POLITICAL PROSPECTS IN SCOTLAND.
BY a sort of tacit convention between Parties, Scotland has become the Belgium of political discussion. It has genuine attractions for English Liberals, who return to their constituencies with increased hope and courage after breathing the exhilarating mountain air of its vigorous and hearty politics. It has a curious, and indeed a fatal, fascination for the younger and more enterprising of English Conservatives, who cherish a strange superstition that some day Scotch pawkiness and caution will develop into caste Toryism, and who, with perhaps more reason, contend that the gain of one seat in Scotland means the gain of five in England. This being the case, it is of advantage to the United Kingdom, and of good omen for the Liberal Party, that, as seems now cer- tain, the Waterloo of Scotch politics will, in point of speech, be fought and won a month before the General Election.
Fervid and forward in all things, Scotland has been ablaze with political activity since the Prorogation. Long before that event, indeed, the fighting arrangements for November had been made in many, perhaps in the majority, of the Northern con- stituencies. Thus, Mr. Charles Dalrymple, who has been chosen by the Conservatives of Midlothian to try a fall with Mr. Gladstone, has been carrying on a trickling campaign of oratory for the past six months. This week Mr. Chamberlain has made his first important attempt to influence the politics of Scotland, with results which we comment on elsewhere. Scotland is in a variety of ways assured of hearing the liveliest, if not the wisest, that can be said on both sides in polities before Sep- tember is out. In all probability Mr. Gladstone will take the field early in October, and his recent railway pilgrimage from Forfarshire to Hawarden, private and speechless though it was, has proved beyond a doubt that his popularity in Scotland is at least as great as ever. In six weeks the issue in Scotland will be virtually decided.
In one sense, the issue may be said to be decided already. It has been announced, indeed, that forty Scotch seats will be contested by the Conservative Party. Even if this announce- ment be serious, which is doubtful, it means nothing more than that some younger sons of Scotch Peers, and some Edinburgh lawyers desirous of qualifying for the office of Lord Advocate, mean to give a little unnecessary trouble and expense to Scotch constituencies and Liberal candidates. Their representatives in the pre-Reform days were in the habit, according to tradi- tion or myth, of expressing their sentiments in the pithy, con- vivial refrain of "Curse the people, blast the people, damn the lower orders." The language and the methods of the jeunesse dorere of modern Scotch Conservatism are somewhat different. They cultivate Churchillism, and propose to explore the new couches sociales in the hope of discovering Tory Democracy. But they will prove as powerless after a Household Suffrage Act which has engulfed faggot-voting, as did their predecessors after the Reform Act of 1832. They may begin to play their comedy a week or two hence ; but the ridicule of the Scotch public will, no doubt, compel the curtain to descend after the first act. Sensible Conservatives in Scotland are, in fact, asking themselves not how many seats will they secure in November ; but can they secure any Tory voters there can no longer avail themselves of the immoral, though not illegal, elec- toral qualification which, before the latest Franchise Act, enabled them to appear in almost as many places during a General Election as did Lee's regiments in the final struggle with Grant before Richmond. No Scotch nobleman has succeeded to the peculiar influence of the late Duke of Baccleuch, which, though it was unable to stand against such a wave of Liberal feeling as swept over the country in 1868 and 1880, was equal to carrying at least three or four seats in times of political quietude or Conservative re- action. Redistribution and the extension of Household Suffrage to counties have submerged the last remains of feudal Toryism in the North. Only one of the seats now held by the Conser- vative Party in Scotland may be regarded as reasonably secure. The Member for the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen was returned by a large majority. He has shown himself a man of moderate opinions and of good Parliamentary business habits ; and unless Sir Andrew Clark—Mr. Glad- stone's physician, and the most popular of Aberdonians— can be induced to enter the field against him in the Liberal interest, he will probably have a walk over. The other University seat, that till recently held by Sir Lyon Playfair, is also in danger. The Liberal candidate, a medical man of emi- nence in his profession, and a transparently sincere politician, has alienated some " of those—both Disestablishmentarians and Churchmen—who would have been his natural sup- porters, by the views he has expressed regarding the Church of Scotland. As he will be in any case run hard by his opponent, the Conservative Lord Advocate, a personally popular politician, the defection of half-a-dozen voters may lead to his defeat. But outside of the Universities the Conservatives in Scotland will scarcely carry a seat, except through Liberal dissensions caused by the Church Question, the Crofter problem, or personal rivalries. Thus, in Argyllshire and Inverness-shire they may win through the regular Liberal candidate being opposed by a Crofters' champion. They have some hopes of success in certain constituencies, as in the Kirkcaldy and Montrose Burghs, where there is a superabundance of Liberal candidates. But this hope will be frustrated if the example of disinterestedness set by Mr. Leng, one of the Liberal candi- dates for East Fifeshire, and by Mr. Hume Webster, one of the candidates for Montrose, in retiring so as not to divide their party, be generally followed before November. It may be confidently predicted that if the worst comes to the worst, Mr. Gladstone's Scotch following will not be less than sixty- five,—it may even rise to seventy. A hansom may suffice to convey all Lord Salisbury's Scotch followers in the House of Commons from King's Cross or Euston Square to Westminster in February next. In any case, the demand for first-class railway accommodation for Scotch Conservatives between the Border and London will be of the most modest description.
The Disestablishment and Highland Land Questions are the sole causes of Liberal divisions in Scotland. The constituencies there are declaring as one man against Mr. Parnell's demand for the legislative independence of Ireland, involving, as it does, protection against Scotch goods, labour, and enterprise. The Nationalist leader will get no help even from Glasgow, in spite of the large Irish element in the population of that city. There will be no difficulty in Scotland over the Land Question in the large and ordinary sense. The bulk of the Liberal can- didates are declaring for the views which Lord Hartington expressed in his latest speech, and with which Mr. Gladstone, by his Midlothian campaign, has rendered Scotchmen familiar. A candidate for one of the divisions of Glasgow, who is accredited by Mr. Chamberlain himself, declares for "the abolition of primogeniture and entail, and the simplification in the sale of land." Nor is there much danger of the Dis- establishment difficulty leading to very serious Liberal losses. Both Liberal Churchmen and the advocates of Disestablishment are aware of, and will in time reconcile themselves to, the fact that the Scotch Church will not be dealt with by the new Parliament. The chances are, therefore, that Liberal candi- dates who, like Mr. Barclay in Forfarshire, appear to think that the Church of Scotland should not be disestablished without a direct appeal to the people on the subject, or like Sir Charles Tennant in Peeblesshire, are personally attached to the Church of Scotland, will, when the pinch comes, receive the support of ecclesiastical as well as political Voluntaries. These will rest content with the conversions and accessions to their strength they are gradually making and obtaining in the course of discus- sion, as in West Aberdeenshire and Roxburghshire on the one hand, and in East Fifeshire on the other. The leading advocates of Disestablishment are, above all things, earnestly religious men, and that means in the present case that they will not embarrass Mr. Gladstone, whom they trust quite as much on moral as on political grounds, the more especially as he, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Chamberlain have spoken with sufficient frankness on the tactical—in the case of the coming Election, a very important—aspect of the question. The settlement of the Land difficulty in the Highlands undoubtedly brooks of no delay, even although it must be admitted that a good deal of the "passionate fervour" shown at a great gathering in Skye the other day to discuss the grievances of the Crofters, was imported and not indigenous. Even Conservative candidates like Mr. Reginald Macleod, who is fighting the battle of his party with considerable skill in Inverness-shire, frankly admit that in the new Parliament a strong Crofters' Bill must be passed. It is to be hoped, therefore, that Mr. Chamberlain will—he was to speak at Inverness yesterday—exert in private a restraining rather than a stimulating influence, condemn "no rent" pro- posals in Skye as resolutely as he has defied Mr. Parnell, advocate Liberal union with a view to feasible proposals, and induce some of the too numerous Liberal candidates for Highland con- stituencies to retire, or to submit their claims to some sort of personal or party arbitration.
There is reason to hope that the coming General Election will give strength and variety to the personnel of the Scotch repre- sentation in the House of Commons. The loyalty, the practical shrewdness, and the capacity for silence of ordinary Scotch Mem- bers cannot be too highly commended. But is it an unpardon- able offence against Northern pride to suggest that a little leaven of vigorous and even self-assertive individuality would render the charm of the Scotch Membership firm and good I We are glad, at any rate, to see that the speeches of some of the younger Liberals, like Mr. Munro-Ferguson in Ross and Cromarty, Mr. Haldane in East Lothian, and Mr. Finlay in the Inverness Burghs, are marked by reflective power, even if they are not quite free from a suspicion of doctrinaire essayishness. We notice also that there is happily a moral certainty of Professor Bryce exchanging the Tower Hamlets for Aberdeen. No formal opposition has yet been offered to Mr. Goschen's candidature for one of the divisions of Edin- burgh; his conversion into a Scotch Member will invigorate his party loyalty. It is well that Mr. Boyd Kinnear, a veteran and able, if also viewy, political controversialist, who has always, however, dwelt in the higher party lati- tudes, should be returned, as appears certain, for one of the two Fifeshire seats. If journalism must be represented in Parliament, it could hardly be better represented than by Mr. E. R. Russell, of Liverpool, who is a candidate for one of the divisions of Glasgow. Mr. Russell is one of the ablest of provincial Liberal publicists ; although a pronounced follower of Mr. Chamberlain he invariably discusses political questions with sobriety of spirit and amenity of style. It is a pleasure to observe that several Northern constituencies are desirous to be represented by other than what is euphemistically, rather than accurately, termed "local talent."
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