LIVING IN A DREAM.
pERHAPS the most serious feature in the existing situa- tion is that many of the eminent Tory Peers are living in a dream. They are convinced that if they resist the Fran- chise Bill they will force a Dissolution, and that if a Dissolution arrives, and the true issue is the existence of the House of Lords, the "country "—that is, the present legal electorate— will be found to be with them. Upon the former conviction we have at present little to say. Its accuracy depends upon a contingency of which we know as little as our neighbours, namely, the view the Queen may take of her constitutional responsibilities. If her Majesty decides not to create Peers, and accepts Mr. Gladstone's thereupon inevitable resignation, there will, of course, be a Dissolution, as no other Premier could lead the present House of Com- mons for a week. It is, we think, most improbable that the Queen will by thus acting appear to take a side, and rouse in the North the unjust suspicion that the Crown and the Tory Party are in permanent accord ; but that question is, of course, beyond useful discussion for the present. There may, 'therefore, be a Dissolution ; but as to its result there can be, among those who have studied the popular temper, but one opinion. Every issue will be swallowed up in the single one, whether the Peers or the representatives of the people shall govern the country ; and that can be answered only in one way. The whole Liberal Party in the three kingdoms—we say in the three deliberately—will give but one reply, and the majority will exceed that of 1880, which was 127 for Great Britain alone, by at least fifty. It is not only from the great multitude of public meetings that we judge, though they have exceeeded eight hundred, and have in all cases gone further against the Lords than the speakers wished ; nor do we decide only in view of the instinctive cries of the crowds, though they have always meant "End 'em." We have full reason, reason which would convince most of our readers, to believe that the educated and well-to-do middle-class, so far as it is Liberal at all, is heartily in accord with the people, and that where it is not Liberal its liking is for Conservatism, and not for the corporate power of the House of Lords, which is disliked, as the county elections will show in quarters where, as Peers think, there is absolute obedience to their direction. The Peers, as a corporate body, have by their long inertia and refusal to work as the repre- sentatives work, by their reluctance to debate, and their eager- ness for dinner, dissolved the ancient belief in their House's utility in the State.
The Tory leaders believe that they will gain votes in the counties owing to the farmers' jealousy of the labourers, in the petty boroughs about to be disfranchised, in the smaller boroughs which will lose one Member apiece, and in Ireland where the Parnellites dread the new element about to be introduced. They forget that the election in the coun- ties will take place under totally new auspices, with intimidation made under the Bribery Act a penal offence ; with popular candidates no longer banished by the fear of unendurable expense ; with the two millions of the unenfranchised eagerly watching every vote against them ; with the rural Dissenters, hitherto in despair, alive with hope, and exerting the whole of their immense influence ; and with the Liberal freeholders working as they have never worked yet. They forget that the farmers have no reason to love the Lords, and that, though they are Conservative, they share the jealousy of Liberals on behalf of representative government when seriously assailed. We doubt, when the gains in Scot- land, Wales, and the North of England are thrown in, whether we shall lose a county seat, and have no fear whatever about the petty boroughs. Men are not so selfish in times of enthu- siasm as Peers think ; and the voters in such boroughs will be as much inclined to become important in their county districts —which will be the result of the Liberal plan of Redistri- bution—as to be grouped with boroughs often distant and often objects of acute jealousy, which would be the Tory scheme. They must, they will reflect, be merged any way. The smaller boroughs may be more doubtful ; but they will be overwhelmed by the returns from the great cities, where the vote against the Lords will be double the usual Liberal vote, where, in fact, the whole question of popular govern- ment will be seen to be at stake. There is passion in those cities, passion hardly to be restrained, and that passion will be shown in a vote heavier than this generation has ever seen.
Even in Ireland, strange and erratic as her course often is, we believe the Tory leaders to be utterly mistaken. The Irish hate the House of Lords, which has so often refused the reforms conceded by the Commons ; and neither the farmers nor the Nationalists can quarrel finally with the labourers.
While, therefore, Mr. Parnell may come up strengthened, it will be with followers pledged to the lips to begin their func- tions by granting the extended franchise, and by resisting the claim of the Lords to govern the United Kingdom.
Above all, the Tory leaders forget the operation of two forces which they have not yet encountered. One is the change of opinion which will follow serious attack on them, and serious analysis of their influence upon legislation, upon the Executive, and upon the realisation of popular hopes and aspirations. Nothing has yet been said, to what can be said, as to their votes for the past fifty years ; nor are the people in the least aware of the extent to which the Peers have suffered their House to become purely an obstruction. The Liberal leaders have care- fully abstained from such attacks ; but the facts are un- deniable, and two speeches from Mr. Gladstone, marshalling them in intelligible order, would vitalise masses of hitherto inert opinion. And they forget the whole influence of enthu- siasm—the catching character of the kind of emotion which would shake the country, if Mr. Gladstone were driven out in such a cause. They have survived the memories of 1832, when the Reform Bill passed, though up to the latest moment the boroughmongers could calculate that if their " influ- ence " held, and if their nominees could be trusted, and if it were safe to obey their orders, a majority could still be obtained. The Tory leaders do not under- stand the resources of enthusiasm when it is national, or the electric effect of popular will upon those whose minds are not yet hardened to resistance. They rely still upon a machinery which, useful on ordinary occasions, will be as powerless in such an election as garden-engines are in a fire, and live in a dream like that of the old German Generals when "that young man," Napoleon, burst through their traditional defences. They think that though the fire is in the prairie, park-palings still count.
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