TOPICS OF THE DAY.
DROPPING TO PIECES.
WE are not seeking a speedy Dissolution for party purposes. Our strong impression is that time is working for the Unionists ; that a process of disenchant- ment with Radical ideas has commenced and will go on ; and that, consequently, delay will serve to swell a majority at the General Election which, for many reasons, we wish to see a large one. Our motive for urging a Dis- solution is that delay is bad for the country, because the House of Commons, the ultimate pivot of power, is visibly dropping to pieces. It is not capable of doing anything except evading the appeal to the country. The Govern- ment pretends to urge forward a quantity of Bills, but the very Ministers who defend them know that they will never pass, and are ready to accept holidays, new proposals, new motions for adjournment, or any other excuse for getting through the time. They are not sufficiently in earnest even to keep their followers together, and except when menaced with defeat, are as content with a hundred voters in the House as with the three hundred who ought to be listening to their arguments. According to their own account, they are trying to establish religious liberty in Wales, to continue and regulate the agrarian revolution in Ireland, to carry through a Reform Bill, and to extinguish " the greatest source of vice and misery in the Kingdom ; " but they dawdle over all these prodigious undertakings as men do not dawdle while they retain a hope. They are wise, no doubt, in rejecting the Radical cries for the guillotine, but they reject them with obvious willingness, as of men well aware that the hour is past for employing force, and caring only for a future which will arrive of itself. Their Reform Bill slumbers undisturbed; while their Liquor Law is not even pushed forward to its second reading. Energy, in fact, has gone out of the Ministry, and so also it has out of their followers. The groups are as mild and as disagreeable as margarine. The Welsh know perfectly well that there is no hope for their Bill, but they do not press the Government to withdraw everything else ; the Irish Mountain, though it is getting nothing, has not a cry left in it ; the Teetotalers see that their Bill is shirked, but daunted by the whispered fears of their own allies, consent by silence to its taking a back place. As for the prostration of the House of Lords, which was to have been the grand effort of the Session, it is never so much as mentioned, and would have been forgotten but that the Premier thinks, after all his professions, it would not be decent to create Peers, and, moreover, could not create any without endangering seats by the removal of Members to "another place." The Ministers meet in Council, and, to judge by the length of their sittings, dispute with something like obstinacy ; but in Parliament they are languid, and hardly care to conceal their languor. It is natural enough. To Englishmen all labour is tolerable, except the useless turning of a crank, and Stephenson would never have filled Chat Moss but that he knew the filling to be both necessary and possible. It is not, however, only the Government which is languid ; the Opposition also suffers from the unreality of the situation. Except when Mr. Balfour says a few words, the debating about the Welsh Bill is poor, the Con- servatives can hardly be induced to attend, and you have the absurdity in a democratic State that as the chance of success for the Government recedes, the majorities for that Government grow a little larger. The Opposition leaders oppose, as is their function, but they initiate no resistance, they let great questions like Armenia sleep, and, though they promise to force a Dissolution at some time, give no hint of the method by which it is to be forced. In truth, the whole House is out of heart. Members, bored with the whole business, live on the Terrace, and only rush in for divisions. No one is thinking of anything but the next Parliament, no one is anxious, except to avoid giving offence, and the only enthusiasts are those who know that they will be heckled on their favourite fad if they cannot prove by statistics that the Government has done its best. The House of Commons Is like a fly-wheel which has been disconnected from the machinery, but goes on whirling for a few seconds in its archway, raising only a little dust. Even the work of Supply does not get forward, and practically the Treasury will nave to ask that all the millions it is bound to spend may be given it in a single, and as it were automatic, vote. Nobody, except Sir William Harcourt, cares what is spent, nobody tries to save, and business is really left to the per- manent officials, whom the House is elected to restrain and guide. Both the Government and the Opposition are blamed for this state of affairs, and both a little unfairly. It is nonsense to expect the latter to allow proposals which to them seem attacks on all they hold dear, on the Church, on property, or on social liberty, to pass without discussion, and as yet certainly they have only discussed. With the regiment of orators behind him, Mr. Balfour could have stopped business altogether ; but he has allowed it to pro- ceed, only insisting that the Government shall every now and then give a reason for the faith that is in them, shall, for instance, state why they think that Church endowments and chapel endowments stand on a different footing, and are not equally liable to State control. He takes any decent opportunity he can, no doubt, of defeating the Welsh Bill ; but that is his proper business,—the very object for which we create the means of carrying on " Government by deliberation." The Opposition are not afraid of the Bill passing, for its rejection by the Lords is a certainty ; but they want, if they can, to persuade the representatives of the people,—surely not a want to which Radicals have any moral right to object. The Government, on the other hand, is scolded for want of energy ; but how is. it to be energetic? It has a majority of leas than 20, and the electors are pronouncing against it so visibly that there is not a Minister who does not assume that the next Election will bring defeat. If the Ministry were to cut off debate on a. Bill for destroying a Church—which is at all events not a measure of urgency—they would rouse a tempest of irritation in the country, while they would not be one step nearer to the passing of their Act, or one whit less em- barrassed by the endless multitude of their pledges. They were gravely in the wrong at first, both as statesmen and tacticians, in giving those pledges ; but having given them, we do not see what choice they have except to do as they are doing,—that is, mark time and let the House talk, or by a Dissolution seek a new mandate from the electors. That they should desire to avoid this alternative is natural. The Ministers probably think they have been unlucky, which is true enough ; and do not recognise that the two first causes of their ill-luck—the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, and the failure of Lord Rosebery—are irremediable unless they resign. They have no leader with the confidence of the people, and no delay of a few weeks will give them one ; but it is hardly to be expected that Sir William Harcourt should see that, or indeed much humbler Members of the Cabinet. They trust in the chapter of accidents, which is seldom against an Opposition, because it is irresponsible ; and perhaps in their traditional theory, that a larger Register must be better for Radicals than it can be for Con- servatives,—a theory which is entirely outside reason. At all events they hold on, and the result of their holding on is that there is no steam in the ship, and the machine is driven, so to speak, by the hand-power of unwilling slaves. They are in the position of the jaded pro- fessional who clings to work for yet another month, and at the end of it finds that he has done but little, and done that little badly, while he has used up finally much of the energy to which his holiday, if taken sooner, might have restored vigour. If the Session lasts another three months, as some Gladstonians affirm it shall, we venture to predict that the next Opposition will prove the most flaccid and nerveless which has been seen since the days of the Reform Bill. Without a trusted leader, with no object upon which the hearts of all are set, and with no cry except " Down with the publicans," the Radicals are just in the position in which a party, when defeated, is also demoralised and made afraid. We agree with the Daily Chronicle that they want a new leader, but new leaders are not made by the queer process which our con- temporary suggests. They announce themselves when the time is ripe, and with the House of Commons dropping to pieces, the time is not ripe yet.
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