THE EAST-LOTHIAN ELECTION.
SINCE Monday, much ingenuity has been displayed, both in Scotland and here, in explaining the fact that on that day Lord Elcho who is a follower of Lord Salisbury, but an advanced Land Elcho, polled 92 votes more in East Lothian than Mr. Finlay, who is a follower of Mr. Gladstone, but con- siders the present relationship between Church and State in Scotland as "beneficial." We are told that Lord Elcho was personally popular, though politically unenlightened, and that his father's tenants, finding him as ready as his opponent to give them "compulsory compensation for nnexhausted improvements, where they have added to the letting value of the farm," saw no reason why they should take advantage of the ballot to desert the Wemyss family. Then, it is contended that Mr. Finlay was the right man, but in the wrong place ; that the Liberal managers in East Lothian should have secured a candidate pledged, like Mr. Craig Seller, the Member for the Haddington Burghs, or Mr. Buchanan, who, at the last general election polled in East Lothian, on a smaller register, 25 votes more than did Mr. Finlay on Monday, not to oppose Scotch Disestablish- meat in Parliament. Finally, we are told that the election was decided not by general, but by local questions • that Mr. Finlay was beaten not on Church or Land, but on trawling. But one fact we have not seen any adequate attempt to explain,—that not far from 200 electors did not exercise their rights on Monday, that Lord Elcho's poll was within some 50 votes of a bare majority of the consti- tuency. It is vehemently contended that the Dissenters who abstained from voting for Mr. Finlay were the merest handful, and we sincerely trust that this is the case. Nowhere have we seen the number of these abstainers—or " abstentionists," as they prefer to style themselves—placed at a higher figure than 25, or the difference between Mr. Buchanan's poll in 1880 and Mr. Finlay's on Monday. How are the remaining 170 or so, who did not go to the poll, to be accounted for, as the contest was long and unprecedentedly keen, and desperate efforts, unknown at an ordinary election, were made on both sides to beat-up recruits. However this fact be explained, it must be reckoned as the one consoling fact for Liberals in connection with the East-Lothian election. There is every reason to believe that Lord Elcho's poll of 492 represents the fighting strength of his party in the county, Its advance of twenty- three on his father's vote in 1889 seems to be adequately ex- plained by the natural growth of the constituency and of Con- servatism in it,—not to speak of the "unearned increment" of faggot-votes or fictitious residenters. Even, therefore, if the County Franchise Act were not pasted before another election, there is a sufficiently unpolled and presumably con- querable element in Haddingtonshire to turn the scale in favour of a good Liberal candidate.
As it stands, however, the East-Lothian Election means that in Scotland parties are practically agreed as to Land Reform, and that if the Liberal supremacy is to be maintained at the next
general election, a modus vivendi must be established between- the followers of Mr. Gladstone who are without and those-- who are within the Kirk. So far as profession goes, Lord-. Elcho is virtually in line with the various bodies representative - of the agricultural interest that this week have agreed to- unite on Compensation for Improvements. It may be said that in Parliament Lord Elcho will forget his East-Lothian creed, and vote as English Conservatives do. But for one- thing, it is by no means certain that English Conservatives- will not prove as Radical as the Farmers' Alliance itself on -
the subject of Tenant-right. Even if they are not, Lord' Elcho will not vote with them. The history of the abolition of agricultural hypothec, which was the leading Scotch tenant's • question, before Compensation for Improvements became his-
cry, should not be forgotten. Conservative Members and- candidates in Scotland opposed it, as long as they could.. At last they were educated up to the acceptance of aboli- tion by a series of disasters at the poll. The Scotch- Conservatives who were returned at the general election of 1874 were to a man pledged to abolition. They were certainly dilatory in keeping their pledges, but in the long-run they did, keep them, in spite of the opposition of their English brethren,. who endeavoured—somewhat languidly, it must be admitted— to raise the cry of "The Law of Distress in danger !" As it was after 1874, so it will be now. If tenant-right in some form-- becomes, as it evidently will become, a leading Parliamentary- question in the Session that is about to commence, Lord Elcho'- will be asked to keep the promises he made in East Lothian., —and he will keep them. In respect of the general lines of' legislation, the land question in the Lowlands of Scotland - —the land question in the Highlands is a very different- thing—is as good as settled, at all events until the County- Franchise Bill is passed, and it be ascertained what the- agricultural labourer has to say for himself.
There is manifestly a sad want of light, and still more of leading, in regard to the Church question, in the Scotch- Liberal camp, at the present moment. We think the Dissenters who on Monday abstained from voting for Mr. Finlay, and so reduced his poll, made a decided, if not a grave mistake, even from their own Disestablishment point of view. Mr. Finlay- is a sound Liberal and a capable politician, and in every way- a man worth returning to Parliament. His very firmness irk- declining to vote for Disestablishment is promising ; he who' declines to yield to pressure, may yield to suasion. From- the stand-point of the practical politician, too, his position- is unassailable. The question of Scottish Disestablishment cannot and ought not to be dealt with, till the passing of the- County Franchise Bill gives an opportunity for eliciting the- opinion of those persons most interested in the Kirk. On the other hand, the Scotch Disestablishers deserve all respect and consideration,—such respect and consideration as they have- obtained from Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington. The United Presbyterian Church, the third most important religious body in Scotland, is distinctly and openly Voluntary, and therefore. cannotfail to support and agitate for Disestablishment. The Free Church has thrown itself into the movement, accepting- - the Patronage Abolition Act of 1874 as a challenge to it to assail the Kirk. It may have abandoned its original ecclesias- tical principles in doing so, but there is no doubt as to the fact... The vote for Disestablishment at the last meeting of the Free Church Assembly was 472, as against a total of 158 in favour of other proposals for letting the Kilk alone and delaying _ the assault on it. It is perfectly idle to describe a movement so supported in a democratic Church as a merely "clerical one. No just Churchman in Scotland denies that the Free and United Presbyterian Churches between them contain a large portion of the earnest religious feeling, industry, and respectability of the country. No just Liberal denies that their movement—though it may be premature, and politically- a mistake—is in the direction of that complete religious. equality which he accepts as one of his ideals.
The conduct of the particular Disestablishers in East Lothian' - who on Monday abstained from voting for Mr. Finlay, thougle much to be regretted, is not inexplicable. Rightly or wrongly, they think the Disestablishment question the most important a purely Scotch problems at the present time. They are bent on. • educating Scotch Members and candidates for Parliament upta- their standpoint, and they have so far succeeded, that they claim- such representatives of official Scotch Liberalism as the Lord- Advocate and Mr. Craig Sellar as converts. They were bitterly'-- disappointed that there should have been chosen as Liberal., candidate for East Lothian a politician who, from their point of view, is reactionary, as compared with the candidate of, 1880. They justify their abstention finally on the ground that Monday's election was only a bye one, with which the fate of Mr. Gladstone or the Liberal Party, was not bound up. We believe that they have acted wrongly, but we also believe that they have acted on principle ; and that. Mr. Glad- stone and Lord Hartington would be the first to admit this. Yet during the course of the election they have been told almost daily by the influential Edinburgh journal whose exertions in the interests of its party are marked by zeal rather than sweet reasonableness, that they are "busy- bodies," "dictators," and " crotcheteers." "If half-a-dozen men in East Lothian may compel the Liberal Party to declare as a whole for Disestablishment, why may not half-a-dozen anti-vaccinators in any other place compel the Liberal Party to declare against vaccination? What "ism' is there that under such a proposition would not have to be made an article of Liberal faith As if Disestablishment could, from the Liberal point of view, be placed on the same platform as anti-vaccination ! As if a movement which at bottom is one for the establish- ment of religious equality could be dismissed as an Writing like this, though it may be meant to support the Liberal cause, is calculated to do more harm than a score of Noncon- formist " abstentions " to a Liberal candidate, even to so courteous and fair-minded a candidate as Mr. Finlay. For it means, not of course in intention, but in effect, the substitu- tion of a Tory policy of exasperation for a Whig policy of opportunism and conciliation.
If such a policy is persisted in if Liberal Dissenters and Liberal Churchmen are set by the ears, nothing but party mischief, if not disaster, will be the result. We do not, indeed, believe that the Nonconformists of Scotland would, in the event of Mr. Gladstone's having soon to appeal to the country on any fundamental question of Liberal policy, insist on sacri- ficing him and it to Disestablishment. But they might not be so loyal to any other leader. Above all, they clearly do not consider themselves bound to postpone the national consideration of the question they have so much at heart, sine die. It seems reasonable, however, that they should defer the formal raising of it until after the passing of the County Franchise Act, on the distinct understanding that then the issue shall not be shirked. Such, at least, seems to be the idea of Mr. .Asher, the Scotch Solicitor-General, as indicated on Tuesday in a speech to his constituents of the Elgin Burghs,—a speech which, from its candour and freshness, is indicative of something more like a reserve force in Scotch politics than anything we have read for a long time. Is it not possible for a truce to be established between Liberal Dissenters and Liberal Churchmen, on some such terms and for some such period as have been suggested ? Here is an achievement worthy of and open to Lord Rosebery, the most popular and conciliatory of Scotch Liberals,—one, too, which would make him Minister for Scotland in an incomparably higher sense than the departmental one.
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