THE AUTUMN NIGHTMARE. T HE only remaining question of any real
interest for the present Session is that of the next Session. Will Parliament, at its rising after a good eight months of hard work, adjourn to the middle of November, as Mr. Gladstone tells us that the Government are " disposed " to advise ; or will the prorogation then take place, and a new Session begin on November 1st, as Mr. Labouchere proposes in Truth ; or will Parliament be permitted to take three months' real holiday before it begins to work again at the exhausting treadmill which grinds out so very little meal ? We will not venture to state that there will be no autumn Session, for with the passionate party feeling that seems to prevail on the subject, it is perfectly possible that the pretence of an autumn Session is almost a question of life and death to the Ministry. When even Mr. Labouchere, who has some sober and sane elements in his view of the matter, and who contends that if the next Session also is to be encumbered with a second introduction and sending up to the Lords of the Irish Home-rule Bill, Great Britain will be sacri- ficed to Ireland instead of being brought into friendly alliance with Ireland,—when even Mr. Labouchere wants to open the next Session on November 1st, and to sit on steadily, " with a, short interval at Christmas," till " the principal Bills of the Newcastle programme have been sent up to the Lords," we cannot avoid the conclusion that the Radical Party is pledged very deeply indeed to the policy of Parliamentary slave-driving, and that the Government may hardly dare, even if it passionately desires, to save the health, and perhaps the life, of its most influential Members by a reasonably long relaxation of the high political tension now prevalent. But this much we venture to predict, that if after this very exhausting Session, Parliament meets again at all before the begin- ning of the year, the time nominally gained by that course will not be really gained, but worse than wasted. Parlia- ment will reassemble, whether it be after an adjournment or a prorogation,—it matters not which,—in a very captious condition of mind. There will be plenty of material for the development of that captious condition. Either the Irish Members will be in great dudgeon that they are not to have their Home-rule Bill sent up again to the lords, or the British Members will be in great dudgeon that their interests are again to be postponed to Mr. Glad- sLone's ruling passion ; and in either case we may expect frequent outbursts of wrath. All sorts of grievances will have accumulated during even the few weeks of Recess. The policy of the evacuation of Egypt, as Mr. Labouchere himself insists, will be crying-out to the Radicals for a more serious and practical recognition. Trade, in all probability, will still be at a very low ebb. Silver will be still sinking, and causing collapses of credit. Agriculture can hardly advance in the interval between a very bad harvest and the approach of winter. If the strikes are at an end, Labour will be in its angriest mood ; and if they are not at an end, Labour will be even harder pressed, and Capital far more disposed to find fault with everybody. Under such circumstances, we do not for a moment believe that even two full months would suffice to carry so much as the Employers' Liability Bill through the House of Commons, and certainly not to thresh-out the many difficult problems of the Parish Councils Bill. Mr. Gladstone is never at his best in the winter, and there will be all the more anxiety about his health on account of the very inadequate holiday and the great pressure of political responsibility upon him. The Welsh will be quite un- governable if the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales is not to be taken up seriously ; and the Temperance party will be quite ungovernable if it is, for there will cer- tainly be no room for two such very big omnibuses as theAet to go abreast through Temple Bar. Wirk-coleixne irritants rrn, to stimulate the suseentibilitin-0 an s t of an already exhausted ii:us.S.114,-,(101...-In'-oins,. it is safe to predict with some eon- ' Inolnce that the autumn Session will turn out the most dreadful failure of the year, that it will not advance the Newcastle programme by one single stop, that it will only set the Gladstonians quarrelling among -themselves, and give the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists all sorts of opportunities of profiting by their jealousies and disap- pointments. Party spirit is a powerful goad, no doubt, but it is a goad which not only produces a spirit of contrariness, not to say vice, in the victim, but it inflames the passions of those who use it ; and the more it is brandished and applied, the more unmanageable the despots themselves become. The defect of "'the beneficent whip," of which Carlyle was so great a eulogist, was not so much in its ineffectiveness with the slave, as in the insolence it pro- duced in the slave-driver. Add to this danger that feeling of exhaustion which unnatural conditions and the strain of incessant sacrifices inevitably produce, and it is perfectly certain that so far from the extra time devoted to riding down foes being profitable to the victors, it will produce again and again scenes like those which disgraced the House of Commons on July 27th. Every man knows by his own experience that if in the insolence of self-will he determines to do more than he can do, the certain result is that he actually achieves much less than he can do. But when the agent who makes this attempt is not a single person but a, great Assembly, all the causes of failure are exaggerated tenfold. There is more friction, more irrita- bility, infinitely less willingness to acknowledge failure, and as a general result a hundred times the incapacity to keep the tongue silent and the will steadfast, which the individual over-worker experiences. The autumn Session, whether it is an adjournment or a fresh start, will be the best illustration of the maxim, " More haste worse speed," that the present Government has yet experienced. They were not foolish, but wise, in postponing the first meeting of Parliament this year to the very end of January, virtually February ; but that was the wisdom which came of a little peace. Ever since, they have been spurring-on the jaded House of Commons till it has become, in temper at least, quite the inferior House of the Legislature, instead of the one with the greater equanimity and the greater self-con- fidence, as, in its normal state, it naturally is. Let it take no more than a month's holiday, and we feel sure of the result. It will begin with spiritlessness, which will soon pass into that nervous irritability of which we have already had so many evidences. The Speaker knows the House well ; and the Speaker, who is one of the strongest men in it, has warned it of the in- evitable result of over-work on the character of its pro- ceedings. It will creep at first, then get impatient and attempt a spurt ; then all the jealousies will begin to break out. The 'predominant party will split into factions, every one of which will be animated by the angriest feeling towards the party which obtains the favour of the Government. If the Gladstonians were really wise, they would accept Mr. Labouchere's advice about deposing Ireland from her prominent position during the next Session ; but they would reject his advice as to the November meeting as hardly even sane. They would take up the most popular points of the Newcastle pro- gramme early next year and not sooner. As to what these most popular points are, they would try to agree among themselves, which they would find very diffi- cult, but much more difficult, the greater the hurry they are in. And they would take partly into account not only what the Gladstonians are most eager for, but what the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists are least indisposed to accept. They will not do this, we know. But the more vehement they are about beginning at the Newcastle programme, the worse blunders they will make. If " fair and gently " does not go very far in their day, " unfair and hurriedly " will soon come to a full stop. From a party point of view, we should like exceedingly to see the November meeting of Parliament ; and even a summons for the very first day of November, which is ?tax. Labouchere's proposal. It would, in our view, be, 'file hap- piest of all.,e..49;mer, Teihuai thorimgt -Varposes. But of thiliXtr,-are quite sure, an autumn Session will bo the ship- -wreck of any hopes which the Gladstonians now entertain.
Previous page
