THE LIBERAL UNIONISTS AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE.
For there is, we believe, great force in what Lord Salisbury said on Tuesday, that it has been the artificial severance between class and class due to the concentration of vast numbers of one class at a distance from the localities occupied by the other classes, which has weakened the wholesome strength of national feeling in England, and rendered it desirable that some countervailing effort should be made to restore the unity so undermined. We believe it to be true, as he says, that the reason why Conservatism is so strong in London, is that in London that closer associa- tion between the classes, which has been dangerously reduced in the manufacturing and mining districts, has been to some extent restored, and that the various classes of labourers have found out that their hopes and aims are, after all, very much the same in substance as the hopes and aims of the classes next above them, and that the last thing in the world which would really make them happier, would be the breakdown of the present system of industrial freedom and progress, and the substitution of some ambitious attempt to organise and dictate to labour, and to carve out property, on some grand artificial principle, in its place. Doubtless nothing could be less favourable to the growth of such reasonable hopes as chiefly animate the poorer classes of this country, as revolutionary projects of the Socialist kind, and this is most keenly felt in the Metropolis, where there is, of course, still far too much of a gulf between the various classes, but yet not such a gulf as is to be found elsewhere. And we wholly agree with Lord Salisbury that if Primrose Leagues or anything else can be made to bridge over the gulf, and to bring the different classes of the English people into frank and friendly intercourse with each other, more will have been done to restore unity and depth of national sentiment than could possibly be effected in any other way. We entertain no doubt, for in- stance, that the complete collapse of the attempt to attack the Government for reorganising the Navy is in great measure due to the better mutual understanding of each other's purposes• and aims by the different English classes, brought about by the concession of household - suffrage to the counties. And so far as the Primrose League has furthered the same purpose,—and we believe that to some extent it has furthered it,—it has done real good, in spite of the somewhat fantastic shape which, in the various " habitations " of the League, that good haS assumed.
What we would urge, then, upon the Conservatives is • this, that if they really wish to cement and strengthen their alliance with the Liberal Unionists, they should do all in their power to purify the methods of the Primrose League from that questionable use of social influence which has given it the reputation of a League invented to propitiate by mild flattery, and to intimidate by milder threats. Con- servatives should, then, throw themselves at once on that genuine belief in the popularity.of their principles for which in recent years they must have found plenty of evidence, and should accept heartily the Liberal creed, that where you cannot alter a man's conviction, you ought not even to wish to alter or to cancel his vote. There is no permanent power in flattery or in intimidation, after all. You may divert a few votes in every constituency by the unscrupulous application of these influences, but you will not divert nearly enough to compensate for the favour which you would win by showing the voters that while they are per- fectly free to follow their own honest convictions, you wish them to adopt your conviction solely because you recog- nise its truth and its tendency to bind together the people of these islands in a strong and permanent society. If the Primrose League really numbers eight hundred thousand members, and if it guarantees a certain amount of free and genuine social intercourse between the different classes, it might do a very great deal to win over the people of these islands to its side, by openly and earnestly condemning every attempt to apply to politics those lower motives of flattery and intimidation which, in a more cruel form, have worked such immeasurable ruin in Ireland. It is a critical moment for the Primrose Leaguers. We believe them all to be sincere Unionists. Well, if they are, if they condemn as persistently as we do Mr. Parnell's avowed methods for the conversion of Irish tenants and labourers to his cause, let them wash their hands of every approach to the use of such methods in England, and draw the Liberal Unionists closer to them, by abjuring alto- gether the few petty and unworthy influences by which hitherto their Association has been discredited, and its better aims obscured.
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