THE INCOHERENCE OF THE NEW RADICALISM' T HE Government frequently congratulate
themselves, and not without reason, on the practical solidity of their majority when they see how invariably the agri- cultural labourers' and the miners' representatives, and the levellers of justice, and the teetotallers, and the Scotch and Welsh Home-rulers, and the Disestablishers, and oven the Collectivists, flock after them into the lobby to prevent the great calamity of a victory for the Unionists. This is perfectly true, and not, indeed, at all surprising, for they all alike know that if Mr. Gladstone's Government fell it would be replaced by one much more hostile to every one of their special notions—except, indeed, the politically indeterminate and problematic fad of female suffrage,— than Mr. Gladstone's, which necessarily invites aid from all the various candidates for political change. We do not wonder that all the Radicals think any Government more hopeful than the Government of Conservatives steadied by Liberal Unionist disinterestedness and sagacity; but we do wonder that there is no attempt made to organise and digest the new Radicalism into something a little more like a homogeneous creed ; that no leader arises with the capacity to give a little more coherence to the perfectly inconsistent destructive- ness.of the motley crew who all unite to keep a cautious but steady policy of gradual reform out of power. The most incoherent of innovators will unite when it is a question between getting a comparatively unsqueez- able Government,—we say comparatively unsgueezable, because all Democratic governments are more or less squeezable, but some of them, fortunately, rather less than more,—and keeping a highly squeezable one ; and that is the real question whenever there is any substantial chance of defeating the present Government. Still, it is remarkable that amongst the many clever men, and probably enough the still more numerous ambitious men, now in the Gladstonian ranks, there should he no rising man to consolidate a Radical creed which would create something like a disciplined. body out of these tatter- demalion scraps and fragments of political discontent. But there is no such attempt as yet, unless it may be considered that Mr. Alpheus Cleophas Morton was attempting something tentative in this line when he marshalled. such a motley demonstration into the House of Lords, to overawe, if he might, the prudence and common-sense of the. .Lord Chancellor. Perhaps it may really be said that irritation against any steady and calm conception of justice is the nearest thing to a common tie amongst the new Radicals. Not, of course, that any of them would so put it, even to himself. But almost every section of Radical opinion, from the Home-rulers to the Collectivists, does feel • some sort of grudge against English lawyers for en- forcing so steadily, and on the whole so fairly, the law of the land against every kind of aggressive action. The Home-rulers all want to have Judges who would relax the law in favour of some Nationalist plot like the Irish "Plan of Campaign." The agricultural labourers want some relaxation of it against poachers, not to men- tion farmers who will not pay them " a fair wage." The miners are indignant against the coal-owners who ask to have the police supported by soldiers when they attack the plant of the coal-pits and coal-yards. The teetotallers rage against those who think that even licensed victuallers should not be plundered. The Disestablishers cannot contain themselves when attacks on private Church pro- perty are called confiscations. And the Collectivists are devoted to disseminating altogether novel ideas of meum and tuum. So perhaps Mr. Alpheus Morton was right wbeh it occurred to him that a larger number of Radicals could be united for a demonstration against the county magistrates than for anyother common purpose. It was not, of course, necessary to remember at so rudimentary a stage of the attack on justice, that a really incompetent and disorganised administration of justice would spread more dismay in England, from the poorest villager to the rich- est millionaire, than any conceivable change in the struc- ture of English politics. Indeed, Mr. Morton was advo- cating, in form at least, a more superficially impartial administration of justice, though his colleagues' idea that all the recommendations of county Members should be passively accepted by the Lord Chancellor, would have seated a considerable number of incompetent, and, indeed, some very shady Justices on the County Bench. But to organise a temporary combination of Radicals, and to find them anything like a common creed, is a very different matter. The old idea of Radicalism used to be distrust of Government, and not only of Government, but of all principalities and powers, and that is the abstract notion of Radicalism which still possesses Mr. Labouchere, —if, indeed, any serious political creed can be said to possess him. He bates the House of Lords more even than he hates the War Office and the Colonial Office, and he hates the War Office and the Colonial Office more than he hates the Church. And he hates the Church more than he hates the Exchequer and its taxes ; but all these institutions are his aversion, and Radicalism, if it followed. his type, would begin by pulling down the House of Lords, then attack and disintegrate the Colonial Empire, reduce vastly the Army and Navy, disestablish the Church, dissect the United Kingdom, and effectually bring the Government into contempt. That is an intelligible type of Radicalism, for no doubt there are many mistakes and many injustices committed even by the least erring and least unfair of all Governments ; and the mission of that type of Radicalism is to find out these mistakes and mis- carriages of justice, and use them to attenuate the respect for all Governments. But then that typo of Radicalism does not suit an age in which the hope of the Democracy is that, by possessing itself of the machinery of Govern- ment, it may make a great step towards establishing a greater equality between different classes, making the rich poor and the poor rich, and introducing something like a Socialistic paradise. Mr. Morton is no follower of Mr. Labouchere's, and Mr. Keir - Hardie is no follower of Mr. Labouchere's, and Mr. Burns is no follower of Mr. Labouchere's. All these gentlemen, though they may be quite willing to pull down the House of Lords, and even, so far as they have turned their minds to so uninteresting a subject, to disintegrate the Empire, have views on Government which are perfectly inconsistent with Mr. Labouchere's radical distrust of all Governments. They may distrust utterly the late Government, and depreciate confidentially the present Government, but they have far too many sanguine hopes of what a Government might effect for the labouring class to be at all willing to acquiesce in the old. Radical notion that it is the chief duty of a Reformer to reduce Government to impotence. They are very willing to inveigh against even the present Government when it shoots rioters, and t.) illustrate its iniquities by its supposed massacres of African savages ; but when it comes to a question of magnifying the individual and paralysing the State, they bethink themselves that indi- vidual agricultural labourers and individual miners, and even individual artisans, would have nothing like the chance of bettering their condition which they would have if they could pull the strings of the Government, and set in motion all the machinery of the State. It is, we take it, mainly this prospect of a Government of which the labourers shall pull the strings, that prevents Mr. Labouchere from gaining way with the new Radicals. Such speeches as he delivered at the Eleusis Club on Wednesday only alienate the Radical voters from him ; and, so far as we can see, the only man of any considerable capacity who is in sympathy with the newer school of Socialistic Radicals is Sir. Charles Dilke, who is, for other reasons, not very likely to gain much popularity as a Parliamentary leader. Indeed, we have enough con- fidence in the fundamental good sense even of the labour- ing classes, to hope that, after a little experience of the very dangerous results of speculative interference with the relations between capital and labour, they will subside into convictions as prudent and moderate as those of Mr. Burt, and abandon all attempts to organise a great Utopia of labour on a large scale. At all events, there is as yet no sign of a leader whom they will trust to lead them in any attempt to experiment on a great scale in the interest of their crude collective aspirations, and we sincerely hope that politicians as moderate as Mr. Burt will, before long, hold the balance when government has passed into the hands of the working class. As yet there is no omen that looks like the sudden rise of a rustic Rienzi.
Previous page
