MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S UNIONISM.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S fine defence of his Unionism on Tuesday at Birmingham in his address at the house dinner of the Ed gbaston Conservative Club, might have been pitched even a note higher without doing any injustice to his old Radicalism. The year in which his "old Radical days 's came to an end, and his Unionist days began, was the same as that in which the great democratic measure of household suffrage for the counties first came into operation. It was Mr. Gladstone's Govern- ment which passed that great measure, and of Mr. Glad- stone's Government Mr. Chamberlain was, in the early part of 1885, one of the chief figures. But at the end of 1885 Mr. Gladstone determined to use the measure which the Radicals had supported for the purpose of binding together more closely the various sections of the popula- tion of these islands, for a purpose which seemed to all Unionists,—though not to Mr. Gladstone himself,—to be one of disintegration. Mr. Gladstone maintained that it was only for a decentralising, and not for a disintegrating, purpose that he proposed breaking off Ireland into a separate and distinct political unit. But Mr. Chamberlain and all the Radical Unionists who held with him, saw that decentralisation of that kind must logically spread like wildfire till every partial element of racial sympathy became a new centre of active discontent. As Mr. Chamberlain said on Tuesday, the new Radicals "are never satisfied with making anybody happy now, unless they make some- body else unhappy. Their love for Home-rule is only surpassed by their hatred of the Protestant and British minority in Ulster. Their interest in temperance is con- ditional on their being able to ruin the publican. Their advocacy of compensation to workmen is tempered by their desire to do some injury to the employer. And even their love, their affection for the Parish Councils Bill is conditional on their hostility to the Church. I say that is not true Radicalism." True Radicalism, as Mr. Chamberlain, perhaps partly unconsciously, understood it in 1885, when household suffrage for the counties was first put in force, did not love household suffrage for the number of citizens whom it deprived of a special privilege, but for the number of citizens on whom it conferred a privilege to which they had vainly aspired before. True Radicalism aimed at cement- ing the ties between the people of the three King- doms, not at relaxing them. It aimed at stimulating national sympathies, not at stimulating sectional anti- pathies. And. it was aghast at finding that the first use Mr. Gladstone proposed to make of household suffrage was of the latter kind, which, under cover of the wish to gratify a national whim, really proposed to gratify still more lavishly an active group of national, and not only of national, but of clannish and sectarian, animosities. It became, then, a great question how the new and very powerful political weapon which the Democratic policy had forged, and put into our hands, was to be used in future. Was it to be used to scatter the various distinct elements of which the national life was composed, or to draw them more closely together ? Was it to be turned, in the very first place, into a powerful solvent, or into a potent cement ? Was it to stimulate centri- fugal forces, or the great force of national cohesion ? Was it to say to every little selfish political instinct in our Kingdom, Assert yourself freely,' or Submit willingly to the binding control of a new uniting force ' ? As it seems to us, the new Gladstonian Radicalism took the former line, the new Unionism the latter. And we see the result in the various and dismal consequences of the Newcastle programme. In Ireland, the new hatreds are avowedly stronger than the new ties. In England, we have the Government proposing to pull down the Scotch Establishment and the Welsh Establishment; attacking the producers of every form of alcohol as if they were enemies of the human race; hounding on the labourers against their employers ; holding out to the parishes the hope of seizing the old charities for a new purpose; and worst of all perhaps, throwing a wet-blanket on the popular ardour for new national enterprises and a stronger development of national life. The year 1885 was, in fact, the watershed between two quite different uses of the democratic principle,—the one in the interest of the jealousy felt by the masses against the classes, the other in the interest of the national unity and national inte- grity. In choosing the latter, Mr. Chamberlain chose, as we think, the nobler development of the democratic principle, while the Gladstonians chose the ignobler. But Mr. Chamberlain's Gladstonian opponents will ask how he reconciles it to himself to be working on the side of the party which is the great advocate of Establish- ments, and can feel no sympathy at all with that passion for religious equality of which at one time Mr. Chamber- lain was, of all our statesmen, the foremost advocate; and especially how he reconciles himself to this change of attitude without having even changed his mind as to the principle itself. Though we have no right and no pretension to speak for Mr. Chamberlain, it would be very easy, as we think, even from his point of view (which is not ours), to answer that question. He may fairly say that there is a time for everything, and that the time for striking a blow at a great institution which certainly represents a vast amount of the binding mortar of our national life, is not the time when every dis- integrating force is receiving new accessions of strength. On the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain may say that since the counties received household suffrage, even the structure of the Tory Party has been profoundly revolutionised. It is all very well to call it still the party of privilege ; but it has now become the organised representative of only those privileges which have a popular aspect, and which really minister to popular life and enjoyment. Consider only the rivalry between the two parties in relation to Local Government, in relation to Allotment-laws, in relation to the alleviation of the miseries of the poor, and it will be evident at once that all the poison of Tory principles has exhaled, and that the new democracy may be trusted to guard its own progressive interests in the popularisation of our social life. If there is less enthusiasm than there was for pulling down national Establishments of religion, is it not evident that that is in great measure due to the reluc- tance of the people to disturb hastily a great historical institution, which is more and more evincing a deep sym- pathy with the wants and aspirations of the people, at a time when there are plenty of other experimental changes of a more urgent kind, with which those wants and aspira- tions are closely identified ? The popular craving for equality, in the old Radical sense, is no longer half as vehement as it was. The people are beginning to realise that uniformity is no guarantee of happiness,— nay, rather a frequent spring of popular depression. At all events when democracy is permeating Toryism no less freely,—in some directions even more freely,—than Radicalism, there can be no hurry about determining the fate of a great national institution, the key of which is kept rigidly under national control, and the tone of which is becoming every day more and more popular. When all the chief efforts of the day are turning in the direction of alleviating the lot of the poor, it seems a work of super- erogation for the popular party to attack the one institu- tion which is doing as much to stimulate that movement as any other of which the nation can boast. If we want to stimulate all the various ties which bind the nation strongly together, there surely can be no wisdom in undermining the foundations of one of the oldest, most influential, and (in a good sense) most socialistic, of the historic institutions of the English people. If the Church is to be disestablished, it may be disestablished later on, when there is no longer a question as to the policy of breaking up the nation into four or half-a-dozen cantons. We are far from saying that this is Mr. Chamberlain's view. But we do say that if, retaining his old feeling of abstract disapproval of Establishments, as inconsistent with religious equality, he did nevertheless think this a singu- larly bad moment for pressing his view, he would, in our opinion, be all the better Unionist, and all the better patriot, for his reserve.
Previous page
