TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BALFOUR AT HADDINGTON.
MR. BALFOUR'S speech at Hacldington yesterday week began with a long metaphorical criticism addressed to scientific golfers on Lord Rosebery's de- plorable mistake in having driven his first ball from the " tee " into a " bunker " and then having failed to get it out again, and "played four more" without any apparent success. We are far from understanding this rather technical illustration, except so far as the political light of nature enables us to judge that a " bunker " must be some sort of hole from which it is not easy, consistently with the laws of the game, to extract the toy with which the player was dealing. For ourselves, we should have said that Lord Rosebery's first blow,—we mean his candid admission that the Union could not be dis- solved without the hearty consent of the "predominant partner,"—was not a mistake at all; though it certainly did greatly offend the partner who, not being at all pre- dominant in power, had nevertheless contrived to make himself so decidedly predominant in party influence that, on the principles of the game as it had been played for the last nine years, he had practically held the lead, which he ought not to have held, and of which he ought to have been deprived. But it took courage to deprive him of it, and Lord Rosebery's courage failed him at once. He tried to undo what he had done, and so made a serious blunder of that which might have been a very long-headed piece of strategy. No doubt, Lord Rosebery might have, and probably would have, fallen from power by giving this sudden offence to his Irish allies; but he would have fallen from power as a states- man who understood the situation, and who might very well have come back again before long at the head of a reformed Liberal party, amidst the congratulations of his ablest, most sagacious, and far-seeing friends. As it was, by vacillating and drawing back, he did not remove the distrust of his allies, while he did forfeit the confidence of those who had long been repenting the great error of playing for Irish applause at the expense of English approval.
But though we think that Mr. Balfour's zeal for golf, and the world of metaphor into which it launched him, rather misled him as to the right criticism on Lord. Rosebery's policy, he soon recovered himself when he left the imaginary " bunker" behind him, and described the general principle on which he claimed that the new Conservatism is identical in kind with the Liberalism of older and better days. On what, asked Mr. Balfour, does the new Conservatism rest ? Certainly not on the infallibility of our institutions as they are. Conservative statesmen of far-seeing views are just as willing to admit that our institutions must be popularised, if they axe to be useful at all, as they are to defend their form after these popular modifications have been grafted upon them. What Conservatives hold by in these democratic days is not the duty of standing on the old ways without shifting their attitude at all, but the duty of so recognising all that is elastic in our political institutions as to get all the good out of the new political habits of mind to which we are grow- ing to be attached, without sacrificing the venerable asso- ciations and traditions which still give a historic grandeur and a political dignity to our methods and save us from the vulgar and vulgarising influences of the modern realism. We want to keep all that is ennobling and chivalric in our traditions without defending what is narrow and unjust to the mass of the people. The Radicals ask us to pull down with a blind sort of fury everything which can be shown to be more or less out of keeping with the popular will, without even first considering how much we may lose which is as conducive to the good of the nation at large as it is in harmony with the traditions of those who have hitherto ruled the nation. Because there happens to be a very minute Parliamentary majority in favour of Irish Home-rule, and no means of convincing the House of Lords that that minute popular majority represents a perm.anent and deep conviction in the English mind, the Radicals cry out that we ought to follow up the policy for w. hich there really is an infinitesimal majority, by a policy for w. hich there is no majority at alb—namely, the blank abolition of the House of Lords. True Liberals, no less than true Conservatives, say that that is a thoroughly, insane policy. We ought to ask, Why is there no popular majority for a purely destructive policy towards the House of Lords ? Is it not that even the Radicals themselves cannot in the least agree on what they shall put in its place, or whether they shall put anything in its place, and that the English people do not repose any confidence in a party which proposes to pull down what has saved us from many a great peril, though it has exposed us, to other perils, without even deliberating on the wisdom of substituting something effective in its place, and so far as may be on the same foundations ? We have not. only great traditions of the danger of yielding suddenly to waves of popular feeling, but we have great examples to guide us in providing substantial securities against that danger. The United States, when they abolished the Monarchy and erected a great Republic, took the utmost pains to guard themselves against this very real and. imminent peril. Switzerland, which has long set the. example of a true Commonwealth to Europe, has made provision after provision for guarding that Common- wealth against the special dangers to which popular institutions are subject. Why are we not to follow these great examples ? And why should we not avail ourselves, in doing so, of the prestige of a House of Lords which has at least some of the best qualifi- cations for a sagacious Second House, though it is at present much too deficient in popular sympathies ? Radicalism ignores altogether the immense advantage of economising all that is dignified and impressive in the political history of the country. Why do we keep the Monarchy ? Because the Monarchy, under the new restrictions which have grown up in the course of Many generations, is a most potent symbol of the nation's unity at a time when the nation's unity is gravely threatened ; and is also a most powerful antiseptic against the spread of a vulgar hand-to-mouth sort of political utilitarianism which debases politics without popularising it in the least. And if the Monarchy can do as much as this for us, cannot the existence of a select order of tried statesmen. who attach at least as much importance to recognising and using all that is great in the history of the past, as they do to incorporating with it the lessons of the present and the immediate aspirations of the future, do a good deal too ? Even where the wisdom of our fore- fathers is inapplicable to our own time,—and much of it is, of course, always in course of becoming obsolete, —its methods are so familiar, and therefore so much easier to us, that it is always well to adopt them and adapt them to our own needs, rather tha4 to invent brand- new ones. It is quite clear to us that we do need an order of men in whom tradition stands for very much more than it does to most of us, in order to sift out the newer ideas which are more or less in keeping with the old, from those which are raw, startling, and undermining. At all events, the very best way in which the Radicals could disgust the English people with the substance of their proposals, is by following up a revolutionary measure carried by a very minute majority even in the House of Commons, with a new and still more osten- tatiously revolutionary measure, which can command no majority at all. And that appears to be Lord Rosebery's only prescription for getting rid of a political deadlock.
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