TOPICS OF TIIE DAY
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THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMME.
THE Government programme, as revealed in the Queen's Speech, is not inspiriting. The Ministry have evidently felt keenly the interruptions and postponements to which their plans for useful legislation have been subjected during the past two years, and as they hope for a working Session, they have brought forward a number of useful Bills, to the exclusion of more purely political proposals. Most of these are exceed- ingly valuable ; two of them, the Bill for the Reform of London and the Bill for Compensating Agricultural Tenants, are of the first importance, and the Floods Bill is indis- pensable; but none of them will awaken political enthusiasm. We are -all delighted to see that, the "most urgent needs of Ireland" having been provided for, the claims of "other portions of the United Kingdom "—" Skye, and the neighbour- ing Island of Great Britain," as the Hebridean preacher said— are this year to receive attention ; and most of us will acknowledge that among those claims, the demands for the Codification of the Criminal Law, for a Court of Criminal Appeal, for a Bankruptcy Act, for a Bill against floods, and for another preventing corrupt practices at elec- tions, are undeniably urgent. The Government promise them all, and we trust they will all be good Bills, and that, whether through the good sense of the House or through the operation of the Closure, they will all be passed unmuti- lated in reasonable time. But though bread is the staff of life, a dinner of bread only is a dull dinner ; and of meat the provision is not large, while the wine is nowhere. There are only two first-class political Bills, and of these, one, for all its importance—which we entirely acknowledge—is only a local Bill ; while the other, though almost imperative, relieves only a single interest. It was most wise, in the present position of agriculture, with the last hopes of the farmers fading away under the incessant rain, to bring forward a measure giving them more security for their outlays ; and the Bill for the Government of London has for ourselves the strongest imaginative attraction. We have always maintained that in combining London, with its popula- tion of over three millions, and its total revenue, as the Economist calculates, of ten millions sterling, into a single Municipality, the Government would call into existence a new Power, which might prove as efficient for good as Parliament itself. An unorganised mass of human beings would, we contended, be organised into a nation, with new life, new energy, new powers, and new objects for their expenditure. A Council governing London will be a new and a splendid force. We approve, too, the Government scheme for evoking a nation in London, as securing the maximum of improve- ment, while rousing the minimum of interested resistance. But though we admire the Bill, and the self-devotion which proposes such an improvement without any acute demand for it among the electors, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that London is not England, still less the United Kingdom ; that the Bill will not interest the whole community, as a Bill reforming County Government would ; and that the wishes of the whole population—that of London excepted—are again disappointed or postponed. The Government, it is true, hint, in the Queen's Speech, that the County Bill may be forth- coming, "if time permits ;" but we all know time never does permit of business which can be postponed, and entertain no hope that half-way down the Session Sir Charles Dilke will rise in his place to ask leave to introduce the missing measure. We are the more disappointed, because we fear the true reason of delay has been a difference of opinion in the Cabinet as to the advisability of extending County Self-government to Ire- land. Lord Hartington is opposed to the plan, Mr. Chamber- lain is friendly to the plan, and the two sections whom they represent have agreed to wait, in the hope that, with Ireland restored to order, the difference between them may become of no importance. As we believe that it is easier to deal with organised disaffection than with anarchical disaffection, and that organisation of itself often removes discontent, by providing it with an outlet, we prefer Mr. Chamberlain's view ; but we would rather Ireland waited, than that the whole United Kingdom did. We might have had the County Bill, even with Ireland omitted from it. We believe the disappointment throughout the country will be sincere, and will not be assuaged by the spectacle of the severe, and therefore interesting, battle which is sure to be waged over the reform of London.
We question, we must add, if it is wise, even in the interest of business, to give the House of Commons so little interesting work. Members may be willing to work hard at useful measures, but experience shows that they hunger for excitement, and that when it is not forth- coming in the shape of work, they seek it in the form of play,. Exciting scenes, personal debates, motions made solely to. annoy or to distract, are all more numerous in Sessions not occupied with exciting matter ; while sections of the House, like the Parnellites and the Fourth Party, luxuriate in the' absence of the pressure created by the preoccupation of the- House. It is not half so easy to talk nonsense about Egypt or India when the House is intent on a measure which interests all constituencies, nor can Mr. Cowen ever perorate with such effect as when Members feel that his rhetoric is, at all events, a relief from routine. Members
become impatient when interesting matter is delayed, and, when five hundred men are impatient, bores and obstructive&
alike are apt to grow intimidated or ashamed. There will, we fear, be plenty of wasted nights, even if we do not class- nights occupied by the Irishmen among them. They, how- ever, are sure to seize the opportunity. Ireland is to them the "hub of the Universe "—we are sure some of them expect a separate Irish Heaven, though we cannot imagine what it would be like—and even if it were not, it is their policy to make themselves important, and their country an impediment to English business. That brings home to us all that they are asking permission to take themselves away. They are already announcing that Ireland, being refused a legislature of her own, has a right to all the time of the common Parlia- ment; they have eleven Bills ready prepared for discussion, one of them being Mr. Healy's Home-rule Bill ; and we do not feel confident that, in spite of the Closure, they will not con- sume an inordinate proportion of the time of Parliament.
They must be allowed their share of attention, and, full as. they are of anger at the imprisonment of Mr. Healy, at the- working of the Crimes Bill, and at the success of the Govern- ment in tracking the Secret Societies, they will, we fear,. succeed in forcing themselves to the front to an extent which the framers of the New Rules did not anticipate. Much wilt depend, of course, upon the working of those Rules, and much, more upon the presence or absence of Mr. Gladstone, whose- personal ascendancy was last year the real motive-power of Parliament ; but an empty building invites occupants, and the work of the Session may be less than the Departments,.
all eager for "substantial" improvements, fondly hope. They ought to have their Bills, but they would have had them all' the sooner, if the Liberals had been bound into a compact body by the promise of some measure which neither they nor their constituents could allow to fail, and which could have moved along pan i passu with the business Bills.
It has been said that no Session ever goes as the Ministry intend it should go, and though that is not quite true, as witness the Session devoted to the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it is true sufficiently often to make men speculate what the intruding element, if it appears, is this time likely to be. It may, of course, be Ireland, whose history is as full of surprises as that of France ; but then Ireland, like Death, though it often startles us, can never be said to be unexpected. The Bradlaugh question, which is always on the- horizon, is to be settled in the only reasonable way,—by allowing every one to swear or affirm, as best pleases himself or his convictions. Egyptian affairs are, for the present, tranquil, the great proposals being before the Sultan, who is never in any hurry ; and though there may be future sur- prises from Cairo, still, as the troops can hardly be withdrawn before September, we need not anticipate any catastrophe till then. Abroad, though there are plenty of clouds in the sky, there is nothing which threatens Great Britain, and we do not believe that Zululand can furnish Parliament with anything but a most tiresome debate. Nevertheless, it is the unexpected which arrives, and the almost ostentatious devotion of the Senate to work which will be most useful, but a little dry, provokes the thought that men do not see very far, and that it is just when you are most resolute to clear up neglected business that the friend and his unlooked-for budget are cer- tain to intrude. The Ministry have ordered a house-cleaning, and while we fully admit that it is needed, we should dearly like just for a minute to glance at the portentous article in which, about mid-September, the Times will sum-up the legislative achievements of the Session. That article may not be an expansion of the Speech with which the Session opened.
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