TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD ROSEBERY'S GREAT SPEECH. THERE ara two minds in Lord Rosebery, the one which governs his action and the other which generates his thoughts, and it is as difficult to regard the latter without admiration as to feel for the former any- thing but a pity not always untinctured with scorn. There is so much literary power in the man and so little real grit. He seldom misapprehends a situation, and almost never misdescribes one, but his method of dealing with that situation inspires, in us at least, no particle of con- fidence. Either his brilliant ideas never solidify into convictions, or, which is much more probable, he has imbibed the idea., so common in America, that in a democracy leadership is impossible, that the governing mass must be managed till it goes right, cajoled into wisdom, startled into action, bantered into common-sense. There is not a great journal in the world which would not be wise to give him five thousand a year as editor, and not a public man who would not doubt in his heart, if he ruled England, whether England were safe. He said Home-rule must wait until England was convinced ; but the Irish Members rebelled at the saying, and now who knows what Lord Rosebery's policy about Home-rule is ? He says, almost daily, that he is an Imperialist, and describes that creed with all the force of his glowing imagination ; but who is certain, if the Little Englanders numbered a hundred and fifty before a crucial divi- sion, that he would not explain that he admired the builders of Rome but his ideal Emperor was Hadrian. Just read his speech as Rector of the University of Glasgow, and ask yourself how many men in this country, or for that matter in the world, could have delivered so eloquent a speech, so felicitous in phrase, so full of insight, so deficient in anything which would help those who heard it on to a conclusion. It is abso- lutely charming unless you want to be guided. He exults with almost poetic fervour over the fact of Empire, and never tells us why he thinks it more valuable than limited dominion, why he considers rule over a fifth of the world so much more desirable than rule over a tenth. He paints with the brush of a Rembrandt the gloomy, or rather the deeply shadowed, times which are coming ; the fierce rivalry of the peoples which will mark the twentieth century, a rivalry which will extend to commerce as well as dominion, the ravening desire of all nations to become "nations of shopkeepers " ; the wonderful, almost terrible, change which has passed upon the world since Europe lay inert, and the kingdoms had com- paratively few soldiers, and the present time, when the nations have become "passive armies," and inertness has roused itself to trained, ff and scientific rivalry. And therefore, in words that burn, he bids his country " prepare " ; but how she is to prepare or what is her weakness he gives no hint, unless, indeed, we take it to be one that the Universities still ' teach Greek instead of German,—which is a purely literary hint. He says, and we are genuinely grateful to him for saying it, that there is a visible deficiency of first-rate men adequate to the heavy tasks that are now before us, and asks us to use to more purpose the large reserves of good material we possess. There could not be better or more urgently needed advice ; but then how are we to use them ? Will Lord Rosebery, as Premier, let into office any but the hundred or so to whom on each side office is now restricted, or give the million equal chances with the ten thousand, or sweep away that strange barrier which confines all State employment to the studious boys who at twenty can best answer difficult questions put to them on paper ? To kill patronage—which is nevertheless not dead—we have dammed up all the sources that supply ability save one ; ought we to break the dam ? Lord Rosebery is silent, or rather he hints that if we examined in German instead of Greek things would be a little better. He declares, quite truly and in perfect sentences, that the nation is deficient in the habit of self examination, does not sufficiently inquire into its own alertness, efficiency, thoroughness, and foresight, and he bids us cor- rect this dangerous want ; but as to the method he gives no sign, for we will not do him the injustice to suppose that his suggestion of a decennial Royal Com- mission to investigate such failures is anything but a bit of rather grotesque jocularity. And then he winds up with a splendidly eloquent peroration, which, if it means anything at all—and we have no intention of accusing Lord Rosebery of insincerity—means that we have built up a glorious dominion and have earned the favour of the Almighty without making the continuous but vague "preparations" ho so ardently desires, or remedying the deficiencies he so eloquently points out. "How marvellous it all is ! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men's hands; cemented with men's honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past ; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human, for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the divine. Growing as trees grow, while others slept ; fed by the faults of others as well as by the character of our fathers ; reaching with the ripple of a resistless tide over tracts and islands and continents, until our little Britain woke up to find herself the foster- mother of nations and the source of united Empires. Do we not hail in this less the energy and fortune of a race than the supreme direction of the Almighty ? "
Lord Rosebery will think these remarks bitter and they are bitter, but it is because we see cause for bitter- ness. Nothing will ever be done in politics to advance any cause without leadership, and year by year the very idea of leadership is dying out of the men who should lead. They are all listening, all afraid of their -own thoughts, all seeking a refuge from the imaginary dulness,. or suspicion, or wrath of the democracy in a kind Of polished - silence. They will not speak lest they should perchance offend, or be misunderstood, or stir up feelings of which they were not aware. The ignorant speak out,but those who know say nothing, more especially if they are aristocrats, for every aristocrat has lurking somewhere in his brain the belief that democracy is really a wolf to be held by the ears. Even Mr. Labouchere has that, though, unlike most of his order, he would like to let the wolf go. The democracy all the while is merely a mass of individuals, most of them dully respectable and sensible persons, all pining for the lead which nobody will give them. Among these offenders we count Lord Rosebery first, because of the contrast between his silence and his . intellectual powers. He is bound to be silent, he will say, until he is in office ; but in truth he is like the regular American politican, who maintains silence as to his real thoughts lest they should keep him out of office. It is fear, not etiquette, that moves him, and induces him, and those like him, to keep back real instruction lest in the flood of criticism their chances should be damaged. There are others, many, who defend silence, as some writers defend their abstinence from conversation, because they fear to waste useful material; but we do not impute that meanness to Lord Rosebery. That is the excuse of men who know that the light they can give is only that of a candle which must be spared or it may burn out, and Lord Rosebery is among those who could turn on an electric flame, but will not, lest enemies should see as well as friends. He aspires to rule England, and in his own mind is conscious of the power to do it, but thinks the legal right must be won by dodgeries, and cajoleries, and concealments, ending at last in prostrations before "opinion." We do not say he is alone in his vicious habit. The country at this moment is distressed by the Boer War, alarmed, as Lord Rosebery is, by its new relation to the Continent, be- wildered by its own incapacity to arrive at a purpose in China, and paying in millions upon millions for all those perplexities, and on none of them will any leader say one illuminating word. They all shrink more or less, lest, as they say, they should say too much ; and none worse than Lord Rosebery, of whom half the world believes—even we, who distrust him, believe—that to him the faculty of clear perception, of wide outlook, of just discrimination between the essential and the accidental, has most certainly been given in large measure. If he does not change his way quickly he is lost, for upon this one truth at least he may rely. It is the merit, or the fault, of Englishmen in politics that they will grant to the litkrateur everything excepting power. Lord Rosebery. is neither counsellor nor man of action he is the brilliant man who comments.
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