TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LATEST CRISIS.
THIS cannot last. We are writing without full information, for the great Parliamentary event of the week is fixed, as usual, for Saturday morning, too late for weekly journalists to discuss, or even hear of it ; but even if Mr. Disraeli does not announce his intention to dissolve on the Suspensory Bill, it is clear that Government cannot go on for ever under an increas- ing load of humiliation. The Premier affected to take his first defeat on Monday lightly, but it was a serious one. He had laid it down as a vital principle of his scheme of Reform that no centre of representation should be entirely disfran- chised, and though he had abandoned it in Ireland, still Irish precedents are always regarded as exceptional. He therefore proposed, wanting more Members for Scotland, to add to the number of the House of Commons. So strong, however, was the feeling against any such increase, that he did not venture to press his suggestion, but promised to accept Sir Rainald Knightley's amendment, depriving the ten smallest boroughs in England with more than one member apiece of the second seat. This, if offered by any other Minister, would have been accepted as a reasonable compromise ; but the House had grown contemptuous of Mr. Disraeli's vital principles, and by a majority of 217 to 196 accepted Mr. Baxter's proposal that ten " centres of repre- sentation,"—Ashburton, Dartmouth, Honiton, Lyme Regis, Wells, Marlborough, Thetford, Arundel, Evesham, and North- allerton, — should cease to exist. The Radical principle that no borough too small for independence should be sepa- rately represented, defeated the Tory principle that small boroughs are necessary to represent property, and an eleventh change in the English Reform Bill was carried against its author. This was, one would think, a sufficiently bitter draught, but it was followed by another still more nauseous. Mr. Bouverie moved the omission of the ratepaying clauses from the Bill, thus establishing household suffrage pure and simple throughout Scotland, and carried his amendment by a majority of 118 to 96. This was too much even for Mr. Disraeli. If there be a principle in his Reform Bill to which he has adhered, it is that no man shall vote who does not contribute directly to the national burdens, and to give this up is to justify every charge ever levelled at him from his own side, to surrender what his own party deem the last guarantee against a purely democratic regime. The Premier rose in a towering temper, and declared that the vote had changed the relation of the Government to the Bill and to the House, and he must have time to consider the course he and his colleagues would pursue. Owing to the absence of the Queen at Balmoral three days were lost, but on Thursday Mr. Disraeli announced that he had resolved not to accept Mr. Bouverie's amendment, but to move on Monday words which would re-establish his vital principle, that the voter must also be a payer of direct taxes. In other words, he has resolved to ask the House to rescind its vote of Monday, to stultify itself by declaring that it never intended the important change in the Constitution for which it voted. Mr. Disraeli can hardly hope that the House will submit to this dictation, or will override all Scotland to please him; and we cannot but suspect that, stung by the con- tempt of Parliament, fretted by his own colleagues, and hoping against hope that his No Popery cry may bring the ignorant and the prejudiced to his side, he may risk a last appeal to the existing constituencies, nominally to protect the Irish Church, really to give himself one more last chance of power. Independent Tories are pressing him hard to try this plan, and he himself, it is said, sincerely believes that a new election would reduce the majority against him at least one-half.
That Mr. Disraeli would be right to dissolve rather than en- dure the present position any longer, is beyond all question. His tenacity in adhering to office in the face of a majority now determined to keep no terms with him, to allow him only the alternatives of servitude or dismissal, is disgracing as well as weakening constitutional government. A position in which a Ministerial crisis may be expected once a week is only anarchy decently veiled. The Government does not govern, but only drifts ; the House of Commons becomes daily more unmanage- able, and legislation stops. Nothing is done or attempted, and yet nobody is refused any request, lest he should, in his discontent, fling the last straw on the burden the Administra- tion has to carry. Opinion is becoming so bewildered, and parties so infuriated, that men's minds are drifting away from their moorings, and there are signs that proposals of
almost revolutionary character may, in the unsettlement of all things, obtain a hearing. It is far better for the country that it should sustain the annoyance and expense of a dissolution, than that it should endure personal govern- ment any longer ; but that is no reason why the neces- sary appeal to the country should be addressed to the old constituencies, why the annoyance and expense should be doubled without cause, why a powerless Parliament should be re-elected• by a condemned electorate. The duty of Mr. Disraeli is to propose a short Bill making the rate-book the register for the United Kingdom for one Parliament, and allowing the English Reform Act to come into instant opera- tion ; and if he will not do it, it is the duty of Mr. Gladstone to delay the Appropriation Bill until it is done, or until an address to the Crown has been voted, praying that no Dissolu- tion may take place until the constituency has been re-orga- nized throughout the Empire. The Premier has a right to dissolve before he resigns, but he has no right to dissolve while the new electorate, though formally established in power, has not yet been organized, while it is impossible to appeal to the real "people," to the " people " recognized by law, while the new House of Commons cannot be vested with that right of final arbitration, which can alone justify a reference from the Representatives to the country which elects them. The situ- ation, as he says, is exceptional, but that is no reason for protracting it, and a re-election of an unreformed House by a sentenced section of the true constituency is only an act of political procrastination. Such a House could not accept and could not reject the policy of disestablishment in Ireland, could not confirm and could not dismiss Mr. Disraeli, could not legislate to any purpose, and could not abstain from legis- lation. It could, in fact, be only what the present House is, —a Committee for the despatch of any business necessary to facilitate a final appeal to the nation on the policy of the country. The single practicable course, if Mr. Disraeli retains, office, is to appeal to the constituencies he has himself created.
We say, if he retains office, for it cannot be too often repeated that the single cause of all this confusion, and annoyance, and danger to the constitutional equilibrium, is the personal ambition of the Premier. If he were like any other statesman who has ever obtained the highest place in Parliament, if he shrank as any other man would from respon- sibility unaccompanied by power, if he had the faintest reverence for the Constitution under which he has risen, or the feeblest conviction that the institution he is defending is morally right, he would resign office, and the majority regain- ing its legitimate authority, and accepting its legitimate responsibility, parliamentary government would once more be firmly established. The Scotch and Irish Reform Bills would be passed, the Suspensory Bill would be driven through, the registration would be completed, and then the Householders of the United Kingdom would be called on to pronounce their final verdict on the fate of the Irish Church. No issue would be uncertain, nothing would be hurried, the decision of the nation would be calm, deliberate, and irreversible. That this, the natural order of English events, is interrupted ; that every power in the State is becoming more or less discredited, that the Commons should be a scene of almost nightly contest, that the Government should be powerless, the representatives impotent, the electorate para- lyzed, is due solely to the desire of one man to appear to be for a few weeks longer Premier of England. It is to gratify- that, and that alone, that Government may perhaps fine the Commons two millions sterling, that the country may be shaken by a barren election, that every pulpit in Great Britain may be made a spring of discord, bitterness, and hate. It is for a man whom they at once distrust, despise, and humour, that the Tory gentlemen of England risk a collision between the Throne and the people, between the Church and the electorate, between the newly enfranchised masses and the bourgeois aristocracy which, after enfranchising them, still keeps the franchise from their grasp, after confiding the ulti- mate sovereignty to them, re-elects a Government in which they are to have neither voice nor share.
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