THE REVERSE IN CHESHIRE.
THE reverse in Cheshire shows, like most of the by-elections which have recently taken place, that it is impossible to keep the minds of our British con- stituencies fixed on a matter which seems to them so com- paratively secondary as the relation between this Kingdom and Ireland, at the cost of sacrificing party ties which have grown to be little less than a religion,—nay, in not a few cases, the most serious religion which the voters recognise. Now and then in a General Election, when every constituency is aware that the policy of the immediate future depends on the vote to be given, enough persons will be found to place their country above party to turn the scales against the policy of the favourite leader of the hour. But even this is difficult to effect.
And in by-elections it is often impossible. In Northwich, as at Glasgow, it is obvious that party ties were too strong to admit of such a sacrifice as this. Whatever might be the result of another General Election turning on the same issue as the Election of 1886,—and it would be insincere to affect anything like confident assurance that it would be the same as in 1886, —it is certain that the bent bow too often springs back when the comparative freedom of a by-election permits the electors to vote oa the old lines, without, as they think, endangering any reversal of the judgment which was then given. Nothing seems better established than that if, at a General Election, an Englishman votes as an Englishman and not as a party man, at a by-election he is very apt to vote as he pleases, and that it pleases him much better to vote with the party with which he has always been accustomed to act, than to vote against it. Nor can we pretend to feel at all sure that the tendencies which the by- elections show to be so deeply ingrained in the English electorates, will be overcome under the political pressure of a General Election. We were never amongst those who held that the General Election of 1886 was decisive of the question at issue. And since then we have seen too many cases in which the process which must have gone on in Sir George Trevelyan's mind, has gone on also in the minds of average electors, to be at all confident that the victory of 1886 can, under the same conditions, be repeated and improved. What happens is a gradual whittling-down of conviction which we should never have supposed it possible that a highly educated and disciplined mind like Sir George Trevelyan's could go through. But as such a mind as .,his has gone through such a change, or something equivalent to it, we have great reason to fear that a considerable number of less educated and disciplined minds have gone through the same with even fewer searchings of heart. First there is a deep sense of alarm and dismay at the great revolution which Mr. Gladstone has proKeed, and a sense of indignation at being suddenly asked to swing round to a position so little anticipated. The politician is angry, is offended, is determined to show his independence. He stands aloof from the Liberal Party. He upbraids its leaders. He refuses to vote for their candidates. But he cannot persuade himself to go so far as to vote against them with his ancient foes. Then he becomes uneasy in his insulation. He reconsiders his position. He hears that Mr. Gladstone has made concessions. He looks at these concessions with an eager desire to find a good deal in them. He does not find much in them, but he makes the most of what there is. Then he looks at the action of Mr. Gladstone's opponents with a keen desire to find that, whatever else he does, he cannot support them. He easily finds something in what they do that greatly jars upon him, and he declares openly perhaps, that, whatever happens, he can never unite himself with enemies on whose policy he sees " the trail of the serpent" so plainly traced. Then he bethinks himself that a man who supports neither party in a great struggle is not doing his duty, but is setting the very example which he has so often condemned in the fastidious culture of other great States, the example of leaving the less fastidious politicians to fight out the battle between themselves. And so he catches at excuses,—very small excuses will often do,—to gulp down his wrath, and come back to the party with which he has been accustomed to act, all the more willingly of course that they are eager to open their arms to a returning prodigal whose desertion had cost them dear. That, or something like that, has evidently been Sir George Trevelyan's experience in these latter years. It is not an experience for which we can feel any great respect in one holding such a position as his. But it is an ex- perience which we can very easily understand in the ordinary elector, and to which we do not find it easy to attach any great reproach. And we feel very little doubt that this represents very fairly the path through which Liberal opinion has passed in the last year and a half in the mind of many a Liberal elector who was first estranged and offended, then paralysed, and has latterly come back to his old party with a sense of relief that has extremely little to do with Irish policy, though he has sought and found certain excuses in the Irish policy of his leader for his apparent inconsistency. This ex- perience has been the experience of thousands who thought that they were Englishmen first and Liberals afterwards, but who found on trial, though they have probably not confessed it to themselves, that they were really Liberals first and Englishmen afterwards. This being, as we believe, the true state of the case, what have Liberal Unionists to hope when they see this ebb of feeling undermining the political ground on which they stood f We hold that for the moment the prospect is gloomy, that they must be prepared to endure a good many dis- appointments of the same kind before they can look for a new flow of the tide which bore them to victory in 1886, but that this is a case in which they will certainly have plenty of time, and in which time well used will be all in their favour. But how should the time be used I In the first place, it should be used to alter the whole basis and significance of the present Conservative Party, so as to remove its unpopular associations and connect it with high national aspirations rather than with ancient privileges. The real hope for the Unionists is not that the shock which alienated a good number of Liberals from Mr. Gladstone's party shall be renewed, but that as younger men enter the ranks of voters, men who were never voters before, a larger and larger proportion of them may join the National Party who are not willing to break up the Kingdom to please any popular leader, especially when they see that by doing so, far from joining the ranks of an anti-popular party, they will be joining the ranks of a party who have no less eager a desire for social progress, and a much stronger desire for national unity and strength, than their opponents. It is quite possible that for many months to come, the reaction which we have seen in Hampshire, in Coventry, in Glasgow, in Cheshire, will continue, and yet that, as one or two years go by, it will be found that while the alienated Liberals drift back into their party, the National Party will gain more recruits from amongst the younger voters than the party which. contemplates a revolutionary federalism and a reconstruction. of the Empire on a totally new and very much weaker basis. Our readers may, however, ask how there can be time for such a gradual process as this to tell before the great issue is decided. We reply that, whatever else is doubtful, it is certain that the mighty revolution into which Mr. Gladstone has gradually been drawn, a revolution involving a complete break with our history, and a new departure on a basis at least as different from anything in our past experience as is the history of Switzerland from the history of England, cannot be effected in a hurry. Almost the only wise thing which Lord Randolph Churchill ever said, was that even if Mr. Gladstone came in to-morrow with a great majority at his back, he would find it simply impossible to carry through Parliament a Home-rule Bill, from the enormous intrinsic difficulties of the case. If to carry Home- rule with the exclusion of Irish Members from the supreme Parliament has been impossible, to carry it with the inclusion of Irish Members, and the consequent adjustment of the different spheres of the Imperial and the local Parliaments, the drawing-up of a paper Constitution, the founding of a Supreme Court to interpret it, the consideration of the various. claims for other local Parliaments which would be put forward on such an occasion, the new adjustment of taxation, and all the innumerable minor provisions of the utmost delicacy and difficulty which these institutions would involve, would be an impossibility of an altogether higher order. No majority would bear the strain which such a task would put upon it. And even if the House of Commons could be per- suaded to pass each a measure, the Lords would throw it out with general approval, on the explicit ground that the country could not have understood how great a revolution was being prepared for it, till the various details of the measure had been considered in all their bearings. And when Parliament came to be dissolved, with all these mighty difficulties looming big in the public mind, we believe that the country would turn round and reject the measure for which, in ignorance of its magnitude, it had supposed itself desirous. Mr. Gladstone would never carry such a measure in one, or in two Parliaments. The difficulties would come out in stronger and stronger light the more they were considered. And at every fresh effort to solve the impossible, the National Party which declared that what it is thus impossible to carry out practically, it is utterly inexpedient to attempt, would grow rapidly in power. This is, we maintain, the great hope of those, who, refusing to move to and fro as Sir George Trevelyan has moved to and fro, take their stand on the position that between Separation and Union there is, for such a State as England, no statesmanlike middle course. This is a position so clear, and founded on reasons so broad and strong, that we shall decline to be dis- heartened by any reverses, whether at by-elections or even at a General Election. What those who oppose this dangerous measure have to do, is to strengthen the foundations of a popular and national party which shall resist this change; to urge by line upon line, and precept upon precept, the abso- lute unfitness of this little Kingdom for the disjointing process proposed, and the far less danger of that complete separation of which Irishmen say that they will not even hear. We must teach our electors that, in the end, it must come to choosing between Union as we have it now, and Separation so complete that we shall cease to have any responsibility for what the Irish Legislature does. When that point is reached, we do not think that we shall hear much more of Home-rule. And if that point is not reached till after a British Parliament has tried its hand on recasting Mr. Gladstone's policy, it will be reached whenever it comes to grapple with that most for- midable and hopeless task. The position of the Liberal Unionists, if only they will abandon the various unmeaning compromises which have been sometimes put forward in their name, is, indeed, so strong, that if they do not succeed by con- vincing the constituencies that Home-rule ought not to be attempted, they will succeed by demonstrating to a triumphant Home-rule Administration that it must go to pieces in the very hour of triumph.
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