Yesterday week Mr. Labouchere addressed a great meeting at Swansea
in favour of the abolition of the House of Lords, declaring that if Radicals were to be satisfied, there must be no trifling or compromising with the friends of the Lords, and that if the Radicals were not satisfied with the Government, the General Election was bound to go against
them. That is not our reading of the situation. To us nothing seems more certain than that if the Radicals are eatisfied, the General Election will go against the Govern- ment ; and that Lord Rosebery will be playing into Lord Salisbury's and Mr. Chamberlain's hands, if he identifies himself with Mr. Labouchere. It is very odd that no Radical can persuade himself that very nearly half, if not more than half, the working class is Conservative, and not Radical at all, and that democracy justifies Conservatism, if the nation proves to be Conservative, just as much as it justifies Radicalism, if it proves to be Radical. If the General Election goes against them, as the Forfarshire election has just gone against them, the Radicals will only lay the blame on the machinery, and go on hoping to devise a kind of machinery which will transform Conservatives into Radicals, instead of accepting the majority as determining for the time at least what the people really do wish. The popular mind is not Radical, but fluctuating, and yet neither party can bear to realise that the constituencies change their minds, and claim to have the right to change their minds, under democratic institutions.
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