TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S LAST SPEECH.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S speech at the Liberal Union on Tuesday was, in our opinion, the most statesmanlike and satisfactory of the many statesmanlike and satisfactory speeches which he has recently made. It acknowledged more frankly than he has ever acknowledged before the difficult conditions of the Irish problem, and the necessity of choosing resolutely between a course which would endanger the United Kingdom, and a course which involves a certain willingness to sacrifice ends which are very dear to the individual politician's heart, in order that he may keep step with those who fear what he fears, though they do not altogether desire what he desires. This is what we have been hoping for from Mr. Chamberlain, and we recognise with cordial gratitude that he has counted the cost of the sacrifice iequired of him, and that he has the strength and statesmanship to declare his willing- ness to pay the price which it is necessary to pay for acting cordially with all the hearty friends of Union in this Kingdom. Mr. Chamberlain's avowal that he has had to con- sider closely the programme of the Government, that he has found it "not unsatisfactory," and that it is "a great advance upon the previously accepted programme of the Tory Party, and more adapted to the new conditions created by the recent extension of the franchise ;" and further that, this being so, he is quite willing to co-operate cordially with the Government, is just the avowal which we were eager to receive from Mr. Cham- berlain. He will accept all that the Government are willing to concede of progressive legislation, will aid them in resisting innovations which all Unionists think fatal to the solidity of the Kingdom, and will join in exhorting his fellow-Radicals not to be too impatient, and not to fret at the sacrifices which must be made if Ireland is not to be put under the heel of the Par- nellites. We regret to see that there are certain of our Tory contemporaries who chafe so much under the mere notion of a cordial affiance with Mr. Chamberlain, that they will not even let him rebuke "the Radicalism which is the English imitation of Nihilism" without reminding Mr. Chamberlain of the Radicalism which is the English imitation of Socialism, and assuring him that the Conservatives will oppose the one as heartily as they will oppose the other. Now, since it was of the very essence of Mr. Chamberlain's speech to indicate that he was not going to press for the full measure of his own Radicalism, but was quite content for the present to support the existing Government in its more moderate conces- sions to Liberalism, we must say that this kind of warning is very unwise and very inopportune. If Tories begin to taunt Mr. Chamberlain with the extreme views which he once put forward, Mr. Chamberlain's friends will begin to taunt the Tories with the extremely reactionary views to which they were once committed ; and what can come of mutual taunts of that kind, except a very certain, and probably substantial, diminution in the disposition to give and take on both sides? Mr. Chamberlain has never been anything like so favourable to Socialism as the Tories have been to the main- tenance of exclusive privileges ; and if the latter are remitting yearly, nay, almost daily, in their exclusiveness, and adapting themselves to the democratic conditions under which they live, what is there to prevent Mr. Chamberlain from remitting something of the much less definite concessions which he was disposed to make to the agricultural labourer, and adapting his demands to the changed conditions under which it is now absolutely necessary for Liberal Unionists, if they would be
successful, to act There can be nothing less conducive to moderation than taunts which tend to remind a popular leader of the individual sacrifices he has made to the national cause, especially if they be levelled at him by men who have made still greater sacrifices to the same cause of which it is very injudicious needlessly to remind them. If Mr. Chamberlain is statesman enough to wish to find a tenable common ground with those who once called themselves Tories, it is not the part of Tories to discourage him from doing so, or to bring on themselves the satire which their very much greater change of front might provoke. If Conservatives and Liberal Unionists are to act together,—as they must do heartily if the Parnellite plot is to be defeated,—the more frankly we agree on what we do and what we reject, and the less we speculate as to what either section might have done or might have rejected, had they stood alone, the better it will be for our common cause.
Mr. Chamberlain's statesmanship was shown not only in the cordiality with which he adopted concerted action with thee present Government, but in the criticisms which he passed on the policy of Mr. Gladstone's followers, and on the difficulties into which they are plunging. "My contention is," he said, that the Gladstonian Liberals are "a sect without a creed." "They profess to be the only orthodox exponents by apostolic succession of the Liberal Party, and in the course of a brief time they have passed through almost every phase of political' heresy. In the brief space of a few years, they have been called upon to support coercion, and to oppose it. They have- been urged to denounce boycotting as public plunder, and to defend it as the only perfect redress of an oppressed nationality. They have denounced the immorality of refusing to pay rent, and they have been silent when the 'Plan of Campaign' has been proposed. A short time ago, they repudiated Home-rule- as tending to the dismemberment of the Empire ; and now we- are to assume that they believe that it is the only wise and certain guarantee of a perfect Union. And, lastly, they have been taught to denounce obstruction as the greatest of Par- liamentary offences, and then to rest silent while it was advocated as a sacred ditty of a constitutional opposition." A neater summary of the inconsistencies of the majority of the Liberal Party could not have been given ; and yet, in truth, they are all due to one inconsistency, the inconsistency of treating the United Kingdom as both united and disunited at the same time and for the same purposes. If it is a United Kingdom,. then the full Irish representation in it has no more right to insist on separate action and an independent policy, than the full representation of the Metropolis or of the Midland counties.. If it is not a United Kin' gdom, then the whole of our recent history has been one long and perverse policy of oppression. Mr. Gladstone and his followers can hardly maintain the latter doctrine, and yet they deny the former, and between the two positions they get into very great difficulties. Moreover, they have not the courage of their opinions, for while all their arguments go towards a repeal of the Union, their policy is founded on an indignant repudiation of any wish to repeal the Union. Mr. Chamberlain has put these inconsistencies in is nutshell, and he sees that those who would not be guilty of similar inconsistencies, have long and uphill work before them before they can give Ireland the same relief for the over- centralisation by which she has suffered so much, which they hope soon to accord to the rest of the Kingdom. It is im- possible to betray the interests of the whole Kingdom even for the sake of decentralising what needs decentralising, and while the Irish Members are in their present mood, it would betray. the interests of the whole Kingdom to concede in Ireland what we are only too anxious to concede to the local institutions of England, Wales, and Scotland. Mr. Chamberlain's wisdom and moderation deserve the heartiest recognition from all sections of the Unionist Party.
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