TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ELECTIONS AND MR. GLADSTONE.
THE general Liberal notion seems to be that it is an admirable thing for Mr. Gladstone's prospects as the future leader of the House of Commons, that the elections for the new Parliament should be carried through under the shield of Lord Palmerston's great name and reputation. No one hopes that the present Prime Minister—who, during the long vacation, will attain the great age of eighty-one--can guide the new Parliament far upon its way. The most that is hoped is, that he may see the Administration fairly out of port, or at best pilot his vessel through the shoals and quick- sands which beset the run out of soundings, and then leave her to the new captain. But the general view appears to be that if thus much is gained, everything will be gained for the Liberal party and much for Mr. Gladstone. No doubt the Liberal party will gain by this arrangement a greater, perhaps a much greater, number of supporters than could be expected for a B,ussell-Gladstone Ministry. There are many quasi- Conservatives who support Lord Palmerston who think Mr. Gladstone the Prince of the powers of the air, or his political equivalent. Then the tone of the Tory Opposition to Mr. Gladstone would be something very different indeed, and some- thing requiring much more judgment, nerve, and coherence to resist, than the tone of the Tory opposition to Lord Pal- merston. All this is indisputable. But on what side does it tell ? Does it show that Mr. Gladstone ought to be thankful for the protecting aegis of this political Ajax ? or that he should regret being taught to rely upon its shelter in a battle the greater part of which must be fought after that shelter is withdrawn ? To answer this question it is essential to consider not only the incoherences in the Liberal party, but the special temperament and Parliamentary temptations of Mr. Gladstone.
There can be no doubt that Mr. Gladstone's greatest difficulty as a Parliamentary leader will be to lead an Opposition with dis- cretion. In office he is weighted by a very scrupulous sense of official responsibility, and by that perfect command of all the sources of correct information which always gives an Administration so much advantage over an Opposition. There can be no question but that one of the most difficult of all the functions of a Parliamentary leader is the conduct of the Opposition, and that it is the one most menacing to the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, though he has learned many and important lessons from his first great leader, Sir Robert Peel, failed to learn the greatest lesson of tactics he had to teach, a sin- gular moderation and sagacity in offensive warfare. During the short time when Mr. Gladstone led a small Opposition party— after his resignation of office during the Crimean war—he showed singularly little prudence or forethought. He fought keenly and inflicted many telling blows, but he fought wildly, and laid down—for instance, in critizing Sir Cornewall Lewis's financial operations—many principles which he must have since regretted. It may be said, and said truly, that for Mr. Glad- stone it was a much greater trial to find himself in some sense ejected from office and critizing former colleagues, towards whom his feeling was not only hostile, but sore, than it would be to be resisting a party constitutionally, so to say, opposed to his own. There is no doubt of it. But this is precisely the reason why we fear for him the special difficulties to which he is likely enough to be exposed. If the contest of the elections were to be fought explicitly for a Russell - Gladstone as against a Derby- Disraeli Cabinet, we should not be very sanguine of a Liberal success ; but in case of defeat, we should have great hopes of Mr. Glad- stone acting with prudence and moderation as head of the Liberal Opposition. There would be nothing irritating or in any way jarring in a Conservative success achieved under such circumstances, and the strong hope of speedy victory which must sustain a Liberal Opposition, would in itself con- duce to as much caution and the exercise of as much general- ship as it would be in Mr. Gladstone's power to exert. He would feel sure at all events of his own party, all of whom would have deliberately chosen their side in view of the particular emergency, and while ho would feel that he had to win his way fairly to power, he would have nothing to regret and no one to reproach. If Mr. Glad- atone can lead an Opposition prudently at all, these would be the very circumstances to call out such prudence, and to developo that strong desire to unite and satisfr i his party without being unjust to his opponents, which coti.dtutes Par- liamentary tact. To have a party behind him which had deliberately chosen him as their leader, and not another, would be the very thing to inspire Mr. Gladstone's scrupulous political conscience and fine political feeling with a sincere resolve to avoid all dangerous or disorganizing action.
But now look at the other alternative, and, as we fear, the probable alternative. Suppose Lord Palmerston, after in- augurating the new Parliament,—after receiving the most respectful criticism even from Tories, the most encouraging support from Liberal Conservatives, and uniting all shades of Liberalism in favour of his general policy, to retire from political life, and that shiver to run through the Liberal party which precedes an earthquake. We all know what the Opposition policy would be. Mr. Gladstone is probably the beet hated politician in England at the present moment. The Tories hate him with a hatred compounded of the feeling they feel towards renegades and the feeling they feel towards the Man- chester school. The Times detests him, nobody knows why. The Saturday Review never misses an opportunity for a sneer. Mr.. Horsman cannot forgive himself for having been unsuccessful in his bitter assault on the French Treaty, and still looks down upon him, like Jupiter on the tattered beggar in Aristophanes, " through those Rags." Mr.lowe thirsts for vengeance on the- man who has admitted an abstract right in the citizen to vote till cause be shown why he should not vote. He is suspected by numbers of the wish to render England again defenceless for the sake of economy ; extreme Dissenters think him a Jesuit, and extreme Churchmen a wolf in sheep's cloth- ing. Add to all this, that Englishmen as a rule will never have thought of his succession to the leadership in the Commons till he does succeed, that they will be unpre- pared for the event, and feel it almost a kind of religious duty to their sainted Palmerston to quarrel with his successor as the man in Bulwer's play felt towards his sainted Maria,— and it is not easy to doubt that Mr. Gladstone will find at. once the opposition to him becoming acrimonious and even. fierce, and the support behind him becoming faint and wavering. If in such circumstances he is defeated and com- pelled to resign, he will assume the lead of the Opposition under circumstances the most nicely calculated to bring out. his Parliamentary weakness. He will feel sore at the deser- tion of Palmerstonian Liberals, sore at the comparative- asperity and unfairness with which he will have been treated' by the Opposition, sore at the depreciation of the Press, and) with all this soreness conscious of prophetic power to hew Mr.. Disraeli in pieces before the Lord. In such a case we may apprehend for him a wild and imprudent career in Opposition, tempered by no delicate sense of responsibility to the dis- organized party he leads, and likely to prejudice permanently his prospects as a Minister.
It may be said that even if all this is true, it is a misfortune not to be avoided, only to be deplored. That is not altogether the case. What we wish to impress on both constituencies and candidates at the coming elections is, that they should define their attitude to Mr. Gladstone no less than to Lord Palmerston. No one now wishes to displace the veteran chief. So long as he can lead the Liberals every one must wish to have him, if only for the satisfaction to one's sense of historical continuity in being ruled, and ruled ably, in 1866 by the man who was helping to rule our grandfathers in 1806. But it would be a parade of delicacy and a criminal negligence to overlook the certainty of a coming change, and not to define our attitude in relation to it. The constituencies ought to know their members' intentions towards Mr. Gladstone no less than towards Lord Palmerston, and the members ought to define their intentions no less clearly. If this were done the danger would not indeed be surmounted, but it would be. lessened. Mr. Gladstone would know beforehand on whom to count and whose desertion to expect, and would be altogether better pre- pared to face the break-up consequent on Lord Palmerston's retirement and to estimate its consequences. To a mind such as his, painful surprise is an infinitely greater trial than the fulfilment of a painful anticipation, and by a clear under- standing of the feelings of the Liberal candidates to him personally at the hustings in July, the Liberal party may be saved the mortification of an unexpected collapse, and the pain of contributing to jar the equanimity and exaggerate the peculiarities of their greatest and most original statesman.
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