THE NEW LIBERAL DANGER. T HE Liberal party is just now
most unfortunate, and that in a way which threatens one of the greatest interests of the country. They lost their best men and their most influential supporters over the Home-rule question, they stood to lose others over the question of armaments, and they are now menaced with a third secession, or period of sloughing, over the Imperial idea. A 'large section of their supporters, including some of their most influential leaders, agree with the Government as to its policy in South Africa, while Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Morley, and doubtless a great body of voters, hold that policy in open or secret dislike and distrust. The division of Tuesday proved nothing. As Mr. Kruger had been so infatuated as to sanction the ultimatum, no one not hostile to Great Britain, or indifferent to her honour, could hesitate to vote the supplies necessary for war ; but even of those who voted for the Government many consider the objects of its action unwise or even unjust. The Manchester Guardian represents a division of opinion both in Parliament and the country much bigger than that vote. The total result of the situation on the party is, therefore, first, a paralysis of its debating power, and, secondly, an increased promi- nence of its Extreme Left, without which, indeed, there would sometimes seem to be no Liberal party at all. This extreme party is made up of doctrinaire democrats, who have never been able to get a true hold upon the illogically sensible English people ; a few " Little Englanders," who are rejected by the instincts—the bad instincts as well as the good instincts—of the mass of voters ; and the Irish Celtic Members, who, while pro- fessing that Home-rule would be in no way dangerous to the Empire, are unwise enough the moment war begins to indulge in rhetorical hopes that England may be defeated. Not one of them would refuse a com- mission for his son, or dream of asking his son, once commissioned, to betray his trust, but the opportunity of venting spite is too good to be lost. It is as pleasant as praying for a rival in his presence. If the Liberal leaders do not take care they will find themselves in command of a few stalwarts, men who cannot believe that Tories can have sane intervals, and a heterogeneous crowd whom the great body of old Liberals, all of whom belong to a Left Centre tinctured with Imperialism, will regard with disgust and refuse to follow, but who will retain the almost magical name of the Liberal party, and who, if disregarded, will mutiny or break into shattered groups. Their policy, so far as it can be detected, for they have no leader who is not violently divided from them on some point or other, is to menace property with special taxation, to support universal suffrage without redistribution of seats, and to avoid all occasions of expansion, even when expansion appears to be the only honourable as well as expedient course. With such a programme such a party will never win the ear of Great Britain, which is as un- moved by rhetoric as by insult, which is content as to its internal administration—always excepting the incidence of rates—and which has thus far at least caught up the Imperial idea that it believes that Providence has im- posed upon it a great, perhaps a difficult, function, and that it must do its duty.
We can hardly conceive of a greater misfortune for the country than this crumbling down of the great Liberal party, with its splendid traditions, its suspended hold on opinion, and its possible future. The Unionist party is a very good one, quite competent to govern, and entirely trustworthy, but if we wanted to see it ruined we should exempt it from all effective criticism and from any belief in the possibility of resistance. We sympathise entirely in its present foreign policy, but it needs restraint in its ideas of expansion, so that they may not outstrip our available strength, or endow us with territories in which we cannot fully maintain the Paz Britannica, or its corollary, substantial justice to all subject populations. The British could govern the whole dark world, to its infinite advantage, but not with a sergeant's guard. We approve for the present our expenditure, vast as it is, because it is forced upon us by other nations, and because it has not really increased more rapidly than our means, but it needs incessant watchfulness to prevent commit- ments which, when the lean years come, as come they must, may produce either a dangerous reaction towards economy, or a scheme of taxation which will kill pro. sperity. And, above all, we dread the dying down of deliberation in Parliament till it becomes a mere tissue of rhetorical outbursts on one side, and dignified but uninstruetive remonstrances on the other. Debate is left too much to the newspapers, which for the moment attract feebler writers than they did in 1845-57, and if criticism is to be poor, or too visibly animated by spite, it will be left still more. You cannot argue forcibly with a "crank," or with an Irishman when he is talking not to you but to a crowd behind whose notion of eloquence is cursing in rhythmical form, and when argument dies the compulsion on the Cabinet to think out its policy dies too. The immediate destiny of all democracies is probably Cabinet government—note how the Cabinet grows even in America, where it consists legally of five clerks—but every Cabinet needs the control of good debaters, and of a necessity for thinking instead of merely coming to resolu- tions. Without an Opposition, in short, there is no Parliament ; and in England there is not only no Opposition, but no visible prospect of one of the old kind being formed. Not only are the chiefs not agreed, but the party itself is riven into splinters, the largest and most visible fragment being the one which Englishmen will not use.
It is no part of our duty to advise the chiefs of the Liberal party, but if it were we should recommend them to abandon openly the thought of Home-rule, even at the risk of alienating the Irish vote, which, being Jacobin as well as Separatist, would not be alienated ; to accept and moderate the Imperial idea, as the Tories have accepted and moderated the democratic idea ; and to try to offer to the people as moderate and as sensible an alternative policy, especially in finance, as they can devise. This is not the hour for abstract principles. They would then be able to await the certain accretion of supporters, to take advantage of any blunders their opponents might commit, and to search out and promote in their own ranks men, no matter of what age, though the young are always to be preferred, who can inspire the nation with something of a feeling of hope. They are heavily weighted just now with a group of excellent and competent persons who excite no one's imagination, and many of whom on the Imperial question, which just now dominates all others, inspire a lively distrust. If they have the nerve to do this, disregarding the wirepullers who never understand anything but intrigue, they may yet form a strong Opposition, and hereafter a strong Government. If they will not do this, but continue reluctant to offend this group and that antiquated form of opinion, they must await the rise among them of a man of genius and the demand from below for a programme with which they can agree. The Liberal party cannot die any more than Liberalism can, but it will, if it is badly directed, wait out of power for several Parliaments, and find when it has once more attained the privilege of initiative that it has no ideas.
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