SIR CHARLES DILKE ON THE LIBERAL PARTY.
SIR CHARLES DILKE occupies, and must continue to occupy as long as his public career lasts, the position of a political outsider,—a man who stands at the edge of the fight and watches how it is going. Hence his opinion as to the condition of the Liberal party is peculiarly valuable. He knows exactly what is going on in the inner councils of the party, and yet his judgment is not warped by any personal ambitions or predilections. He is not a serif as candidate for office, and thus his eyes are not b'■ aded by the desire that this or that group or leader should win the day. With these great advantages for forming a correct diagnosis of the condition of the Liberal p..rty, what does Sir Charles Dilke say ? Almost exactly what we have said again and again in these columns,— namely, that the Liberal party has at present no more got a definite policy than a definite leader, and that till it does get a definite and a coherent policy it cannot hope to win. As Sir Charles Dilke put it, the policy of the existing Liberal leaders seems to be to wait like molluscs on the shore till the tide flows once more.
Naturally enough Sir Charles Dike condemned this policy, and showed how hopeless it was to expect any good results from such an attitude. With merciless knife he dissected the corpse of the Liberal party, and showed the reasons for its dissolution. The moderate members of the party wanted, he said, to take up reform of the House of Lords and registration reform. But, said Sir Charles Dilke, he had grave doubts " whether the one was not dangerous and the other not worth fighting for." That is a very interesting statement. That reform of the House of Lords, even if an improvement to the Constitution, would be an injury to the Radical party and its aims, cannot, we think, be doubted for a moment. Those who declare that no drag is wanted on the coach, and that to use one on the sacred wheels of progress is an infamy, cannot seriously propose to put the drag in order and make it more effective. But to reform the House of Lords is to perfect the drag on legislation. Hence a proposal to reform the House of Lords made on the behalf of people who believe that we have already too much putting on of the drag is clearly an absurdity. Radicals who advocate a reform of the House of Lords do not mean business, and know that they do not, and this knowledge, as always in such cases, paralyses them. What Sir Charles Dilke says as to registration reform is, however, still more important. We are not inclined to agree with those who regard Sir Charles Dilke as a sort of universal expert whose know- ledge of details is almost superhuman. His knowledge in many cases is both superficial and mechanical, and is never corrected by sound judgment. If, however, he knows anything, it is the details of electoral law and of the wirepullers' dreary trade. Depend upon it, if Sir Charles Dilke says that his party will not gain anything worth gaining by registration reform, that is as near the fact as it is possible to get. We have always thought as much. To begin with, it is very difficult to touch the electoral qualification without touching also the distribu- tion of seats. But if seats are to be distributed in the United Kingdom on democratic principles, the Liberal party must be condemned to another seven years of opposition. And even supposing that the grantiug of " One vote one value" could be avoided, we doubt whether registration reform could possibly pay the Radical party. Registration reform must include alterations in zhe lodger franchise, and alterations which would in the towns add thousands of Unionist votes. Thus, as Sir Charles Dilke shows, the party are keenly divided as to the policy of reform of the House of Lords, and reform of the Registration laws. On Foreign and Colonial matters there is, he declares, no sort of agreement in the party. "Liberals," said Sir Charles Dilke, " were disunited with regard to :all these questions." Lord Rosebery and Sir Edward Grey " were in favour of the African policy. Many Radicals were bitterly opposed to it, and connected it with that general desire for other people's lands which to them seemed mere plunder, and a newer and worse form of Jingoism than that against which they had protested in 1878." It was the same in regard to the general Imperial question. " While Radicals differed among themselves as to the African Colonial policy, they differed also as to the military and naval policy which the needs and the extension of the Empire either justified or occasioned." What Sir Charles Dilke said, or rather hinted, as to the leadership showed that here also there was a total absence of agreement. He professed, on the part of the Radicals, to prefer no claim to choose who should be leader, but he pointed out that the Radicals " had a natural bias in favour of leaders who believed in the principles which they taught, but, other things being equal, merely personal questions did not attract them." In a word, he told the country that the Liberal party were heartily agreed about nothing, and in open disagreement about everything that was important, and that till they cleared their ideas and concentrated their efforts on a definite policy they would never return to power.
All this is so true that it has become a common- place, — something hardly worth stating, unless, of course, as a preface to a new line of policy that will disperse the clouds and reanimate the Liberal party. As may be supposed, then, Sir Charles Dilke did not draw his dismal picture of the state of the Liberal party without producing at the same time suggestions for remedying the evils he depicted, and for putting the party on its legs once again. What were his suggestions ? What was the policy which was to rescue the party from the slough of despond? It is almost inconceivable, yet a fact, that Sir Charles Dilke proposes to reunite, revivify, and re-establish his party by a policy of " moderate Home-rule all round." Could anything more hopelessly fatuous be conceived by the mind of political man ? If there is one question which is flabby, dull, and dead it is " Home-rule all round." It is based on no popular demand, and satisfies no national aspiration. It is, in truth, merely a clever academic scheme for appearing to satisfy Ireland without apparently breaking up the Union, and for making our Constitution a federal one without any one knowing it. "Home-rule all round" is emphatically one of those compromises which not only is wanted by no one, but is exasperatingly odious to the people it is specially meant to conciliate, because, while it does not give them what they want, it can be represented as entirely satisfying their demands. For this reason the Irish hate " Home-rule all round " with a deadly hatred. They know that it would result, and is meant to result, in giving them far less than they want, and in stifling rather than in encouraging their national aspirations. The Scotch people, as a whole, do not want it, because they are by no means provincial in their instincts, and a little Parliament at Edinburgh would become hopelessly provincial. English Liberals, on the other hand, look on " Home-rule all round " with the utmost alarm. The English provincial Parlia- ment or Parliaments, supposing that England is to be cut up into cantons, would be hopelessly Conservative, and whenever extreme things were done by the Radicals in the other provinces there would be sure to be intense reactions in the English Parliaments. Wales is probably the only part of the country which would welcome " Home- rule all round," and when Wales found that it meant autonomy in finance as well as in laws even Wales would object. Yet it is with this ridiculous proposal that Sir Charles Dilke hopes to charm back life into the Liberal party. No doubt Sir Charles adds, as a sort of rider to his proposal for "Home-rule all round," "and radical reform in all the principal parts of the United Kingdom," but this is clearly merely a piece of common form, for Sir Charles Dilke is most careful not to say in what his radical reforms consist. In fact, he instantly drops the subject to enlarge on the beauties of "Home-rule all round," and ends his speech with the following eulogium on that maladroit invention. " Moderate Home-rule all round," he declared, " was not only the only policy possible for the Liberal party, but it would conduce to the prosperity of the land itself." How desperate must be the condition of the party when one of its most nimble and quick-witted members, and a member tied also by no sense of respon- sibility, can think of nothing better than this as a policy, our readers will be able to realise without any help from us. To say that " Home-rule all round " is the only possible policy for the Liberal party is to say that the Liberal party has finally gone under.
But though we feel so certain of the fatuity of adopting " Home-rule all round " as the party cry, we admit that if we were in the position of the Home-rule chiefs we should find it extremely difficult to suggest a policy on which the party could rally. No doubt (1) abolition of the House of Lords and of all hereditary titles and the constitution of a single supreme Chamber, (2) universal suffrage and equal electoral districts, (3) abolition of all in- lirect taxation except on intoxicants, (4) compulsory division of all property among children at death, (5) nationalisation of railways and docks, (6) universal Disestablishment and Disendowment, would make a programme, and a programme very attractive to a certain number of the voters; but it would be a programme which would split the party as at present organised into a thousand fragments. The moderates would hate the single unlimited Chamber. The Liberal wirepullers would see ruin in universal suffrage and equal electoral districts. Compulsory division of property would be hated by thousands and really liked by comparatively few. The nationalisation of railways would mean the desertion of all the capitalists who still cling to the party in very large numbers; while Disestablishment would in the towns set up currents of resistance which would have an effect upon the party far beyond what would be expected by the London Radical journalists. They always fail to realise how many country Liberals are in the last resort Churchmen, and Churchmen who would leave the party if once they imagined the cause of religion were in danger. But it must be in danger under any Disestablish- ment scheme which is to be popular with the extreme Radicals. Disestablishment with terms so liberal that the Church would keep its endowments would have no attraction whatever. We confess, then, that we can see no more than can the Liberal leaders where they are to find a policy. This, however, does not alter the fact that unless and until they do find a policy the Liberals are doomed to disappointment. The present Ministry has not had very good luck, but it has not committed blunders of the kind which make voters decide to try the other side at all costs.
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