THE ELECTIONS. THE ELECTIONS. T HOUGH everybody believed that the General
Election was to come in November, no one outside the Cabinet could be said absolutely to know it until it was virtually announced the other day by the Prime Minister. Convinced, as we all were, that by Christmas we should have a new Parliament, the news when it came was almost startling. The manner in which this great and definitive measure of electoral reform has at last been carried, the entire exclusion of the party victories and party defeats which ordinarily accompany any large political change, and the consequent limitation of Parliamentary discussion to the merest details, have naturally blinded us to the real dimensions of the peaceful revolution through which we are passing. It is only when something brings it suddenly to our minds that we remember that we are within half a year of a Parliament unlike, as regards the composition of the constituencies which will return it, any thing that England has yet seen. The Franchise Bill by itself would have made a great change. The Redistribution Bill by itself would have made a great change. We have now linked the two changes together, and committed the Government of England to new electors arranged in new divisions. By the end of November we shall know something of what the first result will be ; but it is impossible to see the date put down for the first time in black and white without a sudden sense that we are sitting expectant before one of the great drop-scenes of history.
It is always a relief to see the last Session of a Parliament come to an end,—assuming, of course, that we know beforehand that it is the last. Even if the Parliament is expiring by mere effiuxion of time, it is always possible that some unnoticed change may have been going on in the constituencies, and that the new elections may have a surprise in store. As soon as the sense of this contingency has once made itself felt, there is a natural eagerness to know at once what this surprise is going to be. Anything that the dying Parliament can do wears a provisional and unimportant air in consequence. Its acts will have, in fact, if not in form, to be confirmed by the Parliament that is to follow. There is neither time nor inclination left for undertaking new legislation. Private Members' Bills are crowded out by the desire of the Government to come before the electors with the best record they can make up ; and among Government Bills only those are alive that happen to possess an unusually tough constitution. But if we wish to see the last of any Parliament when once we know that it is not to come together again, how much more natural is the desire to be rid of the existing Parliament? For the whole of the present Session we have been in a condition of political paralysis. The wildest speculation as to the real mind of the electorate has for the time been as true as the most guarded, for there has been no possibility of bringing either to the test of experiment. The country has been alleged to wish this or that, and what it really wishes has all the time been undiscoverable. The Government and the Opposition have alike been exempted from the sanctions under which both are accustomed to act. The Ministry knows that it cannot go to the country if it is defeated ; the Opposition knows that if it is victorious, it must put up with a Rouse of Commons in which it can command nothing but a chance majority. The sooner such a state of things as this comes to an end the better for all concerned. Party leaders at this moment resemble the Government of National Defence before Gambetta made his escape from Paris. Ministers and Opposition are alike shut up at Westminster, and there is no balloon to carry them to the country outside. The moment when there is most need of a dissolution to tell us what the nation really wants—the moment, that is, when the data by which politicians have heretofore been guided are of least value—is the moment when a dissolution is not to be had. It is good news that this deadlock is to come to an end in November. We have been too long familiar with it not to welcome the first authoritative indication of its departure.
There is a special advantage in the present instance in the election taking place in the autumn. In the ordinary course of events, that will leave an interval of some two months and a half between the return of a new Parliament and its first meeting. According to recent practice, we shall not have to wait till the later date to know by whom we shall be governed. The result of the elections will make it plain of what complexion the majority will be found when Parliament meets, and, according as this is Liberal or Conservative, the Cabinet which has to frame the Queen's Speech will be a Liberal or a Conservative Cabinet. In former times, the interval between November and February would have been spent in drawing up the programme of the Session ; but, in this instance, there will probably be a more difficult problem to settle than the determination what measures shall be brought forward and what passed over. The extreme Irish party, we are told, is to return to Westminster some seventy or eighty strong ; and it is possible that this phalanx may for the time enable Mr. Parnell to hold the balance between English parties. Should this be the case, it may become the duty of the leaders on both sides to enter into negotiations of a kind which were unknown till the other day. If Electoral Reform could be effected by means of an arrangement between the Government and the Opposition, other measures of equal importance may, if the necessity is the same, be dealt with in the same fashion. It is not in itself a good fashion ; that we frankly admit. It removes far too many points from the consideration of Parliament, and gives far too much power to the two or three leading politicians on both sides. But what English parties thought it best to submit to rather than run the risk of Constitutional disturbance, they may think it right to submit to in presence of a common enemy. If Mr. Parnell maintains in the new Parliament the attitude he has taken up in the present Parliament, the antagonism between English and Irish Members will be far more marked than that between the two great English parties. However Liberals and Conservatives may differ as to their immediate objects, the end which they have in view in pursuing these objects is one and the same. Each according to their lights seeks to make England greater, better, and happier. But the end which Mr. Parnell has in view is the direct opposite of this. The one thing which we can feel sure will satisfy him is the dismemberment of the Empire ; and one means, at all events, by which he has hitherto sought to bring this about, is by reducing the House of Commons to impotence. If in every division he can give the majority to whichever party he pleases, he will undoubtedly try to make terms with each in turn. He will tempt the Opposition by holding out a certain prospect of return to office ; he will frighten the Government by the equally assured prospect of being sent back into Opposition. It may be of the utmost importance that the Liberal and Conservative leaders should have a breathing-time in which to consider how best to meet this new and alarming prospect.
The worst result that could follow from the approaching
elections is that they should still leave us in doubt as to the tree dispositions of the electorate. There are two ways in
which this result may be brought about. One is unwillingness of candidates to come forward ; the other is unwillingness of electors to go to the poll. Walks-over and abstentions,— these are the twin mischiefs which both parties should do their utmost to defeat. The more elections are contested, and the larger is the per-centage of votes to electors, the better we shall know on what lines the country wills that its affairs shall be carried on. Be those lines good or bad, they should at all events be drawn unmistakably ; and that they may be drawn unmistakably, there should be contests in every electoral division and enormous polls in every contest.
Previous page
