THE VALUE OF MAGNANIMITY IN OPPOSITION.
IT has often seemed to us that neither British Govern- ments nor British Oppositions adequately value the virtue of magnanimity. We are far from saying that they never practise it. We have given Mr. Gladstone credit for practising it with genuine success during the early part of the present Session ; and when Lord Hartington led the Opposition between 1874 and 1878, he showed a very clear appreciation of the value of magnanimity, as, indeed, from time to time, did both Mr. Disraeli and Sir Stafford North- cote. Still, on the whole, Governments are far oftener magnanimous than Oppositions. It is far too commonly supposed to be the whole and sole duty of the Opposition to oppose, as Lord Randolph Churchill, we believe, once said when he was rebuking Sir Stafford Northcote for his indifference to opportunities of onslaught. Any leader of Opposition who takes such a view seems to us, even as a ques- tion of policy, to misunderstand completely the temper of the English people, and to lose instead of gaining power for effectual and eventually successful opposition by his mis- take. Mr. Gladstone, we are sure, estimates the true duties of an Opposition leader in a very different light, though sometimes,—as, for instance, last Session and during a few days of this Session,—he has taken a different view from our own of what the true wisdom of temperate opposition really is.
Let us illustrate what we mean by magnanimity in rela- tion to the conduct of the Opposition on the questions of Mr. Hamilton's letter to the Speaker announcing Mr. Dillon's conviction for taking part in the "Plan of Campaign," and of Mr. King-Harman's salary. The bitterness of the Opposition on the former subject seems to us entirely factitious, and utterly unworthy of them. As regards Mr. King-Harman's salary, there was a just ground of com- plaint. It is, indeed, a matter which seems to us one of pure administrative detail, though one on which the Government undoubtedly made a serious blunder in judgment. It was an error, we think, to distinguish Mr. King-Harman at all by giving him official promotion in the Irish Government, after his very emphatic expression a few years ago of what are usually called the true Orangeman's opinions. It was a still greater error to take credit one year for not assigning him any salary,—he himself cer- tainly took credit for not receiving one,—if it was meant to assign him a salary the next year. And it was the greatest blunder of all to make this salary an extra charge upon the revenue, when a salary might easily have been provided for him by giving him a. Junior Lordship of the Treasury, and then imposing upon him precisely the same kind of work as he does now. It used to be, we believe, a pretty regular custom to have a Scotch Junior Lord and an Irish Junior Lord as well as an English Junior Lord, and to give these Scotch and Irish Junior Lords the miscellaneous Scotch and Irish work for which the higher officials had no time. And even if it were considered necessary to please the Orangemen by appointing Mr. King-Harman to office, this precedent might very well have been fol- lowed, and would not have caused half the irritation which the actual course of the Government has produced. We do not in the least blame the Opposition for finding fault sharply with the course which the Government thought it wise to take, and we do not dispute even the wisdom of taking that division on the questionwhether or not the salary should be carved out of the salaries of the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, which came so near to defeating the Government. But what dogs seem to us a mistake of the gravest kind, is the course taken of fighting an adminis- trative detail of this sort with all the pertinacity and ardour of a great principle, and stimulating instead of restraining, so far as it was possible to do so, the combative- ness of the Parnellites in the matter. One of the Irish Members said frankly that his object in obstructing was, by causing delay, to fine Mr. King-Harman (whose salary does not commence till the day the Bill receives the Royal Assent) at least a hundred pounds ; and that is the sort of petty spite to which the Opposition, by backing up the Parnellites' obstruction, have lent their aid. Now„ that seems to us wholly unworthy of a great Parlia- mentary party, and a course which reflects positive dis- credit upon it, discredit which is likely enough to be exaggerated into the imputation of positive sympathy with this petty spite. After all, if it is worth an Opposition's while, as it may be, to censure such an administrative blunder as the Government have committed, it is clearly not worth their while,—nay, it is not at all worthy of them,. —to push that censure beyond the point of gravely taking the judgment of Parliament on the matter with as little delay and. circumlocution as possible. If the vote had gone against the Administration, though it would probably have involved Mr. King-Harman's resignation, it could not possibly have involved anything more. It is not on administrative details of any sort that Governments either ought to be, or in general are turned out. And. in this case it would have been little short of a blow to the Opposition to have succeeded in defeating the Government. It was notorious that while many of the Liberal Unionists disapproved Mr. King-Harman's appoint-. ment, and while many of the Conservatives seriously dis- approved the creation of a new salaried office for him, neither those Liberal Unionists nor those Conservatives who. regretted the course of the Government, thought of it at all as a matter involving the fate of the Government, or would have been in the least disposed to administer anything more than a passing snub to Mr. Balfour for his rather high-handed self-will in the matter. To have succeeded in. defeating the Government would have been a misfortune for the Opposition. It would have resulted in a very strong reaction, probably in some direct vote of confidence in the Government which would have more than undone the effect of the temporary check. And if it would have been, as we are fully persuaded that it would have been, a misfortune to the Opposition to have succeeded in defeating the Govern- ment on so small a matter, it is certainly to be regretted on their behalf that they pushed their opposition to the point of obstruction,—to the point of appearing to sustain the Parnellite policy of trying to mulct Mr. King-Harman. of a hundred pounds or so by delaying for a few days the passing of the Bill. Nothing injures an Opposition like the appearance of pettiness or malice. And though we entirely acquit Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley of anything, like personal sympathy with malice in this matter, yet one of the Parnellites confessed to a motive that was both petty and malicious, and the course taken by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley was one which threw a shield over obstruction of this unworthy kind.
There is nothing, in our opinion, which tells more effectually in favour either of a. Goverinnent or an Opposi- tion, but especially, perhaps, in favour of the latter, because it is rarer in the case of the latter, than the magnanimity which refuses to push an advantage beyond the legiti- mate point, to make more of it than it deserves. Mr.. Gladstone, in our opinion, went far towards regaining„ by his perfect candour, moderation, and self-command in the early part of the present Session, the ground he lost last Session by his passionate assault upon the Irish Crimes Bill, for he showed himself a true leader of the Liberals, and not merely an antagonist of the Unionists and Tories. But in making so much more than was fitting of the form of Mr. Hamilton's letter, and of the Tory blunder committed in the case of Mr. King-Harman, he has lost again some of the ground he had recovered, and persuaded the quiet masses, who do not take even serious mistakes of detail greatly to heart, that the Liberal tempest blows with very irregular and spasmodic violence, and that its strength by no means varies in any UM- rate proportion to the enormity of the intentions which excite it, or of the actions by which those intentions are expressed.
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