THE GROWING HEAT OF THE CONTEST.
THE political fight is waxing hotter. The striking scene of Monday night, during which Mr. Morley accused Mr. Balfour, a man " whose phylacteries were always so broad," of " pitiful mano3uvres," and Mr. Balfour replied that his personal respect for his opponent was a thing of the past, shows how high the temperature is rising. If there are men in the House intellectually competent to understand each other, they are Mr. Balfour and Mr. Morley ; yet even they find the struggle not to swear aloud almost too severe. The language of Sir William Harcourt also marks the thermometer, for though the counsel for the plaintiff is always allowed a certain license of speech, the Member for Derby is now using it with a will which is not professional ; and so, above all, does the vituperation into which Mr. Gladstone has recently allowed himself to be betrayed. Playfulness has gone out of the great master of that ornament of debate. That friends of the Parnellite Party should grow bitter over trials under the Crimes Act, was to be expected ; but the savagery of the new tone is not confined to those discussions. The strongest things recently said have been spoken about a question of mere administrative detail, the right of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to have an Under-Secretary to help him. It is the policy of the Home-rulers to make government in Ireland impossible until Home-rule is con- ceded, and one of their methods is to worry the Chief Secretary into resignation by incessant and often most in- sulting questions, intended, as Mr. Morley avowed, not to elicit information, but to enable the Irish Members to " criticise " Irish administration. The answers to these questions, not one of which would be asked if a Home-rule Ministry were in power, are almost a business in them- selves, and Mr. Balfour thinks he may as well delegate the usually useless toil to a subordinate. He has selected Colonel King-Harman for the office, and the selection, in many respects a bad one, may be justified on the plea that no man not born with a fighting instinct would occupy the position. The Parnellites, of course, are irritated to see their prey escape, and with their English allies try to raise a question of purely administrative detail into one of constitutional importance, and even of personal character. They accuse Mr. Balfour of falsehood because he once said he would ask no salary for an Under-Secretary, and do not see that even if he made a promise, he made it to the very House which he is now requesting to release him. It is said on every hand that there is another motive for the new fury. The Home-rulers find, to their intense disappointment—a disappointment well reflected in Mr. Stansfeld's savage outburst against the Unionists at Mrs. Hancock's reception on Saturday—that the Unionists cannot be induced to postpone the safety of the Union to any other cause. They therefore see no advantage in the appearance of forbearance with which the Session opened, and intend to " show fight " upon every practicable occasion. In particular, they intend to obstruct the only great measure of the year, the County Govern- ment Bill, by debating every clause at length, by proposing hundreds of amendments—they have 217 upon the paper already—and by introducing new schemes to give powers to take land, intended to conciliate the labourers. They think that in this way, aided as they will be by the secret feeling of the country gentlemen, they will be able to talk out the Bill, and then to say that the Government, having failed to carry its only measure, is incompetent to govern. They will not, we think, succeed. The object of attack is, it is true, re- markably well chosen, for the Bill is a great Bill, its clauses are some of them of grave importance, and if government by deliberation is to go on, there must be time allowed for adequate debate. The very greatness of the Bill, the completeness of the change it involves, invites comment from a hundred points of view. Moreover, as we have said, the Bill excites within the House little enthu- siasm, the county Members thinking they could bear to be first in their counties for a little longer, and the borough Members not seeing how the Bill affects their seats. Nevertheless, it is more than possible the Opposition are making a mistake. The Government, in the first place, must pass the Bill, even if they have to endure the worry of an autumn Session ; for if they do not, they will be accused of a secret disinclination towards their own work, and of being at heart " Old Tories after all." The county constituencies are looking forward to the Bill with an interest not without a touch of malice against the county magnates, and the Unionists heartily desire it, as proof at once positive and visible that Lord Salisbury's Government is not influenced by any distrust of the people. The county economists, too, the men who are always making a grand grievance of rates, are heartily in favour of the Bill, not only because it is accompanied by large concessions from the Treasury, but because they think, being sanguine persons, that they can enforce a still more effective economy. The only effect of obstruction, therefore, after a certain period of debate, will be to thrust forward Mr. Smith with his inexorable Closure, and the effect of that, when the country is wearied, is not precisely what the extreme Radicals believe. They imagine that the electors resent the Closure, looking on it as a tyrannical expedient to silence the minority ; but they mistake the temper of democracy. Great masses of men prefer action to debate, and are no more irritated by the Closure than a crowd in Hyde Park is irritated by its inability to hear the resolutions it is supposed to pass. The Closure, when a certain time has elapsed, is regarded as a proof of energy, and any discredit attaching to its use is carried to the debit of the party which has, by deliberate over- talldng, made that use unavoidable. This judgment may often be unjust,—nay, occasionally it must be unjust ; but it is the judgment of the people, who, though willing to be instructed by their leaders, are not thirsty for much talk from little men, and who, even when furious with the Upper House, have never once complained of the rapidity with which the Peers get through their work. The people, in fact, desire the House of Commons to be efficient, and though they by no means consider silence evidence of efficiency, they tolerate silence if only in silence can business be done.
Very little, we are sure, will accrue to the Opposition from obstructive fighting, and still less from making the fight so very bitter. We do not mean that the use of needlessly strong language alienates the populace. We wish it did, and that the speakers were compelled by their opinion to manifest temper in restrained, and therefore effective, literary form ; but we fear that with the people strong language is considered only plain. It is true that in an industrial establishment the employer must not swear at his hands, while a foreman may ; but that is only one of our innumerable etiquettes of caste. The people do not quarrel with counsel for their affected insolence, and do not quit a meeting-hall because a speaker loses control of his intellectual temper. But then, on the other hand, they are not impressed by violence, they admire intel- lectual calm—his impassiveness was one secret of Lord Beaconsfield's charm—and they feel, without quite under- standing, the disgust entertained by the cultivated for all kinds of verbal rowdyism. Sir William Harcourt will gain nothing, therefore, by talking of the brutality and oppressiveness of the Judges, any more than O'Connell gained by describing the Whigs as base, bloody, and brutal. The Whigs were not hurt by the epithets, or O'Connell made more popular. The people, unfortunately or fortunately, cannot be moved by swearing, whether openly profane or artistically clothed in words, and the only effect of resorting to the practice is to lower the general estimate of the men who enter the House of Commons. That is pure evil for the country, which benefited immensely by the decaying belief that it was an honour to sit in that assembly ; but the effect of the evil falls upon the com- munity, and not upon either party alone. It would be well if the leaders discouraged rowdyism, because the decadence of the greatest of Parliaments will be unfavourable to popular government, and will be quoted by historians as striking evidence of decaying vigour in the community; but it hurts the Unionists who suffer from it no more than the Radicals who defend it. Pepper is only pepper, after all, and its use in improper quantities only lowers the quality of the viands, not their digestibility.
Previous page
