SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S LIGHT HEART.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S speech of yesterday week was one very characteristic of him. The real point of the amendment moved by Mr. Jeffreys was this,—that the Government concerns itself very little with the great anxieties of the moment, even though the pinch is getting very serious, and the nation feels from day to day that it may be all but unable to feed itself the next day. Land is going out of cultivation every day. Manufacturers are threatening to support fewer and fewer hands every day, and to support less ade- quately even those whom they do support ; and still the only cry of the Government is for changes which are sure to make the situation worse, to diminish the quantity of land in profitable use, and to increase the misunderstanding between those who are daily withdrawing land and capital from employment, and those who are daily suffering by the dwindling resources of agriculture and trade. Sir William Harcourt had to reply on behalf of the Govern- ment. And what was the nature of that reply ? It was to throw as much ridicule as he could upon the fears entertained by landowners and capitalists, and to show reason why the political changes advocated in the Newcastle programme might very well go on just as they do. Mr. Goschen, in one of the best speeches of his political life, had given many reasons why the favourite policy of the Government, —to increase con- stantly the pressure on the rates, and to mulct the well- to-do for the benefit of the poor,—was producing its natural effect, and rendering the well-to-do more and more reluctant to hazard their means in a country so full of disunion and commercial peril. Sir William Harcourt replied to him in a series of jokes. Early in his speech, he called all those who were disposed to vote for the amendment "loose fish." Instead of trying to encourage those who regard with dismay the constant tendency to a falling market, and who expect that if they con- tinue to give work without profit, or even at a loss, now, they will be giving it at a very heavy loss a few months hence, he made fun of them, and appealed to the number of labourers who are still kept at work solely in the hope of a change for the better, and in the personal interest of the labourers themselves, as a proof of prosperity, and of the unreal character of the Conser- vative party's fears. In fact, he made fun of all those who are daily asking themselves if they can go on much longer losing their resources only in the hope,—the constantly deferred hope, the constantly dwindling hope,—of turning the corner and finding themselves with brighter prospects before them. And he held out no prospect at all that he would exchange the policy of setting the democracy against the landowners and against the capitalists, for one more likely to restore confidence and to soothe the growing fear of political divisions and of a consequent commercial collapse. What the Unionists say, and say we think with much force, is that a policy of this kind which finds its chief recommendation in threatening wealth, in increasing burdens, and in rendering those who still have resources less and less willing to hazard them in a country which every year produces some new scheme for diminishing, instead of increasing them, is hardly appropriate in point of time at all events, to an epoch when landlords and capitalists are already so hard pressed, and so much afraid that they will be more and more oppressed with every new change in the condition of Europe. To this Sir William Harcourt replies by calling all who entertain those fears "loose fish," and representing all such fears as pure chimeras, which only mean that the Tories wish to come in and to turn the Gladstonians out. He is even so eager to represent this as the real drift of the Opposition, that he wrested Shakespeare's Henry IV. from its proper text, in order to dub Mr. Goschen with the name of Harry Hotspur, though he really meant to compare him to Prince Henry in his eageiness to seize the crown of the dying monarch. It was a very strange blunder, and can only have been snatched at in his eager- ness to improve the joke at Mr. Goschen's expense for his obvious desire to substitute his own more cautious financial policy for Sir William Harcourt's ostentatiously democratic Budget. But the illustration was altogether topsy-turvy. For Shakespeare wanted to paint the unscrupulous ambition of a warlike Prince who was so desirous for an ambitious policy which should make England great, that be could not even wait till his father's eyes were closed in death, while Sir William Harcourt wished to paint the anxious and over-timid policy of a prudent financier who is so desirous to stop the career of an innovating Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he could not even wait till the country had rejected the friend of the people in favour of the friend of landowners and capitalists. Clearly the topsy-turviness of the jest was all due to the almost indecent eagerness of Sir William Harcourt to ridicule the fears of the prudent economist, and to represent England as prospering rather than suffering under the policy which piles new burdens on land and capital at the very moment when land is going out of cultivation, and capital is tenipted,—so far as it is tempted at all,—by rates of interest between 1 and 3 per cent.
As our readers know, we do not think that the financial policy of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer is so un- just as it is often represented by the Conservatives to be. If there were no danger of its going much further, if it were not accompanied (as unfortunately it is) by political plans which will tend to introduce a much greater disturbance than any which are necessarily involved in Sir William Harcourt's finance, so far as it has been hitherto de- veloped, we should support Sir William Harcourt's principles. But we must say that we totally differ from him in thinking that there is no reason at all to fear a very great estrangement between the wealth of the country and a House of Commons which more and more seems disposed to represent the craving of the poor to lay hold of the accumulated savings of the rich. And the last thing that seems to us appropriate at the present moment is the disposition to make fun of the apprehensions of those who anticipate a greater and greater amount of distress and a steadily increasing disposition to find more fruitful employment for English wealth abroad than any it can find at home. Whatever is wise, the policy of making sport of the fears of ruined landowners and timid capitalists is not wise. There is but too much reason in their fears. And so far as politicians can aggravate the danger of the moment, they could hardly do worse than represent the whole condition of our industry and commerce as perfectly satisfactory, and even so satisfactory that large schemes of gratuitous political change may be entered on "with a light heart." That is Sir William Harcourt's atti- tude, and we cannot conceive an attitude less timely or more likely to aggravate the dangers of the moment. There is no doubt that both agriculture and manufactures are languishing, and that so far as there is any truth in Sir William Harcourt's answer that the bulk of our trade does not diminish, even though its profitableness does, that answer is only provisionally true, because it is always difficult to withdraw fixed capital from its permanent investments, and mill - owners will go on working at a small loss rather than disorganise all their arrange- ments, so long as they have any sort of hope, however faint, that trade will revive. But with the great dis- turbance caused by the fall of silver, the greater dis- turbance caused by the heavy fall of the price of all sorts of grain, and that most formidable disturbance of all caused by the new competition of the underpaid labour of the East, with the more expensive labour of the West, it is idle, and even cruel, to joke as Sir William Harcourt does at the anxieties of capitalists and the complaints of landowners. Nero fiddling while Rome was burning was hardly worse employed than Sir William Harcourt pouring out all his wit at the expense of those who think the prospects of commerce most disheartening. Whatever else may be said for the Govern- ment, it cannot be said that they have chosen a very appropriate occasion for chaffing the agricultural pessimists and ridiculing the dolours of the textile industries. It would be better for the Gladstonians if they had a less witty Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one more pro- foundly aware of the dangers which threaten us if . a collapse of confidence in the honesty of our commercial men and the prudence of our Radical Administration, should shortly ensue.
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