MR. ASQUITH.
MR. ASQUITH stands at the parting of the ways. By general consent he is henceforth to lead the House of Commons. After Easter he will almost certainly be leading it as Prime Minister. Which direction will he choose ? Will he set up his own standard, and ask those to follow him who believe in him, or will he let his followers paint what they please on his banner, and still carry it for them ? The next few months will show ; but it must be admitted that to some of his keenest supporters, even in the Liberal Party, the future is not encouraging. Those who hoped. most from Mr. Asquith two years ago, and especially those who, Unionists like ourselves, hoped that he would prove an effective drag on the Socialistic wheel, have been the most disappointed. They see in Mr. Asquith, or think they see, a man of sound convictions and strict common-sense gradually allowing himself to be pushed along roads which he dislikes to tread, advocating measures for which he feels no enthusiasm, tentatively putting forward half-a-dozen arguments which he seems to hope will please oa.he -1, when he could bring out twenty counter-arguments w oich would satisfy himself. That he is convinced that he is acting for the best is not to be doubted ; but how has he convinced himself ? If he has persuaded himself that his own judgment must be at fault, and that he had better give in where his instinct would be to stand out, what is it that persuades him to self- distrust ? • The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in office before under a Liberal Government, and could find, if he wished, an interesting object-lesson in his own record. When Lord Rosebery's Ministry fell in the summer of 1895 no Liberal Member of the House of Commons had built up a sounder reputation than the Home Secretary, Mr. Asquith. The House of Commons, as he described it, bad been ploughing the sands, but though the country might have thought the plough better employed, it had every respect for a Minister who had shown courage in dealing with difficult situations, a capacity for taking the initiative, and a willingness to exert the authority with which he was entrusted in a spirit unafraid of criticism or of abuse. Mr. Asquith had begun well with a compromise over the right of public meeting in Trafalgar Square. He bad won general approval by his courage and independence in standing up against the Parnellites, and telling them that so long as he was at the Home Office dvnamiters would get no more lenient treatment from him than other prisoners in her Majesty's gaols. He had shown that he knew how to be dignified under undeserved reproach when he was blamed for the deaths of the victims of the un- happy Featherstone riots. He did not add much to the statute-book while he was in office, but that was recognised to be the fault of the measures rather than the man. When he left office, he still persisted in looking at public affairs from an independent point of view. He took his own line during the South African War. Later, when Mr. Chamberlain had launched his ill-starred campaign of Tariff Reform, he found no more uncompromising opponent than Mr. Asquith, nor one who put the Free-trade case in a form more impossible to answer. Later still, when Mr. Asquith was again in office, nothing could be more sound or satisfactory than many of his declarations of opinion and policy. He has declared that he is not a Socialist, but that if there is a strain of Socialist opinion in the country, it is better that it should be represented in the House of Commons, where it will come into collision with other opinion, than that it should find its outlet underground and in secret, —a, statesmanlike attitude far better suited to meet the case than unreasoning opposition or flat rejection. He has most eloquently summed up the ideals of a national education ; his Rectorial address at Glasgow was a fine example of high thinking applied to national problems ; he has left no doubt, by the care of the phrases employed, as to his adherence to the traditional and accepted standards which we should set before us in national defence; and over and over again he has put the academic arguments for. sound Constitutional precedents and purposes in a setting which could not be bettered for wisdom of thought and plainness of speaking. Always, or nearly always, when it is clearly Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Asquith alone, who acts or speaks, the action or the utterance is sound and strong. Always, or nearly always, when the speaker is not so plainly Mr. Asquith, when the speech seems to be the echo of Mr. Asquith's friends, or other members of the Government speaking through the mouthpiece of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the voice changes, the action fails.
Unfortunately, it is precisely when action would have followed speech with the most valuable results that Mr. Asquith has failed, and it has been exactly on these occasions that it has seemed to be not Mr. Asquith acting and speaking, but Mr. Asquith advised against himself. The majority gained by the Liberal Party at the General Election was huge; so huge that it has been difficult to bear its voice, though the voices of sections have been noisier than ever. Has Mr. Asquith been confused by the noise? He has at all events allowed himself to be com- mitted to pronouncements and undertakings which are hopelessly at variance with a true Liberal policy, and which have been themselves on occasion indefensible on any legal or Constitutional grounds whatever. Take, for instance, the Trade Disputes Bill. Mr. Asquith obviously disliked the measure, and was hard put to it to find any arguments to use in its favour. He was reduced to the extraordinary position of urging that Trade-Unions, whether of masters or men, should be put above and out- side the law because industrial war was a rough business, and that therefore masters and men had better fight it out without legal restraint. That a distinguished lawyer should use such a plea was almost incredible, but it was so used. Or take, again, the Coal Mines (Eight Hours) Bill introduced by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone's father was never induced to countenance such a measure, and would not have been induced to do so to-day. To limit by State action the hours which a man may work in a mine, and so to lessen the output of coal and increase its price, when the miners are perfectly competent to deal with the question of their own hours of labour themselves, is not only a meddlesome and retrograde interference with the labour market, but is essentially a Protective measure, and should have no part nor lot in the policy of a Free- trade Government. Yet Mr. Asquith, than whom no Liberal has denounced Protection more fervently, is pre- pared to vote for a Coal Mines (Eight Hours) Bill. Lastly, there remains Mr. Asquith's attitude towards old-age pensions. He has finally pledged himself to a scheme which is to be universal and non-contributory,—a scheme which, even if it costs only five or six millions a year to begin with, will certainly cost thirty millions a year before it can come into full operation. Where the money is to come from neither Mr. Asquith nor any Liberal writer or thinker has explained. There is only one way in which it could be obtained, and that is by an enormous increase in indirect taxation,—in other words, through the imposi- tion of a tariff. That would be a strange conclusion to the work done for the nation by a Government expressly returned to power to defend Free-trade.
Is there any common factor which will reconcile these cross-turnings and contradictions ? If there is, it lies somewhere in the same strange vein of pessimism which sometimes discoloured, if it did not permanently damage, the administration of Lord Salisbury. Mr. Asquith believes, or is ready to believe, in vast and uncontrollable movements of the mob. He sees Behemoth heaving up from sleep, forgets that largo animals need be no more dreadful than small, and does not try to ascertain whether Behemoth may not be, after all, a very tractable creature if he is properly led and fed. Like Lord Salisbury, watching what he conceived to be a huge wave of opinion, Mr. Asquith would ask : "Who are we to stem the tide ? " Yet all the while he may be wrong ; the tide may not be sweeping as far as he thinks, and in any case it should be his ask to harness the tide rather than to float on it. He forgets that, of all hopeless policies, to try to gauge public opinion before uttering your own opinion is the most hopeless and the most dangerous. "They call me an arbitrary Minister," said Sir Robert Peel, "but this country likes to be governed" ; and assuredly it likes to hear strong, unwavering opinions expressed by public men. It is those opinions which make public opinion, and if public men do not utter their opinions boldly, without reference to what they believe the public want to be told, they will never lead, and they will never be followed. When they wait to listen for public opinion, they are setting up a man of straw and trying to imagine what they would think if they were stuffed with straw. If straw coula speak, it would tell them that it can rot or burn, but cannot course like blood or drive like brains. Mr. Asquith, with his great talents, his incisive intellect, and his keen individual powers of criticism, has subordinated his judgment to that of others not so well qualified to judge. He has set up his man of straw, and apparently is now going to ask us all to fall down and worship him.
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