THE SHEFFIELD ELECTION.
THERE is something singularly sensational about the moment of Mr. Roebuck's death. At any time, the fact itself would have been striking, for Mr. Roebuck was one of those solitary figures, the disappearance of which excites more notice than that of greater men. Sheffield and the House of Commons will alike miss him, and in days when individuality grows rarer and rarer, he will be a real loss to both. At any time, too, the election following on his death would have had unusual local importance. The electors who had been accustomed to vote for Mr. Roebuck would have had to consider what they should do in the future. Ordinarily, when a Member of Parliament dies, this is a point which settles itself. The electors who have voted for him have done so because he was the Conservative or the Liberal candidate, and as a matter of course they will vote for the next man who presents himself in the same character. But the electors who voted for Mr. Roebuck have done so for a variety of reasons which have died with him. There were Liberals who voted for him, because, calling himself a Liberal, he had the courage to support the Government. There were Conservatives who voted for him, because they thought that his support did the Government more good than the same support from a Conservative. There were men who belonged to neither party, who liked Mr. Roebuck's independence, or were attracted by stray speeches, and who thought it a credit to Sheffield to be represented by so exceptional a person. None of these reasons can apply either to Mr. Waddy or Mr. Wortley. The present contest must be fought out on
the old lines,—lines which have almost become effaced during the closing years of Mr. Roebuck's life. This, we say, would have been the case whenever Mr. Roebuck's death had happened ; what gives a peculiar interest to his death, happening when it did, is the fact that the struggle for the seat of a man who gloried in belong- ing to no party will be one of immense party importance. It is the first election after Mr. Gladstone's challenge to the Government, and it takes place in a town which was at one time supposed to be especially well disposed towards the present Government. A Liberal victory in Sheffield will be eagerly welcomed, not merely because the announcement of it will be followed by the familiar words, "This is a gain to the Liberal party of two votes on a division," but because it will be seized upon as a decisive augury of victories to come,—the first of those acts of reversal which, as Liberals hope, will be executed next year by one great northern town after another. This is a thought which may well excite enthusiasm in the Sheffield Liberals. They are under no temptation to say that one seat more or less cannot matter much. That is never true of any elec- tion, but it will be quite unusually untrue of the present election in Sheffield. This one seat carries with it all the importance that belongs to encouragement or discouragement, when ad- ministered on the eve of a battle, If Sheffield can wrest a seat from the Conservatives when that seat has been held by Mr. Roebuck, where is the seat that may not be won in like manner If Sheffield can return a Liberal Member when the whole tradition of party representation has been broken down by Mr. Roebuck, what may not be done in towns in which party organisation has suffered no such collapse It has been asked occasionally, during Mr. Gladstone's tour in Midlothian, whether the effect of his speeches will not have passed away before the day of election comes. There is no danger of this in Sheffield. There Liberals will vote and Conservatives will speak with the very sound of Mr. Gladstone's words in their ears. They cannot possibly be in better fighting trim than they are at present. All this makes the duty of the Sheffield Liberal exceedingly plain. If, by any indolence of his, he helps to let in Mr. Wortley, he cannot count upon restraining the mischief he may have done within the limits of a single borough. He will not know how far the influence of this one election may have spread, nor how many other elec- tions may not have been influenced by the example of Sheffield. Happily, he is spared the temptation to which he would have been subject had Mr. Mark Firth consented to stand, Imperial and local patriotism will not be at war within him. We hold that it would have been an immense blunder for any Liberal voter to support a Conservative candidate, even if that candidate had been Mr. Firth. The ends for which a man is sent to Parliament are altogether different from these for which a man is chosen for municipal offices. Undoubtedly, however, some, perhaps many , Liberals would have overlooked this fact. They would have seen in Mr. Firth not the Conservative candidate for Parliament, but the munificent benefactor to the town. They would have asked themselves whether it would be commonly grateful in Sheffield to refuse to show its sense of Mr. Firth's liberality in the one way in which he asked that it might be shown, and many among them might have answered that it would not be commonly grateful. The error would have been natural, and consequently excusable, but it would have been an error all the same, and we are glad • that the Sheffield Liberals have been saved from the tempta- tion to commit it. As it is, they have no possible excuse for preferring the Conservative candidate. Candidate for candidate, there can be no question which is the bigger man. The only thing that can be said by way of even equalising them, is that they are both barristers, and that is no doubt true. But they are barristers with a difference, and we should be quite willing to leave it to the stoutest Conservative in Sheffield to say whether he would rather trust his case in the hands of Mr. Waddy or Mr. Wortley. In every respect, therefore, it is a stand-up party fight, and if the Liberals do not return Mr. Waddy, it must be because they are too weak to return him. That is what—if Mr. Wieldy loses—will be cast in their teeth by their Conservative fellow-townsmen and quite fairly cast in their teeth. If they are really too weak to return him, there is of course no more to be said. The best cause cannot always command votes, and even voters can only be multiplied in counties. The real disgrace would be if Mr. Waddy were to be defeated, while a single Liberal elector, who is not paralytic or ill of a dangerous disease, had remained unpolled. That is the aim for the Sheffield Liberals to keep steadily before their eyes. It is not their fault if they are in a minority. It will be their fault if they prove to be an inert and careless majority. All they have to do is to make sure that not a vote is withheld, and then they will certainly save their own character, and to all appearance, save the election too.
There is another consideration which ought to have weight with indolent voters, and that is, that the Liberal electors of Sheffield owe some reparation to their party. Let it be conceded that they had sufficient cause for returning Mr. Roebuck ; still, all that this comes to is that they had sufficient cause for returning a man who, whatever other merits he might have had, was not in any practical sense a Liberal. The Liberal party in the House of Commons has for years been weaker in every critical division by reason of the whim which led certain Shef- field Liberals to return Mr. Roebuck as their representative. They have had their way in this matter, and it is only fair that they should take more than ordinary pains to undo in the future what they thought themselves justified in doing in the past. If they want to prove that they were right in so think- ing, they cannot take a better way to do it than by showing that their devotion to Mr. Roebuck was purely personal, and im- plied no real departure from Liberal principles. If, after voting for Mr. Roebuck, they do not vote for Mr. Waddy, we shall know that it was Mr. Roebuck's Conservatism, not his independence, that constituted the real attraction. In that case, we shall know also what the professed Liberalism of some of his supporters was worth.
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