TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BALFOUR'S BENIGNITY.
WHAT we admire more and more every day is the unruffled benignity which Mr. Balfour maintains amidst all this welter of angry and sometimes even malignant party criticism. He not only stands well above it, but hardly seems conscious of the hurtling taunts and mockeries which fly about his head. It is only fair to say that Lord Rosebery is quite as good-humoured and, in his own way, quite as humorous. But then he never makes you feel that, except for the purpose of winning a victory, he has any serious interest in the conflict. He parries thrust with thrust just as an expert swordsman does. But his heart is not in the real issue, only in the formal question of victory or defeat. Lord Rosebery him- self thought, no doubt, that the predominant partner ought not to be overruled by the partners who had less to lose by defeat, and much more to win by victory. But he did not care enough about it, except as a question of victory or defeat, to dislike taking back his personal opinion, when he found it endangering the discipline of his troops. Good-humoured as he is, he is not in the least eager that his cause, should win, so long as he wins. And the consequence is that he has done nothing to promote the chance of his own party's victory,—very much less than Mr. Asquith, not half as much as Mr. John Morley. But that is not at all the case with Mr. Balfour. Of course, like every other competent leader, he takes some real delight in victory even for his own sake ; but we doubt whether he takes half as much for his own sake as be does for the sake of the cause for which he pleads. He always gives the impression of finding so many personal compensations for being on the defeated side, that, were it not for reason's sake, he would be content to be always out of Office. He never in the least seems to resent being beaten, though he regrets it for the sake of the country. In Opposition he has more time to read and think, if he has less opportunity of acting. And therefore he looks upon successful opponents almost as much in the light of benefactors to himself as he does in the light of rivals who have overpersuaded the country to take a wrong course. Yet he really cares about its being a wrong course, which can hardly be said of Lord Rosebery. Mr. Balfour is grieved that the country should take bad advice, though he may find his own advantage in it. He is quite ready to do ample justice to his opponents' motives, though he may laugh at their logic. For instance, in his first address to his constituents in East Manchester on Monday, he said, " I do not claim that the Unionist party monopolise the desire to benefit the great mass of our fellow-countrymen. I am addressing, I believe, a large number of those who differ from me in politics. Let me say at once, I attribute to them the same desire for the public good that I maintain for myself, but I think I know much better how to set about it than they do." That is the tone Mr. Balfour always employs, and indeed acts up to. He does not profess to be better than his antagonists, but he holds sincerely that he sees better than they how to attain his object. This can- dour is what gives him at once so benignant and yet so con- fident a tone, a tone of perfect friendliness, and yet of the utmost conviction and equanimity. He does not charge his antagonists, he hardly even thinks of charging them, with indifference to the public good. But he does sin- cerely think that they are " wandering in the wilderness where there is no way," and he earnestly endeavours to set them right. Even when he thinks them a little perverse, as he did about the policy of " filling up the cup," he is never angry. He only laughs benignly at them, tells them that there is a " convivial " air about their policy which he is far from disliking, and that he is quite ready to enter into the humour of the situation if only they will not put on the high and mighty air of supreme earnestness, when they are really indulging in a little comedy. It is very long since we had a states- man at the head of affairs in the House of Commons, at once so serious and so ready to do justice to his opponents. Lord Salisbury cannot restrain himself when he has something to say which will draw blood. Mr. Balfour has no desire at all to wound. And yet his criticism is not less effective. He makes you feel that when he laughs, he laughs with the utmost good-humour. The error he detects and exposes always seems to him pardonable. He is not mordant like Sir William Har- court; nor indignant like Mr. John Morley. He keeps his equanimity in all circumstances even when he launches his spear. He does not direct it at the persons of his anta- gonists so much as at their mistakes. To their intentions he is always fair, and even to their actual achievements when- ever it is possible to him. But he cares too much about the public welfare to be indifferent whether the right way or the wrong is taken. What he desires to see is the closer identification of class with class, not the irritation of their animosities ; and he seldom makes a speech which is not conciliatory as well as just. His earnest repudiation the other day of any jealousy of the Factories Bill only because it was Mr. Asquith's, and would be likely to increase Mr. Asquith's credit in the country, was entirely of a piece with his general spirit. There never was a leader who had less of that spirit which Sydney Smith ridiculed when he said that he felt so unwell that he did not even feel equal to " sticking a knife into a Dissenter."
Mr. Balfour showed just the same temper in his speech on Tuesday concerning the Local Veto Bill. " I throw no question," he said, " upon the absolute disinterestedness, upon the fervent zeal, of these prophets of temperance. I admire them, I sympathise with them, I agree with their objects. But I say that they have mistaken human nature in general, and Anglo-Saxon nature in particular, if they suppose that any form of local coercion such as that pro- posed by this Bill I have been discussing, will radically alter the tastes of the people." That is the attitude we- need in our politicians, and we only wish we could find a greater number of public men to adopt it. No other change of tone would affect so much the temper of political. life, or soften more the virulence of party feeling, without- even tending to enervate the manliness and vigour of party conflicts. The doctors sometimes talk of a " benignant tumour,"—meaning only that it is not one likely to eat out the patient's life,—even though such language seems to the sufferer almost a contradiction in terms. But if party feeling is to be regarded as a disease at all,—and we fear we should be a much feebler people without it,—it is at least desirable that we should have statesmen at the head of affairs, in whom it will be a benignant disease, rather than statesmen who seek to aggravate and inflame it into a, malignant plague. And the key to Mr. Balfour's temper is that though he cares to win, as every General must, he cares a great deal more to see Reason prevail because it is Reason, than to see victory in his own hands. He likes to strengthen the hands of opponents in a good cause, almost as much as he likes to lead his party to victory. Even Mr. Gladstone, though he had no personal enmities,. was almost constitutionally unable to believe that his opponents could ever he right ; he had the contentious bias too deep in him. He could even believe for the moment in the " infamy " of the opposite party with an almost enthusiastic belief. There is nothing of this contentious- ness in Mr. Balfour. Energetically as he exposes what he thinks folly or error, he has so great a gift for entering into the heart of an opponent, that he sometimes seems almost to convince himself, or at least to give himself a very salutary warning, in the process of expounding his antagonist's creed. This is, in the very best sense of the words, due to the benignant candour of a " detached' nature.
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