MR. DISRAELI ON THE REDISTRIBUTION OF SEATS.
IT is obvious that the Conservative-Liberals, who strongly object to any immediate extension of Household Suffrage to the Counties, are,—perhaps indeed by reason of their Con- servative fears,—very much in favour of a thorough inquiry into the principles on which the division of electoral power should in future be conducted. Mr. Goschen and Lord Hartington, who both refused the other day to vote for Mr. Trevelyan's motion for extending household suffrage to the counties, supported, on Thursday, Sir Charles Dilke's proposal for a careful investigation of the principles applicable to con- titutional reform, and Mr. Goschen indeed spoke for it. We suppose their idea to be in the main this,—that careful in- quiry will either reveal the difficulties of further constitu- tional reform so plainly as to exert a Conservative effect in delaying all immediate action on the subject, or if it does not, will provide constitutional safeguards of a nature likely more or less to neutralise the mischief of inscribing the names of a new host of ignorant electors on the Re- gister. On the other hand, there are obviously Conservatives who, like Mr. Disraeli, object much more to the prosecution of a careful inquiry into the proper direction of future constitu- tional reforms, than they do to the mere extension of house-
hold franchise to the counties. Mr. Disraeli's speech on Thursday night was almost, indeed, on this head, an obscu- rantist speech. Political anomalies were the theme of his special admiration. Not only did he truly say that no constitutional system of any value could be found without glaring anomalies in it, but he almost seemed to value an anomalous system simply for being anomalous, and not because the other elements in it somehow produce a fortunate result. What did it matter, he asked, whether or not the anomalies of the Reform Act of 1867 had been growing more and more conspicuous, instead of less and less so, ever since the Act was passed ? All powerful and satisfactory poli- tical systems had always contained anomalies, and ever- growing anomalies, but it did not follow in the least that Parliament was bound to rectify anomalies, or even to keep down their growth, so long as the result gave a powerful legislature, and one adapted to the wants of the English people. A new proposal for a reform bill, if we understand Mr. Disraeli's position aright, requires much more than a verification of the political anomalies involved in it it to justify it. It requires something more,—the proof that a large proportion of the English people are aggrieved by these anomalies. The blots on a political system which strike an intellectual eye with a sense of discomfort and wonder, are not in general the defects which really make it necessary to renovate it. It is the cries of want or indignation from the people them- selves, their belief that they are misrepresented or not represented at all, and the discontent which that belief ex- cites, not the mere oddities of the representative system, which justify constitutional reform. However, while Mr. Disraeli doubtless frightened his Tory friends last Session almost out of their wits, by the broad way in which he admitted the claim of the county householder to the franchise, he makes very light indeed of the demand of the intellectual school of politicians for some inquiry which may guide the country to the true principles of democratic repre- sentation. Mr. Disraeli rather despises the light which intellectual discussion throws on these subjects, and deems it doctrinaire, philosophical, theoretic, anything but practical. What he wants to satisfy, is the political hunger of the people for such an influence in the Constitution as they think needful for their own interests. Beyond that, Mr. Disraeli is careless. Thinkers may write books upon the subject, which he may or may not read for his own amusement, but if he does read them, he will treat them quite as much as beacons to be avoided, as lamps to guide him ; but to Mr. Disraeli reform, whenever it is not inevitable, does not seem needful at all, and when it is inevitable, it should be conducted on the old lines and with a careful distrust of "fancy" notions. As regards the agricultural labourers, for instance, no doubt he would give them votes to-morrow if he dared, and probably he would add weight at the same time to the electoral power of the counties by taking away a few more votes from the smaller boroughs and turning them over to the counties. By that means he would appease the sense of in- justice under which the rural labourer lives, without intro- ducing intellectual experiments into a Constitution which Mr. Disraeli probably regards as a much happier hit of political nature, than any intellectual discussion could have produced. We cannot say that we feel much sympathy with Mr. Disraeli's political optimism, though we happen to agree with him on the one point, that it is far more necessary to satisfy the demand of a great class for political justice than it is to rectify even the grossest intellectual anomalies. We agree with Mr. Forster,—and with Mr. Disraeli, as we understand his last year's speech,—that the admission of the agricultural labourers to the franchise is a concession already acknowledged to be due to them, and especially due, just as Mr. Goschen,—some- what to our surprise, considering his refusal to vote on the subject,—declared on Thursday night, on tilt; ground that so many social reforms are being discussed in which their interests are being neglected, probably only because they have not the power to enforce them on Parliament. But we cannot go further, and say, as Mr. Disraeli appears to wish, that so long as we yield from time to time what a large class expects and demands in the manner which appears to be most in keeping with the political habits of the past, the Government had better let alone the discussion of those future rectifications of our repre- sentative system which may seem best adapted to guard against democractic abuses. For, in the first place, it seems to us childish to judge by the experience of England alone, when we have not as yet gone nearly so far in the direction of demo- cracy as either France or America, and when we know that France and America have been compelled to reconsider the very questions which are now forcing themselves upon us, and not unfrequently, as in the case of Illinois, to reconsider them in the very sense which Mr. Disraeli brands as doctrinaire and pedantic. And in the second place, even if English experience were enough, English experience is by no means decisive on the point. In the School Board elections, English experience has sanctioned a new method of voting which has become very popular, in spite of its many and vehement detractors, —so popular, that no attempt to repeal it would have even a chance. Again, even in municipal elections, as Mr. Heygate showed on Wednesday, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the old democratic idea as to the omnipotence of majorities ; and this was so far admitted even by the Government itself, that Mr. Cross, instead of directly opposing Mr. Heygate, asked for time in order that the opinion of the country might mature itself. So far is it, then from being the case that the minority- principle adopted for three-cornered constituencies is losing in favour,—bitterly as it is ridiculed by many good Liberals and some good Conservatives,—it is, on the contrary, true that this principle is gaining ground even in thoroughly democratic con- stituencies abroad and at home. If there be such a thing as the teaching of facts, this surely is one of the most important lessons facts can impress upon us,—that the popular power is dissatisfied with the old constitutional expedients for organising itself, and is looking out for more considerate and more reflective methods.
The truth seems to us to be that, while Mr. Disraeli appre- ciates adequately all the political ideas of the last generation, he has lost something of his power of discerning the growth of new tendencies in political life. Indeed, it is not Mr. Disraeli only who is impervious to these new impressions, it is all the older statesmen whose minds have been formed in now almost obsolete schools of political life,— Lord Russell, Mr. Bright, possibly even Mr. Gladstone. We suspect that Mr. Fawcett and Sir Charles Dilke, though neither of them is an experienced statesman, discern something of the self- criticising tendencies in modern democracy which are hidden from the former generation of politicians, and that so far from offending the great constituencies which they represent, they positively please them by giving expression to these tendencies. The future of democracy depends in a very great degree on its in- tellectual sensibility to ideas of this class. However, it is unreason- able perhaps to expect that statesmen of Mr. Disraeli's age can catch the new tone, and we are quite sure of this, that it is a more pressing matter to admit the agricultural labourers to the franchise, even without determining the lines of the constitu- tional development of the futurp, than it is to determine those tines. Still, if Mr. Disraeli bAd been far-sighted, he would have made the urgency of the first question the reason for opening-up the second, instead of making the difficulty of the second question the reason for indefinitely postponing the first.
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