TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SUCCESSION TO MR. GLADSTONE.
THE Liberal party has, as a matter of course, received the news of Mr. Gladstone's resignation with profound regret, and even not a little dismay. Except in the case of an insignifi- cant clique which, on the subject of Mr. Gladstone, has always evinced symptoms of morbid brain,—melancholia eelampsia, or as we may translate it, "effulgent bile," is, we suspect, the precise and unfortunately very deep-seated nervous disorder from which these few unfortunates have been suffering,—there has not been a word pronounced except of profound and, at first, almost incredulous disappointment. But no one has really doubted that Mr. Gladstone's decision is serious and final, nor that the Liberal party must accommodate itself as speedily as possible to the new conditions of the case. And as we said last week, the main necessities of the position are these : that the Liberals should themselves make their choice of a new leader for the House of Commons quite freely ; that a leader once chosen, he should be cordially and ungrudgingly supported, even by those who would have preferred another ; and that at least till the new leader is firm in his seat, the brilliant states- man who has resigned the duties of leader should, as far as possible, abstain even from those potent interventions as miens curio for which, at a later period, the Liberal party will not improbably look on great occasions with eagerness and deference. The next step is to decide on the successor to Mr. Gladstone. But this, though a question of great importance, is certainly not so important as a hearty co-operation of all sincere Liberals, whether in Parliament or in the Press, in the choice of, and in loyalty to, some one leader of the party in the House of Commons. One preliminary mistake, however, must be avoided. It is a grave blunder to regard the choice now to be made as essentially temporary or provisional. Of course, all human selections are in their very nature liable to abrupt catastrophes, and may need sudden revision or recon- sideration. But in the choice of a House-of-Commons leader it is exceedingly undesirable, and not indeed very easy, to challenge more of such revisions and reconsiderations than events actually force upon a political party. One of the great conditions of successful leadership is experience. If experience is to be gained by any one man, let it as fax as possible not be gained in vain—that is, let him who gets it have the full use of it, unless he shows no power to use it, which we have no right beforehand to assume. It seems to us both an intrinsically unfair course, and what is more, a course exceedingly unlikely to succeed, to appoint an ad interim chief, with the intention of superseding him so soon as the party can agree upon some one else of greater capacity for the post. That is a most invidious and a most self-de- feating sort of policy, which no great party would carry out, even if it could, and very likely could not if it would. Of course if the party chooses a man who in the course of nature will one day go to the House of Lords, a time for reconsideration must come whenever that event happens. But till it happens, and so long as the leader in question discharges his duty faithfully and to the best of his ability, we believe it would be as unjust as it would be improbable that he should be superseded. No proposal is less well received by English parties than the proposal to supersede a leader. In our own time, there has been one leader who excited the most pro- found disloyalty, a disloyalty founded on no mere caprice and on no mere imperfection of strategy, but on the essential prin- ciples of the party he was leading, which principles it was believed that he had betrayed. And yet it was found impossible, impossible most likely from the very condition of feeling in the party itself, to remove him ; and the attempt, though often discussed, was never seriously made. As for getting rid of a leader from any general preference for another, the thing has never been heard of, and never would be, in an English party. Whoever is chosen is chosen till he voluntarily resigns the post or till events remove him from the House of Commons. That is the com- mon-sense of the situation, and it is exceedingly desirable that it should be so. Unless a party has the magnanimity to be tolerant of errors, and the fidelity to adhere to its choice when once made, in spite of even real disappointments, we shall never have good leaders. We, like other Liberals, have, of course, our own preference. But even if the choice falls on one whose leadership seems to us by no means the best, we should strenuously condemn the somewhat impotent and vacillating excuse that it is only an ad interim choice. Political leaders, to be of any use, must be trusted and must be followed.
If a party gives up the habit of trusting and following, it had better also give up the habit of electing leaders at all. Let us make the best choice we can. But whomsoever we choose, let us stick to him till he leaves us or is taken from us.
So much being premised, we would point out that we may choose the leader who—to use that phrase of M. Thiers which may be called one of the characteristic notes' of the political era which began in 1871—' divides us the least,'—i.e., to whom there is the least active antagonism. Or we may choose the man who would divide us somewhat more, from the presence in him of a larger positive element of political bias, but would for that very reason unite us more, so far as he did unite us. Or we may choose the man who would unite us the most, from the large preponderance of his positive characteristics, but who for that very reason will be most objected to by a small but vehement section of the party. We need hardly say that we, are thinking of the Marquis of Hartington under the Erg head, of Mr. Goschen under the second, and of Mr. Forster- under the third. Let us say a word or two more specially of each.
It is hardly necessary to say that in England Lord Harting- ton's position is in itself a political power not to be despised.. It is all very well to sneer at the Whig connection, but the Whig connection is useful enough in its way, and in the guidance of party, every additional social influence tells. The Cavendishes, too, have been thoroughly faithful to Mr. Glad- stone through all the contumely which other Whig cliques have lavished on him, and for that they deserve well of the Liberal party. Nor is it the sole recommendation of Lord Hartington that he wields the Devonshire influence and the Devonshire interest. He is a wooden speaker, but a man of sense and judgment. His speech on the Irish Home-rule' movement was one, of the substance of which any statesman might have been if not exactly proud, at all events completely unashamed. He has firmness and clearness of head. And he has made no political enemies ;—indeed it is the last quality which makes him the leader who would "divide us the least." As to the danger or chance of his being called to the Upper House, it is by no means imminent. The Duke of Devonshire is not yet sixty-seven, and is as likely, we suppose, as any man of his age to live another ten or twenty years. So much for Lord Hartington's claims. On the other hand, it must be said that as regards his position as the future head of a great Whig house, it will not be satisfactory to the country that both the chief of the party—who is inevit- ably Lord Granville—and the leader of the Liberals in the Lower House should belong to the same small section of the party. This would give a tone of exclusiveness and even of cliquishness to the counsels of the party which would be very unwelcome to the country. Indeed, Lord Hartington's position, which would otherwise be an element of strength, seems to us decidedly an element of weakness, so long as Lord Granville retains the chief place, to which, undoubtedly, both by abilities and experience, he is well entitled. And it adds to the undesirableness of this combination that there is so little that is popular or large in Lord Hartington's political sym- pathies. If Lord Hartington were chosen, the Liberal leader in the Lower House might indeed be fairly regarded as a decidedly narrower Liberal than Lord Granville,—which is not precisely the proper relation between the leaders in the Com- mons and the Lords. Again, it has always been said that Lord Granville's great enemy, the gout, has to some extent deprived the country of the full value of his abilities and judgment. And if a leader of the Lower House who is credited with a certain indifference to hard work on other grounds,—the strong liking for the favourite amusements of wealthy English country gentlemen,—were to be chosen, we should be having complaints of a very opposite kind from those which have been levelled against Mr. Gladstone. The Gout and the Turf would be formidable rivals to the interests of the Liberal party. Indeed Lord Hartington, though he has been War Minister and Postmaster-General, as well as Irish Secretary, has hardly earned a reputation for administrative laboriousness. And if he be chosen leader, we suspect that it will be because, in the opinion of the party, the contracted horizon of modern Liberalism suggests that a certain relaxation of earnestness in the guidance of the party is not inopportune.
Mr. Goschen, on the contrary, has been a very considerable administrator, and in his way is a very strenuous and even trenchant Liberal. On questions of Foreign Policy, there is no one of our Liberal chiefs to whom we should look with a more cordial confidence. His tone on national interests has
always been proud and firm. The last thing we should expect from him would be such a retractation, or at least apologetic explanation, as Mr. Disraeli recently made of an expression which had given offence in Germany. Mr. Goschen is a strong man, a cautious man, and a confident man. What, however, he is not, is a man of warm popular, as distinguished from high national, feel- ing, nor is he a man who has in any special sense the ear of the House of Commons. In every way, except connection, he is a man of more mark than Lord Hartington. But he has never given a wide, popular character to his speeches ; he has never so spoken that the words seem to come with a larger authority and a fuller significance than any private opinion. It is Mr. Goschen—Mr. Goschen only—who seems to address the House of Commons ; not Mr. Goschen embodying the convictions of hundreds of men around him. His is the voice of one, not the voice of many in one. He is more, too, of a good party man, than of a large popular man. His various popular speeches at Bristol, Fronae, and elsewhere have been admirable party speeches, with a sonorous and cordial ring in them, quite be- yond the range of any speech of Lord Hartington's. But they have been, in the main, party speeches after all. Except on foreign policy, Mr. Goschen's tone has not had that large- ness of scope which, without ceasing to be Liberal, marks the statesman who is something more than Liberal, who can speak on occasion for the nation as well as for the Liberal party. We should prefer Mr. Goschen to Lord Hartington, but we believe the party, if there be any magnanimity in its Left Wing, might choose even better than Mr. Goschen.
It will be obvious that our own leaning is very decidedly to Mr. Forster, who seems to us precisely the choice necessary to neutralise a certain Whig exclusiveness which would belong to a Ministry led by Lord Granville, unless there were a thoroughly popular leader in the Lower House. It is impossible to forget that on all subjects where the feeling of the nation has been in some respects in collision with the opinion of political society, Mr. Forster has adhered to the larger and not to the narrower view. ' We are all Confederates here,' Lord Palmerston is reported to have said to some Confederate sympathiser who found a knot of the Ministers of his last Government in con- sultation. But the English people were not Confederates, and Mr. Forster was never a Confederate. His sympathy with the people of England, though very inferior in power of eloquent expression, must be pronounced larger and wiser than even Mr. Gladstone's. There is as much sagacity, in the sense in which sagacity is so popular a quality amongst Englishmen, in Mr. Forster, as in half-a-dozen of his ablest colleagues taken together. What we feel least certain of in him is his tone on Foreign policy, where, we are free to admit, we should be more dis- posed a priori to trust Mr. Goschen, though this is more on negative than on positive grounds. Indeed, Mr. Forster has but seldom spoken on Foreign Policy,—never, we think, in a sense which we should condemn, unless it were when he intimated, as we believe he once did, in a speech at Bradford, that he would rather have submitted the monstrous and unjust 'Indirect Claims,' as they were called, to arbitration, than have sacrificed the Alabama arbitration altogether. But on every home subject of first-rate importance on which Mr. Forster has spoken, he has always spoken with that calmness of judgment, that accent of earnest popular• sympathy, and yet that spirit of conciliation which marks the difference between the states- man and the politician. We can never forget Mr. Forster's speech on Mr. Trevelyan's motion for household suffrage in the counties, when we are weighing the comparative claims of different leaders. That speech and vote alone gauged the broad, popular grain of the man who has been thought so Conservative,—thought so mainly because he was in cordial sym-
pathy with one of the profoundest currents of English feeling, the desire to develope the religious spirit of children. Nor is there any man whom we could better trust to watch Mr.
Disraeli's vagaries, and counteract the mischief of his viewy, rootless, political criticism than Mr. Forster. There is no Liberal chief, again, whose temper has been so pertinaciously tried, and who has, as far as we know, never once betrayed even the natural irritation to be expected from so much bait- ing. In a word, there is no man of more masculine character and deeper principles on the front Liberal bench, none whose homely sagacity would so nearly compensate for the want of Mr. Gladstone's brilliant eloquence. We should be content with any one of the three statesmen we have named, and would be loyal to any of them. But we cannot doubt that the sturdiest and most essentially British of the three in all the greater qualities of the British people, is Mr. Forster.
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