SIR WILLIAM HARCOITRT AT SCARBOROUGH.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S speech at Scarborough on Tuesday was an ominous one for the Ministry. No one sees quicker than Sir William how the cat is going to jump, and no one can prepare for the cat a better foothold to jump from. Had the Ministerial policy been acceptable to the country—had the electors of Peterborough, for instance, been in the slightest degree attracted by the Premier's bounce or Sir Stafford Northcote's appeals for lenity—the Member for Oxford would still have been critical, but his criticism would have taken a very different form. We should have heard, then, of Lord Beaconsfield's resource, as well as of the Ministers' blunders, of the mistaken wishes of the country, as well as of the stupidities of the Cabinet. As it was, Sir Wil- liam poured out vitriol. His whole speech is one attack upon the Government for its conduct of affairs during the past two years, and every sentence in it tells. The worst enemy of the Ministry could not wish a paragraph in it changed, or desire a better brief as a foundation for his next attack. With merciless pertinacity, Sir William Harcourt followed the Government throughout its policy, and showed in epigram after epigram, each more stinging than the last, and each followed by louder ' and louder cheers, that every " triumph " boasted by the Tories was either a sham, a failure, or a dangerous snare. From the Treaty of Berlin, which was to have lasted forty years, and has lasted only forty days, to the "campaign of common-place" just finished by Sir Stafford Northcote, every achievement of the Ministry came in for the same scorn,—which would have been fierce, but for the speaker's obvious conviction that he was dealing with rather feeble impostors, whose game, however injurious to the country or the world, was very nearly played out. He showed, first of all, that the Treaty of Berlin, which, as the Tories protested, had secured to Europe peace with honour, had secured neither honour nor peace. It had broken down on every point except the cessions to Russia which Russia had soldiers on the spot sufficient to secure. Turkey, which, Sir Stafford says, it was the permanent policy of England to maintain, had lost half her European dominions, and would probably lose the remainder, even the Quarterly Review declaring that the Sultan must quit Europe. Austria, whose presence at Novi Bazar was declared by Lord Salisbury to be a guarantee for Turkey, had not fought her way thither yet. Greece had been placed in an " impossible " situation, which must inevitably lead to a conflict. The Eastern Roumelian Commission is already in the "considerable difficulty" that no one wants it, the Turks disliking it, the Russians thwarting it, and the Roumelians themselves repudiating it. The Russians are said to be in- triguing, and no doubt they hold the match to the combusti- bles ; but let them just try, "with all their ability for intrigue, to get up an insurrection against the Mayor of Scarborough." The Treaty has failed at every point, is dead already, and "when tested by experience and reviewed by history, will be known as the Dunciad ' of diplomacy." And for it its authors gave themselves the Garter. Then there is Cyprus, which was to have been " a sort of Scarborough in the East ;" two Cabinet Ministers had gone to see what sort of place they had got hold of ; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was reduced to describing it "as a clinical lecture-room, in which the moral and political regenerators of the East might study the character of Levantine fevers and the moral leprosy of Turkish rule." Was it necessary to take Cyprus, in order "to learn that the Turks had turned it into a desert, when they have done that every- where they set their foot ?" Cyprus will be improved, of course, will perhaps become "a model farm for Turkey," but it will be by getting rid of Turkey and Turkish rulers. Then as to the Convention of June, it was a Parliamentary manceuvre, to cover the defeat in Berlin. It was often said that the fault was not with the Turks, but with those dreadful Pashas ; "but those dreadful Pashas are the Turkish Govern- ment; there is no other Government at all ; and the Pashas have no intention of putting an end to themselves." The Convention not being enough, the Government had now pro- vided us with an Afghan question. That also was all the fault of Russia, but "I thought Russia had been vanquished at Berlin, and her final defeat had been accomplished by the Anglo-Turkish Convention." Cyprus, "we have been told, I. the key of Asia Minor, and Asia Minor is the key of India ; we have got Cyprus, and have guaranteed Asia Minor, and still India is not safe." The truth was the Govern- ment had brandished India in the face of Europe as a weapon of offence, and it was only natural, it was almost unavoidable, that the Power so threatened should say, "If you choose to use India against us in Europe, we will gee if we cannot use Europe against you in India." The Govern- ment, with all their talk about India, had brought India into the greatest danger since the Mutiny. "The time is not far distant when the nation will be called on to pronounce upon the policy of such a Government, and it will be judged by its results. Its policy has been from the first what the Americans call an 'Inflationist' policy, but the time seems to me to have come when this system of false credit is about to collapse. When the people of this country see that all this false glitter and idle display, this game of fanfaronnade and braggadocio have ended in discomfiture ; that real dangers have been created in the attempts to fight with chimeras ; that instead of peace, we are upon the brink of war ; that immense burdens have been imposed upon the nation to repair the errors of a rash and turbulent policy, they will come to the con- clusion that, after all, the conduct of those statesmen who built up our Empire as much by their prudence as their courage was founded on true principles, and that the safety and dignity of a great State are best consulted by a policy of sobriety and common-sense." That is the sharpest and most outspoken attack made ur on the Ministry for months, and it is made amid bursts of applause in a pleasure city, by a speaker who has been, no doubt, a member of a Liberal Government, but who, of all such members, is the one least likely to allow his criticisms to be disturbed by his convictions. The late Solicitor-General has no hatred of Tories, or anybody else, till they blunder ; he entertains, and has expressed, a profound appreciation for Lord Beaconsfield, and he has, of all men in England, the talent of keeping himself just an inch in advance of the pre- vailing popular sentiment. It is impossible to say of him, as the Pall Mall Gazette used to say of everybody else who opposed the Ministry, that he was at heart a Ritualist ; nor is he moved by that enthusiasm for the right which some- times induces unthinking men to mistake Mr. Gladstone, "Scotch by both sides" and the coolest financier in Europe, for a political Don Quixote. Sir William Harcourt's scorn is not an emotion, but an intellectual faculty quite within his own control ; and when he uses it as a weapon, we may know that he thinks his adversary past the point when battle is needed for his defeat. The lance is a showy weapon, but only useful in pursuit.
It is all so true, too. People suspect epigrams, and very justifiably, for political truths are seldom so simple that they can be condensed into that agreeable form ; but in this instance the facts are so well understood that new epi- grams sound like old proverbs, embodiments of the
collective experience of mankind. Nobody wants ex- planations when Sir William Harcourt remarks of Mr. A. Forbes that he described himself as "a repentant Jingo," and adds, "I fancy there are a good many of that sort about the country now." No one demurs when he paints Cyprus as a place "where the Fleet, which could not anchor for want of a harbour, is usefully engaged as a floating hospital, to cruise about with the troops, who could not live on shore." The very crowd cheers intelligently when he says," We were told that the pro-Turkish policy of the Government was to consoli- date Islam, and yet we find the Afghan Moslem the ally of Russia, and the enemy of the protector of the Caliph." The very fact that the people have been educated till they can follow Sir William's glittering darts, and see exactly where they strike, is of itself most dangerous to the Government, for if once they are understood, if once their policy is comprehended, they are lost men, gone from the field of British politics, swept out by the scorn which Englishmen, when sober, feel for bounce, and bombast, and brummagem imitations of lofty purpose. The Times complains that Sir William Harcourt does not argue or devise, and the complaint is just ; but it is because he does not, and yet succeeds, that his oratory of Tuesday is so formidable. There is not an argument in his speech, because it was only necessary to state the facts, to mention the policy, to make the facts seem ridiculous and the policy contemptible. It is because Sir William Harcourt is not too earnest that his hits are so dreadfully damaging. He does not ask the Ministry for high morality, but only for a little truth in their descriptions of themselves and their feats. He does not complain of the want of great successes, but only that their little success, Cyprus, is so very small and unreal. He does not ask them for a noble policy, but only that their policy, whatever it is, shall succeed, in some infinitesimal degree. He does not find fault with them for not being heroes, far less for not being demi-gods, but is half-amused, half-contemptuous to find them as men so ricketty and rheumatic. It is in the want of loftiness in his views that the deadly effect of Sir William's hostility is found. Scarborough is not the highest- minded place in the world, and might not have under- stood the orator had he pitched his discourse in a loftier key, but it understood at once when told that the Ministry had not attained in any degree even what Scarborough deems success. The dullness of the Ministerial fireworks may be best measured by the very moderate degree of brilliancy which would have satisfied their critic. Sir William Harcourt did not ask that they should remould the world, or regenerate Asia, or destroy Russia, or do anything very exceptionally grand, but only that they should have attained the poor compromises they sought ; and he fails, with much seek- ing, to perceive even that. It is easy to fall short of the enthusiast's ideal, but when after promising to surpass the poet's dream one falls short even of the ideal of .a. vestryman, there results a sense of disenchantment which Sir William is precisely the man to express, and to deepen. Flatness is what Scarborourgh dislikes, and Scar- borough was shown, with all England, that the Ministerial
policy was flat,—champagne without sparkle, or rather small beer left too long standing in the air. When Sir William Har- court derides a histrionic Ministry, and Scarborough laughs entire approval, the play may at once be accepted as wanting in every quality which can attract even the upper galleries. The stalls, where the experts sit, have damned it long ago.
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