledge that it could not hope to pass a complete law of Employer and Em- ployed,—a law nearly as good and intelligible as a chapter in a code?
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