WHY HAVE THE RADICALS LOST HEART M R. GOSCHEN, in addressing
his constituents yester- day week, discerned a remarkable change in the attitude of the Opposition. The leaders had recovered their courtesy. Moreover, the section of irreconcilables appears to be smaller than it was, and not in so much favour with the leaders. As we pointed out last week, the extreme party was forsaken and even snubbed by Mr. Gladstone in relation to the Committee on Royal Grants; and further, there was no one willing to enter the lists at Dover to prove to the electors that after the existing Union had been broken up, the Strait of Dover would be safer from a foreign foe than ever it had been since the beginning of the century. Mr. Goschen, too, saw evidence that the Opposition no longer exult in the strength of the Irish difficulty. They are chary of dwelling upon it as they used to do, and are rather seeking about for other questions on which to convert London to their views. They are eager to challenge for Mr. Conybeare's and Mr. Cunninghame Graham's friends on the County Counc 1 the privilege of directing the movements of the London Police, rather than to challenge for Mr. Parnell's and Mr. Davitt's friends the privilege of directing the movements of the Irish Constabulary. They turn their attention to the subject of London leaseholds, and, in fact, do all in their power to break new ground, instead of dwelling with the old fervour on the question which Mr. Gladstone has made the main question of the day. But Mr. Goschen did not ask the particular question which we are now asking : What is the source of all this indecision and groping for new excuses for agitation p—though he was quite clear of the fact, and noted its very useful result in clearing the air in the House of Commons. We ourselves have a strong conviction not only that Mr. Goschen is right,—of which, indeed, there can be no doubt, —but that the reason for this new discouragement and modesty amongst the Opposition is not to be found in any- thing that has happened in the United Kingdom, so much as in the reflex influence of foreign events on Radical opinion. It has been the condition of things in France, and the condition of things in the United States, which have dis- mayed the Radicals, much more than any special success of the Unionist Party here. The Unionists here have done well. Mr. Balfour has shown that he is not only resolved, but that he is as temperate and as determined not to be driven into excesses as he is resolved. Mr. Goschen has administered our finances in a masterly fashion, and Mr. W. H. Smith has conducted the affairs of the Government in the House of Commons with singular good sense and good temper. But none of these things would account for the uncomfortable state of the Radical Party, if it had not been evident that in France Radicalism is in distress, and that in the United States the party which has supplied the Home- rulers here with the sinews of war is in disgrace, and under a cloud from which it will be slow in again emerging. It is a singular thing, but it is certainly true, that stolid as we English are, there is nothing on which the " advanced " section of popular opinion depends so much as on the en- couragement or discouragement it gets from the same ,party abroad. During the great war when Bonaparte had overturned the Jacobins of France, the dullest Conser- vatism reigned in England, and reigned with a sense of confidence which it has never since recovered. The stimulus which the Italian Revolution of 1860, and then the triumph of the North in the American Civil War, gave to English Liberalism, was great and obvious. It really secured for Mr. Gladstone the chance for his first great Administration of 1869- 4. The great triumph. of Germany over the French Republic checked that impulse, and more recently the plain dissatisfaction of the French people with their Parliamentary government has done more to discomfit the Radical Party in England than any effort of our Unionist Press. When the Radicals find General Boulanger gaining so much influence in France by virtue merely of his openly expressed scorn for the anarchy of the French Assembly, they begin to be less and less satisfied with their own suc- ,cess in throwing the House of Commons into confusion, and to fidget lest the English people should follow in the steps of the French people so as to mark their dislike of the party of anarchists amongst ourselves. Well, all this was beginning to tell seriously on Radical opinion in England, and to send a cold shiver through the party that complains of Mr. Balfour's very mild resolve to keep order in Ireland, and Mr. Smith's to get the House of Commons into working gear, when the Cronin murder suddenly fell like a thunderbolt on the Parnellites, show- ing bow unscrupulously indifferent even to American law and American Republicanism, a great part of the Irish-American conspiracy is. We are not assuming, of 'course, that the Irish Parliamentary Party have evinced any sympathy with the persons who condemned and executed Dr. Cronin. We suspect that they would have given -a great deal of money to prevent that shocking tragedy. But it was notorious that many of the Clan-na-Gael who instigated this murder, also sent over large sub- scriptions to the Irish agitators here ; so that when the American indignation broke out, and was freely expressed at the lawlessness of the Clan-na-Gael, those who had received aid and comfort from the Clan-na-Gael felt them- selves in a good deal of embarrassment, and not at all in a position to make the patriotic boasts on which they had previously been living so gay a political life. And the English Radicals, too, felt the blow. They at once discerned that the democracy on whose sympathy they had chiefly relied was likely to be very chary of its sympathy for the pre- sent. It is all very well for Mr. Gladstone to quote the opinion of Illinois and the opinion of New York in favour of Home-rule ; but the mind will wander from Home-rule to Revolution,—and the opinion of Illinois, to say nothing of the opinion of New York, is at the present time in a state of great irritation with the Irish revolutionists in America, because they seem to have no more respect for Republican institutions there than they have for the monarchical institutions of the United Kingdom. Curious as it may seem, it is certainly true that the Radicals of this country are much more sensitive to the breath of Radical opinion in America and France than the Conservatives of this country are to the breath of Con- servative opinion in America and France. The Radicals gather encouragement at once from the rising Radicalism of America and France, and immediately feel the dis- couragement of the disgust to which any spread of anarchy in either country immediately gives rise. We sincerely believe that, well as Unionist leaders have fought, and ad- mirable as their statesmanship has been, their opponents have been much more discouraged by feeling that two great democracies are for the time quite out of temper with their principles, than by learning what they might by this time have learned from their home experience alone, that dis- integration once begun may go to any lengths, and reduce the power of this Kingdom almost to a cipher. We have preached and preached to that effect, and the Radicals have simply stopped their ears. But now the dismay Of the French Republicans across the water, and the anger of the American Republicans at the murderous doings of the Clan-na-Gael, are discouraging our own Radicals much more effectually than any lessons, however impressive that the Unionists of this country have been able to give them. General Boulanger is a better answer to Mr. Conybeare than all the eloquence of Lord Derby and Mr. Chamberlain. Dr. Cronin is a better answer to Mr. Parnell than all the eloquence of Sir Richard Webster. Our English and Irish Radicals are more depressed by the mishaps of their friends across the Channel and across the Atlantic, than by all the reasoning which should have shown them that, if their policy is to be pursued, such mishaps must multiply here as well as abroad.
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