TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BALFOUR'S LEADERSHIP. THE attacks on Mr. Balfour's leadership are very sharp and not always very intelligent. As for those which proceed from the Opposition they may in some vulgar sense be prudent, for an Opposition which is all at sixes and sevens can be much better kept in tolerable harmony by acrimony towards the leader of the Government than by any attempt to invent a common principle, where no common principle exists, for a number of discon- tented and irritable allies. But what really gives importance to these attacks on Mr. Balfour is the want of loyalty amongst his own followers. To our surprise, and indeed disgust, these triumphant Conserva- tives often take their cue from the Opposition. They are so proud of their political victory a year ago that they cannot endure to find themselves foiled in any political contest, and yet they are foiled, for the best of all reasons, because they expect to beat their antagonists without keeping discipline among themselves. They want to dic- tate to their leader as well as to crush their opponents, and that is not a condition of mind which admits of successful strategy. We are not saying that Mr. Balfour has made no mistakes. He himself admitted in his admirable speech of Friday week at St. James's Hall that it was a mistake to introduce so compli- cated and difficult a reform as the Education Bill while his troops were all in that condition of effervescent self-glorification which follows a great victory. Perhaps it was an even more serious mistake to propose at the meeting of the Unionist party a palliative for the difficul- ties of the Government which was, within a week, shown to be quite inadequate to the emergency. But even that sanguine miscalculation was not very important. For even the Education Bill,—which was an exceedingly good Bill, —might have been carried if the Conservatives had not been so set up by what the Scriptures call "fulness of bread" that they regarded their own private opinions as of far more consequence than their leader's, and took to orRanising all sorts of stampedes on points of which it was childish for the rank-and-file to attempt to form authori- tative opinions of their own. They wanted, for instance, to do nothing which did not please their supporters in the country. And yet to carry a great and complex measure against a foe who had almost all the army of teachers,—the most sensitive and the most alarmist of critics,—behind them, was impossible on such a condition as that. The vic- tory might have been gained if the Conservatives had really trusted their leader. But they did not, and then they were angry because the leader whom they had deserted in all the minor crises of the controversy, did not lead them to victory. An undisciplined army must not expect victory on a subject so full of controversial detail as the Educa- tion Bill. And Mr. Balfour's army was undisciplined, and yet just as eager for triumph as if it had been the ardent and loyal host which won the great victory at the polls. Even the Unionist journals were all at sixes and sevens. The Times found serious fault with the Government on more than one subject, and addressed those candid warnings to it which are all the more disheartening because they profess so much sympathy while they sug- gest so much displeasure. The Standard plucked its own crow with the Government with an easy indifference to the effect on the party. And, of course, the rank-and-file followed suit. Even on such a subject as the employment of Indian troops to solidify the Egyptian position in the Soudan,—a point, if ever there was one, on which the opinion of the Indian Council should be authoritative,— Conservatives and Liberal Unionists formed their own opinions and uttered them with great freedom, to the great injury of the solidarity of the party ;—and then they cried out that they were badly led. The truth is that they would not follow their leader when he had all the greater authorities on his side, and, of course, a leader, however wise, with a lot of self-willed followers, is always told that he has not led them well. A little more loyalty and a good deal more discipline would have amply justified Mr. Balfour's lead. The fault was with the army much more than with the leader, and was more or less due, no doubt, to the inflated spirit which the great victory at the polls had inspired among the troops. They expected to carry everything before them, in spite of allowing their own individual whims to determine whether they would follow their leader or not. And such an expectation as that could not have been fulfilled.
In our opinion, Mr. Balfour is perhaps the best leader• that any party has had for a long series of years. though he does not always, perhaps, use his authority as vigorously as, to our great satisfaction, he used it on_ Thursday night. It is his policy,—and a very wise policy too,—generally to ride with a light rein. But his- followers do not see that, in spite of his light rein, he accomplishes a great deal more than leaders of far greater masterfulness. We fully believe that this Session will produce much greater fruits than any recent Session has produced, in spite of the withdrawal of the Education Bill. If the Irish Land Bill, the Agricultural Rating Bill, the Light Railways Bill, the Truck Bill, and the Mining Bill pass, to say nothing of a host of smaller measures, the Government will have no occasion at all to fret over the Education Bill. Mr. Balfour, in his admirable speech at St. James's Hall on Friday week, showed that Mr. Disraeli after his great victory in 1874 announced in the Queen's Speech no less than six Government measures, of which only one was passed, and that one of no moment. In those days there was not this kind of dead set against a Minister who did not get through what he had set before him. Indeed, Mr. Disraeli made it rather a groundr of attack against Mr. Gladstone's Administration that they resembled a range of extinct volcanoes, that they had done too much, and had exhausted the country with their ardours and their reforms. Mr. Disraeli himself certainly did not even attempt that. His legislation was not am- bitious, and when he did not carry it through he was not pelted with sneers by his own party for not having carried it.. He was quite content to withdraw his measures, and bore his legislative ill-success with meekness and indifference. But now it is made quite a crime in Mr. Balfour that he has had to withdraw one great measure, though he will probably succeed with more, as well as more important, measures than any leader of recent years, and that too in a year when his reform of the procedure in Supply has scored for him a very great success of which he has every reason to be proud. Even in relation to Mr. Balfour's in- fluence over his own great majority, we believe that he will have gained considerably before the Session ends. On Thursday night he went far towards repelling the calumnies against him as a weak leader. Riding with a light rein, as a general rule, is not at all a bad policy after all, especially when it is now and then varied by a more potent attitude. Masterfulness is more picturesque, but it is not so wise. To let a party feel the full consequences of its own blunders is far from an unwise policy. If Mr. Balfour should succeed, as he will, in carrying an Irish Land Bill,. for which Mr. Carson and Mr. Davitt express, for dia- metrically opposite reasons, equal disgust, he will deserve well of the country. And in the light of those diametrically opposite reasons for disgust, we believe that the country will recognise his success and appreciate it at its true value. If so we shall hear no more of these virulent cries. " Decline of Mr. Balfour," " A child's philosophy," and the rest of them. These foolish cries rise up and subside with almost equal swiftness. There is no pretence whatever for the assertion that Mr. Balfour is losing his dexterity as a leader. If he could be always in his place, his judgment would almost always justify itself. And even when he does not catch in a moment the whole meaning of what has happened in his absence, his steady policy of taking things easily and not flourishing his authority in the face of his party, renders it a great deal easier to retrieve an error, than it is for one who displays the masterfulness of more ostentatious leaders. We shall find, we believe, that after all the crowing over Mr. Balfour, the close of the Session will show that he has scored a considerable success under very unfavourable circumstances, and that both certain disloyal followers, Mr. Victor Cavendish, Lord Hugh Cecil, and the rest, and his flushed antagonists will have much less reason to congratulate themselves on their achievements than they have recently supposed. Public opinion is too much in a hurry. It takes short views and expresses its impatience at the first check. That is not the kind of public opinion which lasts. We venture to predict that Mr. Balfour will be seen to have recovered at the close of the Session, all the confidence which the tepid loyalty of some of his followers has lost him during its course.
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