SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT AND MR. BRYCE ON LIBERALISM. B OTH Sir
William Harcourt and Mr. Bryce devoted speeches on Wednesday to the definition of true Liberalism, with a view to showing that they belong to the true Liberal party and that their opponents are its bitter foes. Of course Mr. Bryce was far more temperate than Sir William Harcourt, partly perhaps because he was not addressing a great Liberal Caucus, but only an East Marylebone Liberal and Radical Association, while Sir William Harcourt was blowing a trumpet-blast intended evidently to convince the Liberal Federation at Norwich that the time is approaching for turning out the Unionist Government. We wonder how he would like an immediate success. We suspect that dismay would be the upper- most feeling in his mind if the walls of Jericho suddenly fell down before the blare of his trumpet. The great dif- ference, he said, between the two parties is this, that the Liberal party never surrenders "the principles that it has espoused, and that the Tory party always in the end adopts those principles." We fancy that the Liberal party deserted Armenia in a manner that set the example to the Tory party, though Sir William Harcourt blusters now as if be and his friends were going to break up the Ottoman Empire, and were desperately ashamed of Lord Salisbury for following France in accepting the nominal integrity of the Ottoman Empire at the very time they are securing the autonomy of Crete,—which means depriving the Ottoman Empire of another province,—by way of making it clear that none of the Great Powers mean to enter into a scramble for their own hands. We should be surprised to learn that if Sir William Harcourt had been in power, and Lord Salisbury had attacked him with as much fury as he has attacked Lord Salisbury, for expressing his concurrence with the French Foreign Minister's statement, he would not have retorted with something like passion that in endorsing the French policy in this matter he had taken the best security possible that the Concert of Europe should not be pro-Turkish, but should do all that is in the power of England, France, and Italy to secure a Liberal interpretation of the Concert of Europe. We are no friends to even the nominal integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as all our readers know. We have always believed that Lord Salisbury with a little more courage might have carried the Concert of Europe for a Greek protectorate of Crete. But of this we feel very confident, that Lord Rosebery would have shown far more timidity than Lord Salisbury, —his own speech on Armenia demonstrated it,—and we do not feel much doubt that even Lord Kimberley, who now that he is in Opposition denounces any acquiescence in the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would have acquiesced in it himself had he been our Foreign Minister. We are far from sustaining that article of the Concert of Europe, which we utterly con- demn. But we are still further from thinking that if the so-called Liberals had been in power we should have had an atom more reason for satisfaction, even if we had not had much less. Mr. Bryce is one of the heartiest friends Armenia ever had, but even he belonged to a Cabinet which set the example to their successors of leaving Armenia in the lurch. Sir William Harcourt's loud- mouthed censure of the present Government would very soon be hushed if he and his friends were suddenly to succeed to power.
Then as to Sir William Harcourt's boast that Liberals never surrender principles they have espoused, why do we now hear so very little of Home-rule, or of Disestablishment, or of Local Option ? A nd if the Glad- stonians returned to power to-morrow would anything astonish us more than to find them taking up any one of those three causes ? Nor do we believe that either Mr. Dillon, or Mr. Healy, or Mr. Redmond, or Mr. Carvell "Williams, or Sir Wilfrid Lawson would look for the smallest advantage for their own special causes from that return to power. Indeed, if Sir William Harcourt expects the Unionists ultimately to adopt any one of those causes, he is certainly the victim of a very astonishing supersti- tion. What he probably really meant to say was this, that Liberals never surrender causes which are popular with the constituencies. And that is true. But when it turns out that the Unionists' causes are popular with the con- stituencies, then the Liberals silently evacuate the positions which they had unfortunately taken up.
But of course both Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Bryce make their running chiefly with the Education Bill. Sir William Harcourt calls it a Bill for giving half a million of money to the Church, though he knows that not a penny of it will go to the Church, but will all be devoted to improving the efficiency of the secular education in those elementary schools which ever since 1870 have been under the inspection of the Education Department, and are to continue under the inspection of that Department still. That the Church will continue to teach its own catechisms and theology to its own schools, and that the Roman Catholics and Wesleyans will continue to teach their own catechisms and theology to their schools, is of course true ; and that is the reason why the Radicals rave against any increase to their means, unless, indeed, an elective element should be admitted to all the Boards of Managers to set the old managers by the ears. Why, we should like to know, is the Education Department, which the Radicals lauded up to the skies last Session, to be considered wholly unequal to inspect the voluntary schools effectively this Session, though we were told with all the shrillness o! Radical acrimony a year ago that the Unionist Government dis- trusted and desired to dethrone the Department on which they now rely ? Directly the Unionists confirm the ascendency of the Education Department, and decline to add to its intelligent scrutiny the very ill-advised security of popularly elected members, the Government is assailed with the fiercest censure, and treated as ignoring the only sound principle of Liberalism, namely, that local government should control the expenditure of Government grants. If the check of departmental inspection has been so valuable for seven and twenty years, why should it suddenly be accounted inadequate because £600,000 is to be added to the millions whose expenditure it has hitherto checked? We quite agree with Mr. Bryce's first Liberal principle, that education should be "cheap and efficient." But who was it that made it cheap, except the Unionist Government of 1886-92, which carried the Free Education Act ? And if efficiency has been secured up to the present day, why should it not be secured by the same means for many years to come? But the main ground of Mr. Bryce's attack on the Education Bill appears to rest on his third Liberal principle, that the Government should seek " to link and bind together the different classes, the different denominations, and the different sections of the community, so as to make them grow up in goodwill and good feeling to one another, and to recognise that what is common to them is far more important than any differences which could divide them." Well, but how does Mr. Bryce propose to bring that principle (so far as it is true) home to denominations which do not think it true ? Do Roman Catholics, for instance, think that the authority of the Roman Catholic Church is far less important than what Roman Catholics and Anglicans and Dissenters of a great number of different types hold in common ? Mr. Bryce may think so, but we will answer for it that Cardinal Vaughan and Archbishop Temple and Dr. Rigg would not agree with him. And if not, how are they to be brought to agree with him ? Not surely by making it difficult for the Churches to teach their own religion to the children of parents who accept that religion, and so to establish in their minds a deep sense of grievance. Yet all this fierce multiplication of amendments to every line and every word of the Education Bill really does mean that the Government ought to put a differential duty on all separate denominational teaching, and to discourage it by every means in their power. To our mind, perfect liberty for denominational teaching, so far as it does not interfere with the liberty of non-denominationalists to absent them- selves from that teaching without exposing themselves to persecution, is the true Liberalism, and yet it is against any practical and honest acknowledgment of that principle that half the Radical amendments have been directed.
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