BOYCOTTING MR. GOSCHEN.
MR. GOSCHEN'S protest at Hendon on Wednesday against being read out of the Liberal Party may, we hope, bring a few of the bigoted Radicals to reason, or at least induce the Liberals at large to reconsider the principles on which party organisation should be conducted. There is nothing that we dread more for either party than the introduction of the detestable policy of boycotting into English politics. Donbtless there are degrees in boycotting. To decline to recognise a man as a legitimate member of your party is one thing, and to decline to recognise him as a member of society at all, is quite another. It is not quite so bad to excom- municate from a party, or even from a Church, as it is to excommunicate from all the benefits of civilisation ; just as it is not quite so bad to cut a man off from all the benefits of civilisation, as it is to kill him outright. But there is the same narrow spirit in rejecting the co-operation of any man who heartily desires the ends which we desire, on the ground that we have some grudge against other opinions of his, as there is in refusing him the means of living so long as he does not yield to the tyranny of your dictation. What made Sir Charles Mike suggest in his speech on Tues- day that Mr. Goschen seemed not to be "in accord with the bulk of the Liberal Party " ? Of course, it was simply that Mr. Goschen had opposed the immediate extension of the franchise to the agricultural labourer, believing, as he did, that Poor-law proposals would immediately arise in consequence which would be of a nature to retard the progress of the class of labourers instead of to advance it. Well, we differed profoundly with Mr. Goschen' not because we did not quite admit that such pro- posals would very likely result from the enfranchisement of the labourers, but because we thought their enfranchisement would do more in every way to make men of them, than the com- mission of a few errors of this kind, if such errors should be committed, would do to injure them. Nevertheless, we are now quite with Mr. Goschen in desiring to see every proposal which is at all of that questionable kind that suggests the bribing of a class, most carefully sifted by the Legislature ; and we know no one likely to sift such proposals with more eminent ability and honesty, and, we will add, with more thorough sympathy for the agricultural labourer and a more ardent desire to see him really raised in moral and intellectual status, than Mr. Goschen. It seems to us worse than childish, almost spiteful, to make the error of which we all thought Mr. Goschen guilty in reference to the Franchise Question, the excuse for declining all political partnership with him now that the Franchise Question is finally settled. Mr. Goschen, as he tells us, is heartily at one with Mr. Gladstone's present programme. Nay more, no one has a stronger belief in the judicious use of allotments for the improvement of the agricultural labourer's condition than Mr. Goschen ; and so far even as he deprecates certain proposals to which Mr. Gladstone has lent no sanction, but which may be generally described as Mr. Chamberlain's proposals, he depre- cates them not at all because he is wanting in sympathy for the agricultural labourer, but, on the contrary, because he sees in them many tendencies which seem to him likely to lower, instead of to raise, the status of the agricultural labourer. Surely this is the very man whose co-operation we ought most to welcome in sifting proposals of that kind. Mr. Goschen has never uttered a sentence that had in it the least flavour of indifference to the many miseries of the poor. We doubt if there be a politician on either side of the House who has devoted more ability and toil to the consideration of the many great questions— financial, economical, intellectual, moral, and political—which bear on the amelioration of the lot of the poor. If there is a master of the science of taxation, it is Mr. Goschen. If there is a statesman anywhere who knows more about local government than even Sir Charles Dilke, it is Mr. Goschen. He has made the spread of popular education one of his great hobbies. He has devoted years to the study of the various remedies for improving the housing of the poor. In short, there is not an ex-Cabinet Minister anywhere whose opinion is more valuable on all the immediate domestic questions of the future than Mr. Goschen. Add to
this that be has almost as much knowledge of naval adminis- tration as he has of Local Government, and more knowledge of the most critical aspect of foreign affairs—the Oriental aspect—than any of the younger members of the late Admin- istration, and it does seem to us the purest and most narrow- minded folly to attempt to ostracise him from the inner circle of Liberal statesmen, and to treat him as a kind of alien to our counsels and a traitor to our policy. We differed vitally from him on the great question of the Session before last ; but Mr. Goschen had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by the conscientious protest which he then made against a policy cordially adopted by all his friends ; and scrupulously conscientious statesmen are not so very plentiful amongst us that we can afford to undervalue them when we find them. If the narrow-minded attempt to run down Mr. Goschen for his judgment on the Franchise Question were right, it would have been right to ostracise in like manner Sir Roundell Palmer for his conscientious objec- tion to the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Mr. Glad- stone pursued a nobler and a wiser course, and the consequence was that in Lord Selborne he has found one of the ablest and most efficient of his colleagues. It will be much the worse- for the Liberal Party if the same wise precedent is not followed in the case of Mr. Goschen.
And not only is Mr. Goschen one of the ablest and best informed of the group of Liberal statesmen, but apart wholly from that, the political boycotting of Mr. Goschen would mark a new and declining era in the ethics of Liberal organisation. Surely the mischief which has resulted in France from the petty jealousies amongst Republicans of different schools—from, the refusal to constitute the Republican Party there on a broad basis, and to eschew altogether the bigotries of Democratic tests, ought to warn us of the danger of admitting any grudging or vindictive tactics of the same kind amongst our- selves. The Monarchical Party would not have taken the start they have in France if the Republicans could but have been- moderate and declined to persecute all who did not fully agree with them. It was in all probability the accumulation of hatreds against M. Ferry that led him into the disastrous policy of redeeming, by a grand policy of Colonial expansion, the ground he had lost ; and certainly it is that grand policy which has wrecked his fortunes now. Perhaps the greatest of all dangers in Democracy is the danger of accustoming the people to expect a vindictive ostracism of all politicians who have opposed the popular cry. We do not for a moment believe that the English people will ever approve of such vindictive ostracism. We even think that they would be disgusted by any appearance of it. But however that may be, it is certain that the politicians who set the example of such ostracism, will do whatever lies in their power to lower the tone of popular government in England. We are not at all disposed to extenuate men who, like Mr. Marriott, come- into Parliament to serve one policy and party, and then tarn round to serve the other. That is a totally different thing, and implies political untrustworthiness. But when a high- minded man, compelled by his own scruples to differ from his party for a season, remains throughout true to all his old principles, and after the crisis of difficulty is passed, is willing to serve it again, we hold that the party which disowns him and visits vindictively upon him what is called his desertion of them, is lowering the whole tone of political principle among them, and teaching men to prefer a habit of servile obedience to frank. and free co-operation. For all these reasons, we earnestly desire to see Mr. Goschen included in the next group of governing Liberals.
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