THE TRUE ANTIDOTE FOR RADICALISM.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN is now the main quarry of the Radical huntsman. We sometimes think that no greater misfortune could befall the Westminster Gazette than Mr. Chamberlain's retirement from politics. Othello's occupation would then indeed be gone. And it is note- worthy that what annoys the Radicals most is the half- consciousness by which they are pursued, without having adequately realised it, that though Mr. Chamberlain is no longer a, Radical, he is really a much better democrat than his old colleagues. For the new Radicals were, it seems, only democrats so long as they believed or hoped, that when the people got their own way, they would wish what the Radicals wish. The moment they discovered that this is by no means the case, and that the true antidote for a great deal of the most rasping Radicalism is de- mocracy, they began, like Mr. Labouchere, to become doctrinaires, who, instead of consulting the people frankly as to their wishes, lecture them as to what they ought to wish, and assure them that if they were only true to themselves they would find that they ought not to wish what they do wish, but only what their old Radical tutors had so long been teaching them that they were under a positive obligation to wish. Mr. Chamberlain is told, for instance, by the Daily Chronicle, that in his remarkably able and amusing speech at Birmingham on Tuesday, he was intolerably bitter. Well, the chief cause of offence seems to us to have been the ex- ceeding skill and effectiveness with which he applied the democratic principles on which the Radicals had so long been insisting, to counteract the drift of the new Radicalism. First of all, he dwelt, and dwelt most powerfully, on the reluctance of the Government to take the real judgment of the people on the first article in their new creed,—their Irish Home-rule policy. They had said as little as they could about it before the last Dissolution, sandwiching it between other and more popular articles of the Newcastle programme, and not explaining to the people what they really meant by it ; and then having reaped the fruits of that suppression, by winning a small majority at the General Election, they found to their disgust that they must show their hand, and translate honestly into Irish legislation what they bad kept as dark as possible before the appeal to the people. This Mr. Gladstone did for them, in the frankest way, and from that time onwards they found their power sinking in the constituencies till it reached its present low ebb. But then, instead of frankly submitting their fully developed policy to the people, as, if they were true democrats, they ought to have done, they did all in their power to take off the disagreeable taste of the medicine they had avowed their intention to ad- minister, by insisting that before the people said how they liked it, they should be forced to taste the various less nauseous ingredients by which they hoped to neutralise its disagreeable effects. Irish Home-rule was their most essential prescription no doubt, but on no account would they take the people's judgment on it till they had tried to dissipate the unpleasant shock of the plain confession of what it would do, by their further explanations of what they regarded as the more agreeable prescriptions by which it was to be followed and the memory of it partially obliterated. Mr. Chamberlain insisted that whether this was Radicalism or not, it was clearly not democracy. Their Irish policy was avowedly their main policy. It was on that that war had been declared. It was on that that they announced their intention to stand or fall. Clearly, if they were really democrats, they should give the people the opportunity of declaring their will plainly and separately on the leading article of their political faith.
But, on the contrary, instead of taking this course, they did everything to avoid it, and the more signs they dis- cerned that their Irish policy had alienated the con- stituencies, and that their small majority had been already transformed into a disastrous minority, the more they endeavoured to conceal their bankruptcy in popular favour, and to go on "trading on credit" in the hope of recovering their lost capital,—one of the greatest aggravations of the offence of bankruptcy under Mr. Chamberlain's own Bankruptcy Act. Nothing, Mr. Chamberlain maintained, could be less democratic. When their Irish policy had been fairly developed, they should have asked a judgment on it all the more if they had any reason to believe,—and they had much reason to believe,—that it had wholly undermined their popular support. But the more they recognised that the democracy rejected their Irish policy, the more anxious they were not to give them as yet any opportunity of saying so. From this moment their policy became a series of sensational attempts to divert the attention of the public from their great political failure. Mr. Chamberlain related a most amusing story told him by a lady who had just returned from China of the hope of the Chinese that a remedy for their defeat by the Japanese might be found in the enlisting of a regiment of formidable aspect, called the Tiger Braves, who were clothed in imitation tiger- skins, wore masks of tiger-heads, and shouted so horribly, and turned such ghastly somersaults, that they hoped the foe would run away without firing a shot. The present Government, he said, was a regiment of Tiger Braves. They were playing at war, and dressing themselves up in costumes so sensational, that they hoped to put their antagonists to flight without showing their real weakness. And all the curious somersaults that Sir William Harcourt has made, in relation to Local Option, Church Disestab- ]ishment, attacks on the House of Peers, and the like, had been made with this object of terrifying his foes into forgetting their own strength and his weakness,—in a word, with the object of diverting the attention of the Opposition from the fact that the Radical Government has no longer got the confidence of the people of this Kingdom. Of course this playing at war will not succeed. The Tiger Braves will not daunt those whom it is intended to daunt, into forgetting that they have the people on their side.
What the Government are really aiming at is indefinite delay. Nothing passes in Parliament, said Mr. Chamber- lain, except time, but of that a very great deal passes, to the great detriment of the public. And this ostentatious waste of public time is, again, unscrupulously undemo- cratic. There is no more flagrant indifference to the will of the people than a deliberate waste of time in pretending that the Newcastle programme is being carried through, when nothing is, or can be, carried through except in the House of Commons, and when everybody knows that if the opposition of the House of Lords is to be overcome, it can be easily overcome, and can only be overcome, by the simple process of showing them that the masses of the people are distinctly against the Lords, if, indeed, they are against them, and not, as both parties now really believe, on their side. The true secret of the dislike to a Dissolution, and of the waste of public time which is so laboriously arranged in order to delay the Dissolution, is that the Radicals distrust the people instead of trusting them. They would dissolve to-morrow if they hoped for a popular majority. But as they do not hope for a popular majority, they evade consulting the people. That means that the Radicals are not democrats. The true antidote for the new Radicalism is therefore, as Mr. Chamberlain has so powerfuly shown, honest democracy. The democracy are not Radical, but are full of Conservative instincts.
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