TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLITICAL PROSPECT. NIB,. GLADSTONE will certainly have a larger fol- lowing than a week ago there was any good reason to expect. He will be able to carry a vote of want of con- fidence against the present Administration by a substantial though not an impressive majority, and to form some sort of a Government. But the most curious feature of Mr. Glad- stone's victory is that, in spite of the efforts made on both sides to put the Irish question in the front of the battle, it is certainly not by any enthusiasm for Irish Home-rule I hat the victory has been won. Mr. Schnadhorst and the New- castle Programme account for almost all Mr. Gladstone's gains in Great Britain, perhaps even for all his English gains. We seriously doubt if a single great victory has been won in England on Mr. Gladstone's side by the sympathy of the constituency with his Home-rule policy. The counties that cared least for Home-rule, were those in which there have been most Gladstonian gains ; and the candidates who were most decidedly in favour of the mini- mising policy as regards Irish Home-rule, the candidates who insisted that the Irish Legislature and Adminis- tration are to be the mere Legislature and Administra- tion of a magnified County Council, have found most favour with the county electorates. Lord Salisbury, on the other hand, has gained many of his greatest victories by his strenuous opposition to Home-rule. Birming- ham, with its magnificent demonstrations against Mr. Gladstone, has been actuated almost exclusively by its aversion to Home-rule. The solid phalanx of the Home Counties has been animated chiefly by steady Conservative instincts, while the promises of the Newcastle Programme have turned county after county into strongholds of the new Liberalism. It is where Home-rule has played the most modest part that its victory has been most complete. Where the constituency has been permitted to think Home-rule the least important of all the issues, the greatest Glad- stonian triumphs have been gained. Unionists have gained ground and lost none in Ireland, whereHome-rule was really the main issue. They have gained ground in those populous English constituencies where it was really the main issue. They have lost ground in Scotland wherever Disestablish- ment counted for a great deal more than Home-rule. They have lost ground in the rural constituencies, where the hopes of the agricultural labourers have been excited by the promises of the Gladstonian candidates to outdo the agri- cultural policy of Lord Salisbury. We have, then, this very curious result, that where the main issue has been the real subject of conflict, Mr. Gladstone has been checked or defeated ; and that wherever it was more or less eclipsed by other conflicts, Mr. Gladstone has forged ahead. If he comes in, as we suppose he will, with a majority exceeding forty, be will have to thank the very tepid advocacy of his followers on behalf of the chief article of his own political creed, for his success. Now, how this striking feature of the Election will affect Mr. Gladstone's policy, it is not at first sight very easy to say. On the one hand, it will render a very large propor- tion of his followers by no means anxious for the pro- duction of his Home-rule Bill, and decidedly indifferent to the effectiveness of the measure when it is produced. At the same time, there is every reason to believe that the Irish Nationalists will care a great deal more to obtain practical independence for Ireland than the English Parlia- mentary Home-rulers will care at first to defeat that end. The party that is in earnest, and that feels that it has the passions and convictions of the constituencies it represents at its back, will always be a great deal stronger than the party which has never been in earnest, and that has done all it can to prevent the constituencies it represents from giving any express instructions to its representatives on the subject of the main issue. The Irish Nationalists care for nothing except virtual independence. The English partisans of Irish Home-rule care for almost everything else they have promised more than they care for an effec- tive Home-rule Bill. If they could, they would grant as scanty and meagre a. measure of Home-rule as they dare. But then, they will not dare to run any great risks on the subject. They are not deeply pledged on the sub- ject. They are deeply pledged to keep Mr. Gladstone in power, and to give him the chance of winning other and more interesting battles in which their constituents are really interested. To our mind, all this will tell in favour of a strong Home-rule Bill such as can alone secure the loyalty of the Irish Party. Mr. Gladstone will know that it is as much as his tenure of power is worth to offend the Irish. And, on the other hand, he will know that, so far as English Home-rulers are concerned, they are, in the first place, very unlikely to be deeply offended for the present by any Irish policy he may think it right to pursue ; and are, in the second place, sure to fail in obtaining what they do care for, if they make a great stumbling-block of Mr. Gladstone's willingness to secure effectually the Irish vote. Hence we fully expect that Mr. Gladstone will bring in a strong Home-rule Bill for Ireland at the first practicable opportunity ; that it will go a good deal further than the Bill of 1886 in conceding to Ireland practical independence ; and that those English supporters who disapprove it will be compelled in the first instance to suppress their scruples, and to acquiesce in a policy sufficiently strong to satisfy the great majority of their Irish allies.
But then comes the question how far the Bill so intro- duced will have the effect of startling and staggering the Gladstonian constituencies out of their recent apathy on this subject. If those constituencies retain their indiffer- ence under the wear-and-tear of the great debates in the Commons. the Bill will at all events pass the House of Com- mons. But will they, can they, retain their indifference to the great dangers which the new policy will reveal ? When it comes to giving the Irish majority substantial power to put down all resistance to their will, or to assuring them that Great Britain will herself interfere to subdue that resistance,—when it comes to giving the Irish Ad- ministration military resources of their own, or pledging the Imperial Government to supply such military force as may be necessary to overcome disaffection, we fully expect to see a new passion break out in the constituencies of which there has hitherto been no symptom. Here Dr. Parker serves as an excellent weathercock, and Dr. Parker,. in spite of his leaning to Mr. Gladstone, has gone round tor the side of the Ulster Nonconformists. Hitherto, in Eng- land there has been little power and little will to realise what the new policy means. Even the Ulster Convention has not brought it home to the English popular imagination, which is sunk in a sort of optimist superstition that every- thing will go much more smoothly than the Ulstermen expect. But here Dr. Parker's conversion helps us to fore- cast the future. Let the process of devising the means for forcing the Protestants of the North-East of Ireland to submit to their enemies, once begin in earnest, and we do not understand the English people, if they do not shake off their stupor, rub their eyes, and tell their representatives that this was not at all what they meant, when they gave them authority to vote for Home-rule. The stronger the Bill, and the more heartily it commands the assent of the eighty Irish Home-rulers, the more vehement will be the shock, and the more complete the awakening that will ensue. As Lord Salisbury is not to be commissioned to go on as he has begun,—which would have been far the best,—we are even glad that Mr. Gladstone's majority is likely to be substantial enough to render it essen- tial for him to introduce and elaborate his plans, and to im- press on the country what he really does mean. With a majority of between forty and fifty, he will have no excuse for not doing this; but at the same time, with a majority of that magnitude, he can certainly not hope to carry his scheme even through the House of Commons, if the constituencies once wake up to find themselves on the eve of abandoning Ireland to such an Administration as Mr. Dillon might form, and Mr. Healy might shape kit° working order. Would it be possible to give its full significance to Irish Home-rule, without rousing the English conscience to a pitch of remorse and restlessness which would create perfect consternation in the country, and strike the new House of Commons into a tumult of dismay ? We do not think it would. We believe that the moment the English people really understand what the Irish demands mean, there would be an effervescence of feeling such as we in our time have never beheld, and then we should soon see how impossible it is to keep up the optimist indifference of the English Home-rulers. One after another would find out that the Home-rule he had intended to give, was something quite different from the Home-rule which the Irish intended to take, and Mr. Glad- stone's small majority would melt away like snow in an April sun. It is, we think, now essential to the clearing-up of Eng- lish opinion and purpose, that Mr. Gladstone's plans should be put forward in detail, and take distinct shape in the imaginations of the English people. We would gladly have saved Ireland the dangerous excitement and mad hopes to which we fear that the country must now be given up, until the radiant bubble finally bursts. But nothing else, it seems, will awaken the average English elector to the great injustice of which he is about to be guilty. The battle must be fought out to the end ; and the end cannot we fear, be reached without one more Irish convulsion. The English people would have been far wiser, if they had been more fully alive to the policy to which they were giving in their sleepy and unthinking adhesion. But now that Mr. Gladstone has gained so considerable a majority that he cannot find any excuse for drawing back, they will soon begin to realise what they have done. And as soon as they do realise it, we shall learn that the Irish and the English conceptions of the policy to which Mr. Gladstone is pledged are quite incompatible with each other, and that at last it will be forced upon the English people that what they might be inclined to give, the Irish would scorn to accept, and that what the Irish would accept, the English would think it unjust and disgraceful to offer. Our English constituencies,—especially the newly enfranchised constitu- encies,—are walking in their sleep. It is fortunate, perhaps, that Mr. Gladstone's majority is sufficient to render it im- possible that he should draw back till he has given them the shock which will be sufficient to awaken them out of sleep. That waking will be painful, but it will be salutary.
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