TOPICS OF THE DAY
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THE LIBERAL REVERSES.
THE Liberal reverses have been many and great. Two of the Liberal Cabinet have been defeated,—Mr. Childers and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre,—men whose steady and, for the most part, prudent Liberalism has been of the greatest possible use to the Liberal Administration. It is not improbable that the late Chancellor of the Exchequer owes the loss of his seat to that too generous desire to sketch the outline of a new modus vivendi with Ireland on which we commented, at the time it was first put forth, with alarm and regret. But even if it were so, nothing could have been more shortsighted on the part of his constituency than to reject one of the most tried and trusted of the Liberal chiefs,—one of conspicuously fair and impartial intellect,—on the ground of that unfortunate enterprise of chivalrous knight-errantry. Mr. Childers has done the Liberals service after service, both legislative and administrative, of the most valuable kind ; and it was he who bore the brunt of that unprincipled attack by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach which led to the resignation of Mr. Gladstone's Government. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre has not served us as long as Mr. Childers; he was only placed in the Cabinet towards the end of the last Government, but he has done excellent work for the Liberal Party, though he too, like Mr. Childers, where he has erred at all, has erred on the side of too great anxiety to conciliate Ireland,—which may, perhaps, have been one cause of his defeat. At all events, the defeat of these two ex-Cabinet Ministers in very different parts of the kingdom seems to point to the indisposition of the English consti- tuencies to sanction anything that seems to them too great a desire to meet Mr. Parnell half-way. Of course, we may be mistaken in attributing the rejection of Mr. Childers at Ponte- fract, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre at Reading, to this cause. But it is certainly remarkable that one of the four English Liberals whom Mr. Parnell has amnestied from the dire penalties of Irish Nationalist wrath, Mr. Thompson, immediately after the conferring of this Parnellite order of merit, and probably in con- sequence of it, lost his seat for Durham. We feel but little doubt that, while the Irish vote has, both in Lancashire and in London, told heavily against the Liberals, the disposition to con- cede too much to Ireland, of which so many were suspected, has told quite as heavily. It is perfectly true that this ought to have told still more heavily against the Conservatives, and ought to have been fatal especially to Sir Michael Hicks- Beach's candidature for West Bristol, where we greatly regret to see that Mr. Nixon has not succeeded in his spirited cam- paign. But unfortunately it is true that Conservative discipline is so much better than Liberal discipline, that while a Liberal candidate may hardly look over a wall at the Parnellites, a Conservative Minister may break down a hedge to join them, and will not suffer the penalty. Of course, in a crisis like this, Liberals must take the uncomfortable consequences of the more independent action of their supporters, while the Conservatives reap all the advantages of their more thorough partisanship.
But whatever importance we may attach,—and we do attach great importance,—to the Irish element in the disasters we have had to bear in the large boroughs, we do not for amomentbelieve that this is the principal cause of the Liberal reverses. We believe it must be admitted that the English constituencies are very much disposed at all times to think less of the reasons why they should vote one way or the other than of venting their more active discontents by their votes. Doubtless, they were discontented,—to some extent, we think, justly discontented, as the late Government itself admits,—with the policy pur- sued in Egypt. And still more are they discontented with the bad times, for which, if they are to blame anybody, they think that they must blame the Government that lasted for five years rather than the Government which has not yet lasted much longer than as many months. Of course, as regards that matter they are not only very foolish in holding that anybody is to blame, but almost insane in thinking that a Government which coquets with Fair-trade is likely to improve their cir- cumstances. Scotchmen and Welshmen know better. We shall not find any disposition in Scotland and Wales to look for more prosperity to a policy guided by Lord Salisbury, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr. Chaplin. But the English manufacturer and the English artisan are not as canny as the Scotch manufacturer and the Scotch artisan, nor as longheaded as the Welsh manufacturer and the Welsh artisan. A great deal of direct discomfort has been felt, and the most natural impulse of English electors is to vent their displeasure on the only potent factor in English affairs at which they can really get ; and so, by way of venting their displeasure, they secure for themselves the continuance of a Government which will soon give them cause for a great deal more displeasure by its interference with the one policy which has alleviated the dis- tress instead of causing it. But so undoubtedly it is. Lanca- shire and the manufacturing parts of Yorkshire have suffered most from bad times. And Lancashire and the manufacturing part of Yorkshire have certainly said within themselves that they will try what the new men can do for them, as the old men did so badly, little anticipating how much mischief the new men, if they get the chance, will be able and but too likely to do.
Further, we do not doubt that the terrible fright which Mr. Chamberlain has given to the Clergy has lost the Liberal Party a host of voters in the metropolitan and many other boroughs. In all places where the Clergy have influence—and there are very few large towns in which they have not a very considerable influence—they have worked very hard, in some places almost with blind passion, for the Tories. We see the result in a borough like Southampton, where the pulpit had been, it was said, converted into a mere political instrument of the Tory Party, and in most of the wards of Liverpool and Manchester. Mr. Chamberlain must do a great many sub- stantial services to the Liberal Party before he can retrieve the mischief which he has done by the sanction which he gave to a crude, cruel, and ridiculous scheme for disendowing as well as disestablishing the Church.
Take the borough elections as a whole, so far as we know them at the time we write, and it cannot be denied that they furnish solid ground for mortification on the part of all true Liberals. That on the very morrow of so large an extension of the political rights of the people, gained solely by the steady resolve of the late Liberal Government, the electors should avow themselves entirely indifferent to that great and very difficult act of justice, and anxious only to resent the disasters which one or two errors, and a much larger number of in- evitable misfortunes, had brought upon England, is certainly not creditable to the electorate as a whole, either as regards the grounds on which it gives or withholds its con- fidence, or as regards the shrewdness of its own self-interest. It shows but little insight into the character either of the great Liberal or of the great Tory chief, when the electors do what is in their power to change the one for the other at such a crisis as the present. By this time at least, the people should have learned that even Mr. Gladstone's errors have been the errors of a too scrupulous mind, forced to judge under difficult circumstances of the best mode of retrieving the blunders of his predecessors, while his great achievements have proceeded from his wide sympathy, his far-reaching knowledge, and his utter hatred of vainglorious displays. Lord Salisbury's Chief errors have been the errors of vainglory and unscrupulous ambition; while the whole set of his recent speeches has indicated the most hopeless con- fusion of mind on a matter so all-important to England as the true theory of trade. In their impatience of hard times and small humiliations the large boroughs have hazarded more than they dream of. After five years under Lord Salisbury and Mr. Parnell,—if the counties do not save us from that miserable destiny,—we shall be much surprised if this impatience be not ten times as angry as it is now ; impatience of crimes like the Afghan War, of follies like the seizure of Cyprus, of disasters like the commencement of a campaign of fiscal retaliation on the Protective policy of other countries, and of actions as rash and ignorant as submission to a genius like that of Lord Randolph Churchill and a virtual alliance with Irish Home-rulers must in- volve. It is still possible that the calamity of arming Lord Salisbury with full power to dispose of the government of England may be averted,—possible, but not probable, for we should not consider a mere majority of Liberals over Con- servatives, Mr. Parnell holding the balance of power, an issue much less dangerous than that of Lord Salisbury's complete triumph. But if the first result of distributing power in direct proportion to population is to strengthen the most dangerous of English statesmen in his tenure of power, we fear that the next use of their authority by the people will be a reaction against Tory government so profound and so vehement as to break all the historical traditions of the country, and to land us in something very like a policy of revolution. The events of this week are not by any means decisive, but so far as they go they bid fair to initiate a period of our history through which it will be a bitter thing to live, and on which we shall be ashamed and reluctant to look back.
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