TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE OPENING OF THE SESSION.
FIRST nights are generally a little unreal, except when country gentlemen flock to Westminster with -feverish cattle on the brain. Certainly the skirmishes in the debates on the Address on Thursday night were not of this down- right and matter-of-fact character, and neither Lord Derby nor Mr. Disraeli threw much tone of real business into their attacks. They insisted chiefly on points of foreign policy which have lost their interest, and were ex- ceedingly cautious in relation to those which are likely to attract the attention of the country, during the
coming Session. Of the references to the Central-Asian question we speak elsewhere. With regard to the American Arbitrations, the criticisms in both Houses were as unpleasant as it was possible for Opposition critics—who did not mean serious fighting, and who were perfectly aware that by their own acts or those of one of their chief colleagues they were pretty thoroughly tarred with the same brush as the Govern- ment,—to make them. The only purpose of the Opposition was to undermine further the reputation of the Government in relation to Foreign Policy,-that in case any serious mistake should be committed in that or any other department of policy, there may be the less strength to fall back upon. The Opposition speeches, in their elaborate and rather tedious criticisms of the American Arbitration policy, only established thus much,—that the Administration, languid as usual in relation to foreign questions that are not of the first urgency, has really never taken into consideration its undertaking to recommend those famous "Three Rules "—rules for the guid- ance of maritime neutrals in time of war—which were agreed upon between Great Britain and the United States at Wash- ington, to the attention of foreign nations, and has, there- fore, not approached the question of the particular inter- national interpretation of these three rules which it
desires. Mr. Gladstone had thought so little on the matter, that he made the mistake of saying in his speech, what he had subsequently to correct, that these rules had been recommended to the attention of the allied European Governments, though without any explanation on our part as to the construction we desire to have put upon them, and that we had as yet received no definite reply. At the close of the debate the Prime Minister corrected himself, and explained that the invitation to allied Powers to adhere to the three rules had never been sent, the discussion as to the Indirect Claims having interrupted the regular course of procedure on this point, and that it had not been thought that the time had yet arrived for resuming the subject. From that we argue that Mr. Gladstone's mind, and indeed the mind of the Government, has been recently quite a blank on the subject of these rules which we stand committed to recommend to other Governments, and that till Mr. Dis- raeli delivered his criticism, they had well nigh forgotten that we must make up our mind what interpretation,—whether that of the Arbitrators or that of our own legal advisers,—
we ought to affix to those rules. No doubt it will and must be the latter, the Arbitrators having interpreted "due diligence," as we always contended, in a most impracticable and non-natural sense. But no doubt the exposure of the Govern- ment's want of interest in so important a matter did lay bare a really weak point in its armour. There is a blind point—a punctum caecum, as physiologists call a certain point in the eye where there is no vision—in the Adminis- tration, and it is to be found somewhere in the back- ground of the Foreign Office. Such a question as this ought not to have been left to a chance debate to bring before the attention of the Government. For the rest, it cannot be said that Lord Derby, and Lord Cairns, and Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gathorne Hardy made any point in their own favour. Lord Selborne remarked justly enough that if the Arbitrators had got any idea,— and he was not sure they had not,—that Great Britain expected and rather wished to be condemned at Geneva in relation to the escape of the Alabama, no one had done more to contribute to that notion than Lord Derby himself, who frankly stated in Parliament when he was Secretary for Foreign Affairs that he could not conceal from himself the probability that we might have to pay under the Arbitration he himself had sanctioned. The debate on the whole matter will probably be taken by the country as showing that both parties have been not a little languid in defending the British
view, and that if Lord Granville was more dilatory in the pre- liminary stages of the question than Lord Derby would have been, and more content to rest on his oars when the main. point had been decided, he was more adroit and peremptory at the critical moment, and got the 'Indirect Olaims quashed by a really great effort of diplomatic strength and skill. Still there is real danger in this inertness, this want of life during the quiet and monotonous stages of diplomatic questions, which seems to be characteristic of the Foreign Office just now, and the debates of the first night of the Session bring out this danger but too distinctly, The re-appearance of Mr. Dieraeli'w " Superior Person,"—Mr. Horsman,—on the stage as a sharp critic of the Government's Arbitration policy was a curious and somewhat pathetic feature of the debate- in the Commons,—reminding us of the re-appearance of Madame Dejazet on the stage. There was the old ease rhetoric, with a sense of decay in it., the old pleasantry, but with a new deprecatory air about it that seemed to say, "Please, smile," and the old disposition to choose the unten- able ground where tenable ground was open to him. It was a speech that brought upon one with new force that too, common feeling of the agedness of the world, its sad want of originality and habit of committing uninteresting plagiarisms. on itself.
Of course, the chief interest of the debates was the very slight hint thrown out as to the impending battle. Mr.. Disraeli clearly meant business when he said that it would be a great mortification to him to find that the Government's solution of the Irish University problem was likely to be "the sacrifice of a famous and learned University, in order to sub- stitute for it the mechanical mediocrity of an Examining- Board ;" as also when he characterised one of the paragraphs in the Speech from the Throne as savouring too much of the "vagrant rhetoric" of the Recess, and as ominous of a session, of "hurry-scurry debate and helter-skelter legislation." And again, he no doubt meant to foreshadow grave and fiercer opposition, when he closed his speech by saying that in his. opinion the Legislature never stood in more need of that blessing of Almighty God on its deliberations invoked in the Queen's. Speech, than at the present time. But hints of this kind, with a forward relation to the future operations of the Opposition, were exceedingly rare, and perhaps the extreme reticence of all parties is not the least ominous sign of a severe impending struggle. Men are evidently reserving themselves for Mr.. Gladstone's exposition of the Irish Universities Bill next Thursday. Till then neither the Dissenters nor the Tories will show their cards, or rather, will know what cards they have to show. That Mr. Vernon Harcourt will be as disagreeable- as he can, both his attack on the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his significant notice of motion for the 18th of February, that "the present rate of public expenditure is excessive, and that the House desires it should be diminished with a view to- the reduction of the Public Burdens," sufficiently show. But Mr. Vernon Harcourt always plays for his own hand, and his action is no index to the general state of mind of the disaffected members of the Liberal party.. We suspect that we shall have no light on their procedure till after the disclosure of the Irish Uni- versities' measure, and of the feeling of the constitu- encies in relation to it. If, then, there is a new eruption. of the anti-Catholic feeling, and the Nonconformists veer round into Opposition, the Government will have little chance of weathering the Session without a dissolution, and a dis- solution on such a crisis would not be very promising. But. if, as is likely enough, the feeling of the nation is one of a certain indifference towards Irish legislation, and of slight reaction against the strange martinetism of the German Liberals in relation to ecclesiastical affairs, above- all, if the friends of Disestablishment should regard the Irish Universities' measure as one demanding their support- on grounds of policy too grave for the intrusion of mere sectarian antipathies, we shall see Mr. Disraeli subsiding. into the " vagrant " criticism of former sessions, and no longer solemnly invoking the special care of Almighty God for the Legislature "in this unlooked-for crisis." As Mr. Glad- stone pleasantly remarked, the Irish University question is one on which both he and the Conservative leaders have im times sufficiently recent "burnt their fingers," and perhaps the old precept that "a burnt child dreads the fire" may be found sufficient to save both alike from the same sufferings, in spite of the necessity of undertaking certain delicate opera- tions which compel a very close approximation between the fingers and the fire.
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