TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SANGUINE MINISTERS AT BRISTOL.
IT is but becoming for Conservatives to find reasons against doing anything, and we have no right, therefore, to com- plain of Lord Stanley and Mr. Gathorne Hardy, at Bristol last Wednesday, for assigning so many grave reasons for letting ill alone. Mr. Disraeli's temerity of last Session has rendered Liberal critics a little unreasonable in their expecta- tions from the present Cabinet. We do not doubt that Mr. Disraeli himself, however much he might personally wish for an opportunity of discharging a new political boomerang, apparently at the Opposition, but really warranted so to recoil on his own party as to destroy some other vital principle of its existence, is perfectly aware of the importance of giving his supporters time to recover their self-respect and equanimity before demoralizing them again. As schoolmaster of the party, he will doubtless not forget the importance of holi- days, and will infuse into them his own lights on the principle discovered by Sir Isaac Newton of " easy fits of transmission and reflection." Last session was devoted to not too easy a " fit of transmission." This one should by every principle of prudence be devoted to a veryeasy fit of reflection, and we should argue from the speeches of his colleagues at Bristol that, so far as his purposes have yet been revealed to them, they have every reason to hope that, for this session, they will be permitted to be Conservatives, and nothing more. We have no possible right as Liberals to object to this, but there is real ground for lamenting it. With regard to education, there is an opportunity such as may hardly occur again, yet we cannot gather the least ray of hope from Lord Stanley's and Mr. Gathorne Hardy's speeches that anything efficient is intended by the Ministry in this direction. Lord Stanley, after vindi- cating the prescriptive right of his party to deal with educa- tion, which no one has ever denied, mildly hopes that " the next two or three years may not pass away without leaving behind them something which shall be not less memorable than the Reform Bill of 1867 in the social history of the country,—by that something I mean a wise, a large, and a well considered measure for the education of the people." Mr. Gathorne Hardy is still more discouraging. " There are already some men who, although the Government is burdened with the Scotch and Irish Reform Bills, which have to be passed with the Boundary Bill, with the Bill for the Prevention of Bribery and Corruption, and other measures which demand immediate attention, with sudden haste have rushed forward, saying that we must immediately take up this question. They say, You must do something at once, and we will support you.' I have not much confidence in that assurance, or that the measure we may propose will meet with that support which they are now so ready to promise,"—which is evidently Mr. Hardy's way of saying that the Goverment have some very weak educational scheme to produce, the anticipated con- tempt which they are already discounting. Were it other- wise, how could any conceivable Bribery and Corruption' bill be one-half as momentous to the independence and purity of elections as a year gained for a great educational reform would certainly be,—especially as there is nothing like the same ripeness of public opinion on the former subject which there is on the latter ? Lord Stanley, with his frank promises of a Conservative Reform Bill for education " two or three years" hence, and Mr. Gathorne Hardy, with his languid hopes for the measure of this year, have carefully prepared us for a poor Bill of which the Cabinet themselves are ashamed, and on which they are only about to take a half-hearted stand. And the Duke of Marlborough's dim speech in answer to Lord Russell in December was couched in the same tone. Candidly as we admit that it is in general the business of Conservatives to find objections to change, and not to promote it, we hold this to be a great party mistake. It is the sound Conservative feeling of the country which is now most alarmed for the future, and most anxious to prepare for it by beginning in earnest at education as soon as it can. It is the one subject, too, on which there can be no great party division of feeling. The moderate Liberals would help on a thorough popular education measure with a much heartier feeling than they exhibited last year in helping on Reform. And if there are any Conservatives who think that Conservatism may find its gain at the elections in keeping Englishmen ignorant, they are too few and too much moulded on Mr. Disraeli's un-English theories to exercise any real influence in the party. Again, a really strong and effec- tive Education bill passed this year would be the greatest
merit which the Government could earn in the eyes of the new electors against the coming struggle. It would have been as politic as it would have been wise, to have put out this one Conservative talent to usury, instead of wrapping it in a napkin and burying it in the earth. But what can you ex- pect with a Duke of Marlborough,—a man who had appa- rently never read the Conscience Clause till Lord Granville kindly quoted it for him at full length,—at the head of the Council ?
But if the Ministers give us anything but a sanguine. view of what the Government proposes in regard to Edu- cation, Lord Stanley almost takes a pride in his blank hopelessness with regard to Ireland. As to the question, of the Irish Church, prudently concealing his own view, he merely descants on the obvious duty of relegating it to the reformed Parliament. We cannot say that we see the point of the obligation,—though it is a safe and prudent formula for a Conservative to use. If the question were of doing something likely to offend and oppress Irish feeling, no. doubt the policy and even duty of waiting till Irish feeling, could be more fully and fairly expressed upon it would be obvious. But why it should not be right to anticipate the noto- rious wish of at least four-fifths of the Irish people, at a. moment, too, when it is a matter almost of imperial import- ance to remove every cause of just offence in our treatment• of Ireland, it would, we suspect, puzzle Lord Stanley's in- genuity to explain. If he had spoken quite frankly, he would probably have said that the Government could not afford to- incur at present the hostility either of the Irish Protestants or the English clergy, and so the one clear duty towards Ireland which probably both Mr. Disraeli and Lord Stanley admit thoroughly in their own hearts, is to remain undone as a concession to the exigencies of party politics.
When Lord Stanley came to the Irish land question, he was. no longer speaking of what any one has proposed to do this session, or to do before the reformed Parliament is summoned.. The hopelessness, to which he confessed, of doing anything of the slightest moment to conciliate Ireland was of much more than temporary significance. It was a deliberate avowal, by the most liberal man in the Tory party, that nothing ever could, should, or would be done to satisfy the crave of the Irish peasantry for that position in relation to the land, to- which they believe, however ignorantly and falsely, that they have a prescriptive right,—that the Irish custom and Irish genius, in this respect, must bend to the English custom and English genius,—or break. Lord Stanley cavalierly pooh- poohed Sir John Gray's proposal to give Irish tenants a fee-farm rent, or rather to enable them to buy it, (for he unfairly assumed that they were not to be asked to pay for it), as a pure quackery. He will not hear of any foreign analogy for such a proposal. The English political economy is the only one Lord Stanley knows of. He is evidently persuaded that Norwegian, French, and Flemish peasants, and Italian nuitayers are anomalies which do not even furnish a presumption that our English system of land tenures is one not suited to the Irish temper. He has, apparently, never heard of Bengal and Lord Cornwallis's per- petual settlement, which changed as if by magic a province as disaffected as Ireland into the one perfectly content portion of our Indian dominions. At least if Lord Stanley has heard of these radical differences of land tenure, and the wonderful adaptation they seem to have to one stage of develop- ment in particular races, he has at any rate no sort of reserve in describing all such policies for Ireland as pure " quackeries," —that is, policies which an English landlord feels that Provi- dence could only have permitted to exist in other countries by way of delicate compliment to the superior genius of Great Britain, and which he would regard it as simply insult- ing to compare with his own system for a moment. Lord Stanley is not a very narrow-minded man. His great good sense usually preserves him against the mistake of setting down everything as quackery " which is not English. But it is clear that on the land system his prejudices as a landlord are too much for him. The Church question he reserves. On the land question,—one far nearer to the heart of the Irish difficulty,—he is peremptory. Everything is "quackery" for Ireland which he would not like to see adopted in England. All that Lord Stanley can practically suggest is, compensation to tenants for improvements, which he knows very well, and expressly intimates, would do nothing substantial to remove the disaffection of Ireland. Well, then, what does he really hope for Ireland ? As far as we can see, he has no hope at all. He remarks that Ireland is much more prosperous physically
than 20 years ago, but he does not deny that this physical prosperity, instead of soothing her, is really providing the fuel of all this fire. It is the little stores of past savings which are going in these futile rebellions. He harps on a hypo- thetical hope, which, as it is based on the following hypo- thesis contrary to the fact, is nothing but a lamentation in disguise—"nothing is wanted, except a little peace and security, for uncounted millions of British capital to pour into that country, as English wealth has poured into Scotland." Precisely ; nothing is wanted, except loyalty, to make the Irish people prosperous ; but then, unfortunately, Lord Stanley has no suggestion for making them loyal except making them prosperous, and no suggestion for making them prosperous except making them loyal,—and that, we submit, is a very bad look-out indeed. The more we hear statesmen like Lord Stanley descant on the advance Ireland has made in physical prosperity, the more astonished we are that they should feel that to be any consolation, when the only result has noto- riously been a great impulse to the resources of disaffec- tion. The spirit in which such men treat Ireland is like the spirit in which kind and vulgar people treat orphan children, whose hearts are broken with grief for the loss of their father or mother,—they propose to stuff them with jams ; the only idea they have for healing the wounded spirit is to fill the empty stomach. And they are often utterly incredulous of the possibility of failure in adopting that method,—as are our English statesmen in dealing with Ireland. They too, can't believe that an in- crease of English capital in Ireland, better savings' bank accounts for the people, richer shops, and more active manufactories are conceivable without tending to satisfy this Irish hunger for a soil which they can genuinely call their own, and feel themselves possessors of. They revert with almost imbecile emphasis to the stuffing policy which would be so easily rendered possible by " a little peace and security." For our own parts, we do not see the advantage of pouring wealth into Irish pockets which only goes to pay for Fenian fire and Clerkenwell gunpowder. We have been told for fifty years that Ireland was under- going the process of complete reconciliation to English rule ; and but for the little fact that almost every outbreak has been more serious than any preceding it, we might by this time have been convinced. As it is, we are profoundly convinced that there is no hope discernible for Ireland in the best Tory statesman of the present day,—and very little immediate hope for any other want that asks urgent atten- tion. Lord Stanley is evidently disposed, like Lord Russell a few years ago, to "rest and be thankful,"—with this differ- ence only,—that he has assented to a measure which will terminate his rest soon enough ; while as for political thank- fulness at the present moment, it certainly takes a mind dis- posed to be thankful chiefly for calamity, to produce it.
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