MB. LOWE'S ECCENTRTOITIES.
. LOWE must always be a man of high political mark.
It is something at least never to speak without convey- ing a meaning, though we are not sure that in a statesman of high position this is uniformly the note of a sound judg- ment. It appears to have been on certain occasions very useful to Ministers to speak without conveying a meaning. Sometimes it gains time, gives the impression of careful deliberation, and conceals a purpose which it would be premature to avow. But be this as it may, Mr. Lowe is too clever and impulsive a man to have the gift of speaking with- out conveying a meaning, and a very sharply-defined meaning; and that has its advantages, too, in a political world as hazy as our own. But the worst of Mr. Lowe is, that sharply cut as his views always are, you see but little consistency between one class of his views and another class. On Reform questions he has always spoken very like a scholarly Tory, with a Conservatism due half to Thucydides and Aristotle and half to sincere contempt for the intellectual inferiority of the masses. On Church and Educational questions he has always spoken like a rough utilitarian Liberal, who judges even the more delicate intellectual products by what are called "results,"—i.e., results appreciable by a very rough gauge indeed,—and would like to let " the market" law of demand and supply determine the amount and character of all middle-class education. But on questions of University reform, on the other hand, you find him going clean over to the Conservatives again,. and arguing for the abuses of the Fel- lowship system, as if it were a legitimate application of his principle of " payment by results " to grant a vast number of great prizes to men who have finished their education, and only need the means of making a figure in some profession, out of funds raised and intended to be used for purely educa- tional purposes. Then, on Colonial matters he goes back again to the rough utilitarian view, and has often argued for the dis- memberment of the Empire, as if there were no meaning or purpose in loyalty or union beyond the security it gives for prosperity and trade. But perhaps the most difficult thing to know about Mr. Lowe is what view he is likely to take on a question of foreign policy. Of course, so far as he can, he will be in favour of non-intervention. That is the natural result of the excessive importance he attributes to the economical policy of laissez-faire, and the overweening value he sets on com- mercial prosperity. But having laid it down that he will always advocate the policy of laissez-faire when he has a decent excuse for so doing, it is the next thing to impossible to know how he will judge the merits of any international dispute. You may feel tolerably sure that he will avoid anything like a view deeply penetrated by sentiment. But beyond this you can be sure of nothing. In the autumn it was a pleasant surprise to find him insisting strongly on our indirect responsibility for the misdeeds of the watch- dog which Great Britain had insisted on hiring to keep off Russia, and even demanding an autumn Session to repu- diate the dangerous doctrines of Lord Beaconsfield. But
that little burst of feeling seems to have spent itself, and to have left Mr. Lowe in the condition of what Mr. Disraeli called an " exhausted volcano," on the Eastern Question.
For the oddest and to our mind the most untenable view which has yet been taken of the Eastern Question was taken by Mr. Lowe at the Engineers' dinner on Tuesday in relation to the impending war. At that dinner he said :—" It is a melancholy and painful reflection to think how many thousands of men are drawing near to their last breath, and probably are about to suffer a painful death, for the sake of a cause which those who stand by and look on must consider as one which might have been easily settled without so deadly an arbitrament as that. Gentlemen, it is vain to lament over these things. All we can do is to hope that everything has been done which could be done to avert this catastrophe, and that in the future everything will be done which can be done to make the miserable scenes which we are about to hear of as
short as possible. I can only say that I conceive that the duty of Government will never be better discharged than if it can by any means, and almost any sacrifices, pre- vent this frightful effusion of blood for issues which cannot appear, I think, to any responsible man as worthy of the sacri- fice that is thus demanded of humanity. There are cases in which men can look on with something like tranquillity, and see enormous sacrifices sustained by nations for great causes, but I believe that the feelings of every man of sense must be that this is not one of those causes. Having had the benefit or the misfortune of living many years, I have seen many wars, but I cannot remember one which struck me with a more melancholy feeling of the utter disproportion be- tween the enormous sacrifices and miseries which are to be suffered and the ends which are to be attained." Now whatever view of the coming war is true, that is as- suredly not true, and is even a marvel of eccentricity. Take the view of those who think that Russia is entering on a career of most unrighteous and fatal ambition, and then it is clear enough that the cause of the war is not one which could " easily have been settled without so deadly an arbitrament as that." Take the view which we believe to be the true one,—that this great war is the natural issue of centuries of frightful oppres- sion, in which judgment has been delayed through the ignorance of bystanders, and the selfish fears of those who thought Turkey a useful watch-dog—to use Mr. Lowe's own phrase—against the Russian burglar. If that be the true view, it is plain enough that this is no dispute about a trivial matter which ought easily to have been settled by peaceful arbitrament. And again, as to Mr. Lowe's last remark, that this is not a war from which it is possible to hope anything. Why, many of the Russophobist party hope everything from the war. They hope to bring about an alliance with Turkey which will inflict a deadly blow on Russia, and prevent the development of her ambitious schemes for another half-century or so. Assuredly those who hold with us that this may be the final break-up of the bad empire which has inflicted more unmerited suffering on Europe than any other State that ever existed has had the power to inflict, hope everything from the war,—hope for the final exorcism of Eastern Europe from a sort of diabolic possession. There is no one we ever heard of, except Mr. Lowe, who does not hope much and fear much from this war,—no one, whatever his view, who does not think that it involves mighty issues, and that the results must be re- sults of the first magnitude to the history of the world. But Mr. Lowe is an exception to every rule. You never can make out to what conclusion the odd abruptnesses of his mode of thought will lead him. Whether he publishes an educa- tional manifesto, which no one expects and no one accepts, on the very eve of entering the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer ; or launches an unexpected and unpopular tax, with- out giving the least exposition of the objections likely to be taken to it, and the true answer to such objections ; or rushes into erroneous statements about the action of the Crown, and has to withdraw them as suddenly as he made them ; or de- clares a war about which opinion is indeed vehemently divided, but which no one except himself thinks a war about a trifle and one easily to have been avoided,—he is always incalcul- able. His mind is like those zig-zag lines by which the elabo- rate tables in Financial Opinion illustrate the sudden rises and falls in price during a period of panic. You never know where his intellectual power will begin and where it will unex- pectedly break off. You only know that it is there, that it is wonderfully incisive of its kind, but as likely to snap in deal- ing with political questions as a surgeon's lancet would be if applied to the function of sawing the bone, instead of merely dividing the tissues.
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