TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CABINET DURING THIS SESSION.
THE effect of this Session upon the position of the Parlia- mentary Leaders has been unusually small, though it has, on the whole, been beneficial There has been very little debating
and no display of oratory, and the vast mass of business got through has not been of an attractive character, facts which delight some of our contemporaries, but which seem to us, who regard Parliament as an educating force, and look to it first of all for the development of competent rulers, men whom the nation can not only trust, but understand, not to be altogether satisfac- tory. Mr. Gladstone, to begin with, has not risen in the estimation of the outside public, nothing attempted in the Session having called forth his peculiar powers either of administration or debate, but his hold over his party within the House is dis- tinctly stronger than it has ever been. He has led them, in spite of the Collier blunder, very well, has roused few personal animosities, and has performed the most difficult of tasks—that of restraining the House when it is full of a subject better not discussed—with remarkable tact and discretion. Lord Palmer- ston or Lord Melbourne could not have exhibited better temper, more firmness, or more adroitness than Mr. Gladstone did in his answers on the Indirect Claims, answers which often seemed to outsiders quite perfunctory, but inside the House gave an impression of wise and resolute caution, that helped, with Mr. Disraeli's right feeling, to ensure the needful support of Parliament in conducting the negotiation before it was safe to reveal all the facts. The credit of success in that dangerous and difficult transaction attaches too to the Premier, as it does toLord Granville, who stands several degrees higher in the political hierarchy than he did when the Session began. The English have a remarkable tolerance for a temperament very often found among them, the distinctive temperament of Sir R. Walpole, Lord North, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Granville, the temperament in which insouciance, idleness, or mere careless- ness has such a place that the man is never his biggest self until fairly aroused by opposition or by circumstances to a perception that great things are on hand. Detesting at heart the microscopic intellect, our countrymen have a kind of latent liking for the opposite defect, and rather incline to estimate strenuousness all the more because displayed by a man who until provoked to action is apt to let even important affairs slide. There is something bovine about that course, a suggestion as of placid and reserved power which, provided there is no failure at the end, is not unacceptable to the British mind. Lord Granville, we suspect, benefits in the popular imagination by his defects as well as by his successes.
The most decided rise in the Session, however, has been that of Mr. Cardwell. He has made few speeches, none of them on general politics, and is perhaps no more clearly revealed to the electors than he was in January ; but within the House his influence has seriously increased. He has carried through a most difficult reform with success, display- ing besides judgment and knowledge a degree of firmness, of capacity for command, in which he was popularly supposed to be more deficient than the majority of the Peelites. He not only knows his work so thoroughly that his professional critics begin to be a little afraid of his answers, but he knows what he wants, and with quiet, determined persistence he usually contrives to induce the House to accede to his demands. He has not been beaten this Session ; he has had a great triumph of the Parliamentary kind about the cost of his re- form ; and he has obtained power to carry out what average men perceive to be a very large measure, one which will give elasticity to the British Army. We imagine, though of course we may be in error on a point on which discipline imposes silence, that he is more popular with the Army ; he is certainly more respected by its chiefs ; and he has got rid to a very considerable extent of his difficulty about stores, on which, in the previous Session, he was the object of almost daily attack. He has borne those attacks and others with great fortitude and dignity, never striking back until quite sure of his ground, and has thereby greatly increased his weight with a House which places an exagger- ated value upon impassiveness. The Home Secretary, on the other hand, has gained, not much, but still perceptibly, in another way, by an exhibition of much more spirit and decision. He has had hard work to do in his own department, has had to fight all the mine-owners, and all the publicans, and all the teetotallers, and all the women's rights party in the kingdom, and has borne himself bravely, marking
the limit of concession with unmistakable distinctness. He- gave up his own conviction as to the Contagious Diseases' Acts, at first, perhaps, a little too easily, but his subsequent action,. whether wise or foolish in itself—we are not entering into that question,—has certainly not been wanting on the aide of determination. The elector can see these things, and the, Member sees something else, namely, the untiring assiduity with which Mr. Brace sits night after night on the Ministerial Bench, watching the Government business, and very often doing everybody's work as well as his own. He does it very- well too, never allows the House to get hopelessly out. of hand, and keeps some sort of control over a most. refractory class of Members, the Liberals with more philanthropy than judgment, who want more legisla- tion than they can have, and in their passion of pity for those who suffer would terminate the freedom of those who do not. Mr. Bruce has always sufficient sym- pathy with the philanthropists to see what they want, and therefore sufficient influence to compel them to reduce their- proposals to manageable limits. As time goes on, and we are deluged with plans of protective legislation, that faculty wilr become more valuable ; and if Mr. Bruce continues to harden, himself, or rather to consult his brain instead of his heart, ho- mey yet receive the public appreciation which he has hitherto,. partly through accident and partly from good cause, failed to obtain. A little hardness, a little of the aristocratic inability to give way, is a great help to an English Minister; and the members of this Cabinet—which collectively displays the quality almost to excess—have proved themselves this Session to be individually less amenable to pressure, less fearful of criticism than ever before, and with the best result. The Admirals realise more fully week by week that they cannot "sit upon" Mr. Goschen, that his replies when he is attacked are apt to carry the House with them, and abstain from an- amusement about as attractive and almost as useful as badger- drawing. Mr. Forster always had this character for readiness- to fight, and even Mr. Stansfeld showed a fortnight ago that he understood perfectly well the limits of concession. Each of these Ministers had a Bill to pass which the Opposition, dared not resist, but were determined to emasculate, and each, amid what seemed to be a rain of concessions, carried a mea- sure of most unusual strength. There is no country in the world in which the voter is so completely protected from intimidation as the Englishman is under Mr. Porker's Ballot. Bill, nor have the squirearchy ever received a heavier blow to their monopoly of local power than that involved in Mr. Stansfeld's Bill for Public Health, a Bill which in principle makes the nominees of the ratepayers the administrators of local business.
With the exception of Lord Granville and Lord Hatherley, no Cabinet Minister in the Lords can be fairly said to have gained or lost much during the Session. Lord Hatherley lost- much by his defence of the Collier appointment, by his failure to carry his reform in the Appellate judicature of the kingdom,. and by his repeated betrayal of a desire to get judicial work done cheaply, a desire in which the country at large, with its habit of studying American precedents„, does not sympa- thise, while it arouses a bitter dislike in the most powerful of all English professions,—the Bar. The House, however, has. begun to fail so very much in its function of administrative criticism that the Peers in office become almost invisible to any but official eyes. Indians mutter that "the Duke" grows. more and more doctrinaire, as in retaining the Income Tax at a low rate, when the complaint is, not of its weight but of its. existence ; but the public knows nothing, except that no blunders calling for Parliamentary criticism are committed in the India Office, and that a good selection was made for the Viceroyalty. Colonists mutter that Lord Kimberley is not very easy to deal with, but all the public can see is that his lordship, whether by volition or luck, has added Griqua- land to Her Majesty's dominions, has acquired for her the unbroken sovereignty of the West African Coast, and has in an irresolute, half-hearted way assented to the annexation of the Feejee Islands. He has also carried out measures at the Cape which must end in the establishment there of a Federa- tion, and has fostered, though he has not secured, the Federation of the Australian Colonies. These are all con- siderable acts, which might greatly increase Lord Kimberley's reputation, if only one knew officially how far they are his own, but that is precisely the point which the House of Lords appears to care nothing about. Lord Salisbury contrived to ascertain that Lord Kimberley was determined the Cape should govern itself ; but on his greatest
act, his offer to annex the Feejeee through Victoria or New South Wales, his defence was left to Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, who palpably wanted to do what he was afraid of doing. He may have spoken the sentiments of his chief, but he also may not, and the reticence of the Peers forbids us to say that we have in Lord Kimberley an administrator who will face the responsibilities involved in new territories. The general reflection forced on us by the attitude of the Cabinet during the Session is that its members are, without exception, a little too reticent, a little too blind to the neces- sity of letting the electors see what their rulers are like, a - little too humble about their position as leaders of opinion. They wait for the people, and forget too much that in England one main element in opinion is the opinion of the Parlia- mentary chiefs. They under-estimate their own-power, and forget how greatly the public delights in being guided by those it respects, in having its own convictions or doubts strongly stated in Parliament. A single sentence from a political reputa- tion has often the weight of a mile of speeches from other men. We ask any fair opponent or advocate of the Liquor Traffic whether the whole aspect of that great controversy was not visibly affected, we might even say visibly changed, by a single decided sentence from the Bishop of Peterborough ; and a Cabinet Minister has quite as much weight as even an eloquent Bishop. It is natural enough that a Minister with constituents behind him should prefer to avoid an opinion on "burning questions," to say nothing about a Galway Judg- ment, or the unpopular "Acts," or the limits of sanitation, or the labourers' strike; but he should remember that his opinion to no trifling degree makes opinion, that Englishmen will pardon a great deal to courage, and that above all, if opinion is in future to be an executive power, it must have bones. Until the chiefs have spoken it is apt to be mere pulp, which anybody without responsibility or brains may help to knead as he likes. It is very important to get a Licensing Bill through the Houses, but it is much more important that Englishmen should be told—told openly and without thought of consequences—what the Premier thinks in his heart about that unending struggle. He would, if he spoke out, make opinion about it at the next election.
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