TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD SALISBURY.
.y0OFNESS, sincerity, and self-control were the three marked qualities in the labe Lord Salisbury which, displayed as they were by a man of high intellectual powers and great hereditary rank, secured for him the admiration, and ultimately the confidence, of his country- men. Lord Salisbury had many reasons for pride, and all tended to keep him aloof from other men. He was, to begin with, a great noble with adequate wealth, an unstained name, and a pedigree which stretched back to the Tudors through names that were intertwined with the history of the country. He did not despise the com- monalty at all, they being as much creatures of Allah as himself ; but he thought that historic descent ensured in good men qualities their inferiors were apt to lack, and he preferred those qualities. He was also a man of great ability, saw quickly into the heart of a subject, and could upon most occasions bring his singularly varied experience as scholar, traveller, man of science, and member of many Cabinets rapidly to bear upon the great incident of the hour. He did not, therefore, "suffer fools gladly," but held away from them, sometimes, if the rules of controversy permitted, told them they were fools in most incisive words. Above all, he had the capacity for governing, for being impressive, for making inferior men give way as to some one whom it was useless to oppose. He was, we have reason to believe, aware of this, and in middle life, before he had mellowed, accepted his nickname of "the terrible Marquis" as high personal praise. He was by nature a shy man too, with a curious nervous shyness which made him turn cold and his fingers tremble when in the Lords he felt the necessity to rise and speak. Every- thing therefore helped to keep him aloof ; and he kept aloof, being little influenced by other men, desiring no intimate companionship outside a very few, and caring notbingfor popularity, even as an instrument of power. This attitude of mind, which, owing to another gift, was patent to all mankind, would anywhere on the Continent or in America have ruined him as a politician; but in England it served him as a pedestal. The people here do not feel envy. Other things being equal, they prefer to be led by men of the great families ; and for intellectual pride they have a regard, as well as deference, which it would take a history to explain. They display it towards a Bright as towards a Cecil, and feel it even in a case like that of Parnell, whom they recognised more or less, instinctively, as an enemy. They think aloofness shows disinterestedness— which is often, or even usually, true—and for disinterested- ness they have in politics unbounded admiration. It is not because they feel that they themselves could not be disinterested, but because, being in the main a people of confused thoughts, they exceedingly value good. and definite counsel, and think that they find it most readily in the disinterested, especially if the latter are also unmistakably sincere. That Lord Salisbury was, almost to a fault. He must no doubt occasionally have concealed opinions about persons, and he must also in dealing with foreign states- men have sometimes employed finesse ; but we cannot recall an occasion upon which he tried to leave a false impression or hide up a belief because it might lessen his popularity. Though. for example, leading a democracy, he never con- cealed his opinion that democracy was a doubtful experi- ment which would in the end lead to mischief; never pro- fessed to " love " the people even when serving them with his whole heart ; never uttered one word of the flatteries which it is supposed—erroneously as regards this country —the democracy craves. There was democracy, a fact, and he accepted the fact, and did the best he could with it ; but he never cringed to it, even after he had dis- covered, as he must have done in his later years, that Behemoth, if bred in Britain, is a very placable and long-suffering beast, responsive to the bridle, and without any great need of blinkers. To the end he served the people as laboriously and conscientiously as if he had believed their collective intelligence to be brighter than his own. He worked for them, in truth, as he worked for his many tenants, not believing much in tenant rights, but entirely believing that his duty was to do justice, to be merciful on occasion, and, above all, to see that they did not suffer from bad conditions. They say, indeed, that when he was much withdrawn in mind from politics the project of taxing food aroused him, and that his shake of the head was an angry one ; but there may be political feeling in that tale.
Of Lord Salisbury's self control there are many instances. He did not, as we have said, believe in democracy, but he never when in power wasted strength in the futile effort to deprive it of its ascendency, or to resist its clear man- dates. He had a strong feeling for Established Churches, as well as much personal piety, and it must have been a bitter moment to him when the Bill disestablishing the Irish Church was brought into the Lords ; but he, never- theless, considered that the country had given its verdict, that the appeal which it is the duty of the Lords to secure had been heard and rejected, and he advised the Peers therefore to pass the measure. It was the same in foreign politics. His experience as Special Commissioner at Constantinople had given him a horror of the Turkish Government, but be never became a crusader, never forgot that, evil as that Government is; the consequences of its disestablishment without an acceptable substitute might be even worse. He helped to modify the Treaty of San Stefano, and thus kept the peace—a bad peace, no doubt—for another quarter of a century ; and he is believed to have controlled himself in an even stronger way after the Armenian massacres. They roused his intense indignation ; and as we have been told, he decided on coercion if the Austrian Government would help. The Austrians were willing, and orders were issued for opera- tions which would have brought Turkey to its knees ; but .at the last moment some irresistible pressure induced Vienna to withdraw, and Lord Salisbury, inwardly raging, declared that the British Fleet "could not sail over the mountains." He liked success in negotiation ; but he never forgot that it might be bought too dear, com- pelled himself to see his adversaries' point of view, and re- peatedly smoothed their path towards graceful retreat by small but amiable concessions. The English public, which in some moods seems ready to fight the whole world, it once exaggerated these concessions • but in the end, especially after Fashoda, it felt confident that the dignity of the country was safe in his hands, and rather rejoiced in his absence of rash Chauvinism. He rather liked Russia, and would gladly have come to a final entente with its rulers ; but when all tentatives failed he took the strong precaution, wise or foolish, which is involved in his Treaty with Japan. He faced America in the first difficulty about Venezuela, and denounced what he considered unfounded extensions of the Monroe doctrine ; but when the difficulty ended he gladly accepted American amity, and per- manently enhanced it at the crisis of the Spanish War by showing his readiness to stand by the States against a European coalition.
His defect as a statesman was lack of administrative force. He was, in fact, essentially too conservative in mind to believe strongly in " reforms " of any kind, and he did not always choose colleagues well ; while he had either—what we think was the case—a dislike of driving them, or he had not the ability to see that they wanted driving. His addition to' the numbers of the Cabinet was a mistake which weakened the force of that great fly-wheel, and he did not sufficiently realise that in our Constitution the Premier is the King's adlatus, and responsible for every Department. The primary responsibility for the early disasters of the South African War rests with Lord Lansdowne, but the Premier, when war with the Boer Republics seemed imminent, ought to have looked into the condition of the War Department, and have remedied that condition of total unpreparedness now revealed by the Report of the Commission of Inquiry. No one would have suspected him of jobbing if he had cleansed the Augean stable there, and insisted on efficiency; and it was his duty to have done it whether the Minister of Wax supported him or not. This was the great failure of his career, and one we can only explain on the theory that, with all his intellectual powers, Lord Salisbury was not 's, perfect judge of men. If that is the correct explanation— and of course we must wait for further light till more of his correspondence has appeared—Lord Salisbury as a ruler of men did not reach the absolutely front rank ; but Europe has fallen upon a cycle of second-rate men, and the whole world recognises that his departure leaves a painful void.
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