TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD HARTINGTON AND THE RADICALS.
THE outbreak of Radical disgust against Lord Harlington for his present political attitude, to which the correspondence in the Daily Nsles has this week given expression, is extremely natural, and, we might almost say, inevitable. Of course, Radicals who have learned to care more about Home-rule in Ireland than about any other political subject, must feel annoyed when they see Lord Hartington saying, in relation to one constituency after another, that he would prefer to see a Conservative elected rather than a Home-ruler. The Radicals are very naturally irritated with this advice, and ask how, then, Lord Harlington, who casts his influence into the scale of one Con- servative candidate after another, can be accounted in any sense a Liberal ? The answer is very plain,—that so long as the great question between Conservatives and Liberals is the question of Irish Home-rule, Lord Harlington cannot be accounted in any sense a Liberal, for he has always opposed himself consistently to Home-rule, and on that subject is conservative,—that is, he prefers the existing condition of things to the immense change proposed by Mr. Gladstone. But when the Radicals go on to urge that, this being so, Lord Hartington ought to join the Conservative ranks, and confess that he has turned Conservative, they allow their irritation at an inevitable vexation to themselves to make them unreasonable. It is not Lord Harlington who has changed his principles, but the Liberal Party which, under Mr. Gladstone's guidance, has added a new article to its creed. Why is he who has not changed his political attitude by a single hair's-breadth to change his political name, while the party which has revolutionised its attitude, and dropped all its other Liberal proposals for the time in order to urge this entirely new proposal, monopolises the title which never till now even suggested Home-rule, and cannot, by virtue of any associations of the name, be made to convey a Home-rule creed to the world at large ? It seems to us obviously unreasonable to reproach Lord Hartington for not merging himself in the Conservative Party when, measured by any standard that could have been applied up to the end of 1885, he is as good a Liberal as ever. Let us take a parallel case. There are, we believe, amongst the Methodists of Wales more than two or three modern subdivisions of a curiously indi- vidualised character. There is, for instance, we believe, in one corner of South Wales, a small sect called (we will say) the John Williams New Connexion Methodists, meaning that some of the New Connexion Methodists in that particular locality got so much attached to the special views of a teacher whom we will call John Williams, that they separated themselves from ordinary New Connexion Methodists by adopting a proper name which represented to them a par- ticularly sacred method of administering the rites of their Church, and one to which they were determined for the future to adhere. Well, would it have been fair for the John Williams New Connexion Methodists to have monopolised for themselves the title of New Connexion Methodists, and to have declared that all other New Connexion Methodists who did not follow in the special track of Mr. John Williams were utterly disqualified to be regarded as New Connexion Methodists at all, or ought to go over to the Old Connexion, or to the Baptists, or some other quite different Church ? Of course, it would have been most unfair, and the John Williams New Connexion Methodists did nothing of the kind. They fixed the new distinctive mark on themselves, not on the body from which they were separating themselves, and never dreamt of dis- puting the right of that body to call themselves New Connexion Methodists as before. Well, that seems to us the proper course of the Gladstonian Liberals. They should call themselves Gladstonian Liberals, and allow those who agreed with Mr. Gladstone up to the very end of 1885, and have only differed with him since then, on the Home-rule Question, to
call themselves Liberals just as they did before. Bat then,' retort the Gladstonians, "Liberal," in these latter days, has come to mean just the same as " Conservative " for all the purposes of practical politics. You vote with the Conserva- tives on all critical questions ; you insist that your candidates shall pledge themselves so to vote ; and if you have no candi- date of your own, you give your vote to a Conservative rather than to a Gladstonian Liberal.' That is quite undeniable ; but it arises solely from the fact that the one great issue of the day is this new issue, and that if at present the Conserva- tive Government were driven from power, the result must be that a Government determined to grant Mr. Parnell his demand would take its place. That would be, in the eyes of Unionist Liberals, a misfortune so incalculable in its conse- quences, that while there is any danger of it, Liberals who are not Home-rulers are as much bound to vote with the Conser- vatives as they might be in time of war, when the very existence of the country depended on an oblivion of political differences and a cordial co-operation between the two great parties in the State.
We cannot see, then, what ground there is for reasonable complaint against Lord Hartington that he will not give up his old name, when he has not given up any one of the con- victions which his old name denoted. He is as staunch for reform of Parliamentary Procedure as any Radical,—per- haps stauncher than the Radicals in their present mood. He is as strong an advocate for the decentralisation of local business as distinguished from the denationalisation of the United Kingdom, as any man in the House. He is as cor- dial a supporter of the enfranchisement of the land, the abolition of primogeniture and of the elaborate restrictions on land which are involved in entail, as Mr. Arthur Arnold him- self. He is as firmly opposed to a meddling foreign policy as Mr. Gladstone, and as sincere a Free-trader and economist. Till about thirteen months ago, these convictions were held to constitute a thorough-going Liberal, a Liberal on whom the country could rely. Lord Harlington holds firmly to all these convictions, and if he has not added to his creed, as the Glad- stonian Liberals have added to theirs, that is no reason surely why he should abjure the name which adequately expressed his creed thirteen months ago, when it was just what it now is. The mere fact that for the time Lord Harlington votes with the Conservatives no more makes him a Conservative in the old sense of the word, than the fact that there were several Liberals who voted steadily with the Conservatives against Mr. Bradlaugh's admission to the House of Commons, made them Conservatives. No doubt that issue was comparatively small, while the Home-rule issue is a very great one. All the more is Lord Harlington bound to assert his convictions in a matter of the utmost moment, without regarding the fact that the majority of his former party differ from him. On a small matter it may be right to defer to the view of a great majority of your own party. On a great matter it cannot be right to do so. If Lord Harlington would swim with the stream, and follow Mr. Gladstone wherever Mr. Gladstone leads, he would not be the strong statesman he is. We should be very foolish if we were made at all angry or indignantby the irritation which the Radicals express at Lord Hartington's position. That position being what it is, the idolaters of party are necessarily irritated by it ; it is a tremendous obstacle in the path of this vehement and impulsive effort to solve the Irish Question by letting Mr. Parnell have his way, and, of course, the impatient party resent the existence of that obstacle. But not all natural resentments are reason- able, and we can hardly imagine one less reasonable than this. It would be as reasonable to reproach one of the members of a firm which had dissolved partnership, for describing his name and business just as he did before,—there really being no altera- tion in either one or the other,—only because his partners, who had taken on a quite new branch of business, had found no new name by which to describe their new operations, and did not like to run the risk of being confounded with their former partner, as it is to reproach Lord Harlington with not changing the name of his political party just to suit Liberals who want their old name to convey a new meaning.
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