TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ELECTORS AND THE GOVERNMENT. THE electors are a little, or more than a little, unfair to this Government. They indulge at the by- elections their local fancies or their chagrins without re- flecting that although with such a majority the in- dulgence does not prevent the Government from going on, it weakens their hands abroad, and at home deepens in their minds that doubt as to what the democracy really wish, which all over the world is making rulers vacillate or delay. Premiers beat time in sheer despair of know- ing exactly what the people demand of them. To judge 'by their votes, British electors are disappointed with the Government which they themselves called into being ; yet it is impossible to discover from what the disappointment arises. They expected something, they appear to say— for it is the note of the situation that they do not say it— which they have not got ; but what is it ? It must be some sin of omission, for nobody accuses the Unionist Ministry of doing anything which is even disagreeable, unless, indeed, it be trying a little too persistently to extinguish hydrophobia. There have been many grants- in-aid, and Liberal newspapers say this grant is wasteful and that is partisan, but we do not believe that, provided it is made out of a surplus, the real people object to any grant. They hate fresh taxation, but they are entirely indifferent to expenditure, or indeed, as we sometimes fear, they positively like it. Certainly they have issued no mandate to the Treasury to be economical. Except the grants-in-aid, nothing has been done which is even seri- ously criticised; no unpopular Bill has been introduced, no fiscal change is galling anybody—the Death-duties being an inheritance from the last Government—there has been no pause or failure in the ordinary course of ad- ministration. The Bill which grants self-government to Irishmen in their counties has been resolutely pushed forward, is passing with a certain ease, and is really at once a change and a reform which thirty. years ago would have occupied the whole time of a Parliament. More- over, it is the measure which, by the consent of both the great parties, will do most to secure to Ireland the benefits of Home-rule without the dangers which must have attended that prodigious leap into the dark. The Navy has been strengthened in full accordance with a popular demand, to such a point that grave men begin to inquire whether it is possible to go further without burdening the country too much, and whether it is wise to think of general coalitions against Britain as contingencies to be provided against. The Army has been increased, not sufficiently we admit, but still increased, and though the difficulties of recruiting have only been alleviated and not removed, the tone and the method of the alleviation are acknowledged on all hands to be of the right kind. The Government is, in fact, trying to attract soldiers as great employers attract other kinds of labour,—the only practi- cal alternative to conscription. The country is prosperous, work is plentiful, the Treasury is overflowing, and with all the expenditure the only change in taxation has been a remission. Where, then, has been the failure in internal government ? The truth is there has been none, unless it be failure to do everything in an undramatic way, and to defend everything done by the arguments which weigh with the House of Commons rather than by those which arouse enthusiasm in the country. There has been some want on that side, arising, we suspect, more from the dis- organised condition of the Opposition than from any other cause, orators in a country like this requiring the stimulus of a fierce engagement. The Cabinet is full of able speakers, but except when Mr. Balfour is irritated out of his habitual tolerance, or Sir Michael Hicks-Beach lets himself go upon a favourite subject, there has been a certain want of the eloquence which excites ; but that is a failure which has hardly been perceived, and which English electors would say, untruly, that they did not mind at all. In action at home there has been no failure.
But we shall be told the failure has been not in internal administration, but in the conduct of foreign affairs. How do the electors know that? Almost all of them deny that they desire war for war's sake ; and if that is • true, wherein can it be alleged that Lord Sais b has as seriously failed ? He has been steering the ship during the past three years through the narrowest of practicable channels, and has struck upon none of the hidden rocks with which it was studded. Was it Lord Salisbury or Mr. Olney who was beaten in the Venezuela quarrel ?—a quarrel which, as we can all now see, would, had it resulted in war, have destroyed the most promising prospect ever opened out before Great Britain, America, and, as we shall always maintain, mankind. Lord Salisbury did not succeed in defeating Turkey or organising Crete, but it was because had be adopted any other policy than the one he did he would have risked, almost certainly would have produced, that general European war from which everybody, British electors included, shrank back appalled. We thought, and think, he was mistaken in so shrink- ing, a peremptory duty requiring the country to run the risk of protecting the Armenians ; but the elec- tors did not think so, and we ourselves have always acknowledged that if the responsibility of giving the orders had fallen to us, we might have found it too terrible to face. It takes statesmen of iron, supported by a resolved people, to order the shot which may set the world on fire ; and if Lord Salisbury was not iron, he certainly was not supported by a resolved people. We never remember more hesitation than we saw among them when they perceived that to send the fleet to the Dardanelles might precipitate that vast conflagration of which all Europe was so mortally afraid. There may have been a failure of judgment on the Indian Frontier— that is even now our own belief—but there was certainly no failure of energy or nerve, or preparation upon the largest scale, and for the present, at least, the Government has won, and won—for that is the really wonderful feature of that war—without exasperating the subdued. Let the electors think for one moment of what the French would say about a war in which they defeated every tribe opposed to them, and every tribe offered unasked to be their faithful soldiers. They would have gone wild with exultation over the "benevolent and attractive" genius of France. On the Nile, the record so far has been one of unbroken success. We are actually conquering Ethiopia almost without knowing it, shall avenge the murder of General Gordon by making of Khartoum a British pre- fecture, and have so solidified our position in Eastern Africa that it is doubtful whether Europe, as it recognises the success of our work, will even wish us to leave it incomplete. Our success has, in fact, been marvellous, and is only forgotten because our interests are involved in so many places at once. In West Africa, on the other hand; though we are not isolated as masters, the Government have-, under the most difficult circumstances not only avoided war, but have avoided wounding the pride of France, yet have secured a vast dominion which includes rights such as we exercise in the tributary section of India, over the Hausa States, the only kingdoms in Central Africa capable of civilisation, and, therefore, of rapidly developing trade. What would the electors have ? "More of China" will be the instant response ; but what have we lost in China which we could have obtained without a long and costly war ? We have a position in the North which Russia envies, we have earmarked the grand Delta of the centre so that we can fight for it if we choose, when we choose, and we have made of Hong-kong a nearly impregnable entrepOt. And we are now adopting an attitude towards the United States which, besides e.being righteous and philanthropic in itself, will in the end give the English- speaking peoples a predominant position as regards the vast probabilities of Chinese trade. Where is the visible- failure in all this that the electors should overthrow a. Government which has, on the whole, given them a prosperous and tranquil time in order to replace it by another in which they do not believe ?
If they do believe in it, of course the question, as a question of practical politics, ends ; but where is the evidence of it? In whom do the electors believe, as thinking him capable of governing and guiding the country with more success and greater energy than Lord Salisbury ? Is it in Lord Rosebery, who would have fought France for Siam, or Sir W. Harcourt, who would probably retire from Egypt, or in Lord Spencer, who would concede Home-rule, and of whose opinions upon any but the Irish question they know practically nothing ? Or have they before them any other candidate in whom they place implicit confidence ? It is all very well to keep on giving the present Government little "lessons," but if they desert it they must be prepared with a substitute which they at least think more competent ; and where is the substitute which they trust ? The country cannot be left without a Government, nor is this the time for a mere Ministry of Affairs, such as Princes driven to despair by the absence of great men sometimes raise to power. If the electors are really as discontented as the by-elections would indicate, they have not only to let this Government fall, which is comparatively easy, but to set up a new one in which they can place more confidence ; and whence do they think it is to come ? They say they want more energy, and judgment, and knowledge of external affairs than there is in Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. Have they the slightest evidence that there are five such men in the Kingdom, or that if there are, they will secure any .better results than the very orderly, calm, and on the whole successful Government which, on the hypothesis, they are intended to displace ? For ourselves, we do not believe it, or believe that when the crisis arrives, and , the electors are forced to choose a Government instead of a Member, they will venture to make so serious and far-reaching a change. It is not so easy to govern the British Empire, with the whole world in commotion, and all the great States, except America, doubting whether they would not be much better off if that Empire were reduced to its original islands in the North Atlantic. It does not matter a straw who sits for East Herta ; but the composition of the Government for the next few years, which will be years of storm and stress, matters to Great Britain more than anything else in the world. Empires die when Emperors are full of levity, and the electorate as a whole is Emperor here, and is displaying levity every week.
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