TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
PROFESSOR DICEY, in his admirable paper in the Contemporary Review for March, on " The Defence of the Union," very justly insists that the Unionist leaders must keep the question of the Union in the very front of the battle, and not allow subordinate questions of any kind, whether it be a Small Holdings Bill or an Irish Local Government Bill, or an Employers' Liability Bill, to distract the attention of the country from the one issue on which the next Election ought to turn, but on which the Gladstonians are most anxious to prevent it from really turning. No better commentary on this very wise advice could have been furnished than Sir William Harcourt's speech on Monday, on the very day on which Professor Dicey's paper appeared, in the skating-rink at Greenwich. Whether it was the genius loci which affected him or not, nothing was more remarkable in his very amusing and hilarious speech than the adroitness with which he skated over the thin ice of the main political issue, and delighted his hearers with all sorts of boisterous jokes and boastings on almost every conceivable subject which was quite irrelevant to that issue. He made much of what he called the defeat of the Government on an insignificant private Bill, the Tramways Bill ; he was jubilant over Mr. Chamberlain for what he called his bad leadership of the Liberal Unionists, and over Mr. Balfour for the unmanageable attitude of many of his supporters, though he brought no evidence on either point, except Mr. Chamberlain's perfectly right and proper course in giving his own vote for the Welsh Disestablishment reso- lution which so many other Liberal Unionists opposed, and Mr. Balfour's perfectly right and proper course in insisting on the safeguards of the Irish Local Government Bill, which it was his positive duty as the Unionist leader to do. Of course it was quite right for Mr. Chamberlain to vote without speaking for a resolution which he himself approved, but which, as he knew, divided the Unionists, seeing that he thinks the question of the 'Union far more urgent and weighty at the present day than the question of religious Establishments. Sir William Harcourt would, of course, have preferred to be able to taunt Mr. Chamberlain either with deserting a cause he honestly approves, or with spreading dismay among the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists by using his public influence in active hostility to a Church Establishment which they earnestly desire to sustain. He did neither. He gave his own individual vote for the policy he had always supported, but he declined to put himself in ostentatious opposition to allies with whom he is at present much more closely identified than he is with those who wish to liberate religion " from State patronage and control." That was precisely what Sir William Harcourt did not like. He had hoped that Mr. Chamberlain would needlessly detract from his own personal influence as leader of the Liberal Unionists ; and as Mr. Chamberlain did nothing of the kind, he was forced to make-believe very much that there was some food for merriment where there was no such food at all. It was the same in Mr. Balfour's case. He had introduced a Local Government Bill forIreland which immensely extends the local powers and liberties of the Irish people, but which provides the sort of safeguards against the abuse of those powers and liberties which a Unionist Government, just because it is a Unionist Government, is bound by all its pledges and all its traditions not to neglect. Sir William Harcourt would have been much better pleased if Mr. Balfour had either neglected these safeguards, and so offended the whole Unionist Party, or had so exaggerated them as to make his Bill ridiculous. He did neither, and again Sir William Harcourt was mortified, for he did not like the emphasis with which Mr. Balfour insisted on guarantees for the Union,- in the very measure in which, as Sir William Harcourt hoped, he might have been induced to forget the manifold dangers to which tumultuous county assemblies in Ireland might expose the numerical minority of the Irish people. As Mr. Balfour was much too cautious to make such a mistake, and as he intimated plainly enough that, much as he desired to give large local liberties, he did not desire it half as much as he desired to protect Irishmen against oppression and exaction, Sir William Harcourt spoke of him as having himself attempted the life of his innocent offspring at the very moment of its birth. Of course the Greenwich audience was enraptured at the phrase. but none the less Sir William Harcourt was really publishing to the world, just what the Unionists wish him to publish to the world, that the present Government• regards the question of the Union as paramount to all others, and earnestly as they desire to extend popular- liberties, will do so only under reserves which secure them against any sacrifice of the more important end. When a leader of Opposition is compelled to enlarge on minute- technical errors like the mistake as to the proper mode of introducing a measure the financial aspects of which were a little dubious, or on the question whether or not the Government should have left the protection of school buildings and school furniture against unruly public meetings to a private Member, he shows how very anxious. he is to avoid the great issue of the hour. Sir William Harcourt's Greenwich speech is from beginning to end the- speech of a man who wished to throw dust into the eyes: of the constituencies,—the speech of the same man who,. when challenged by the Irish Party to say what he meant by Home-rule, went home to dinner, and took care not to return till the division-bell rang.
Indeed, the attempt which Sir William Harcourt made to• show that the Unionist Government and Party are rapidly dissolving themselves, can hardly have succeeded in con- vincing even his Greenwich audience. The Government.
have not only opened the Session very well, but they have- gained rather than lost in the country since the opening of the Session. Mr. Sexton's amendment to the Address, the feeble speeches which supported it, the vigorous speech from Mr. Redmond, in which its significance was challenged, and Sir William Harcourt's conspicuous absence from his place- at the critical moment, brought the weakness and crooked' policy of the Home-rule Party into full relief. The Irish Local Government Bill has shown that the Govern- ment do not abandon one iota of their care for the cause of justice and tranquillity in Ireland, in spite of their determination to fulfil their pledges to the country._ The Small Holdings Bill has earned general applause. And the Irish Education Bill, though it has apparently hurt• the amour propre of the Roman Catholic Episcopate, who- are conscious of not valuing education quite as they ought,. and are yet ashamed of the feeling and angry with them- selves for feeling it, has been very well received by the Irish laity. As for the inadequate attendance of Con- servative Members, no importance attaches to it at all in the last Session of a Parliament which has so exhausted the patience of many of its Members that they do. not intend to offer themselves for re-election. The snatch-votes and the attenuated majorities produce no. impression on the country, which perfectly well knows that the appeal from Parliament to the constituencies is near at hand. The contrast between Ireland in 1886 and Ireland now, speaks volumes for the policy of the Govern- ment ; and the combined prudence and popularity of the other and less important measures of the Government recommend them to all Conservatives of the popular type.. We cannot count with any confidence on winning the General Election, but we can count with the utmost con- fidence on not suffering any great disaster, on bringing up a Unionist Party so large, that even if we do not win, the day, Mr. Gladstone will gain no effectual and decisive victory. The two great popular parties are nearly even, and it will take much more than a bare Gladstonian victory to render it possible for Mr. Gladstone to reconcile his party either to an Irish measure which mortifies Irish- men, or to one which alarms and disgusts Englishmen_ After all, a sufficient victory for the Government is far from unlikely, for the Government would find a majority, ample for their policy of perseverance, which would be ridiculously inadequate for Mr. Gladstone's policy of revo- lution. The country is not craving for sensation. And it is Mr. Gladstone's misfortune that if he wins the Election,. he will be compelled either to give the Irish Party a cold douche which would annihilate his majority, or to give his English followers a shock which would be at once humi- liating and overwhelming when it came to explaining to- the constituencies how the modest policy which had been described on a thousand country platforms as perfectly safe and insignificant, really meant putting Irish injustice beyond the jurisdiction of the Imperial Parliament, and fomenting a civil war in Ireland which would plunge Great Britain into paroxysms of grief and shame.
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