LORD ROSEBERY ON LIBERAL RECON- CILIATION.
-LORD ROSEBERY'S kindly little speech on Wednes- day in Edinburgh, indulged in a hope which is, in our opinion, over-sanguine, as to the early reunion of the Liberal Party. His reasons for this hope are three,—first, that the split, though running very deep in relation to the constitutional dangers and duties of the crisis, is a split as to political expediency rather than as to political morality. " The question between us now," he said, " is not a question of morals, but a question of expediency, of arrangement,—expediency of government based to some extent on history, but, so far as the people of this country is concerned, not on morals. It is a question, if I may put it in a word, of politics, not of ethics." His second reason is that, at all events as far as Scotch Liberals are concerned, their sympathy with each other as to the spirit in which political matters ought to be considered is so deep, that no difference of view on any particular subject can permanently alienate Liberals from Liberals, And the third reason is that, in Lord Rosebery's opinion, the next General Election must settle the Irish question for this generation. We fear we cannot agree in any one of his three reasons for hope. As to the first and deepest of them, we hold that the sympathy which Mr. Gladstone has given, and has given in more generous measure as the years have rolled or, to the moral methods of his Parnellite allies, the boycotting and the " Plan of Campaign " especially, has made the split with the Liberal Unionists a far deeper one in regard to political morality than any merely political difference of estimate as to constitutional expediency could possibly have been. Home-rule might have been doubtless limited to a question of political expediency, but, as a matter of fact, it was not ; and Mr. Gladstone, in leading his followers into the moral camp of his new allies, has committed them to a species of moral and political anti- nomianism which seems to us more fatal to re-union than any divergence upon the constitutional issue, deep and far-reach- ing as it was, could alone have caused. The new doctrine seems to the Liberal Unionists to be in effect this, that the end justifies the means, whatever the means may be. And a doctrine more fatal to reconciliation we cannot imagine. We are well aware that all the Gladstonians have not followed Mr. Gladstone into his pleas for boycotting and the " Plan of Canipaign," still less into his eulogy on Mr. Parnell's agitation as having positively saved Ireland from that intensity of criminal disturbance which would have been otherwise probable. But though they have not imitated Mr. Gladstone's characteristically headlong course on this subject, they have never uttered a word of protest against it, and are virtually committed to what their leaders have said without eliciting any remonstrance from them. Hence we fear that we cannot at all agree with Lord Rosebery, that the ground of difference is only one of expediency, and not one of morality.
As to the second reason for Lord Rosebery's hope, so far as it relies on the specially strong sympathy which all Scotch Liberals feel for the Liberal attitude of mind as manifested even by those who on certain specific points differ from them, we are not so well qualified as Lord Rosebery to speak, not being profoundly conversant with the peculiarities of Scotch Liberalism. But we may point out that while Liberalism and Conservatism differed essen- tially in this, that the Liberal was in general sympathy with all genuinely popular sentiments, and the Conservative only in sympathy with what might be called the exclusive sentiments of the well-to-do classes, there was a great deal more to be said for Lord Rosebery's view than there is now, when both Liberal and Conservative found them- selves absolutely on popular sentiment, and when the only distinction is between the kind of popular sentiment which appeals to the desire for novelty and experiment and what may be called audacity of hope, and the kind of popular sentiment which appeals to the love of customary habits, the dread of change for the sake of change, and the anticipation of evil. Both kinds of popular sentiment really exist, and really exist not merely in hundreds of thousands, but in millions of hearts ; and the only difference now between the Liberal and the Con- servative is a difference between the proportions in which these elements are mixed,—the love of novelty, the hopeful- ness, and the courage being a little stronger in the Liberal, though these are qualified by love of custom and by dread of arbitrary change ; while the love of the habitual and the suspicion of arbitrary change are a little stronger in the Conservative, though even he is eager for a new experiment now and then, and will sometimes take a sanguine view of the popular advantage to be derived from a sturdy and courageous policy. Lord Rosebery, however, must not conceal from himself that the recent enlargement of the suffrage has very gravely modified the Conservative habit of mind towards experiments supposed to be made in the interests of the people. It is no longer true, as it was a few years ago, that the sympathy of Liberals with popular movements constitutes so specific and distinctive a characteristic of their party that they cannot help co-operating with each other, to the exclusion of the Con- servatives. On the contrary, the Conservatives of the present day are eager for any change which holds out a sober and rational hope of a great improvement in the general condition of the people. Least of all can we agree with Lord Rosebery's view that the next General Election, in whatever way it results, will settle the Irish Question for this generation. If he really hopes for this result, he would at least do well to spur on Mr. Gladstone to an early and explicit declaration of his intentions as to the form of the next Irish Home-rule measure; for of this we are perfectly confident, that unless Mr. Gladstone's plans are frankly laid before the con- stituencies, not only before the General Election, but a good time before it, so that there may be plenty of time for a thorough discussion of them throughout the country before the dissolution comes, the General Election cannot possibly settle the question, unless it goes decisively against Mr. Gladstone. It appears to us certain that if Mr. Gladstone's next Home-rule Bill is not disclosed till just before the General Election, it cannot even be adequately apprehended by the people till the next Parliament meets, and certainly cannot be taken as having been voted upon at the General Election. There should be a year's clear notice at least of what Mr. Gladstone intends to propose, if there is to be the faintest hope of the vote of the con- stituencies settling the question for this generation. But even if Mr. Gladstone announces this summer what his plan is to be, and even if it should be fully and fairly discussed for a year or a year and a half before the General Election takes place, we feel very little hope that the decision of the electorate, in whatever sense that decision may be, can be final. First let us suppose that it is favourable to the Liberal Unionists. In that case, of course, we should be most desirous to think that Lord Rosebery would have it in his power to verify his own prediction. But would he have it in his power to verify his own prediction ? With all the good-will in the world, we do not see that he would be able to overrule such colleagues as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. John Morley, who have nailed their colours to the mast, and would be the very last to admit, in Lord. Rosebery's language, that this is an issue of political expediency and not one of political morality. Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be in a state of mind to maintain that " Thou shalt not refuse Home-rule " is more or less involved in the Eighth and Tenth Commandments, and that any one who does refuse Home-rule to his neighbour is more or less guilty of stealing, and of coveting what is another man's and not his own. Mr. John Morley is too decided a utilitarian in his ethics to take ground so absolute as that, but he is almost as resolute in his practical determination to have his own way on the Irish Question. And the local Liberal lieutenants are, it must be remembered, very deeply pledged to the intrinsic equity of Irish Home-rule, and would feel profoundly humiliated by being required to give up the agitation only because the country had con- demned it. We do not say that Lord Rosebery, if he is resolute, could not carry a fair portion of his party with him in the advocacy of such a course ; but he would leave the most considerable of the chiefs behind him, and a not inconsiderable number of the local lieutenants. The result would be, therefore, not a healing of the split in the. Liberal Party, but a new decomposition and a new combination of the elements. We should have a union between Lord Hartington and Lord Rosebery and all the moderates, and a party of pro-Irish irreconcilables, headed by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. John Morley and followed by perhaps half the Liberal Associations in the Kingdom. If, on the other hand, the decision of the constituencies went decisively for Home-rule, we do not see how the Liberal Unionists could by any possibility be reabsorbed. Their duty would be to submit for the time, if Mr. Gladstone had really published his constitutional proposal in good time for a thorough discussion before the General Election took place. But it would be equally their duty to stick vigilantly to their principle that the new arrangement must disorganise the United Kingdom, and to point out all the dangers involved in it as they arose. That duty would be quite inconsistent with falling back into the ranks of the Gladstonian Party and strongly supporting a policy in Ireland which Liberal Unionists believe to be at once impolitic and unjust. Look at the matter as we will, we can see hardly the smallest possible chance of such a reconciliation between all the sections of the Liberal Party as Lord Rosebery, in his sanguine mood, foresees.
Previous page
