THE FLYING RUMOURS.
WE wonder who makes all the rumours, and still more, who inspires all the fond credulity with which they are received. From two quite different quarters,— though of course the fountain-head of streams running in opposite directions may be the same,—we have heard the most confident assertions that the present Administration will not last three months, that it has muddled all its work, first the Armenian question, next the Education Bill, thirdly South Africa, fourthly the question of the Indian troops, and lastly even the prosecution of Dr. Jameson and his raiders, and that when the break-up comes the Duke of Devonshire will be commissioned to form a new Administration, with a new Leader of the House of Commons, and with the Conservative element inlaid rather than overlaid as it is now. It is rather an inept rumour. Why the head of the Council of Education, from which the unfortunate Education Bill proceeded, should be selected to reanimate the life of the Govern- ment does not seem very intelligible, nor does Rumour appear to have constructed her legend very happily, when so much stress is laid on putting the Liberal Unionist element in the foreground, though Lord Salisbury is generally supposed to have been held back in relation to the Armenian question chiefly by the influence of the Duke of Devonshire, who is designated as the next Prime Minister. The whole rumour is pure in- vention, and of this at least, we are certain, that a Government which gave no predominance to the Con- servatives in its ranks would be not much firmer, but much more certain to tumble down, than the present Administration. A great deal of the prevailing dis- satisfaction has been fostered by the sensitiveness of the Conservatives to the favour shown towards the Liberal Unionists, and if we were asked who bad done most in the House of Commons to weaken the existing Administra- tion we should be inclined to pick out Lord Cranborne and Lord Hugh Cecil as some of the most active of the malcontents, while Mr. T. G. Bowles, a Conservative of the Conservatives, has seconded with all his little force the cabals against Mr. Balfour. It is certainly not the Liberal Unionists who have conspired to clutch more influence over the policy of the Government, but so far as we can judge, the Tories who have been amongst the least loyal of the party in power. And if the Duke of Devonshire were to supersede Lord Salisbury, we should have a much angrier "cave" among the Ministerialists, and a much less united Cabinet. Whatever errors Mr. Balfour may have committed, he is at least the man round whom his colleagues rally with the greatest enthusiasm, as Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach proved con- clusively enough in their Wednesday speeches. The very last kind of change that would cement the Administra- tion would be the substitution of any other statesman, however able, for Mr. Balfour. Indeed, the most effectual security for the spread of the spirit of mutiny in the Ministerial ranks, would be the ousting of Lord Salisbury and the substitution of a Liberal Unionist in his place. Rumour has a happy knack of hitting on the very changes which would aggravate whatever danger there may be of divided counsels, and of excluding the elements which do most to bind together mutually distrustful allies. We do not believe that within the Cabinet there is any ex- plosive element at all. And outside the Cabinet it is the Conservatives who are sore and sensitive, not certainly the Liberal Unionists, who, unless we except Mr. Victor Cavendish and Mr. Courtney, are perfectly aware that they have more power than their numbers would fairly entitle them to expect. In our opinion, the most serious of all dangers,—and we do not believe at all in any imminent danger,—would be the attenuation of the Conservative element in the Government and the strengthening of the Liberal Unionist element, heartily as we appreciate the great usefulness of the latter constituent in the existing Administration.
But as we have already said, what puzzles us most is not the invention of these fantastic rumours, but the eager credulity with which they are accepted by people who are really at the very heart of politics, and who either know, or ought to know, how very empty and unmeaning such rumours are. Of course at any time a great Administration may collapse, either i internal dissensions or from the shock of a great catastrophe. Of the former kind of undermining, however, we believe that there is no sign whatever. Mr. Balfour has at all events succeeded completely in binding all his colleagues to him with links of the heartiest confidence. And if any great catastrophe happened, from the chances of which no European Administration, in the present condition of unstable equilibrium in which Europe lives, can possibly be free, the nation might no doubt insist on a new Ministry, and cry out for some greater security against the threatening peril, but we should be far from anti- cipating in that case a more Liberal Administration than the present. We should look rather for an Adminis- tration in which all the more enterprising elements would be eliminated, and the whole object would be to strengthen the Navy and Army, and to diminish as much as possible all the causes of offence abroad, either in the Colonies or elsewhere. Of course it is impossible even to guess what the wish of the nation would be, till the particular kind of catastrophe which had shaken down the existing Government had taken place. If it could be shown that the Foreign Office had brought it about, Lord Salisbury's resignation would be called for. If our Colonial policy had been too adventurous, Mr. Chamberlain's resignation would be called for ; and naturally the two events would have very different consequences. It is perfectly idle to specu- late on imaginary catastrophes when we cannot see even the shadows of the coming events under the shock of which the Government might collapse. The real origin of these rumours is nothing more important than the diminished majority which the Government have had in several recent divisions, and especially the disposition of the Irish landlords and those who feel with them, to complain of their treatment in the Irish Land Bill. But these are not the sort of causes which justify such wild rumours as we have been discussing. The anger which prevails among the Irish landlords will certainly not lead to a Liberal Unionist Administration. No one knows better than the Irish landlords that the whole influence of the Liberal Unionists has been cast in the direction of achieving a real pacification of Ireland by an effective Purchase Bill, and the establishment of peasant-pro- prietorship in Ireland on a large scale. if Mr. Gerald Balfour succeeds in passing his Bill, as there is now the best reason to believe, the Irish landlords may very likely continue to show the displeasure, which Colonel Saunder- son and Mr. Carson showed on Thursday till Mr. Balfour, by his most impressive and moving speech, silenced them for the moment. But the very last way in which they would manifest it would be by trying to put a Liberal Unionist in the place of the Conservative Administration. The rumours afloat are not only baseless but foolish. They indicate nothing except the grudges which the Government have stirred up, first by failing to settle the Education question in the sense desired by the Church party, next by prosecuting Dr. Jameson for his mischievous attack on the Transvaal, and lastly by stimulating purchase in Ireland without ful- filling the hopes of the Irish landlords,—which it would have been all but impossible to satisfy. These three causes of discontent and disloyalty are by no means of the same or even similar origin, and nothing that gratified any one of these resentments would gratify the others. Naturally, therefore,the rumours generated, though all unfavourable to the Government, are by no means coherent or logical. So far as can be at present seen, nothing is less likely than a collapse of the Government during the long vacation, since the Cabinet are really cordially united, unless some external misfortune should strike the English people; and though this is quite possible, we have as yet no indication of its probable nature. The only moral we can deduce from these wild rumours is that a certain number of Ministerialists are already alienated from the Government, and that they do not know any better way of expressing their resentment than by spreading abroad unpleasant forebodings destitute of any shred of probability..
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