THE TORY COMPLAINT.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE, in his short speech at Bournemouth, while taking up the line of extreme moderation and reticence in relation to the sins of a Govern- ment which he is so anxious, for the honour of the country, to support through the hour of peril, yet permitted himself one 'vehement expression, which is so carefully echoed by some of his followers, that it is worth a little consideration, " The 'dangers," he said, "to which the Constitution is exposed are great, and the enemy is very powerful and very repulsive. We see they are quite ready to use every weapon against their .opponents when they are out of office themselves ; but when they get into office, they take up all they abused, and everything they found to be wrong in us is right with them. Well, that is a very difficult class of men to deal with, because they certainly have such a wonderful amount of influence over their sup- porters throughout the country, that the latter are quite ready ta believe whatever they say.' Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, who appears to be in rather confidential relations with Sir Stafford Northcote, as it turns out that it was from him Sir Stafford borrowed that brilliant application to the "Treaty of Kilmainham " of the phrase used by one of the Witches in 111 acbeth—" a deed without a name "—echoes the same charge, in his speech at Whitehaven on the same day :—" A peace-at-any-price Government bombarded Alex- andria; the largest expeditionary force which had ever gone from this country since the Crimean war was despatched to Alexandria. That was very remarkable, after the Midlothian speeches of Mr. Gladstone, who had told them that it was his study to reverse the policy of Lord Beaconsfield. Instead of thwarting that policy, the reverse was the case. Every- thing for which he blamed Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone was doing, but without the support which Lord Beaconsfield had in Europe." So that Sir Stafford Northcote's cue to his followers seems to be' that they should reproach the government for borrowing the policy of Lord Beaconsfield, and, as Sir Stafford himself suggested in a recent speech, .copying it so badly as to make it their own only so far as the originality implied in clumsy imitation is their own. That is the cue of the Tory leader in the House of Commons. The Tory leader in the House of Lords, however, with whom Sir Stafford boasted at Bournemouth that he was in complete and 'Confidential agreement, gave the opposite cue only the other day to his followers. He declared that the restoration of Cetewayo was another step in the same evil policy of breaking with the Policy of the last Government, which the present Administration seemed to be deliberately bent on pursuing. And Lord Car- narvon, about a month ago in South Lambeth, took the same line as Lord Salisbury, declaring that the present Administra- tion is deliberately bent on reversing all the policy of the late Government in every particular in which they find it possible to .do so, and speaking of Mr. Gladstone's policy as one" as ignorant .and unstatesmanlike as ever was foisted on ignorant audiences by Ignorant Ministers." Now, we do think i t reasonable to ask to which 'Charge of the two the Tory orators desire us to reply ? Plainly, the two are not consistent. If the Liberal Administration is re- versing everything which the Tories did, Sir Stafford Northcote can hardly say that directly the Liberals get back to office, they take up all which they so recently denounced ; nor can Mr. Cavendish Bentinck consistently say that instead of thwarting lord Beaconafield's policy, Mr. Gladstone is eagerly adopting it. If, on the other hand', Lord Salisbury and Lord fiarnarvon are wrong, and the great crime of our rulers is the adoption of Lord Beaconsfield's policy in office by a group of men who were so bitterly hostile to it when out of office, it is hard that the Government should not at least have the credit rof its inconsistency, and be told that wicked as its ways when it was out of office were, its ways now that it has returned to office would be satisfactory, did they not proceed from
Ministers who have bitterly condemned all that they them- selves are now doing. But as it is, the Tories claim the right to pelt the Government with quite inconsistent charges ; and while some of their speakers go about assailing it for its plagiarising policy, others of them go about assailing it for its cold-blooded perversity in endeavouring to undo all that its predecessors did.
For our own part, we are quite willing to admit that there is a certain amount of plausibility in both charges, but only just so much as shows what the answer is to each. It is perfectly true that while the policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government was to spare the feelings of the Porte in everything, and to spare the feelings of the Christian populations which had suffered through the Porte in nothing, the policy of Mr. Gladstone's Government has been to press on the Porte the fulfilment of every obligation it had undertaken to these Christian popula- tions, and to endeavour to obtain more undertakings of the same kind. Again, it is perfectly true that where it was the policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government to settle everything with a high hand in South Africa, it has been the policy of the present Government to retrace its steps wherever there has been clear evidence of any previous injustice ; and by frankness and candour to establish a condition of permanent equilibrium, where the haste of its predecessors had left a solution that could not endure even for a few months longer. Thus, while Lord Gran- ville has carried out the Treaty of Berlin made by his prede- cessor, he has carried it out in a very different spirit from that of his predecessor. And while it is true that Lord Kimberley has done all in his power to continue the Colonial policy of his predecessor, so far as it was tenable at all, it is also true that where he found it likely to involve us in worse and still more disastrous conflicts and mistakes, he has not hesitated to reverse it. So far, then, we can quite understand the assertion of those who say that Mr. Gladstone has not taken up the thread of his predecessors' policy, but often snapped it in two. But then it must be added that, when- ever his Government could follow the thread of that policy without disloyalty to grant principles, it has done so, and has availed itself of every opening which the formal acts of its predecessor afforded it, to make the policy of this Government the legitimate development of the agreements entered into by the last Government. For example, it was because the last Government took up the case of Greece without the smallest earnestness or reality of mind, that this Government was able to press the claims of Greece so successfully. It was because the last Government agreed to compensate Montenegro for the territory she had conquered (though it never endeavoured seriously to do so), that this Government was enabled to obtain Duleigno for Montenegro. It was because the last Govern- ment had annexed the Transvaal, that this Government went as far as it could,—and further, we think, than it ought, con- sidering the Ministers' conviction that the proposals for peace made by the Boors ought to be entertained,—towards the attack on the Boers. It was because the last Government had left the Zulu question as Sir Garnet Wolseley settled it, that this Govern- ment waited long to see whether Sir Garnet Wolseley's settle- ment could or could not be sustained. Again, it was because the last Government had seized on Cyprus, that this Government has done what it could to make use of Cyprus, and to develope its resources. And, it was because the last Government had established itself at Candahar, that this Government held its decision so long in reserve as to whether it would or would not restore Candahar to Abdul Rahman, and that it refused to do so till Abdul Rahman had shown his
capacity for ruling Afghanistan for himself. It is plain enough, then, that much as this Government disapproved of the policy of its predecessors, it did all in its power to prevent its own policy from showing any sign of an abrupt break with the policy of its predecessors, and to await those further circumstances which justified or even demanded a change of policy. And whenever, as in the case of the Treaty of Berlin, there were negotiations conducted in an unreal sense by the last Government of which this Government could cordially approve, then its easy and pleasant task was to interpret in the real and earnest sense, whatever the last Government had agreed to in words which it did not intend to follow up with deeds.
And so, on the question of Egypt, there is no doubt that our Government is now pursuing the policy of the last Government, though it is pursuing it with reserves of its . own, and without the pretensions which the last Government would certainly have put forward. There is no manner of objection to admit that what is being done in Egypt is being done in great measure, because the last Government committed us to the support of the present Khedive, and to the financial amelioration—in conjunction with France—of the condition of the Egyptian people. It is very likely quite true that if Mr. Gladstone had remained in power between 1874 and 1880, we should have had no such engagements ; that as Cyprus would never have been seized, we should have had a much stronger case for resisting the French aggression at Tunis, and might have resisted it successfully ; and that if that had been successfully re- sisted, the present war in Egypt might never have been neces- sary. All that is perfectly conceivable. And therefore we have no objection at all to admit that in some sense we are doing now in Egypt what is the natural consequence of Lord Beacons- field's policy, and may, in that sense, be regarded as only borrowing a leaf from his book. But the duty of the present Government being to make the best of the actual engagements to which it finds itself committed, unless it be an obvious necessity of justice that they should be broken through, there is no more matter of reproach in the fact that the present Government is putting down the anarchy in Egypt on the ground that the late Government committed us to the support of Tewflk Pasha, than there would have been in the admission that the late Government carried out the award of the 'Alabama' Arbitration on the ground that the previous Government had consented to that arbitration, As a matter of fact, we believe that the policy of the Con- trol established by the late Government was doing real good in Egypt, and that Arabi in upsetting that Control was doing all the harm he could to the people of Egypt ; and this, as our readers are aware, we believe without having the slight- est faith in the claims set up by the Bondholders to an inter- national intervention on their behalf. The Government found that the arrangements made by Lord Beaconsfield's Govern- ment in Egypt, and violently broken through by the mutinous army, were, on the whole, arrangements beneficial to Egypt, and indispensable to the security of the Suez Canal, and of the right of way of Europe by that Canal and by the railroad. It was, there- fore, quite right that the pledges given by Lord Beaconsfield's Government to Europe should be redeemed, and they were re- deemed by this Government. What is there in that to be called a policy of plagiarism, unless all fulfilments of promises made by the country under one Government are to be called plagiarisms, when another Government carries them out? When, however, Mr. Cavendish Bentinck tells us that the last Govern- ment had a kind of support in Europe which this Government cannot pretend to, we only wonder at his self-deception. To our minds, the attitude of Europe at the present moment seems one of the most singular of testimonies to the confidence which Mr. Gladstone has gained by such self- denying acts, for instance, as the retrocession of the Transvaal in the face of a British defeat. Europe trusts the Govern- ment which had the moral courage to do justice under such a temptation to be unjust, as it never did trust, and never could have trusted, the Government of Lord Beaeonsfield.
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