A WORD IN SEASON.
THERE is something involved in the vote of next Tuesday —if, indeed, the division is to be taken on that day— which is even more important than the unity of the Kingdom, and that is the moral value of the system of representative government. That system is ultimately based on the belief that the picked men of a nation, selected freely by the people, will on all grave occasions do their best, to the limit of their powers and their intelligence, to guide the nation right ; that they will at once fulfil their pledges to their constituents, and honestly express and act upon their own convictions. If that belief proves illusory, and is seen by the people to be illusory, confidence in the system will be gone, and either a new one will be tried, or the people, distrusting all agents, will take power into their own hands,and govern either through plebiscites, or delegates removeable year by year, and charged only to ex- press accurately the opinions of their constituents for the hour. If the Member of Parliament will not think, and act upon his thought, if he is to have no conscience in politics, and to be merely an animated funnel, there is no further use in electing tb,oughtful men, or men of the highest character. Any candidate will do who can speak, plain, pliability becomes the most useful of political qualities, and the absence of definite convictions, absence as complete as in Sir W. Harcourt, is the highest among political recommendations. England has not sunk to that level yet, and it is one of the few compensa- tions for the present break-up of the Liberal Party that it has arrested the process of degeneracy, and has com- pelled even average Members to consider themselves, and see if they have any manliness left in them, any right to consider themselves, in the highest sense of the term, freemen. Tuesday will show the Kingdom the much-needed spectacle of a great group of men who dare to be true to their own consciences and convictions, and face all consequences, break with their party, interrupt their careers, go out into the political desert, rather than, by voting for a proposal at once magnificent and bad, betray the electors who have trusted them with power. Their self-denial may be unfruitful, they may resist the Bill in vain, but they will restore the shaken confidence in parties, and revivify the declining belief in the patriotism and disinterestedness of public men. The public had begun to fear that, however honour- able individuals might be, no large body of representatives could be found to vote to their own hurt, or to place peace of conscience and independence of mental judgment before the favour of their, electors ; and in the spectacle of Tuesday, whatever the result of the division, they will recover their faith. A third of the Liberal Party, amidst a suffering which only convinced party men can understand, will risk all consequences, break the connections of their lives, tread down the attachments of years, and face all imputations of treachery, rather than vote on a historic occasion for a Bill they believe to be dangerous to the safety of their country. There is not a politician in Eng- land, be his convictions what they may, who will not be the stronger for the sight, more inclined in future to believe his leaders honest, less despondent than he was of the future of Parlia- mentary institutions. Upon the greatest occasion of our genera- tion, under the most terrible pressure, amidst the most exas- perating circumstances, nearly a hundred Liberals will have preferred their consciences to their careers. Then Liberalism is neither dead nor dying, and the energy of the British may survive even the concession of Home-rule.
We are not writing for one side only. We would, if we had the power to reach him, implore every man in the House, first of all, to give on Tuesday a sincere vote. If there are Tories, and there may be, who in their heart of hearts believe that their leaders are wrong, and that Home-rule will benefit Ireland and Great Britain equally, even more than the overthrow of the Ministry would benefit them, their clear duty is to step out, say plainly that they believe this, and vote for the second reading, which, if carried, will infallibly dissolve the Union they condemn. If, on the other hand, there are Liberals who, hating or despising the project as a blunder in politics or a treachery to national allies, still intend to vote for it, let them reflect that they are degrading their own natures, as well as betraying their trust, and recant, if it ba after the ringing of the division-bell. They will never have such a chance again to prove themselves to themselves to be indeed men. It is no counsel of perfection we are pressing on them, but adherence to the simplest duty. Nine times out of ten, indeed upon all small occasions, we should urge the waverer to vote with his chiefs, certain that even if they were wrong, the main- tenance of party discipline was essential to the good government of a State whose bad government implies bad government among a third of all mankind. Nine times out of ten we should say the leaders had better reasons for their action than their followers could have for thwarting their designs. There are, however, occasions when the very objects of political organisations are at stake, when the thing itself to be sought for is in danger, when the nation itself, and not only its good government, is in peril; and if ever such occasions be, this is one of them, when the united peoples of the Kingdom are asked to declare that their union is a blunder, that they are by mental failure incompetent to govern their own component parts, and that they must abandon for all time an effort which is visibly too severe alike for their intelligence and their energies. That, a confession by the whole United Kingdom at once of failure in the past and of powerlessness in the future, is the governing thought of this Bill. Let him to whom that confession seems an absolute truth vote for it in peace. We would not, if the Unionist Liberals were as numerous as they are few, read one sincere Home- ruler out of the Liberal Party. But let the man who does not believe that—and there must be many such— realise fully, if it be at the eleventh hour, what it is that he is doing in giving his vote for the Bill. He is selling the future of his country for a seat, is as distinctly a traitor as if in the hour of action he betrayed his regiment for a bribe. A seat so secured is but a bribe, and nothing better, and a bribe for an act almost without a parallel in our annals. We have had scoundrels among us in plenty, a few traitors, and a few cowards ; but the Englishman who, being in English service has, when the battle is actually joined, betrayed England, has either never existed, or has, in the contemptuous lenity of history, been mercifully forgotten. Marlborough, his enemies say, sold information as to military plans to France ; but even Marlborough, once in command, never betrayed a province to a foe,—and that is the act with which the man who, believing this Bill to be ruinous to the Kingdom, or to involve a future necessity of reconquest, nevertheless votes for it, will in history stand charged. The convinced Home-ruler, though an Englishman, is blameless, if only his conviction does not spring from self-will ; but the English Home-ruler against his conviction is parting with his country for his own gain. To "vote straight" on this occasion means, for Home-rulers no less than Unionists, to vote as you believe.
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