MR. CHAMBERLAIN ON THE LIBERAL UNIONISTS.
1,1-R. CHAMBERLAIN is accused by the able paper _LI I whose ce,ly craze appears to be a hopeless yearning f,a• the sweet revenge of a real, however momentary, emotion of scorn for Mr. Chamberlain,—which it never attains,—of always forgetting his own past career. He was, it says, among the earliest of the Irish Home-rulers. He brought forward Home-rule schemes in the Cabinet of 1884-85. He joined the Home-rule Cabinet in 1886 in the hope of devising something that should be satisfying to Ireland and yet safe for England. And even after his resignation, he endeavoured, at the conferences of the Round- Table in 1887, to concert some scheme with the Govern- ment of the day that might enable the Liberal Unionists to return into the fold. No doubt he did, as we have often reminded our readers ; but can anything prove more completely the depth and sincerity of Mr. Chamberlain's Liberal Unionism than these facts ? He endeavoured with his whole strength to bring back the Liberal party to an Irish policy which should not open up the prospect of any disintegration of the Empire. He wished, in the first instance, for an Irish Council which might help in governing Ireland on Irish ideas, without making a great rift in the Act of Union. He tried various other modes of attempting to satisfy Irish national cravings, without satisfying Mr. Parnell, whose schemes he regarded as fatal to the Union; • and he failed. How does that show that he has now forgotten his attempts to bring back the Liberal party to a sober, though generous, Irish policy ? What it does show is that after patient and sanguine efforts in that direction, he ultimately found that he could do nothing effectual on those lines, and must amend his design by approaching it from the opposite side, and attempting rather to liberalise the Conservative policy, than to conservatise the Liberal policy,—an endeavour in which he has succeeded beyond his most sanguine hopes. He found by bitter experience that the Irish Nationalists could not be appeased by any concession which did not really break to pieces the larger nation in its attempt to embody and gratify the smaller nation ; and worse still, that that tendency was contagious and progressive, and logically involved the conjuring-up of several new, smaller, and very jealous nations, by whose strife and discords the strength of the larger nation would be sapped. Does it show Mr. Chamberlain's forgetfulness or his states- manship, that, as the ambitions of the smaller nation- alities have grown and swelled to alarming propor- tions, his resolve to treat the matter from the opposite point of view, from the fixed determination to hold fast by the larger nation, and curb the destructive rivalries of the smaller, has grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the anarchic jea'ousics to which the earlier policy had unfortunately given birth?
We believe that the development of the Home-rule controversy has brought out Mr. Chamberlain's states- manship in more than one direction. In his vigorous speech at St. James's Hall on Wednesday, he showed that his study of the anarchic tendencies of the Home- rule movement had modified gravely his general con- ception of what Liberal Unionism ought to be, by strengthening his belief in the Unionism, and awakening him to the point at which Liberal principles, if not firmly held in check by a vigorous patriotism, are always in danger of yielding too much ground to the eager animosities of sectional passion. He drew attention, in his able speech, to the alarming tendency in modern so-called Liberalism, to punish the classes under pretence of liberating the masses, just as the petty nationalities, which are now so active, spend almost all their strength on baiting the big nation, in the effort to reduce and overpower its hold over their centrifugal and dispersive tendencies. Modern Liberalism, he said, aims less at enlarging the freedom of the people, than at venting the resentment of the majority at the tenacious Conservatism of the minority. Instead of asking for new rights, it is eager to avenge old wrongs. It cares more to increase the taxation of the rich, than even to relieve the taxation of the poor. It cares more to mulct the workman who will not join his Union, than to vindicate the right of the men who will. It cares more to deprive working men in a minority of their discretion to choose the most effective remedy for the various misfortunes of mechanical catastrophes, than it does to secure the average operative against the evil results of these catas- trophes. It cares more to punish the publican for being a publican, than it does to help on the Temperance move- ment. It cares more to impoverish a great national Church, than it does to increase the self-respect and living influence of a Dissenting body. It cares more to strike a blow at the capitalist than it does to secure the safety, and promote the progress of the labourer. Where the old Liberalism struck off a chain from the weak, the new Liberalism devises a brand-new fetter for the strong.
Well, that seems to us a very true description of the more dangerous tendencies in modern democracy, and, moreover, it opens up a very useful sphere for the Liberal Unionists as a separate party, or,—as we hope they may be,—a distinct element in the next Government of the Unionist parties. While the Conservatives will naturally and rightly look chiefly to developing the better class of national and constitutional traditions, it will be the function of the Liberal Unionists to do all in their power to discriminate between just and unjust methods of asserting the rights of majorities over minorities. A great democracy no sooner learns to understand its power than it is tempted to abuse them and to become a despot on its own account. There was a time when even the most energetic Liberals,—Mr. Bright, for example,—lost sight of the tendency of Capital to lay down unjust conditions to the operatives whom it employed. The Ten- hours Bill was resisted by the Manchester School as a gross interference with the discretion of capitalists. Yet that Bill not only became law, but by common consent pro- duced the best effects in controlling the arbitrary temper of the capitalists who resisted it. Now the danger is the other way. The majority control all our political arrange- ments, and there is often the most real danger that they will dictate to the rich, terms so unwise and arbitrary that they will drive capital away from England to embark in foreign enterprises. The group which can do most to prevent this and similar dangers, is that of the Liberal Unionists. They sympathise with the people, but they have learnt by a severe experience that the majority can be despotic, rash, unwise, and unjust. They can stand between, as they have stood between, the dictatorial majority, and the unreason of an obstinate minority, and bring both sides to reason. That is the true position of the Liberal Unionists of the future. They will not oppose, but they will regulate, progress. They will try to reconcile the classes with the masses. They will resist the policy of revenge which the Radicals so often seem to prefer to the policy of justice. And they will follow Mr. Chamberlain in his wise effort to consult for the prudent alleviation of the miseries of the people, without scaring away all the moderate reformers and the sober wealth of the country, by violent raids on the traditions of English political life and the property of English owners.
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