TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLICY OF THE DISSOLUTION.
THE sudden axe has fallen. Parliament was dissolved on Monday, within sixty hours of the first rumour of the Government's purpose reaching the public, and before we again address our readers, the results of the Borough elections will be known, and the political complexion of the New House of Commons in a great degree determined. The Government have done wisely in realising, tardily though it be, the danger of again meeting a House of Commons in which they had fallen into a condition of paralysis, or rather what physicians call " locomotory ataxia " (to use a technical term), —i .e., inability to govern the sinews by which pace and direction are determined. We believe that after the first moment of dismay was over, all parties alike were conscious of a feel- ing of relief, in knowing that the Parliament which had done such great things in its youth and become so feeble and querulous in its old age, had vanished from the scene. The Prime Minister is right in intimating that " that authority which was in 1868 amply confided by the nation to the Liberal party and its leaders has now sunk below the point neces- sary for the due defence and prosecution of the public interests." We only regret that the Government did not take the same view sooner. We have repeatedly urged it between the great defeat in March and the present time, and in spite of the very attractive " boon " which the interval has enabled the Prime Minister to bold out to the nation, we believe that the dissolution would have had a more tonic effect on political morality if it had come either in May, or in October just after the Bath and Taunton elections had shown that the alleged " reaction " was not so universal as Conservatives supposed. As it is, we shall un- doubtedly lose a month of the " renovated " Parliament's most youthful strength, and what we care for much more is this,— that we fear a false issue, an issue, that is, which will not test the strength and sincerity of either party's political creed, may be dangerously prominent at the coming elections. Nor do we approve the precedent of submitting a popular proposal as to the mode of dealing with an unappro- priated surplus to the constituencies instead of to Parlia- ment. Not indeed that we feel much sympathy with the outcry that Mr. Gladstone is making a mere " bid " for power. Every proposal by which a statesman be- lieves that the nation will benefit, and his own party gain in strength, is a bid for power. The meaning of party government in a self-governed people is that each party shall propose what seems to it wisest and best, by way of a bid for power,—the nation deciding on the bid for power which it prefers. And the only sense in which a " bid for power " can be used legitimately as a term of reproach, is when it is meant to imply that a party or a statesman has sacrificed something of characteristic and long-cherished principle, or else broken through a useful parliamentary precedent, from the motive of ambition. But though every proposal which is fully consistent with the avowed principles of a party and of its leaders,—if it be a fit subject for the constituencies at all, and not rather one for mature deliberation,—is a sound and legitimate bid for power, it may happen that such a bid for power is of a kind of which constituencies are very bad, and Parliament is a very good judge. We fear that an appeal to the people on the policy of abolishing the Income-tax, made though it be in the fullest possible accordance with Mr. Gladstone's own clearly defined personal convictions, is one of this nature. Of course the people only think of the burden of a tax, not of the need for such a burden, which is what should chiefly occupy the mind of Parliament. Moreover, this appeal on a special tax is not an appeal on political principles, is not one which will sift the people. It will attract for the moment true and false Liberals alike, and not a few genuine Conservatives, to the Liberal camp, and leave room for a vast deal of early falling-away so soon as " the boon " has been appropriated, and the strain falls on other and more critical questions of party principle. We would rather have had a smaller Liberal party of the tested and sifted kind, than a larger one made up of the remnants of the political world,—the odds and ends of poli- tical indifference who think more of their pockets than their belief. We would rather have had even a minority of the kind that an October dissolution might have given us, than a majority attributable to a promise which, once redeemed, will leave many of its adherents all but neutral as to the battles of the future. We are fully persuaded that Mr. Gladstone's proposal is in him, who has consistently deprecated the de- moralising temptations and the necessarily unjust incidence of the Income-tax, strictly conscientious. But we are not persuaded that it is either a good political precedent or that it will yield us a good House of Commons and a well-knit Liberal party. Weak-kneed Liberals have been quite numerous enough in a Parliament tested by the policy of " justice to Ireland." In a Parliament tested by no severer test than that of dislike to the most grievous of the taxes,. we fear that the hands that hang down and the feeble knees will soon be in a large majority amongst the hands and knees of the Liberal party.
Nor, again, can we feel any great enthusiasm for the financial boon itself which the Government offer us. For our- selves, we would much rather have seen Mr. Fawcett's sugges- tion adopted, that the annual income at which the taxpayer first becomes liable to the Income-tax should be greatly raised,—so that, for instance, only that part of a man's in- come exceeding £300 a year might be assessable,—while the tax itself, with an improved machinery of assessment, should. be retained as an invaluable financial instrument for the elastic adjustments of revenue to expenditure, and one which least of all disturbs the delicate organisation of commerce. We believe that experience has shown the Income-tax to be by far the least prejudicial means of making up a temporary deficit or raising a temporary supply. And we cannot attach all the importance that the Prime Minister attaches to the argument from its demoralising tendency. We are disposed to think that the taxpayers who defraud the revenue by their returns are not very likely to cherish a conscience void of offence in other matters. A priest prepared to absolve the utterer of a hundred falsehoods would hardly hesitate because a hundred and first of no greater heinous- ness had been raked up out of the past. And if the genu- inely struggling classes were to be exempted, the temptation to falsehood, as regards the really comfortable classes, could not be regarded as iniquitously strong. Financially we• are unable to hail Mr. Gladstone's unquestionably splendid boon with any hearty enthusiasm,—though we are as pro- foundly convinced as any one can be that the power to offer it is due to the financial capacity and constancy of the Govern- ment which actually offers it, and that a Government such as. that of 1866-68 would never have earned the chance of bestowing any boon so great.
But while we regret the dazzling character of the issue on which the constituencies will have to vote with eyes half blinded by the glare, and should greatly have preferred that questions of the adjustment of finance were kept out of appeals to the people, we repeat that the Government have acted wisely and boldly in declining to meet again a House of Commons in which their power was but weakness ; and we may add, that the Liberals who support the Government without any reference to the proffered boon, will have even stronger ground to stand upon, than those who are fascinated by the immediate prospect of reward. Think what we will of the remission of the Income-tax, it is unquestionably true that the policy which has rendered this great remission possible, which has procured us year after year of overflowing surplus, instead of year after year of oppressive deficit, is a great financial policy, and is Mr. Gladstone's. By what he did as Sir Robert Peel's lieu- tenant in 1842, by what he did on Ilia own account in 1853, and most of all, by the great and audacious financial revolution of 1860, Mr. Gladstone has developed the vast prosperity whose fruits Mr. Lowe has garnered in and sagaciously accumulated till we have the splendid results detailed in the Prime Minister's address to the people of Greenwich. Though we may disapprove, as we do, of the tempting use that is to be made of this accumulated national wealth, we cannot but approve with hearty admiration the financial genius and perseverance which now for the tenth time reckons up for us the great results. The total abolition of the Income- tax is not the best stroke by which to illustrate what has been achieved, but so far from its being too brilliant, it is really much too weak an illustration of the financial power and wisdom for which we have to thank the statesman who proposes it. Be it good or be it bad, it is a very inadequate measure of the millions and millions Mr. Gladstone's policy has saved and gained for the British nation.
For the rest, we could wish that the financial results of Mr. Gladstone's administration,—thoroughly great as they are,—were somewhat less prominent in the Prime Minister's address. The passage in the address devoted to Foreign policy is altogether too little, and indicates, we think, too
much sympathy with that advocacy of a self-containedto write hurried leaders on stately manifestoes, and the isolation which it is well known that Mr. Bright ap- ' art has served him, as it constantly serves Lord Salle- proves. What Mr. Gladstone says on this head is indeed bury, in right good stead. He strikes with a lighter hand perfectly defensible in itself, but it contemplates only our than Mr. Disraeli, and yet his strokes cut deeper. Mr. direct duties and claims, and appears to ignore altogether Disraeli hints that Mr. Gladstone has acted so rapidly, either those less direct international duties which we owe to to avoid the humbling confession that he has again violated the general brotherhood of European nations, and which the law by retaining a seat to which he is no longer entitled were at one time awkwardly and inefficiently summed —a mere absurdity, for Mr. Gladstone has done no act as up under the formula that it was our duty to maintain Member for Greenwich which he might not have done " the balance of power." " We desire to found the credit as a man outside Parliament, but Chancellor of the Ex- and influence of our foreign policy," says Mr. Glad- chequer—or to postpone the " reckoning for a war carried stone, " upon a resolution to ask from foreign Powers on without communication with Parliament, and the ex- nothing but what, in like circumstances, we should give penditure for which Parliament lias not sanctioned." Mr. ourselves, and as steadily to respect their rights as we Lowe, of course, makes no reference to the first point ; on would tenaciously uphold our own." Is that a form of the third, comment is unnecessary, unless Parliament is asked words which covers in any sense the duty, for instance, of for money, which will only be the case if Tories come helping to protect Europe against the tyrannical decrees of dic- in to swell the expenditure on the war by their inherent tatorial arrogance ? Is it possible to maintain that, were we our- proclivity to waste ; but on the second, Mr. Lowe answers selves in the position of an ambitious and overgrown power, such calmly and proudly that British territory had been invaded as that of France under Napoleon L, we should really grant the and British forts treacherously attacked, and we had no option, reasonable demands of less powerful military nations ? Yet if but "basely to fly or firmly to resist." Mr. Disraeli, on his own that be intrinsically absurd, does it not become evident that showing, would either have basely fled, or less basely but more Mr. Gladstone declines to contemplate the possible necessity of unconstitutionally have transferred her Majesty's Prerogative any foreign policy of the disinterested kind, even in the pre- of declaring peace or war, not to Parliament, but to Bence of serious danger from national dictatorships ? We should the House of Commons. The old rule was that a shot fired like to have seen traces not indeed of a fussy and meddlesome at her Majesty's flag should elicit a shot in return as surely disposition to interfere, but of a grave and deliberate con- as cause produces effect ; but Mr. Disraeli would alter that sciousness that we might have duties transcending those of the healthy system, without which men do not retain Empires, for defence of our own interests and honour, in Mr. Gladstone's a humble inquiry whether the House would in its grace sanc- address. A high and clear ground in relation to foreign policy tion the expenditure of the ninepence-halfpenny required. To
has not been the strong point of his Government. raise a loan or impose a tax requires Parliamentary authority,
But, on the whole, no sincere Liberal will doubt that Mr. but her Majesty with her Treasury full needs no previous Gladstone's appeal to the people of England ought to meet sanction for accidental departmental expenditure. That a with a grateful and cordial response. We do not think that the "little more energy is required in our foreign affairs" we freely Government which makes this appeal has been either faultless admit, but Mr. Disraeli's illustration is most unhappy, and Mr. in administration or on all subjects wide enough in its view. Lowe retorts accurately when he says weJ might in 1870, but But when we compare its work with either the small achieve- for Government, have been involved in a war with France ments or the high-sounding promises of its opponents, it is diffi- to guarantee the Saxon territories of Prussia, for it was Mr. cult for a thoughtful man to understand the attitude of hesita- Disraeli who in 1871 brought out that guarantee as a reason tion. Mr. Disraeli's claim on our gratitude is chiefly this,—that he why we should have threatened the then Emperor of the did the Liberals' work against the principles he had professed French unless he abstained from the war. The threat when he was denouncing that work. That is a sort of gratitude would not have turned Napoleon from his purpose, for he knew we do not wish to feel again. And all who think it true, as Mr. how unprepared we were, while it would have brought on us Gladstone puts it, that the forty-three years of Liberal govern- the indignant dislike of all politicians of France, which between ment have left the institutions of the country stronger in England andNorth Germany would have indeed lain throttled,— every way than it found them, while the previous forty years or rather, for England was at that time entirely German, the of Conservative government left them feeble, undermined, and Government would have threatened war, have stood ready for even tottering, should give him their hearty support. This war, and have then skulked away, being deserted by a people Government has been distinguished above all other Liberal which since Hanover was forfeited has always declined a war Governments for the honesty and earnestness with which it has neither popular nor needful. redeemed its pledges, instead of using them mainly as baits " But," says Mr. Disraeli, " though I have always en- to catch votes. It has been a steady and an upright and a deavoured, and will endeavour, to propose or support all Liberal Government, not a Conservative Government with a measures calculated to improve the condition of the people Liberal name, and has done more to gain for the people of the of this kingdom, I do not think this great end is advanced United Kingdom, some addition to that stock of human happi- by incessant and harassing legislation." Always, Mr. Disraeli? ness which, as Mr. Gladstone as truly as pathetically says, is Was it you, then, who supported Free Trade, or you who " never too abundant," than any Government of the present poured out such vials of vitriol on the mighty Tory who to generation. The genuine Liberals who see its shortcomings carry it dissociated himself from almost every friend, that best, will also see best its immeasurable superiority to anything the recollection of their effect is not lost even yet, either likely to replace it. If fidelity, gratitude, and trust are not by your enemies or your friends ? Is it you who never political virtues, as we are sometimes told, politics are no true " harass," or you who harassed your party in 1867 by de- field for the English character. If they are, as we believe they mending Revolution, till your best supporters quitted you, and are, Liberals will not desert the Government which has been the residuum, while obedient to Lord Derby's voice, cursed laboriously faithful to their instructions, and which has now so you as the Evil Genius of the Tory party ? Harassing legis- long been the target for a steady artillery fire of contempt and lation, forsooth I Do the two million tenants of Ireland
insult in their cause. think the Rent Law which secures them harassing, or the four
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