THE CAUSES OF LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S SUCCESS.
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S success is exaggerated in popular estimation ; but that he has succeeded is beyond a doubt. He has formed a party within the Lower House which, as the scene of Monday showed, equals in number Mr. Parnell's ; he has compelled Lord Salisbury to consult him, though not to obey him, in the formation of a Government ; he has claimed and secured a Secretaryship of State ; and he has obtained in various ways the support, sometimes enthusiastic, of a large section of his party throughout the country. That is success, so far as it goes ; and it behoves all politicians to study, and to study so far as possible without prejudice, the causes of that success, which has been obtained, it must not be forgotten, with the old constituency. It is certainly nothing that Lord Randolph has done, for as yet he has had no opportunity of doing anything ; nor has he left even with his followers any certain impression of administrative power. The truth upon that point is as yet unrevealed and uncertain, for Lord Randolph has obviously one faculty—skill in managing men—which is sometimes the equivalent for administrative capacity ; but to outsiders he seems as yet to possess none. Nor is it his ability in counsel, for he has not yet betrayed any, has rather—it may be with intention—shown a total absence of coherent political thought. It would be easy to prove, if the task were worth the doing, that Lord Randolph Churchill has upon almost every question of importance defended absolutely contradictory lines of action, arguing with vehemence that Ireland should be held down, and that repression in Ireland is unconstitutional ; that Egypt should be abandoned, and that Egypt should be strongly ruled ; that the people should be taxed as well as property, and that the people ought first of all to be considered in taxation. He has even in the same speech promised retrenchment and lavish expenditure, and has furiously waved the flag while declaring his party the only party of peace. On political economy he has never adhered to the same doctrine for two consecutive speeches ; and on foreign affairs he has emitted nothing but ill-considered and sometimes dangerous diatribes. Nor do we believe that his eloquence has done so much for him as it is the fashion to affirm. Lord Randolph Churchill speaks well, with rush and "go" in his sentences ; he has a power of invective marred rather than assisted by his natural unscrupulousness and his artificial vulgarity ; and he can sometimes—we remember two occasions—rise into something like true oratory, or at all events to a lofty level of stirring declamation. But be lacks persuasiveness ; he has never made his hearers cry "Let us march against Philip !" though he has made them cry "Hurrah for Demosthenes I" and with a hostile audience he comparatively fails. Birmingham is not the less, but the more, Radical because he has addressed it ; and there is no fruit— even fruit in party votes—from his speeches as there is from Mr. Chamberlain's. And most certainly the cause of his success is not weight of character. There may lurk in him, though he is no longer in his first manhood, some unsuspected sobering force ; but he has seemed to the world as yet a political Puck, with a strain in him which admirers might misinterpret into genius, but also a strain of waywardness, deepening occasionally until his foes have half-doubted his perfect sanity. Very close observers who wish him to win doubt his ever winning, and declare in sporting language that although he has courage, form, and a turn of speed, he is incurably a jibbing horse. Be that as it may, he has, as yet, given no impression of being what the French call a "serious" politician, or of belonging to the class in which a nation like the English, which is essentially grave, will put its trust.
Nevertheless, he has succeeded so far, and we believe, subject to his exhibiting a new character in office, that his success is mainly due to three causes. One is his courage. Call it audacity, impudence, what you will, he has nerve, and the insight to see that the people, like private soldiers, exaggerate the value of that quality. They weary of the besetting defect of modern English statesmen, bonelessness, and appreciate Will even when they dislike its application.
They like a barrister who fights hard, a 'divine who threatens them, a politician who is telling them his thoughts, and not deferring to them. Lord Randolph does not lead as yet anywhither ; but he does not follow, and seems to his followers always to have, if not the courage of his convictions, the audacity of his opinion for the day. He has it too. His line on Monday was dictated by his audacity, and its success will deepen his followers' impression, which arose originally from the directness and irreverence with which he assailed Mr. Gladstone. That fighting, and especially the method of it, irritated many Liberals deeply, more deeply than it irritated Mr. Gladstone, who has had fifty years' experience of such men, who saw Mr. Disraeli rise, and who has not forgotten Mr. O'Connell and his "descendant of the impenitent thief that died upon the Cross "; but it struck Tory outsiders in a different way, as if a very small man were on their behalf facing a giant. They did not underrate Mr. Gladstone, and thought what a wonderful thing it was for Hop-o'-my-Thumb to face the resistless Blundabore ; or, perhaps, rather what a miraculous thing it was for the fisherman to spring at the throat of the gigantic Jinn. Punch, in his earlier caricatures of Lord Randolph, always embodied that impression. To Tories thirsting for some expression of their rancour, such audacity seemed wondrously fine, and has never been forgotten.
Then we must remember the kind of impression made by Lord Beaconsfield, and the myths that have accreted round his memory, and the lurking hunger in Tory minds to find another chief like him, a man with flash and insight, and not too scrupulous. There lingers always in the British mind a feeling that one's lawyer should not be too scrupulous, that he should meet sharp practice with sharp practice, and that in him the first of virtues is fidelity to his client. Lord Randolph Churchill from the first excited in Tory minds a hope that they had found another Disraeli just where they wished to find him, that is, in an aristocratic house ; the hope was strengthened, rather than diminished, by Lord Randolph's unscrupulousness in speech and writing ; and it has been confirmed by his astounding self-assurance, which they read as if it were consciousness of power. "Don't he do it well," the admiring cabman cried to his perspiring fare after a reckless gallop ; "he never were in harness afore." They have wearied of Sir Stafford Northcote's political virtues, and hope for a brilliant leader like Lord Beaconsfield, with less sanity, but more go. They do not see the difference in the two men, the absence in Lord Randolph's speeches of those revealing flashes, and the total want in his character,—as we think, in the very basis of his character,—of his exemplar's magnificent selfrestraint ; and they will never give up their hope until he has visiblyfailed in office, or counselled some recklessly dangerous course of policy.
There remains a third cause yet, perhaps stronger than the other two. We cannot doubt, in the face of Mr. Bartley's letters and Mr. Forwood's speeches, and the repeated election of Lord Randolph Churchill to the chairmanship of party organisations, that a deep discontent with old Conservatism, now best represented by Sir Stafford Northcote, had spread among borough Tories ; that they believed the old ground was no longer tenable ; and that they longed with a longing which made them mutinous for a new field of battle. They were sick of resisting tendencies, and wanted a tendency of. their own. That longing Lord Randolph has perceived, and has gratified. Tory Democracy is not old Conservatism, but an idea which, in its tendencies, is utterly different, and which, if it is pursued, will create a totally new party. Whether, when it has been explained by men in office, it will attract
the people ; whether it will not drive old Conservatives into the Whig ranks, thus reconstituting the Liberal right wing; and, above all, whether it will work, are all questions to be settled in the future. For the present, the spirit of revolt has found expression, and is personified to the mutineers in Lord Randolph Churchill, who thus has behind him the most impatient, the least experienced, and therefore the most energetic, section of his own party throughout the country. He is their leader ; and it is clear, both from Lord Salisbury's and Sir Stafford Northcote's action, that they believe his numbers to be great.
We doubt it, believing the whole contrivance to be an illogical absurdity, and that the parties of the future, as of the past since 1688, will be essentially Constitutionalist and Democrat: but that is the belief of the thousands who have raised Lord Randolph to power, and who hope from him that kind of advocacy for the party opposed to Liberals which Mr. Disraeli gave. We shall see ; but if they find it, then once more, in.. "horsey" language, public running is no test of speed.
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