TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROSPECTS OF A POLITICAL FUSION.
THE prospect of a fusion between the moderates who call themselves Liberals, and the moderates who call them- selves Conservatives,—which is, we think, what the exigencies of the country ultimately demand,—has not improved since last week. We say that such a fusion is what the exigencies of the country ultimately demand, because we believe that it would group Parliamentary parties by what must be for the future their natural and normal affinities. We believe that Toryism in this country was virtually extinguished by the County Franchise Act, and that for the future, any party that has the least chance of governing, must be constructed on the basis of a tihoroughly popular policy. But there will always be a popular moderate policy in this country, as well as a popular Radical policy,—a policy that aims at serving the people by using the old institutions skilfully, as well as a policy that aims at serving the people by sweeping away the least efficient of the old institutions, or by substituting more efficient institutions for them. It seems to us that Lord Hartington is the natural head of the former party, and we should have said that Mr. Chamberlain was the natural head of the latter, but for Mr. Chamberlain's manly and vigorous protest against the policy of Home-rule in Ireland. But no doubt the very fact that Lord Salisbury still seems to the mass of Conservatives the natural leader of their party, even though he should mould his policy so as to differ very slightly from the policy of Lord Hartington, is one that is certain to have its effect in rendering them indisposed for the fusion at the present moment ; while the earnest opposition of Mr. Chamber- lain to Home-rule in Ireland appears to tell with great force against precipitation in forming any Government of which it would be a natural result that Mr. Chamberlain would be either isolated or driven into co-operation with the Liberal Home-rulers. These two disturbing forces,— the reluctance of the Conservatives to part with their old leader and to confess themselves Moderate Liberals sooner than it is absolutely necessary that they should do so, and the causes which keep Mr. Chamberlain detached for the time from his most natural allies, and which render it dangerous to drive him into their arms,—will probably, we think, delay the crystallisation of parties into their ultimate and natural groups. Lord Hartington cannot well take a subordinate place in a Salisbury Ministry without giving a false conception to the country of his principles and purposes ; and as the Conserva- tives are not yet prepared to let Lord Salisbury take a position inferior to Lord Hartington, there will still be on both the Conservative and the Unionist Liberal side difficulties in the way of a coalition,—too great, probably, to be at present overcome. On the other hand, both the Conservatives and the Unionist Liberals are eager to retain the support of Mr. Chamberlain, so long as that is in any way possible, and un- doubtedly, in his present mood, he is likely to be retained longer amongst the Unionists if Lord Hartington remains out- side the Government, than he would be if Lord Hartington were attracted into it. Thus, for the present, we fear, the political combination which would be at once the most natural and the most suitable for the purposes of a permanent recast of parties, is unlikely to take place. We regret this for many reasons, though we recognise the substantial character of the obstacles. In the first place, we believe that it will not be till Lord Hartington, or some leader of his stamp and of his solidity of character, is really at the head of a Government, that the old English confidence in a temperate and moderate leader who is the friend of the people without being committed to any policy of an exciting or heroic kind, will return. We heartily admit that till he took up Home- rule, Mr. Gladstone's policy,—with some exceptions, especially in relation to Egypt,—was a policy which all sincere Liberals could heartily admire. But then, what with the necessity for inaugurating a new policy in Ireland, and what with the mis- fortunes which attended our policy in Egypt, Mr. Gladstone's Administrations were necessarily marked by more or less of sensation, and probably the dissolution in 1874 when Mr. Gladstone proposed the total repeal of the Income-tax, showed that there was something in the great Liberal leader which exulted in heroic policy, even when such a policy was far from necessary. At any rate, the Conn ty Franchise Act, which gave so large an increase of power to the Parnellites, was treated by Mr. Gladstone as opening a new era of sensation, and so it has happened that not since the time of the late Sir Robert Peel has the country had experience of any policy that could be called conservatively Liberal, for Lord Palmerston was hardly a Liberal at all in his home policy, and was certainly hardly a Conservative at all in his foreign policy. It is time that, after so much excitement, and so much experience as this generation has accumulated of the mischief which a policy that is not firm as well as pro- gressive, may do in Ireland, Irishmen should have some experience of a calm and prudent reformer, who administers the law unwaveringly, while he is anxious to promote cordially every well-proved and well-reasoned legislative change. We sincerely believe that Lord Hartington would command a kind of respect for his government both in the House of Com- mons and out of it, which would be almost without precedent in this generation, and which would content the wise Conserva- tives as deeply as it would content the wise Reformers. Nor can we believe that without Lord Hartington's aid, Lord Salisbury will ever succeed in gaining such respect as this for the Govern- ment. In the first place, Lord Salisbury's antecedents render cautious men suspicious of him, and Liberals very suspicious. In the next place, there is some nervousness, some liability to panic in him, which makes him frequently injudicious in speech, and often even in action. The celebrated "Hottentot "speech, made only a few months ago, was just the sort of speech which it would have been simply impossible for Lord Hartington to make at all. And the still more injudicious sanction which Lord Salisbury lent to Lord Carnarvon's conference with Mr. Parnell in the Tory Administration of 1885, was just the sort of blunder which it would have been absolutely im- possible for Lord Hartington to commit. These are the kinds of error from which it is very unlikely that a Government headed by Lord Salisbury will ever be quite free. With all his power of speech and stateliness of demeanour, there is something un- certain in Lord Salisbury's statesmanship which points either to an alternately shrinking and arrogant, or to a vacillating state of mind ; and it is impossible that the sort of steady moderation which would best suit the people of this country, could be originated by such a mind as that. Therefore, we do not expect the constituencies to recover their former confidence in a moderate Liberal Administration, till some representatively moderate Liberal, like Lord Hartington, has been for some months at the head of affairs.
In the next place, we cannot help regretting that the Con- servative Party should be able still to cling to the illusion that they are and can remain a Tory Party, in the old sense of the word ; and they will cling to that illusion, even through every disappointment, so long as they are commanded by the old Tory leader. It is no easy matter to " edacate " such a party as theirs. Mr. Disraeli achieved the feat of half-converting them to a spurious species of urban democracy, even while the landed aristocracy still ruled the counties. But then, Mr. Disraeli was no common man, a man of illimitable patience and tenacity, who was incapable of such restlessness as is dis- played by his very degenerate imitator, Lord Randolph Churchill. What is wanted now, is to impress on the Conser- vatives that while there is much in the historical institutions of this country which is genuinely popular, it is absolutely use- less, under the present franchise, to attempt to glorify old caste- prejudices, which are, indeed, anything but popular, and that for the future they must be content to strengthen the popular tradi- tions to which they cling, by sacrificing irritating anomalies and obsolete privileges as obviously inconsistent with democratic institutions of any kind. This is what Lord Hartington or Mr. Goschen might teach them, but what the Conservatives are certainly not at all likely to learn under Lord Salisbury. And for this reason, also, we regret very deeply the probable delay of that fusion between the moderates of both parties which must take place before the Conservatives can lay to heart the restrictions under which alone for the future they must indulge their delight in the institutions of the past, unless they would forfeit all their influence over the course of events in the future.
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