MR. GOSCHEN'S ANTICIPATION.
" 11 Indian as the Indian financiers call their forecasts of revenue formed a year and a half beforehand, are hardly more trustworthy in predicting political campaigns, than they are in predicting the yield of taxes. Nevertheless, at the Liberal Union Club on Tuesday, Mr. Goschen was so cautious, as becomes a practised Chancellor of the Exchequer, in taking fully into account both the emergency which he hopes for and the emergency which he fears, that we may regard his expectations as perfectly sober in both cases alike. He looks forward, he says, to a Unionist triumph- at the next General Election not less considerable than was gained at the Election of 1886; but as there are about three years to run, unless anything happens to hasten a dissolution, no cautious man would place much reliance on a result which the contingencies of three years may vitally affect. He therefore asked the Union Club to consider both the case of a Gladstonian triumph at the next General Election, and also the case of a Conservative triumph, and to form the best augury they could on both hypotheses. Now, taking the least favourable issue first, what, asked Mr. Goschen, would be the situation of the two opposed parties, if the elections of 1892 gave Mr. Gladstone just such a majority as he would have had in 1885, with the help of the Parnellites, had he not succeeded in alienating the Liberal Unionists, with Lord Hartington at their head ? And. Mr. Goschen replied that the situation would be no worse, probably even better for the Unionist cause, than it was when Parliament met in January, 1886. This may seem at first a rather hazardous prediction, for, of course, there would be this difference between the two situations, that in 1885 the Liberals who took the Unionist side had certainly never pledged. themselves to their con- stituents to vote for Mr. Gladstone's proposals, proposals which had. not been so much as hinted to the world before the General Election took place ; whereas in 1892, if Mr. Gladstone wins the Election, every man who is returned to support him would be pledged to the lips to vote for some form of Irish Home-rule, and for some form of it which goes quite beyond any Unionist scheme. Now, of course, that difference is a very important one. There neither would nor could be a party of anything like ninety Members which would be at all likely to desert Mr. Gladstone on the second reading of his next Bill after being returned. to the House of Commons, as they would have been, expressly to give his Home-rule proposals a full trial. We quite admit that, in all human probability, both parties will come up after the next General Election so deeply pledged to either the support or the resistance of Mr. Gladstone's policy, that very few votes indeed can be expected. to change sides after the Election and before Mr. Gladstone's next Bill to establish Irish Home-rule is either read a second time or rejected. The Gladstonians will come up with the peremptory order to vote for the second reading,—no matter what Mr. Gladstone proposes,—and the Unionists will come up with the peremptory order to vote against it, and neither section will be disposed. to trifle with the orders they have received. But then, there will be a set-off on the other side not less, perhaps even more, important. The country even now appreciates to some extent the difficulty and delicacy of the task imposed. on the advocates of Irish Home-rule, and by 1892 it will appreciate the difficulty of that task a great deal better. And. though unquestion- ably the division on the second. reading of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, whatever that Bill may be, will follow pretty closely the clear lines of party pledges, the discussion of the details in Committee will reopen the whole question of principle as between the Parliament at Westminster and the Parliament which is to sit in Dublin. If we understand the country at all, it will send up an English Home-rule Party as thoroughly pledged to forbid. any paltering with the authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as it will be to discover some safe plan of Home-rule,—in short, just as deeply committed to the successful solution of an abso- lutely insoluble problem, as if Mr. Gladstone had promised to make " yes " mean both " no " and " yes " at the same time, and. the people had taken for granted that he could really achieve that feat. When it is discovered that the Irish Home-rulers are really utterly indifferent to the unity of the Kingdom, and. that all they care for is to throw off the authority of the Parliament at Westminster, —and this their leaders are already betraying very plainly, Mr. Parnell himself leading the way,—the question of the complete practical subordination of the Irish to the United Parliament will become a question of primary im- portance with the English constituencies ; and. if ever a Bill passes its second reading for establishing a Parlia- ment in Dublin, as we have supposed, we believe that the English representatives will not only be permitted but required by the constituencies to press home every guarantee that a cautious and somewhat anxious foreboding can devise, against the danger that the Irish Parliament may either break or relax the ties by which it is bound to submit to the decision of the central Assembly. There are already plenty of signs that this will be so. In the election for Kenning- ton, for instance, the successful Home-rule candidate, Mr. Beaufoy, spoke so strongly on this subject, that many of the Unionists are said. to have regarded him almost as one of themselves. And. a feeling which was marked enough even then,—before the Parnellites gave their evidence before the Commission, and. before Mr. Parnell's recent outbreak to the deputations from the Irish Municipalities,—will be far more emphatically expressed. with every year of the agitation. Moreover, as Mr. Goschen says, the opposition to any Home-rule measure will be conducted with some great advantages three years hence, as compared with the conditions under which it was conducted three years ago. In 1886, the Tory Unionists laboured under great suspicion for the part they had taken only a few months before in throwing over Lord Spencer, and forming an alliance with the Parnel- lites for the General Election of 1885. Men said, and with some plausibility, that it would be better to trust Mr. Gladstone to carry Home-rule in the face of day, than to trust the Tories to resist it, since they would be sure to make some arrangement with the Parnellites. behind men's backs. That cannot be said with any force after Mr. Balfour's most successful Unionist adminis- tration of Ireland. Every one now knows that Mr. Balfour is deeply and finally committed to the policy he has so boldly and. successfully carried out ; and hence there will be no distrust of the Tories in 1892 as there was, and with good reason, in 1886. The Unionists will be able to point to a six years' administration of Ireland in which not only agrarian crime had been seen to diminish steadily, and probably almost to have been extinguished, but in which there has been no weakness towards the Home-rulers, no attempt to make friends of the mammon of unrighteous- ness such as distinguished. the Irish administration of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. The consequence must be, that the Unionists will hold a very much stronger position in 1892 than they held in 1886. They will be able to appeal to a continuous administration of Ireland in which the country can feel some confidence, and to represent it as an alter- native policy for the dangerous concessions which the Home-rulers demand. So that we heartily believe with Mr. Goschen, that if ever Mr. Gladstone gets his Bill read a second time, and the House goes into Committee on its practical provisions for preventing any danger of Separa- tion, the Unionists will occupy a far more formidable position in 1892 then they occupied in 1886, and may expect a far more complete victory.
There is, however, still the other, and we believe, more probable, alternative to consider,—namely, that the General Election in 1892 will go for the Unionists. And in that case, as Mr. Goschen says, the consequences to the Glad- stonians will be simply calamitous. Mr. Parnell has pledged himself not to stay another day in the Westminster Parliament after the country has again rejected the Home- rule measure, and he has spoken for his colleagues as well as for himself. The consequence would be, that Mr. Gladstone, already in a minority, would suddenly lose the support of some eighty or eighty-five steady votes, and would not only lose that support, but would become all the more unpopular in England because he had lost that support, and because he would be regarded as the chief ally of an Irish leader who, if not advising open rebellion, would at least be advising passive resistance to the Constitution. We can hardly imagine a more miserable plight than that in which the Gladstonians would be placed by the secession of the Parnellites,—a plight all the more dangerous because it would be even more ludicrous than helpless. Yet this is the plight with which they are threatened in case of defeat, and it must be remembered that even the threat itself will do them harm. Mr. Parnell must have wished to show his complete independence of Mr. Gladstone when he uttered the threat, and this is the very attitude that has always been attributed to the Parnellites by those who criticised Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and that has . always been denied by the Gladstonians. Mr. Gladstone cannot control them, some have said ; their objects are not his objects, and however eagerly he may answer for their loyalty and their wish to co-operate heartily with Great Britain, he can only predict, he cannot verify his own pre- dictions. Mr. Parnell and his followers are influenced by considerations of many kinds into which Mr. Gladstone has no insight.' And so it turns out to be on Mr. Parnell's own showing. We may be very sure that his threat will have great weight with the constituencies, and a great weight in a sense the very opposite of that which Mr. Gladstone would desire. The constituencies will say that Mr. Parnell has proclaimed himself entirely independent of Mr. Gladstone, and that if he is to be entirely independent of Mr. Gladstone, we had much better have our battle out with him, sooner rather than later,—sooner under Mr. Balfour and a Unionist Govern- ment which has not been weakened by a defeat at the polls, rather than later under some other Unionist Government which had resulted from the inability of Mr. Gladstone to satisfy the country that the Irish Parliament would not wrench the practical government of Ireland out of British hands. We may depend upon it that Mr. Parnell's avowal of his ultimate intentions will go a great way towards dis- maying the constituencies which have been sanguine enough to believe that Mr. Gladstone could control him, and towards warning them not to give Mr. Gladstone the chance of placing the country in so embarrassing and even absurd a position as it must occupy whenever it was found that nothing which would satisfy Mr. Parnell would secure the safety of the Kingdom, and that nothing which would secure the safety of the Kingdom would satisfy Mr. Parnell.
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