THE LEWISHAM ELECTION.
THE Lewisham election has resulted satisfactorily enough. When the Gladstonians say that they have reduced the majority by nearly 460 from the point it reached in 1886, they say what is literally true, but are not very candid as to the net result. In 1885, the Con- servative majority against the undivided Liberal Party was 1,225 on a total poll of 7,263. In 1886, the Unionist majority was 2,151 on a total poll of only 5,527. This year, the Unionist majority is 1,693 on a total poll of 7,477, the largest poll yet reached in Lewisham, though probably not so large in proportion to the number of voters now on the register, as the poll of 1885 was in relation to the number of voters then on the register. There is no reason at all to think that in 1886 the Gladstonians polled their full strength. They knew there was no chance for them, and the total poll was so small that in all probability many of both parties absented them- selves, as it is quite certain that many of the Conservative Party did this year. But Mr. Warmington appears to have been so popular among the Gladstonians on the present occasion, that they undoubtedly made a very enthusiastic push for him ; and yet, in spite of their enthusiasm, and in spite of the lethargy among the Con- servatives, who are asserted by the Daily News to have preferred Margate shrimps to Unionist politics, they did not succeed in reducing the Unionist majority of 1886, which was probably to some extent an unreal majority due to the extreme disheartenment of the Gladstonians, by more than 458 votes. That the Gladstonians do not them- selves think much of the reduction of the nominal majority of 1886 which they have effected, they candidly confess. Indeed, when they enlarge at great length on the igno- minious preference of the Tories for shrimps over politics, they seem to imply that they would have sustained a much more disastrous defeat if the prawn-eating Unionists had returned to vote. We are not very certain how that may have been, believing as we do that not a few of the prawn-eating holiday-makers were fol- lowers of Mr. Gladstone, and might have voted for Mr. Warmington had they been at home. But even if it be so, even if British Conservatism is reinforced much more by voters who do not care to make per- sonal sacrifices for their political views, than is British Gladstonianism, we should like to ask what the right inference with respect to the merits of the controversy now before the constituencies ought to be. It is not a question, remember, involving only a single act of political justice or injustice, that is now before the con- stituencies. If it were, we might well assume that those who are most willing,—whichever party it may be,—to make personal sacrifices for their political convictions, are more likely to be in the right than those who are less willing to make those sacrifices. It is not, however, a question of that kind. It is a question affecting the constitution of the United Kingdom for generations, and probably centuries, to come. It is a question, in the highest sense, of policy and intellectual foresight ; and supposing,—what our antagonists evidently do suppose, though upon very little evidence,—that the great majority of somewhat apathetic, if not selfish politicians in the urban or suburban constituencies, who have more or less prospered in life and are very reluctant to disturb the foundations on which their prosperity has been raised, reject blankly the proposed political revolution, even though they are not very willing to over-exert themselves in order to defeat what they have hardly yet learned to fear, does not that fact read us a very serious warning against the revolution of which they thus steadily though coldly disapprove ? What is certain is that the more dis- tinctly urban or suburban a constituency is, the more steadily, in the greater number of instances, does it set its face against Mr. Gladstone's proposal. London, Liver- pool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Belfast., with all their manifold rings of suburbs,—and the Home Counties, as the great breathing-spaces that encircle London are called,—the very places to which the reformers of two or three generations ago endeavoured fruitlessly to divert some of the representative strength of the United Kingdom,—with one or two remarkable exceptions, like Leeds and Glasgow,—set their faces steadily against Mr. Gladstone's plans, and join in resisting the application of the political solvent which Mr. Gladstone proposes to apply to our Constitution. His strength, on the other hand, is in the constituencies which are quite new to the exercise of political power, which have hardly yet fixed in their own minds what their political aim ought to be, and which. certainly represent much better the restlessness of un- satisfied desire, than the caution of growing and half- realised hopes. Speaking broadly, the rural counties and the great county towns follow Mr. Gladstone, while the large cities and the suburban counties give an im- mensely preponderant vote to Lord Salisbury. The great reforming constituencies of the first half of the century have almost all turned Conservative ; while the rural districts which were then actually in the power of the landlords and the tenant-farmers, are now, under the dominant ground- swell caused by agricultural discontent and Trade-Union ambitions, disposed to favour every great unsettling scheme. Thus, even if we were to admit, what we do not admit at all, that the profound selfishness of comfort and prosperity is the cement which keeps the prosperous communities firm, on one side, while the sympathy which springs from suffering is the stimulus which renders the less successful communities eager for great experiments on the other side,. how could we imagine anything more menacing to Mr. Gladstone's policy than this striking solidarity in re- sistance between all the social ambitions which are- attaining their end, though only a few generations ago- they were the very mainspring of the Reform move- ment ? Those great communities which have proved, themselves equal to vast achievements, regard Mr. Gladstone's great enterprise as a menace to their in- terests, while only the constituencies which are more or less smarting under a sense of disappointment or dwindling influence, are eager advocates for Mr. Glad- stone's schemes.
It seems to us that there could hardly be a worse augury for a great constitutional change than the combination of all the most powerful masses of city and suburban life against it, especially when we consider that ib is just these masses which are at present greatly under-represented in our Constitution, while the more struggling and thinner populations which chiefly favour that great constitutional change, are at present greatly over-represented. Give the English democracy its proper constitutional strength in relation to Ireland, and give London and the Home Counties their proper constitutional strength in relation to the rural counties of England, and there would be no more chance for Mr. Gladstone's pro- posal than for the abolition of the Monarchy and the setting-up of a Republic. What gives it its chance is that the weaker communities have their political influence in the State artificially enhanced, while the stronger com- munities have their political influence in the State artifi- cially attenuated. Yet none the less the former are yearly losing general force, and the latter are yearly gaining it. It is a very dangerous thing, as it seems to us, to carry a great and permanent constitutional change against the will of constituencies such as these,—a change so great that even its Radical advocates, in their draft Bill for Irish Home-rule, admit that it may ultimately involve the enact- ment of a brand-new Federal Constitution, and the break-up. of the historical system under which the United Kingdom has grown to be what it is. If women chanced to be on. one side and men on the other of any great issue, and the women were allowed, in consequence of their greater numbers, to outvote the men, it is pretty certain that no result so arrived at would be held to be a permanent and stable result. Nor do we think that any political result can be stable which is attained only by virtue of under- representing England in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and by under-representing, even within the limits of England itself, that most potent and most successful portion of the community which has steadied our politics, as the freight in the hold steadies the ship,. for half-a-century back. Only when the political energy and vitality of the country is heartily on the side of a great constitutional change, can such a change be safely made. Make it with all the greater urban and sub- urban constituencies against you, and the result will be a constant effort of the country to right itself, and to throw off the incubus of an oppressive and unnatural arrangement.
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