TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NORTH NORFOLK ELECTION. THE defeat of Sir Fowell Buxton in North Norfolk, and his defeat by a much greater majority than in 1876, is un- questionably a great blow to the Liberal cause. Sir Fowell Buxton was a good candidate, a man of high esteem in the county, a great brewer, and the inheritor of a great name. The Liberals had proclaimed, and very wisely proclaimed, the vast importance they attached to the election. Mr. Forster, who is one of the electors, and a Norfolk man, went down to canvass the constituency for his relative and friend, Sir Fowell Buxton, and made at Great Yarmouth one of the most masterly speeches that he or any other Liberal leader has made for many years, on the political situation, on the reasons for distrust- ing the present Government, and especially on the reasons why the tenant-farmers should distrust it. The election was recognised on both sides as a critical one, as an accepted test of the strength of the Government and the Opposition in the county, and the result is that the electors of North Norfolk have given very much more effectual proof of their confidence in the Government now, than they gave two years ago, when Lord Beaconsfield's very original foreign policy was as yet undeveloped, and his preparations for snatching a "scientific frontier" from Afghanistan were not even suspected. We must look the result fairly in the face. Undoubtedly it means that in North Norfolk,—and North Norfolk is likely enough to be a fair specimen of all but the most Liberal counties,— there is not only no reaction against the Government, but apparently an increasing aversion to the Liberal policy. The tenant-farmers, no doubt, read all Mr. Forster had to say, on the one side, and all that Mr. Clare Sewell Read had to say on the other side and the majority of them deliberately preferred the views of side, Read. They thought the case one for a hard fight against Liberalism, and their hard fight has been crowned with complete success.
So much we admit freely, but it is as absurd for the Times to take North Norfolk as representing the judgment of the country at large, as it would be for us to argue that because there may be a good deal of corruption at Great Yarmouth, and a good deal of pressure on the estates of Lord Hastings, the victory in North Norfolk is anything but a serious and significant beating. North Norfolk no more represents Eng- land, than Bristol represents England,—not nearly so much, for the constituency of Bristol is four times as large, and in- cludes a much greater variety of classes than the constituency of North Norfolk. The truth of the case is clear. In the great towns, and even in the urban constituencies,—for Maldon is not a great town, but a small one,—the Government has been steadily losing ground. Even in South Northumberland, which includes a very considerable urban constituency, the election of last year showed that the Government had lost ground. But in the genuinely rural constituencies, the Govern- ment have not lost, have probably even gained, ground. We say "probably," for it is possible that if the election of 1876 had been fought with as much earnest party-spirit as the election of last Tuesday, the Tories might even then have gained a majority as large as they gained last Tuesday. But anyhow, they have evidently rather gained than lost ground, and possibly gained a good deal. What we must concede is, that whatever the Tories have lost with the electors of the artisan and trading class, they have probably gained with "the country party." The tenant-farmers are grateful to them for doing so much as they did, and trying to do more, to raise the price of meat for the graziers. They are probably still more or less grateful for the two millions of taxation handed over from the Imperial taxes to relieve the local taxpayer. They are not very grateful for the Agricultural Holdings Act, out of the advantages of which they were unfortunately allowed, and therefore virtually compelled, to contract themselves ; but they doubt pro- bably whether they should have got anything better from the Liberals. They are not very grateful for the feeble County- Government Bill, which was so cheerfully dropped on the first excuse. But there, too, they had their doubts whether the Liberals would have done more for them,—or rather would not have more than neutralised anything more that they would have done, by giving at least as much power to the labourers, of whom they are so jealous, as to themselves. Indeed, the Liberal proposal to extend the county vote to the householders is, no doubt, the secret of a very great part of the growing dislike among the tenant-farmers towards the Liberal policy. They would rather never gain greater power in the government of the county than share their new power with their labourers. And this feeling, in conjunction with their new chagrin at the low prices of corn,—which they ascribe to the Liberal agitation, though it was their own Premier, the late Sir Robert Peel, who really abolished the Corn Laws,—has probably been quite sufficient to fix the dislike which the slow nature of the farmer has never yet ceased to indulge against the whole circle of Liberal ideas. The farmers do not really like compulsory Education, which was of Liberal origin ; they do not like the Education rate ; they do not like the tendency to equality between their own children and the children of the labourers, which education is producing ; and least of all do they like the idea that a considerable employer may be outvoted by three to one at the poll by his own labourers, if the household franchise be extended to the counties,—and this without even the evidence on which he could give them notice of dismissal for their independence. We do not at all wonder that, without relation even to the disputed issues con- cerning foreign policy, the tenant-farmers should still prefer the policy of the Tories to the policy of the Liberals.
Such considerations as we have named are, we believe, much the most important of those which have given the Tories so great a success in North Norfolk. But doubtless, so far as. the foreign policy of the Government weighs with them at all, it has weighed on the same side. If we had already felt the pinch of the recent expenditure at all to the extent to which, in some form or other,—probably that of increased Debt,—we must feel it, the case might have been different. No class of men in the country would be more enraged than the farmers, at having to pay down much of their hard-earned pittance for the support of the unspeakable Turk, or the attack on the unknown creatures called Afghans. But so long as the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer can boast that he has only added 2d. to the Income-tax, to save us from war in Europe, and throws on the Indian revenue the expense of the war in Afghanistan, the tenant-farmers will not be very careful to inquire into the danger of taxation they have escaped, or the danger of taxation still in the bosom of the future. Mr. Forster may tell them that the addition to the Income-tax, instead of saving us from war, only increased greatly the risk of war, besides sustaining the Government in a policy which promises most dangerous and complicated obligations for the future. But this the farme.rs,*no doubt, do not believe. They see, as a matter of fact, that we are not at war in Europe, and that we are not at present to be asked to pay anything for the war in India, and with that they are content. They have a deep-rooted suspicion of all the statements made on the Liberal side, which they regard much as the defendant in an action for damages regards the statements made in sup- port of those damages by the plaintiff. As for changes of Government in the abstract, they do not hold much by the principle of rotation of crops in politics,—least of all when their own side happen to be the sowers of the crop just reaped. They see little in the talk concerning Cyprus and the Anglo-Turkish Convention, except proof of a recovery of English influence on the Continent of Europe; and in this, while it continues to cost them nothing, they take a hearty satisfac- tion. Hence, as far as the general issue weighed with them at all, we believe it weighed in favour of the Government ; while the charges of braggadocio, jugglery, and unconstitutional con- cealments, are not of a kind to influence this class of voter at all,-.-at least, until they have influenced such leaders as Mr. Clare Read. So long as their leaders continue to see nothing of importance in these charges, and to ignore them, the tenant- farmers will follow snit. On the whole, we believe that the Liberals,—partly by their own fault, partly by the necessity of their position,—have as yet wholly failed to get any hold on the minds of the tenant-farmers ; and that they can only do so, if they ever do,—not on questions of foreign policy, so long as they remain questions of foreign policy and nothing more, but only on questions of taxation, or of tenure, or of local government. For the present, while the urban constituencies are swaying back to their old alle- giance, the rural constituencies are as stiff as ever in their fidelity to the cause of the county magnates and the official slayers of foreign cattle.
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