TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BEWILDERMENT OF THE RADICALS. THE Radicals are evidently bewildered, and very reasonably bewildered, by the result of the Elections. It is not only that they are amazed at the wide diffusion and mass of the anti-Radical feeling in the country. For that they account by saying that, after all, it is due to chance more than to conviction that the scale did not turn the other way. The democracy may be on the Conserva- tive side now, but if it had not been for Local Option, who knows that it would not have been on the other side ? It does not seem to us very gratifying to the justice of democratic feeling to attribute its vibrations to King Chance. But, however that may be,—and we have no doubt that Sir William Harcourt's eager adoption of the Local Option Bill did turn a great many electors against him,—what bewilders the Radicals even more, is the want of evidence of any strong enthusiasm for them, even more than the existence of exceedingly widespread irrita- tion against them. You would suppose from the elaborate investigations that the Westminster Gazette has been setting on foot, that the one dominant influence on the Radical side is party feeling, — in other words, the acquired habit of members of the Gladstonian party of regarding themselves as Radicals, and as bound to vote for the Radical Government. As for the special Radical programme, there seems to be little but indifference, except where there is deep vexation with it. Accord- ing to the information obtained, Local Option was their ruin. Disestablishment lost them many votes. For Home-rule scarcely anybody cared either one way or the other. As we write, we have not heard the answer to the question, " Was it the proposed abolition of the Peers that did the mischief ? " but we cannot have the smallest doubt that, looking to the complete indifference with which Lord Rosebery's appeal was received all over the country, this proposal, like the rest, utterly failed to stir the pulses of the Radical party, and did alienate a good many hesitating votes. The real difficulty is to find out that there was any item in the Newcastle pro- gramme which improved the prospects of the Radical party, though there were certainly many which, when looked steadily in the face, disgusted them. If there had been no programme at all, they would certainly have done better. Party spirit would then have had a much freer course, and the Radicals would have voted merely because they were Radicals, and not because any particular Radical measure was to be passed. So far as we can judge, when it came to the point, even Radicals were more alarmed at their own leaders' doings, than pleased by them. They were willing to vote for them rather because they had always supposed themselves to share the senti- ments of their Radical leaders, and had always cheered them, than because they really liked what was proposed. It is quite clear that very few really cared for Home-rule, though many felt themselves bound to vote for it. As for Disestablishment, when they came to consider it, they hardly liked to think of the country without its national Church ; and it was very hard on it to take away such a large proportion of its funds. They would vote against the Establishment, of course, because they were Radicals, and had often cheered speeches against its monopoly of the national title, but they voted rather less heartily now that it meant something concrete and practical than they voted against it while the cause remained a mere cause, founded on abstract principle. And it was just the same, we suspect, with the House of Lords. They bad often shouted, "Down with the Lords!" and they were bound to vote with their leaders, but after all it would be very dull without the Lords ; the Lords had acted very prudently in not allowing Home-rule to be carried by a majority of thirty-two, or thereabouts, and, on the whole, England would probably be worse off without them. -That, we should say, is the general drift of Radical opinion, —very irritable against the proposal to throw everything into the hands of the teetotalers; not at all enthusiastic for destroying the old Church ; entirely indifferent to Home-rule, if not rather averse to it ; and probably decidedly reluctant to part with such an old and interest- ing feature of our Constitution as the House of Lords, just when the House of Lords is doing its duty by preventing Irishmen from riding roughshod over us,. Even Radicals begin to feel half Conservative, and to- feel qualms, when they are asked to put in force their own principles and strike down familiar institutions. They vote straight, generally, because they are proud of being party men, but they vote with no enthusiasm.. They are much more disposed to gag at what they dis- like, than to le thankful to their leaders for proposing, to give them what they had professed to wish for. Well, if this be the real condition of the Radical mind, —and we think it is,—we do not wonder at the bewilder- ment of the Radical Members. It seems as if English. Radicals were half Conservatives who have committed. themselves to abstract cries to which they feel bound to be loyal. They are far more loyal to a Liberal Govern- ment which goes forward very timidly and very slowly,. than they are to a Radical Government which boasts of carrying out big programmes in a wholesale (and rather ridiculous) fashion. Just consider the result as regards the one article of faith which their Irish allies are prepared to compel them to stick to,—Irish Home- rule. The most that can be said, the most that even earnest Home-rulers can put forward for Home-rule, is that there was no very strong feeling against it amongst professed Liberals, that the party cared very little about it, and were pleased to regard it as virtually shelved ! What can be conceived more hopeless than that a policy on which Mr. Gladstone had staked everything and which Mr. Morley had nailed to the mast, should be calmly regarded as shunted, and as so impracticable, that very few Radicals thought of it at all as they went to the polls ? Is that an encouraging view of the matter for the Radical leaders ? The mainstay of " justice to Ireland," the proudest boast of those who hail the "union of hearts," to be pushed into the background and described. as not on the whole hurtful to the Radical party, because no one thought of it as imminent at all! We can hardly imagine a more bewildering condition of things for. Radical leaders than to discover that their first and most ostentatiously lauded principle, on which something like eighty Parliamentary allies rested their allegiance, is re- ceived with perfect indifference in the country at large, and. is only not to be regarded as having lost the late Govern- ment popular support, because it is also to be regarded as. having gained them none, except in the Irish colonies of our great towns. We are told that we shall hear a great deal more about Home-rule in the future than we have heard in the past. And perhaps we may,—from the Irish. But is. it not bewildering to find that the " union of hearts" really means complete indifference on one side, and nothing but stern insistence on the letter of the bond, on the other side ? Here have the Radical party been boasting for ten years that they had pacified Ireland by the mere promise of Home-rule, and when it comes to the point of asking what that promise really means, the answer is that fortun- ately, to the English people at least, it means nothing. It has not greatly injured the fortunes of the Government which held out that promise, chiefly because very few of the electors thought that the promise would ever be fulfilled. Well, if that is the net result of ten years' sensational. agitation, and three years' practical endeavour to embody that agitation in a change of the law of the country, what are the Radical party to think of their own prospects ? They may console themselves by repeating that it is only King Chance who is against them. But how are they going to get that very mythical monarch on their side ? We suppose they will say,—By abjuring the teetotalers, by adopting a policy of reserve on Dis- establishment, and by doing all they can to weaken the House of Lords. Well, that is not a very hopeful pro- gramme. We suppose they will rely chiefly on the proba- bility that the next swing of the pendulum will be a more considerable one, and that they have much more to hope from the blunders of the Coalition than from the strategy of their own party.
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