LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S EXPLANATION.
TORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S explanation of his J resignation was made in a tone of businesslike modera- tion that did credit to his tact. But it was in itself totally insufficient to sustain his reputation for sagacity. What it amounts to is this,—that ever since he joined the Government, he had committed himself to the policy of reducing the mili- tary and naval expenditure both in consultation with his col- leagues and in public speeches ; that he was committed up to the eyes to the initiation of such a policy ; and that as he could not persuade his colleagues at the War Office and the Ad- miralty to agree with him, and could not persuade the Prime Minister to take sides with him and ask for the resignation of those colleagues, he had no course honourably open to him except to resign. So far, doubtless, he proved his case ; but then, it was his own previous conduct which constituted the case for his resignation. And what public opinion will doubtless say, and say very justly, is this,—that Lord Randolph acted very foolishly in making an immediate and substantial reduction of the military and naval expenditure an absolute condition of his co-operation in a Government which had only been in office for six months, which had fallen upon times of great peril as regards the affairs of Europe, which was pledged to a large extra expenditure on the fortification of our Colonial coaling-stations, and which had also made somewhat dangerous enemies abroad, partly in consequence of the unmeasured and violent language used by Lord Randolph himself a couple of years ago. For a Minister in such a position, a Minister whose invec- tives against Russia are still vivid in all men's memories, a Minister whose administration of the Indian Office was remarkable for nothing more than for its eager and almost lavish preparations for the contingency of a Russian invasion of India, it was surely very imprudent to take so headlong and premature a stand on the necessity of very large redactions in our military and naval expenditure. As the First Lord of the Treasury remarked in his very skilful and businesslike reply to Lord Randolph, the only suggestion that Lord Randolph had to make was that the vote for carrying out the fortification of our coaling-stations abroad, should be abandoned or post- poned. Well, we deny that the country would have approved that course. We believe that in the critical position of European affairs, it is one of our first duties to carry out the too long postponed duty of making our Colonies safer, and especially of securing our supplies of coal in distant seas. That is a temporary though urgent need, which would perfectly have justified Lord Randolph in postponing for another year his demand for an absolute reduction of the Army and Navy expenditure, especially as one of the Powers who is at present most likely to be involved in war is the very Power against which some two years ago he did his best to irritate Tle. Lord Randolph has to learn that it will not do to be the spokesman of the most violent international anger one year, and the spokesman of the most exalted economical principles and of the most straitlaced non-intervention a year or two after. He is on of those politicians who are always changing their line, who pass from invectives against a states- man to something like adulation of the same statesman, from invectives against a State to confidence in its perfect friend- liness, from exhortations to liberal expenditure to exhortations to strict economy, in a fashion that the public do not and cannot understand. It would at least have been decent for him, in his position, to have given the great spending Departments fair notice of what he should require next year, and to have yielded this year to the very reasonable plea that with so urgent a necessity for extra expenditure on the fortification of coal depots, a substantial reduction would not be possible. The only reason that this course could not be taken was that in his speeches at Dartford and Bradford, Lord Randolph had committed himself " up to the eyes " to a different policy. Doubtless ; but he should not so have committed himself. As a Minister of the Crown, in a time when a great war is more than possible, he mould have known better than to let the stump-orator's tongue run away with him. He maintains, no doubt, that Lord Salisbury is disposed to a foreign policy which is too meddling and interventionist, and that but for that policy the Army and Navy votes might have
been reduced. Well, Mr. W. H. Smith distinctly denies the charge, and the public, of course, have no means of judging between them. But., in any case, it hardly lay in the month of a Minister whose speeches did so much to irritate one of the Great Powers only two years ago, to treat Lord Salisbury's policy as a meddling policy which creates the only danger that exists that we may be involved in war against our wilL Of course, Lord Randolph Churchill's speech on Thursday night was but the first note of a controversy which is certain to be resumed before very long in a much more serious and practical form. It is clear from Mr. Gladstone's speech that a motion will be made, not immediately, but so soon as the financial situation is fully developed, on the lavish ex- penditure of the Government. In that case, Lord Randolph, with perhaps a few of his personal followers, will probably coalesce with Mr. Gladstone's party and the Parnellites, while the allies may be supported by Mr. Chamberlain and his friends from among the Radical Unionists. That would be a formidable combination, though we do not think that it would be at all likely to succeed. For one year at least, the country, anxious as it is for a substantial reduction of taxation, will bear with this Administration, remembering as it must that its fall would mean the instalment in power of a party which has not only pledged itself to Home-rule, but has no censure for such a pro- gramme of plunder as the " Plan of Campaign." We regret more than we can express the language used by Mr. Gladstone on Thursday night in reference to that organised attack on the com- monest morality. Of course, Mr. Gladstone did not approve it. But he founded on his own preference for some Bill like Mr. Parnell's in principle,—a Bill which we, too, wished to see adopted in a modified form by the Government,—and on Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's use of influence with the landlords, what we understand to be a virtual excuse for the Nationalist Members who tried to put pressure on the landlords after their own peculiar fashion. That has grieved us more than any utterance of modern times. If Ireland could be benefited, and benefited enormously, in material prosperity by such a policy as the " Plan of Campaign," she would lose more by the degradation of the popular conscience which that plan involves than she would gain in physical prosperity. To such straits are our greatest Ministers reduced when they form alliances with such a party as that led by Mr. Parnell, and feel that their success depends on keeping him and his colleagues in cordial sympathy with their proceedings.
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