CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATE ADMINISTRATION.
THERE seems to be no duty more fascinating than the writing of political epitaphs, but the reading of them is a different matter, especially as hardly a single reader exactly agrees with the writer, and almost all of them wish to retouch here and there, and deepen the lines which express this virtue or that defect. Yet in spite of this grave objection to political epitaphs, there are occasions on which it seems only fair to write them, when the temper of the time seems disposed to pervert the truth of political history and to make light of great efforts and noble work. If the Conservatives are not just at the present moment much disposed, while they are buckling on their armour, to boast themselves as they who are putting it off,—and the unwonted temperateness of their organs shows that they appreciate the responsibilities they are undertaking, —they are yet very much disposed to do the next worst thing, —to pervert the story of the last few years by a jaundiced and somewhat malicious view of the Administration they have overthrown. We might have thought that Mr. Gathorne Hardy had something better to do, in preparing for his own arduous duties, than to bring an indictment against the Government which he and his friends are to replace. The time for taunts has passed away with the elections. If any one is to be exhorted to self-examination, it surely should be those who are assuming heavy responsibilities, rather than those who are laying them down. At all events, if the Con- servatives must still continue the retrospective arraignments of the last few weeks, it becomes a sort of duty to say what we really think of the Government that has just retired after its great five years' war against political abuses,—abuses of which all but one were extinguished by its efforts.
And as we have never pretended to be mere adherents of the late Government, we will mention just one or two of its leading defects, before referring to its far greater merits. Of the former, the worst seems to us to have been this,— that while Mr. Gladstone was in many respects the greatest and the most laborious Premier of his day, he certainly was not anything like as good an overseer of the general work of the Departments as many very inferior men. Like most men of genius, Mr. Gladstone has an extraordinary power of " taking pains," but also, like most men of genius, he has not any great power of diverting his attention from one subject to another. It has been said of him that nothing was so difficult as to get Mr. Gladstone's attention to any subject, except to get it away again. If he once got a subject into his imagination, he be- came engrossed with it ; but this was never possible with many subjects at a time. It was this gift which made him so great in dealing with a complex, and at first sight almost hopelessly intricate subject, like the Irish Church or Irish Land Act. Yet the same peculiarity prevented him from giving a general supervision to the work of the Depart- ments, entering into the political anxieties of his lieu- tenants, counselling them how to avoid needless difficulties, and encouraging them to overcome what could not be avoided. The consequence is that Mr. Gladstone's Administration, great as it has been in legislation, has been somewhat constructed on the principle of those iron ships which are made up of an aggregation of separate compartments, warranted to sink or swim on the limited-liability principle. There have been some great departmental chiefs,—Mr. Forster, Mr. Childers, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Cardwell, and we should have said, had he never left Ireland, Mr. Chichester Fortescue,—made under his Government ; but there has been a certain want of unity in the administration of the Departments as a whole. No one felt that the revising mind was over them all, as Sir Robert Peel's was over the Administration of 1841- 1846, or as Lord Palmerston's was over the War Administration of 1855. Members asked what would the Chancellor of the Exchequer do in relation to the Budget ; what the Home Minister would do in relation to the licensing system ; what the Vice-President of the Council would do as to a change in the Twenty-fifth Clause ; what the War Office would do in reorganising the system after the abolition of Purchase ; and BO on,—never what the Government would do. And in general, it was quite evident from the course of events that this was a true instinct of the public. Mr. Gladstone was one of the strongest of Premiers on the few subjects with which he grappled himself, but one of the least efficient of overseers in other matters. Even on first-rate administrative questions, we usually had the decision of the Ministers rather than of the Government. The Prime Minister was not the living tie between the various Departments.
In the next place,---and this was a defect closely con- nected with the former,—the comparative isolation of the Departments involved an unreadiness in the Cabinet, as a Cabinet, to debate questions of general policy. Each of the Ministers was very much left to grapple with his own peculiar class of problems, and was thus less imbued with the conception of general policy animating the Cabinet as a whole, than has often been the case with men of very inferior powers and under very inferior chiefs. The duty of debating departmental policy being almost exclusively left to the departmental chiefs, the duty of debating general policy was necessarily almost exclusively left to the Prime Minister with the help of the one colleague whose work was most closely related to the subject. As the central policy was not adequately diffused through the Departments, so the departmental ability was not adequately associated with the Prime Minister in the discussion and defence of that policy. There was a want of homogeneity about the Government. There was a strong centre, and many strong posts in the cir- cumference, but the central mind was not enough felt at the circumference, and the judgment of the subordinates was not enough consulted at head-quarters. Nor did either defect arise from the arbitrariness to which it has been attributed, but rather from the tendency to abstraction which was one of the great qualities of the chief, and necessarily also one of his great dangers.
Such seem to us to have been the principal shortcomings of the Government which has just abandoned power. Now, what
were its most characteristic virtues ? The first and most striking characteristic of all was, that from first to last it was the most absolutely sincere of Governments, that it really meant all it said, that it used its whole strength to fulfil all its pledges, and practically did fulfil all but one. As far as the present writer can recollect, this is a characteristic unique in our recent political history. Almost with the very passing of the Reform Act the system of shilly-shally began. For instance, the first Liberal Administration which made an attack on the Irish Church in the shape of the Appropriation Bill, pledged itself deeply to the principle, repledged it- self, and at the critical moment gave way, and praised its own moderation for giving way. Oftentimes since, Liberal administrations have promised their support to this great principle and to that,—nay, have, as in 1859, positively turned out the Conservatives for inadequate dealings with the Liberal principle, and then, when reinstalled in power, have dropped their own measure, and drunk oblivion of all their promises. Oftentimes, too, Conservative administrations have gone through the same demoralising conversion. Sir Robert Peel came in to be the bulwark of Protection, and carried Free Trade. Lord Derby came in to resist democracy, and carried the great democratic measure of the age. In fact, in our time, both Liberal and Conservative governments, as a rule, have been prone to this dangerous laxity of principle. They have not really meant what they said, or if they did, have not cared to do what they meant to do, so soon as it appeared that it would be inconvenient. But Mr. Gladstone's Government has been the very impersonation of almost grim honesty and tenacity of purpose. What it said it would do, that it did, almost to the very letter. Yet we have heard it asserted by very sincere Radicals that they were rejoiced that Mr. Gladstone's Government was gone, because " Gladstone was not honest." Now, whatever else might be said of the late Government, we should have thought that was the one thing which could never be said. For the very first time in our recollection, a Ministry has laid down a very difficult programme, and acted upon it with the scrupulous conscientiousness of a man under a vow. No doubt Mr. Gladstone has written letters at times in what looked like ambiguous language, has interpreted documents in a strained manner, and put wonderful constructions on Acts of Parliament. But judge him as a statesman has a right to be judged—by deeds, not words—and it seems to us almost as ab- surd to say that the sun does not give light, as that the late Prime Minister was not honest. If he was not honest, what was Lord Palmerston, who shelved the very reform for the sake of which he had ousted Lord Derby ; or Lord Derby, who carried a much more drastic reform than that for horror of which he had ousted Lord Russell ? For years, almost generations, Liberals have complained that Liberal pledges meant nothing, that
" As bees on flowers alighting cease their hum, So settling upon places, Whigs are dumb."
Mr. Gladstone has redeemed the conscience of the Liberal party from this slur. He has reduced his promises as anxiously into performance as if they had been bills of exchange which he had to meet on maturity under pain of bankruptcy. What- ever Mr. Gladstone's Government has not been, this it has been,—honest with an honesty that gives new significance to the words of statesmen. And besides its honesty in the greater things, this Ministry has shown the highest honesty in what is more difficult,— fidelity to the public service when there were many people to offend by fidelity and very few to gain, inasmuch as those whose interests were protected were merely " the many," who never know either what they gain by the scrupulousness, or what they would lose by the complaisance, of Government. This is what the great cry about "harassed" interests really means. It is now more and more evident that the publicans, though no doubt they have not turned, but only swelled the tide of unpopularity, have really made a concerted effort, — not to defend themselves, they admit that the Act of 1872 needs very little alteration to make it a really good one,—but to revenge themselves for the Bill of 1871, which never became law. And what the publicans have done, hosts of interests which have lost some- thing by the sturdy honesty of the Government's economy have done also. They have taken bitter offence against the singleness of economical purpose—sometimes, no doubt, pushed to excess, oftener simply carried out with the calm logic of honest purpose—which the Government have steadily shown in all departments. This is a very unpopular quality, though it is a quality to which more than any other the people owe the great remissions of taxation. And it is a quality which in small things gauges the honesty of the Government, just as the great measures carried have gauged it in great things. On the whole, Mr. Gladstone's five years have been the great five years of the last half-century in legislation, and it is not easy to suppose that this generation will see anything so good again. His faults have been the faults of an over-concentrated political genius, as his achievements have been the achieve- ments that only great concentration could have carried. Under the contagious influence of his singleness of purpose and zeal, some of his colleagues have grown into departmental chiefs as great as was he himself when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, though without much intellectual moulding from his supervision. And after every defect that can be reckoned up has been displayed in its worst light, the Administration that redeemed the soil of Ireland and the Army of England,— that relieved a Catholic people from the incubus of a Protestant Establishment,—that pledged the country to educate all its children, and to give the most capable the opportunity of rising to the highest places in society,—that recast the Judicature, and made the Navy new,—and that did all this in the face of the most urgent temptations to cast its promises to the winds, will be remembered as the great administration of the century, in spite of even serious errors in Foreign Policy, or an occa- sional sophistical construction of an Act of Parliament.
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