TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MANIFESTO OF WEDNESDAY.
THE cry is found, and it is a good cry. Mr. Forster, it is true, spoke on Mr. Trevelyan's Household Franchise (Counties) Bill as a private member; and Mr. Gladstone's note, which he read to the House, only pronounced the measure " just and politic, and one which could not be long avoided ;" and the Home Secretary, while affirming every word the Vice- President had said, rather tried to whittle away the effect of so momentous a communication. But Mr. Forster had spoken as a convinced man from the very depths of his heart, as if he were prepared for a fight of years, and Mr. Gladstone's note was palpably drawn up for the instruction of the House. Mr. Bruce, though he is elected by farmers who may be annoyed, repudiated nothing, and English Ministers of the first class do not affirm just before a dissolution that a fundamental change in the deposit of power is " just and politic, and cannot long be avoided," unless they intend to carry it out. The House, therefore, in treating Mr. Gladstone's note as a message or manifesto, or declaration of purpose, was fully borne out by all experience, more especially as the stern criticisms which followed were in no way repudiated. Whether the dissolution occurs in 1873, or, as we hope, in November of this year, it is quite clear that the Liberals will advance to the conflict pledged to remove the last morsel of injustice in the distribu- tion of the suffrage, and therefore to a new alliance and a new Reform Bill. Setting aside for a moment the effect of the Manifesto on the next elections and on the peat question of redistribution which is bound up with equal suffrage, the measure is, at all events, unquestionably just. It is folly to say that the crowds of artisans who live just outside the great cities have not the intelligence of the crowds who live just inside them. As a matter of fact they have more, for it is the rank and file and not the skilled men who stick so close to the shop. It is folly to say that the householders of counties do not want the vote when they declare everywhere that they do ; when they send up giant petitions ; when they are combining in great leagues to get it ; and when they suffer insult every day because they have not got it. No peer or prelate will advise that an elector, speaking to electors of their grievances, shall be thrown into a horsepond. And we will further venture to say it is folly any longer to doubt the political intelligence, moderation, and peacefulness of the British labourer. Is there any other in the world who would have conducted a fierce struggle with their employers with so little bloodshed, so little menace, so little of hard words ? In France, Spain, or even Germany, they would have been in arms months since. Even in America the fight between the New York farmers and the Patroons cost blood. It is not thirty years since the war against machinery in Essex was fought out, with the country-side in flames, the labourers insisting on maintaining a monopoly of labour which they now will not accept. In Ireland the peasantry have kept up a civil war with the landlords for ages, and it is but just dying away. In Scotland the strikes of the ploughmen have
been of the most determined kind. Only in England, and only now, have the labourers pressed for wages quietly, listened to reason, appealed to the owners of the soil to stand between them and the tenant - farmers, and when defeated, preferred the emigrant - ship to the lucifer-match. We venture to say that in shrewdness, in a clear knowledge of his own interest, and in his interest in politics of a certain kind—war, for example—the villager is often the superior of the townsman. If Socialist ideas have appeared in a few places, they have only arisen from a sense of powerlessness to obtain even the moderate justice secured to artisans by their political influence in boroughs, and will exhale most safely in the atmosphere of the House of Commons. It is wise that men who have become at last and, as it were, suddenly articulate, should say their say in the regular way, through their representatives, and not in mass meetings outside, and it is just that they should say it now, when the two questions in which they are vitally in- terested, education and ecclesiastical reform, come so inces- santly to the fore. Why is the ploughman or the blacksmith not to express his opinion about the education he wants for his children, and which is being specially provided for him ? or why is all effect to be refused to his view as to the right of the Vicar to remodel the weekly services ? At this moment, if a ratepayer, he has, it is true, a right to attend vestry meetings; but nobody ever saw a smock-frock in one, or will till he is a voter,. and the squire, intensely conscious of that fact, sees that room is made for him. Of course there is the difficulty that he may be intimidated or bribed, but that difficulty exists also in the towns, and as the experience of the Unions shows, will be less,. rather than more, in the country districts. Intimidation of the strongest kind has not broken them up. They are dour people, the farm labourers, and as little likely to give up any secret they are authorised to keep as any class in the land.. That the labourer is very likely to be for a time Conservative,. as Mr. Forster said, is true enough ; but he will be Conserva- tive in his own way, and county members with labourers' votes to secure will have seriously to modify their tone, or they may chance to find in a district like West Essex Lord E.. Cecil, the aristocrat, superseded by Mr. John Jay, the " emi- grants' jackal," as he is most unfairly nicknamed.
That the labourer ought to vote, and that the concession of the vote to him will involve a great redistribution of seats,. and perhaps—at least we heartily hope so—the introduction of qualifications such as Mr. Fawcett desires in order to secure full representation to minorities, will be admitted by all Liberals and a good many Tories, but of the effect of the proposal on the next elections we are not so clear. Many men will not approve so early a re-opening of the con- stitutional question. It is a bore, if not a nuisance, to be changing one's Sovereign every year. Many citizens, more es- pecially Londoners, will be as much startled as if it were- proposed to admit the beasts of the field into the franchise. Many more will be afraid of the uncertainty attending the action of the new million of voters, who want many things not wanted by those who have hitherto held electoral power. The Liberals will recover to a certainty the suburban counties, or counties swayed by the great cities, but in the agricultural counties the farmers may be so bitter that we shall not get a. vote. Ten men on the farm to have votes, and the farmer only one,—it will hardly be in human nature for a farmer who has perhaps just overcome a strike to vote for so extensive a, change. It would shake even the loyalty of Scotland, were not master and men one in faith, in politics, and very nearly' in education ; and will try Ireland to the heart,—Ireland, where the tenant thinks the man who works for him not much more to be respected than a fish. The little towns, too, may quail' under the idea of redistribution, and the Dissenters out of Wales view with a certain dread the introduction of this new- element into politics. Still it must be noted that in this country a just reform, if backed by a Government, always in the end succeeds, and a long and strong fight for a clearly just principle is just what would band all Liberals together. We want a secular cry, a cry on which men are not opinionated,. because they can quote facts. We are not quite sure either that the Tories would fight the battle very hardly. They want redistribution, and they have a sneaking kindness for the countryfolk against the townsfolk which is very curious to- see, considering that they never did anything for them of much moment, and are bitterly opposed to their last new movement,—the effort to place themselves on an equality with_ their employers. We doubt Mr. Henley fighting hard, and it will tax the whole strength of the whole party to fight us when the subject of discussion is not ecclesiastical, when we can all go in for a great principle, and when the masses are once more heart and soul with the Liberal cause. The Tories. may cap the move if they have the courage, but unless they do, the election will be fought under circumstances of which the pessimists, ourselves included, never dreamed. "No Tories. and no serfage." That will do.
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