TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MULTIPLICATION OF POLITICAL GROUPS.
MR. JOHN MORLEY, in his interesting and sagacious speech at the Engineers' Institution last Saturday, declared that the breaking-up of the two great parties into groups pledged ,to particular aims and causes which are more or less beside the objects of the greater party with which they usually ally themselves, is a political fact which it is impossible to ignore ; and which, looking to the visible tendency in the same direction in all the Continental Parliaments, it would be unwise to regard as temporary and evanescent.. We heartily agree with him, though we regard it as a matter for profound regret that it should be so. Mr. Bagehot, in one of his earlier and rasher writings, when discussing the causes which rendered political life in England so much steadier and less unstable than political life in France, laid it down dogmatically that the reason for this is that the English are stupid. and. the French lively. "What we opprobriously call stupidity, he wrote, "though not an enlivening quality in common society, is Nature's favourite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion. It enforces concentration ; people who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do ; the best security for fixedness of opinion is that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a dense and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister Sharp, oh yes, yes ; he's too sharp by half. He is not safe, not a. minute, that young man." What style, Sir,' asked, of an East India director, some youthful aspirant after literary renown, is most to be preferred in the composition of official despatches P' My good fellow,' responded the ruler of Hindostan, the style aa we like is the Humdrum.' I extend this, and advisedly main- tain that nations, just as individuals, may be too clever to be practical and not dull enough to be free." Mr. Bagehot would probably say the same now in somewhat less irritating language. And he would seize on Mr. Morley's remark that the young Members on both sides of the House have shown a very high level of ability, and have made speeches "of great promise," as illus- trating one of the chief causes why our great parties are splitting up into groups, and showing among a people whose great political merit had formerly been a sort of stolidity which ensured the solidity of political combina- tions, the sensibility and vivacity and openness to a variety of impressions, which is all but fatal to the kind of party government that has hitherto worked so well in England. The increase Of education in the constituencies, and the increase of a higher kind of education among the repre- sentatives, has all tended in the same direction,—the dimi- nution of that impassiveness, of that imperturbableness, of that disposition to go on in the same grooves, and to hold by the old standards, which prevented the disin- tegration of parties, and discouraged the multiplication of those smaller groups within the party by which the unity of each party is now so gravely threatened, The constituencies themselves are beginning to be made up of groups which, quite apart from Home-rule, hardly admit of perfect allegiance to either party. The Labour group, for instance, openly boast that they will give i their support n the last resort to either party which will do most for their Eight-Hours Bill. And many of the Temperance party have declared. that they will throw their votes either in favour of, or against, the party to which they belong, according as that party favours or resists the policy which the Temperance leaders advocate. And now, again, there are the Socialists, who insist that so long as they can obtain a. step or two towards the nationalisation of the land, they do not care from which of the two parties they may wring what they regard as the most important of all concessions. Indeed, there are now groups within groups which threaten the unity not only of the party but of the group. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is eloquent in favour of the Veto Bill, while some of the most eager of his former allies declare it a Bill which is pure treachery to the cause of Temperance. And so, too, there are two vehemently opposed subdivisions of the Labour party, one of them in favour of a legislative eight-hours day, and one of them opposed to it. Again, upon the Gladstonian side there are men who openly rail at "the accursed prece- dents" by which Parliamentary practice is confined, and wish to apply the Closure freely and habitually to stop.•discussion, and not merely to limit it ; while on the Con- servative side, there are a few Members who openly lean towards Lord Randolph Churchill as their chief, rather than to Lord Salisbury or even Mr. Balfour,—Members who wish to see Tory democracy triumph over mere Conservatism, and regard the rasher and flashier leader as more likely to carry the popular vote than the older and more Constitutional statesman. There can- not be a question that the livelier political life of the pre- sent day all tends in the direction of groups,—and minute groups,—which will not greatly regard political discipline, but break loose from party chains whenever they fancy that their particular crotchet is likely to profit by an act of insubordination. We should be sorry to assert that even the increase of intelligence is the only force which tends to the disintegration of parties ; for in some sense it is not the increase of intelligence, but the increase of sectarian obstinacy,—a very different thing,—or the increase of the impatience of enthusiastic conviction,—again a very dif- ferent thing,—which promotes this disintegration. But always it is the multiplication of political individualities, whether intelligent or otherwise, which promotes this disin- tegration, and the multiplication of political individualities is due to all causes, whether educational or social, which tend to diminish the cohesion of parties, and to substitute the distinctions and convictions appropriate to a clique or set, for the distinctions and convictions appropriate to. those larger bodies to which alone we can safely entrust the administration of the State.
When Mr. Morley says that, whatever the difficulties caused by this multiplication of groups may be, he has no doubt that Parliament and the State will successfully surmount them, he is more sanguine than we can be, unless he means merely to express his belief that, in one way or another, we shall escape any of those greater catastrophes by which, from time to time, European order has been destroyed. There we may heartily agree with him. But if he means that the principles of Parliamentary government will not be very gravely modified and dis- turbed by this tendency of parties to resolve themselvea into minute political groups, whose elective affinities for each other will be very variable and uncertain, we cannot agree with him, for we see in the condition of the French Assembly how very unstable Parliamentary government has become in that country from the same cause. We shall be quite prepared to see an unstable Government as the natural consequence of unstable Parliamentary combina- tions,—a Government that will be rich in promises, poor in performances, whichever party is uppermost in the State, because it will be necessarily a Government dependent on the acquiescence of the greater number of groups whose agreement amongst themselves must be more or less acci- dental and temporary on every great political question.
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