TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BALFOUR'S SUCCESS.
HOW bitterly the Radicals have begun to attack Mr. Balfour can hardly be better illustrated than by the suggestion of the Daily News, that even if Mr. Balfour "deviated into sense" when he proposed his Sessional resolution with regard to Supply, that does not prove that the method which he proposed and initiated aught to be accepted by the House as a Standing Order or the future regulation of Committees of Supply. Such a comment as that betrays a feeling of the most profound irritation on the part of the Radicals for which it is not easy to account. To speak of Mr. Balfour as " deviating into sense," is like speaking of Sir William Harcourt as " deviating" into wit, or of Lord Rosebery as " deviating" into humour. The leading characteristic of Mr. Balfour is good sense, though he does occasionally show himself a little too optimist in his calculations of the probable con- duct of the House of Commons. No doubt in relation to the Education Bill, he had not understood how many points of attack were presented to antagonists rendered very sore by a tremendous defeat, and aware that they could count on the general support of that very considerable and formidable army of teachers who exercise so great and as Vet so inadequately realised an influence throughout the country. Mr. Balfour made a mistake in putting the Educa- tion Bill before the Irish Land Bill, for which there was a much more urgent need, and he made another mistake in fancying that by calling together Parliament again in January he could carry a Bill with which he had made so tittle progress before Midsummer had been reached. But we do not believe that he has made even one other serious mistake during the present Session, and nothing can be more certain than that his resolution for regulating "Supply has been a brilliant success. His bitter assailant in the Daily News can indeed find nothing to fall foul of except the application of the guillotine at the close of the twenty-three days to put an end to the few re- maining and insignificant votes. Even this assailant, however, has to admit that Mr. Balfour's prudence and good sense in breaking through the absurd practice of taking the votes in Supply according to the order in which they appear in the printed lists, and submitting the more important and more controversial votes to the House, before the trivial and insignificant votes, set a precedent of the first importance. And, indeed, it really disposes of the charge that " Supply is the very last subject to which an automatic Closure should be directed." That depends, surely, entirely on whether the automatic Closure closes very unimportant and uncontroversial votes or very important and eagerly contested votes. In the former case we hold that no subject is better fitted for an auto- matic Closure, as in the latter case no subject could be worse fitted for that proceeding. If other First Lords of the Treasury follow Mr. Balfour's example of giving plenty of time for the discussion of all votes on which any party in Parliament desires to submit weighty and critical amendments, we cannot imagine any better way of sweep- ing up the litter at the end, than the application of the automatic Closure. And we do not hesitate to say that there is not any substantial party in Parliament which does not regard the regulation of Supply during the pre- sent Session as in the highest degree satisfactory and effective.
But not only has Mr. Balfour scored a, great success in relation to Supply,—a success which will almost certainly be followed by the elevation of the Sessional Order into a Standing Order on the opening of the next Session,—but he has in our opinion scored a still greater success in getting through Parliament a temperate and useful Irish Land Bill which neither the Irish landlords nor the Irish tenants nave even desired to wreck, though they did complain, not without justice, that it ought to have had for its discussion a. good share of the time spent in vain on the abandoned Education Bill. This is a success which may be fairly said to outweigh, and far more than outweigh, the error made in regard to the Education Bill. And it would not have been achieved without the display of very high qualities both by the Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant and by the Leader of the House. Mr. Gerald Balfour conducted his difficult Bill through the House with the utmost tact and temper. He showed great mastery of the difficulties of the situation, and the utmost candour in dealing with the representative speakers on both sides- And he was supported by the First Lord of the Treasury, with a spirit and a dignity that even put Mr. Carson to silence and wrung reluctant support from Mr. Dillon, desirous though he evidently was of playing up to the prejudices of Mr. Davitt, and the eager wish of the. Gladstonians that the Government should fail in achieving what they had themselves failed in achieving from a different cause. The success of the Irish Land Bill is• indeed an immense success, and all the greater that it.
could only have been accomplished by making it the plain. interest of landlords and tenants alike, and therefore of course of the parties that represent them in the House of Commons, that in spite of all the difficulties and com- plexities of the Bill, it should not be lost. No man who bad not served Mr. Balfour's long apprenticeship to the Irish question could have learned how to do what he has done. And the statesman who has achieved that, has far more than wiped out the effects of his miscalculation as to the Education Bill, and even surpassed his own success: in regulating Supply.
And these are by no means the whole of Mr. Balfour's achievements, though they are the greatest of those in the Session just coming to an end. To carry through the- English Agricultural Rating Bill, and to carry it through with the support of even one or two candid though eager Gladstonians in spite of the vituperation directed against it by the great mass of the Gladstonian party, would. have been a feather in the cap of any other statesman_ Yet in Mr. Balfour's case it hardly counts. Neverthe- less, that was the Bill which drew upon him the sort of invective which has reached its climax in the innuendo- that it is almost a prodigy when Mr. Balfour " deviates, into sense." That Bill is the first great signal that. has been given to the farmers of this country of the serious sympathy of any of our Governments with them, in the long train of their misfortunes. Since the era of Free-trade it has been quite the fashion of both parties to declare either coldly or regretfully that the laws of Nature do not admit of any alleviation of their exceptional. troubles. Mr. Balfour has broken through this dreary unanimity of discouragement, and by the Light Railways- Bill no less than by the Agricultural Rating Bill has shown that he will not press unduly on an exceptionally burdened industry, and that he can and will help the farmers to help themselves. On the whole we submit that, in spite of the one failure,. it is long since the House of Commons has done anything like such good work as has been achieved. in the Session that is now coming to an end,—a Session neither com- menced prematurely nor prolonged to a weary length. Mr. Balfour has got through a Session of almost incredible friction without once betraying either annoyance or, we might almost say, consciousness of the bitterness of his opponents,—especially of his opponents in the Press. We believe, indeed, that that partly accounts for the foolish inveteracy of many of the attacks upon him. It iv confessed that on one or two occasions Mr. Balfour had not seen the daily papers ; the rumour has even gone forth that he does not study them carefully ; and the sensitive vanity of the journalists has been wounded, It has become the soothing fashion of the day to assume• that the Press governs the world ; and the mere rumour that the Leader of the House of Commons does not adore the great divinity of the nineteenth century has ruffled the inspiring priests of the various oracles almost beyond. bearing. We do not pretend to know whether the rumour be true or false, but this at least is true, that Mr. Balfour has shown so complete an equanimity amidst all the contempt poured upon him, that if he has perused the attacks upon himself, he must have a strength of triple brass about his heart ; and that if he has not, he has, found in himself sufficient means of computing the trend of public opinion to guide the House of Commons all the more shrewdly for not painfully watching the rather misleading straws that indicate which way the momentary eddies of English opinion happen at any particular moment to be blowing.
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