TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MOMENTUM OF THE PARTY MACHINE.
TORD HARTINGTON and Mr. Chamberlain have J contributed two epigrams to the political discussion of the day, each of them having reference to the evident unwillingness of the Gladstonians to stake the General Election on the great constitutional issue which it must chiefly raise. Sir William Harcourt, says Lord Hartington, treats Home-rule as one of the counters in the game of politics, as a policy which is to be prosecuted if convenient, and dropped if it is found expedient to drop it. " Gentle- men, the transaction which is being carried on before our very eyes, is something not altogether dissimilar to what we may sometimes have seen in commercial transactions of a questionable character. When a dealer has made a large investment in some article which he thinks will be extremely attractive, but finds that nobody will look at it, what does he do with it ? He makes up his mind to make the best of a bad business ; he invests in a variety of other articles which are found to be more attractive, and endeavours to get rid of the unsaleable article by offering it in a lot." Just so Home-rule is to be got off by merging it in a large and attractive programme of an altogether different kind, and throwing Home-rule in as part of that fascinating bargain. Mr. Chamberlain's epi- gram on the previous day, at the Unionist dinner to Mr. T. W. Russell, was not less pointed. The Unionist programme, he says, looks very modest beside Sir William Harcourt's multifarious policy, "but it has some distinct advantages of its own. In the first place, it is a practical policy, and not the prospectus of a Bubble Company which is certain to involve the shareholders in ruin." Both these admirable epigrams assume, what all the signs of the time seem to announce, that the Gladstonians themselves, though they know that they cannot renounce Home-rule, are anything but anxious to keep the main article of their political creed in the front of the battle. Irish Home-rule is not the popular cry it was, either at home or in Ireland. Arch- bishop Walsh, if we understand his letter to the National Press, described and partly quoted in the Times of this day week, is preparing to lighten the ship by throwing over that part of the political cargo. And we wonder that neither Lord Hartington nor Mr. Chamberlain drew attention to this very remarkable evidence that even in Ireland Home-rule is losing favour, in their speeches of Tuesday and Wednesday last. The feud in the popular party, said the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, had led to rumours that in various places there had been denunciations from the altar of _parishioners who had declined to identify themselves with the Anti-Parnellite Party ; that troubles of this kind are pressing more and more on the Irish Bishops ; and that therefore the Irish Bishops are very eager to see the split between the two parties healed. The Archbishop absolutely denied the authenticity of these rumours, but added that of course the Irish Bishops are desirous to see the dispute ended :— " What Irishman is not anxious to see it ended—what Irishman, I mean, with the exception of Mr. Parnell and a small—surely I am safe in saying an insignificantly small —knot of his closest personal adherents ? Outside of that narrow circle, what Irishman has adopted the new political paradox that in the actual circumstances of our country division in the national ranks is better than unity ? Speaking now only for myself, I take this opportunity of saying that I for one, in my anxiety to see this ruinous conflict ended, am influenced by many painful considera- tions, but most of all by this,—that I am deeply convinced that the countenance of it even for a little longer must be absolutely destructive of every hope of the establishment of Home-rule in Ireland, at all events within the present century. To me it is one of the most obvious truths of the present deplorable situation, that the fitness of our people for Home-rule, and, indeed, for constitutional government of any kind, is on its trial, and that so far the evidence of that fitness is somewhat less clear than it ought to be. In a crisis such as that through which the Irish people are now passing, it is always in the power of a minority, grown desperate from defeat, to wreck the fortunes of a nation." We could hardly have a more significant hint than this, that, in the opinion of the one prelate who more than any other member of the Irish Episcopate is desirous to follow rather than lead the drift of Irish popular opinion, it is becoming an open question whether or not the Irish people are fit for Home-rule. And Archbishop Croke has de- clared in so many words that all immediate hope of Home-rule has ceased. Evidently those Irish leaders who are most anxiously watching to see which way the wind blows, are beginning to doubt whether they might not get a very much more satisfactory settlement for the Irish people by giving ut3 Rome-rule, than they will be able to achieve if they stick to it. Is not the chief article in Mr. Gladstone's political creed losing popularity simul- taneously both in England and Ireland ? In England, as Lord Hartington says, it is sought to pass it off as one of a political lot of which it is the least attractive. In Ireland, the most vigilant of the party managers are doubting whether they would not gain better terms for the people, as well as more influence for the Church, by breaking altogether with the political Radicals on condition that they secure good land laws, religious education, and a benevolent policy towards Irish industry and poverty. Thus at one and the same time the English Gladstonians are anxious to get Home-rule into the shade, while the Irish ecclesiastics are reconsidering their position, and questioning whether they could not better secure their influence with the people by throwing Home-rule to the The real danger of the situation, then, is this,—that a policy may be forced upon the electors by the mere inertia of its already acquired momentum, which Mr. Gladstone1 almost alone, enthusiastically supports, while a great many of his most influential and practical followers wish to eliminate it as much as possible from the working pro- gramme of the Liberal Party, and which even the Irish clergy are beginning to think premature, if not unfor- tunate. It is often, as everybody knows, quite impossible to stop the revolution of a great fly-wheel or a huge vehicle in rapid motion in time to prevent its crushing some one whom nobody desires it to crush ;—simply because, when once in full career, it takes a certain fixed expen- diture of time as well as effort, to bring that progress to a standstill. It is exactly the same with a party policy which has long been echoed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind, till it has been made part and parcel of the daily life and habitual assumptions of a great party organisation. There may be the most convincing evidence that the leaders are repenting of it ; that they would, if they could, get the opportunity of reconsidering it ; that the very persons on whose behalf it was undertaken are cooling sensibly in their eagerness for it ; that the people are wavering ; that if there were but time to arrest the mighty rush of an accepted popular demand, the deter- mination to insist on it would be postponed, and the reasons for hesitation carefully weighed afresh ; and yet it may be impossible to arrest the machine, when once all the subordinate agencies which go to make up party organisation have been committed to it for a considerable number of years. Great parties cannot pull themselves up in a moment, even at the desire of their principal leaders. The by-elections may show convincingly that the motive power is not centred in the chief article of the party creed, and yet they may show quite as convincingly that it could not be thrown aside without a shock so disastrous to the party that no party leader would countenance the giving of such a, shock. It disorganises a party to be told that its leading war-cry must be revised. A new order of the day cannot be given without a catastrophe which would involve the collapse of the party ; and so it happens that a policy which almost every leader half-regrets, may yet be vic- toriously carried, and receive the assent of a really unconvinced nation. This seems to us the serious danger of• the present crisis. England is more or less weary of Irish Home-rule ; Ireland is half-uncertain whether, after all, she heartily desires it, and yet, unless the Unionist Party can force the constituencies to see that if Home-rule be mischievous, the Gladstonian policy ought to be rejected as a whole, since every other item of that policy is secondary and subsidiary to this leading doctrine, the nation may find itself committed to a great constitutional change which it does not desire for its own sake, but only because it has been so long identified with a great name and a great movement. Home-rule may be accepted as the least attractive part of an otherwise attractive political "lot," though none of the attractions of that lot can be enjoyed till Home-rule is passed. It. may be forced on the market as the first condition of a Bubble Company, which is only a Bubble Company because the prospectus of its work cannot even be entered upon till this detrimental condition sine qua' non is fulfilled. It may be carried in Ireland just when 'Ireland is beginning to bethink herself that, after all, she does not want it. And all this will happen only because a policy which was adopted with enthusiasm before its dangers were understood, cannot be dropped at a few months' notice without a shock and a collapse to which a great party organisation has hardly ever the power to assent.
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