THE WELCOME TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
TORD GRANVILLE is to take the chair at a dinner to be I given next month at the Devonshire Club, by way of • compliment to Mr. Chamberlain for his services in negotiating the Fisheries Treaty with the United States. Until lately, this would have been too natural an incident to call for notice ; but under present circumstances, two reflections of some in- terest are suggested,—one, by Lord Granville's action ; another, by the fact that it is in any way remarkable. The first feeling is the familiar, if slightly Pharisaical, satisfaction that in this respect England differs so greatly from Continental countries. Although in name Lord Granville and Mr. Chamberlain are both Liberals, the division between them is, for all present purposes, sharper than that between Liberals and Conservatives. It does not matter that the divergence relates to a single question, and that, if this were out of the way, host and guest would be still of one mind. This one question is admirably calculated to breed political enmity. It touches men alike on the sentimental, the practical, and the personal side. Controversies into which nationality enters have always had a unique power of exciting the passions of those who take part in them, and in the present case, the English Home- rulers are not a whit less enthusiastic than Mr. Dillon or Mr.
• O'Brien. Nor has the Liberal schism stopped short at a difference of opinion. It has exerted and is exerting a direct influence on events. The effect of the Unionist secession has .been to place the Tories in office, and next month Liberals of both sections will be welcoming back a politician who is among the few who are most responsible for keeping them in office. Men constantly will forgive grave divergence of principle more readily than even a slight quarrel which stands in the way of the realisation of their natural hopes. In this respect, moreover, Mr. Chamberlain is not merely one among others. Whether he has done more than Lord Hartington or Sir Henry James to break up the Liberal Party, may be doubted ; but there is no question that -he is more hated for what he has done. The reason of this is sufficiently plain. Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James are Liberals in the older sense of the term ; Mr. Chamberlain is a Radical. Consequently, if the Irish Question had never arisen, it is more than possible that Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James would at some time or other have found themselves unable to act with their former colleagues. But there was no danger of any such severance in the case of Mr. Chamberlain. On the contrary, he was looked on as the natural leader of the advanced wing of the party, the pre- destined prophet of the Liberalism of the future. That he should be found in active alliance with Tories, and this for the express purpose of keeping the Liberals out of power, gives a specific and personal touch to the hostility of which he is the object. If we imagine those conditions reproduced in France, we shall at once see the gulf which still separates English from foreign feeling on these topics. In France, much less than what Mr. Chamberlain has done would be enough to make the exchange of social courtesies between him and his old friends impossible : M. Clemenceau might as soon take the chair at a dinner to M. Ferry as Lord Granville pay a similar honour to Mr. Chamberlain. We have only to think of the two sets of names to realise the gulf that separates them as regards the mutual relations of each pair.
There is an unmistakable distinction, however, between our recognition of this difference to-day and our recognition of it five years ago. Then, we should have taken it as a matter of course ; now, we feel a certain pleased surprise that it still exists. We question whether there was any one who, when he first saw the announcement that Lord Granville would take the chair at a dinner in honour of Mr. Chamberlain, did not look at it again with a sort of half-feeling that he had mis- read the name. So easily may men slip into the habit of carrying political enmities into private life. So slight is our real hold upon what we have been accustomed to think the distinguishing glory of English politicians. Supposing that, instead of the announcement of the other day, we had read that Lord Granville had been sounded on the question of taking the chair at the Chamberlain dinner, and had replied in a way that convinced the Com- mittee he would rather not be asked to do so, should we have thought it strange ? Should we not rather have moralised on the change that is coming over English politics, and gone sadly away ? If this is so, our danger is real and imminent.
It is a short step from thinking a thing natural to doing it ; what we have ceased to blame in another we easily pardon in ourselves. As yet, happily, we have not come to think the con- fusion of public with private feelings in itself praiseworthy. Even if we excused it, we should still lament it. Now, there- fore, is the time to make a stand against its farther progress, to do what we can to make Lord Granville's readiness to take the chair at the dinner to Mr. Chamberlain once more too natural to call for remark.
Reformation should begin at home. The point to be insisted on, therefore, is not that Liberals should feel kindly towards Liberal Unionists—that, however desirable it maybe, is a matter beyond our control—but that Liberal Unionists should feel kindly towards Liberals. We do not deny that they are under strong temptation not to do this, a temptation which can only be resisted by a steady determination to keep politics to Parlia- ment and the hustings. In old days, friendliness between men of opposite ways of thinking was much helped by relation- ships. The political world was small and aristocratic, and cousinship and intermarriage were constant and important features of it. As politics have become more democratic, they have lost this family character, and now, perhaps, it is more often a question of making new friends than of keeping old ones. The only way of doing this is to set steadily before our minds the essential fact that what given political opinions would mean in one man, they do not necessarily mean in another. For us, with our convictions, to vote for Home-rule or to refuse to put in force the Crimes Act, would mean indifference or worse to the highest interests of the Empire, and to the first prin- ciples of right and wrong. Not for an instant ought we to lose sight of this truth. To put any party or personal interest before the maintenance of the Union or the en- forcement of the law in Ireland, would, in those who believe in the Union and in the law, argue a want of patriotism which ought not to be condoned even in our best friend. But then the qualification—in those who believe in the Union and in the law—is all-important. We are not now considering the case of a man of whom we have good cause to believe that he has become a Home-ruler from evil motives. Such cases may exist ; but, happily, motives are so mixed and so obscure, that the occasions on which we can pass this condemnation must be exceedingly rare. The lesson which this known confusion and obscurity of motives has for us, is that we are bound in wisdom, as well as in kind- ness, to take the most favourable view ; and in the great majority of cases, no other view is possible. We see in every word our adversaries say, what to us seems entire wrong-headedness, but what we cannot deny to be entire sincerity. There can be no question, therefore, in cold-blood, whether these opinions ought to make any difference in our estimate of them, in our attitude towards them. We have, strange to say, mastered the tempta- tion to think ill of those who differ from us in religion, and now we are suddenly confronted by the temptation to think ill of those who differ from us in politics. Yet it ought not to be harder to behave ourselves pleasantly to men who think that Ireland ought to have a separate Parliament, or that the poverty of the tenant has more claim to be considered than the contract he has made with his landlord, than to men who think that the world never had a Creator, or that
God, having made man, takes no further trouble about him, or that the Supreme Ruler of mankind is not also their Supreme Judge. The constitution of the universe, and the existence of an inherent distinction between right and wrong, are matters of even more importance than the Constitution of the United Kingdom, or the right distribu- tion of responsibility between landlords and tenants, who at some time or other have probably been both to blame. If we can swallow the theological camel, need we strain at the political gnat ? We have learnt, as regards religion, a better lesson than David's "Do not I hate them, 0 Lord, that hate
Thee 2 Yea, I hate them right sore, even as though they were mine enemies." Let us take care lest in politics we invert the order of ideas, and say,--' Do not I hate them, 0 Lord, that hate me? Yea, I hate them right sore, even as though they were Thine enemies.'
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