POLITICAL DIAGNOSIS. A FTER all the pains taken by the Westminster
Gazette to classify and analyse the replies given to their questions by the accepted and rejected candidates of their party, we are not sure that we are very much the wiser. No doubt it has been well worth while to go through all these questions and answers, as it turns attention to each of them in turn, and now and then gives at least a distinct negative result. You can tell better what did not influence the Elec- tion than what did. If hardly any one questions you at all, or comments at all on a particular measure, you may feel pretty sure that that did not exercise much influence on the result. But it is far more difficult to say what did affect the result than what did not, for the very good reason that the electors themselves do not know. They go to the ballot-boxes, and they make their cross opposite the name or names they wish to vote for without knowing themselves what it is that has chiefly swayed their choice. Doubtless many a voter makes a great fuss about some particular question, and yet votes after all for the man who did not agree with him on that question. He votes with no clear self-knowledge as to why he votes. He has been rather proud, perhaps, of his own interest on some one question, and has said a good deal about it, but it may have had, after all, extremely little influence on his choice. He votes because he liked the man he voted for, or because he loved the repute of being a Liberal, or because he was irritated at the mess the Liberals made during the last three years, or because he thought the Conservatives showed more general good sense, or because he was tired with " so much cry and so little wool ;" and when he went away from the poll, he was far from clear as to the motive which really prevailed with him. And if he himself does not know what turned his vote, how shall the candidate know what turned it ? As a matter of fact, the candidate does not know, and all these answers which have been received from accepted or rejected candidates, are in fact but gropings in the dark, doubtful classifications of still more doubtful suggestions which have been floating about at Election time.
Our own confident conviction is, after reading all that has been said on the subject, that the total result in the change of popular opinion in the present instance, has had much more to do with the sense of vexation at the fuss, and the unsuccessful fuss, which the late Government made on a dozen questions, than with grave convictions as to any one of them. The electors thought the Irish party had been a great deal too much in the front, that they wanted snubbing, and should be snubbed. They thought that "ploughing the sands" was silly work, and they would el ict persons who would not play at politics. They th)ught that the interference with a poor man's beer was imp irtinent, and that they would give a lesson to the lecturing temperance men. They thought that the House of Lords had shown more sagacity than the House of COM12MS, and that it was silly to cry out against them. And above all, they thought that the Radical party were ovefaearing, and they would give them a lesson not to medlle in so many things at once, and not to stir up such a lot of harassing questions without seeing their way clear on any one of them. In all probability, the effec of incompetent meddling with a host of difficulties, with ,ut any distinct appearance of capacity to deal with any one of them, had more to do with the great swing of t,ie pendulum from one side to the other than any sing e element of political conviction. The people were worried and harried like Tennyson's "Northern Farmer" at the noise made by the steam-plough which went " huzzin' au' maazin' the blessed fealds wi' the Divil's oan team," and they voted against it, especially as it only ploughed up sand. But of course all this is guesswork on our own part, just as much as the various answers received by the Westminster Gazette were guesswork on the part of the successful and unsuccessful candidates. Till we get a little definite light on what the people think of specific proposals, we shall have nothing that is not guesswork. But one thing is, we believe, pretty certain,—that the ballot does keep its own secret, and for this very excellent reason, that the greater number of the voters do not them- selves know their own secret, and if compelled to give a reason to themselves for their own vote, are as likely as not to give the wrong reason even to themselves. They know they are dissatisfied. They do not clearly know why, and if they try to say why, they are as likely as not to put forward some reason which really was clear enough to themselves, but which did not turn the scales, as to give one that did. The dissatisfaction was deeper and stronger than any reason they could assign for it. On the whole, we believe that the General Election has been a greater warning against a fussy policy of "troubling the waters" than it has been against any particular mode of troubling them. An ambitious party that fusses and fails, produces a general disgust, which is much deeper than the disgust felt at any particular failure. We hope much from the new Government, mainly because we think it will attempt very little in which it cannot succeed, and will not go, as Hosea Biglow said, "lashing around like a short-tailed bull in flu-time." Ireland loves a fussy policy ; England does not, and, after all, the silent "pre- dominant partner" will get his way. When it comes to the vote, the screamers come to grief, and the more modest doers carry the day. Diagnosis is helped, no doubt, by all this questioning and analysis, but it is helped most by the negative results, by the exclusion of causes which certainly had no great effect on the people. As a general rule, the physician who does not attend too much to the patient's own theories as to his own malady, but who looks at him with a keen gaze and trusts to his experience for the interpre- tation of his different symptoms, is the physician who is most likely to get at the true state of the case. And we believe it is much the same with political diagnosis. When you have heard all you can of the complaints and the hopes and the convictions of the voters, you should try to forget the details, and form your impression as you would form your impression of any other wide field of observation, as much from the accent in which the tale is told, as from the words in which it is told. In the present case we mean by the accent with which the late Government was spoken of, the accent of respect or irrita- tion or contempt. For our own parts, we believe that a certain disgust, such as the disgust felt with an intolerably zealous busybody, was the predominant note of those who changed sides. They were angry with individual proposals, but they were more angry with the number and the import- ance of them. The Government acted as if the people were in a revolutionary mood when they were not in the least in a revolutionary mood. They were not very anxious for any particular reform ; but the last thing they desired was to have a great mass of ill-digested ieforms thrust upon them in a sort of panic of intemperate zeal. The late Government confounded earnestness with impatience, and their impatience made them not only ill-advised, but ridiculous. The late Master of Trinity said to some one who remarked on a departed friend, that he had "a great deal of taste,"—" Yes, and all of it bad." We cannot expect Gladstonians to say that of the political taste of the late Government ; but we do think that a great many of them would say that at least a great deal of its political taste was bad, and as a criticism on their own leaders, that would be quite damaging enough.
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