TOPICS OF THE DAY.
BOUNCE.
IS it from policy or as an indulgence that the Radicals everywhere, in conversation as well as in writing, are pouring out such a quantity of bounce ? Listening to them a stranger would believe that they were coming into power next week. They talk of " the Cecils" as if they were Catholics of Elizabeth's later years. The " family," they say, which misgoverns the Empire is rapidly being found out. Lord Salisbury is seen to be weak, Mr. Balfour has been proved to be too easy, Mr. Chamberlain is growing more and more fretful, the Cabinet never considers anything carefully, the party is disgusted and disaffected, all moral authority has departed from the Government, and we see already the beginning of the end. Defeated on the Education Bill, discredited by the Rating Bill, deserted on the Indian vote by the best of their own men, the Government only staggers on; the House of Commons is already out of hand ; and, most ominous sign of all, it is already necessary to avert deadly blows by threats of a dissolution, which would compel disheartened Unionists to explain themselves before disenchanted con- stituencies. Already, it is pointed out, the Times has fallen away from the Ministry ; the Church is almost hopeless of its future ; and even the Peers are muttering, though they have just received the sop of permanent Pro- tection for their herds. This Government is dying of incapacity. We do not in the least exaggerate the language of the Radical newspapers, Metropolitan or provincial, while Sir William Harcourt roars with delight, Mr. Morley chirrups with pleasure, and every little man who hopes to be big crows audibly with jubilant con- fidence over the " reaction which is not so much approaching as arrived." Only the Radical Premier is silent, and watches the tumult, one imagines, with slightly cynical if not derisive eyes.. What does it all mean ?
Looking out, for the time being, as mere observers without predisposition towards the Government or against the Opposition, we entirely fail to perceive sufficient reason for all this exultation. The -Government, no doubt, has suffered, and for a time will suffer, from being so unusually strong. Its chiefs, especially Mr. Balfour, have been a little careless, and have forgotten that a public meeting, whatever its component parts, always wants careful handling, while their followers have felt that with such a majority they could safely enjoy the double luxury of victory and independence. With a majority of only 50 they would have forced through the Education Bill, "in redemption of pledges," if they had sat till Christmas. With a majority of only 50 they would have used their knowledge of facts to make the necessity for the Rating Bill more clear, and have feared by silent voting or inept debating to have left—as they did—the argumentative victory to their foes. And with a majority of only 50 they would have rallied to a man behind their representa- tive on the Indian dispute, would have seen that the question was one for the Executive alone, and would have refused to abandon themselves to a generous but unfounded illusion. When Toryism is safe the luxury of indiscipline tempts even Tories, and the driving of the carriage has suffered because the horses have been a little too full at once of spirits and of corn. When heavy work is on hand it is the men who are a little depressed who get through it most steadily, and a Bill like the Education Bill, with a dozen Bills in its clauses, needed a depressed and rather frightened majority to force it, step by step, past the many obstacles in its way. We do not say that the Government tas made no mistakes. On the contrary, we think it was unwise in making its Education Bill a sort of code; we think Mr. Balfour has been too optimistic about the House of Commons, too forgetful that mere delay was almost of necessity his adversaries' game; and that all the leaders have been too indifferent to the careful explanation and defence of their very large proposals, a defect painfully manifest in regard to the perfectly sound Rating Bill, and in a less degree in regard to the disputable and dangerous question of the money for the Suakin expedi- tion. But we see nothing in any of the incidents which have occurred that in any way shakes the position of the Government, which is now, as it was at the be- ginning, supported by a phalanx which may not be, nay, is not, marching in perfect order, but which has not the slightest intention of giving a victory to its inferior foe.
To overthrow a Government supported by an immense majority there must be a kind of insurrection of opinion, an intimation from masses of constituents that they are disappointed or disgusted; and where is a movement of that kind to come from ? Sir William Harcourt thinks it will spring from discontent with the Rating Bill ; but no Bill palpably intended to relieve a class suffering from unmerited depression is ever sincerely disliked in England, especially at a time when the revenue is rising and the taxes are nearly or, if we confine the remark to the working classes, entirely unfelt. Grant that the Bill is a.
dole to the farmers, and what artisan will in consequence of it have half an ounce less of tobacco or any other luxury of his leisure ? Mr. Asquith believes in the Education Bill as a weapon, but that Bill has not been passed; and is not the real reason of its not passing this, that there was no bitter popular discontent with the old arrangement? The Bill, in our belief, was a good Bill, and would have produced a great improvement on the present system of State instruction, but can any Radical produce an instance in which the average voter has cared because some counsel of perfection has not been adopted ? The necessary point of the Bill, that which meets a grievance, the grant of an additional allowance to voluntary schools, will be passed, and when it is passed the very memory of the Bill of 1896 will glide into oblivion. The electors are not so much attracted as Mr. Asquith thinks by the dullest of all dull topics of social controversy. As for the Indian dispute, it is a question which interests the House of Commons, not the country, and though the House of Commons feels passing emotions. very keenly, it is not often governed in its action by any recollection of them. How often, since the great Plimsoll scene, has a vote been gained or lost by difference of opinion over the load-line ? A Government in this country is judged mainly at all events by three things,—by its willingness to remedy grievances, by its ability to govern, and by the acceptability of its Members as compared with the rival claimants for power. Now, on which of these three points has the Government evidently suffered in the opinion of the people ? On the second, all Radicals will tell us. They will admit that their men are not personally more popular than the leaders of their adversaries—indeed, their accepted leader is not as a political personage popular at all—and they will not deny that there is for the moment an unhealthy spirit of content and wish for rest among electors, but they will assert that the Government which was expected to be so strong has displayed inability to govern. Where ? In the House of Commons ? That, so far as it is true, affects the House of Commons not the constituencies, which, unfortunately, are patient of obstruction, rather amused by all-night sittings, and profoundly careless as to the method in which business is got through, whether it is transacted as it would be in the City, or whether Members are worn out by useless visits to the division-lobbies. We heartily wish it were not so, for obstructive Members and faddy Members would then suffer that penalty of oblivion which they so richly deserve, but long experience has convinced us that the country no more attends to the internal doings of the House of Commons than it attends to the internal doings of the Bank of England. It expects business to be done, and notes to be paid on demand, but as to how it is done, and whether clerks or directors sit up all night, the country does not care one straw. Is it in foreign affairs ? Nothing is going wrong in foreign affairs. The country agreed with a sort of sob of rage that it could not interfere by the sword in Armenia ; and since the breakdown in Armenia nothing has occurred which has really interested the people, who do not share Lord Rosebery's conviction that if a Russian railway reaches the Gulf of Pecheli the world will be set on fire. Is it in home legislation? Just tell us what legislation the average Briton who governs at the polls is just now thirsting for. Is it finance ? The Treasury is bursting with wealth, and the only tax which anybody even proposes to alter, the tea-duty, concerns only the women, who have no votes. "The cat-lap is cheap enough already," say the men. Is it in Colonial affairs ? Well we do not approve the policy as yet pursued in Rhodesia, which seems to us to need a master, but the people are only looking on, not quite content with either the Chartered Company or President Kruger, dully interested in the daily reports of engagements round Bulawayo and Salisbury, and rather disposed to think that if Dr. Jameson had been there things would have gone much better. No doubt, if an Isandlana occurs, or if President Kruger passes a certain limit very well defined in the popular mind, we may have an explosion of opinion ; but then neither of those events has occurred or, in the general judgment, is likely to occur. There is a side to the present conflict which forty years ago would have aroused passionate feeling and discussion ; but for some reason which we cannot attempt to explain—unless it be the spread of the "scientific spirit "—the people have not the interest in blacks which they formerly had, and hear of very doubtful proceedings against them with a new, and we hope a momentary, callousness. Then what in the name of political common-sense is the justification for this sudden recrudescence of hope, this sort of war-whoop of victory now resounding in the Radical ranks ? It is all, we shall be told, due to Sir William Harcourt, and Sir William Harcourt is a far-sighted man. Is he? He is a very good advocate who makes very telling speeches, and he retains some of the sound Whig opinions as to the way to govern ; but who at the last Election smashed all Liberal hopes ? We have every respect for Sir William Harcourt's ability as a debater, but the one thing about which he understands nothing is the mind of the British elector.
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