TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE'S SANGUINENESS.
ONE of Mr. Gladstone's great powers as a leader is his extraordinary sanguineness. It is not easy to read his letter to the Women's Liberal Federation on Wednes- day, without feeling inclined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether Mr. Gladstone has really followed the course of Parliamentary history during the last five years in which he has led the Opposition. "The present Parlia- ment," he writes, "has sat long ; its whole term has had the continuing interest of a single prolonged crisis ; and that crisis, as months and years roll away, seems only to become more and more acute." More and more acute ! Does Mr. Gladstone really mean that, comparing 1887 with 1891, the crisis of the Irish Question has really become "more and more acute "? In 1887, Irish passion was not only at its height, but the whole Gladstonian Party were effervescing with wrath at every incident both of the Crimes Bill which was carried in that year, and of the Land Bill of the same year. The Gladstonians then did not believe that Mr. Balfour could possibly suc- ceed in quieting Ireland without a kind of tyranny that would raise all England into fury. Now the Gladstonians evade as much as possible the discussion of Irish questions, and do all in their power to keep before the constituencies the Radical aspects of English politics. Ireland is quieter and more contented than it has been for thirty years. Mr. Balfour and Lord Zetland can hardly move about in the West without evidences of their real popularity. Mr. Parnell gains popularity for himself by supporting Mr. Balfour's Land measure. Even Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy do not venture to oppose it. We hear almost more of Free Education than we do of Ireland, and almost as much of Parish Councils as we do of Ireland. To speak of the Irish crisis as being now " acute " is like speaking of a stiff-neck as an acute disease, or of the dispute with France as to the time of evacuating Egypt as having entered on an acute stage. To our impression, nothing could be less acute. But to Mr. Gladstone's sanguine mind, everything is acute which he himself feels to be acute, and he has no more lost his pathetic sense of the acuteness of the Irish Question, than Lord Ebury has lost his pathetic sense of the acuteness of the Ritualist Question. The Irish Question is to Mr. Gladstone's imagination exactly what it was five years ago, though to so many of his followers it is the most dreary of all questions, which they heartily wish they could shelve without discredit. And this singular power of retaining his passionate interest in a question which he has once made his own, is no doubt a very great part of Mr. Gladstone's power. If coming events sometimes cast their shadows before them, it is still more true that the vision of coming events not unfrequently engenders the events themselves. The witches put into Macbeth's head what only Macbeth could himself have brought about. And Mr. Gladstone's strange and deep conviction that England is passionately pining for the devolution on an Irish Parliament of duties which would, when so devolved, excite more angry controversy in England than they had ever excited while they were discharged in, toto by the Parliament of Westminster, may possibly bring about the fulfilment of the impassioned expectation which hardly any other English statesman entertains. At the same time, it is not always the most sanguine statesmen who succeed best in realising their own dreams. Mr. Disraeli went further towards realising his dream of Tory Democracy, and towards realising his dream of pushing the centre of gravity of the British Empire Eastwards, than almost any statesman of our time has gone in obtaining the fruition of his hopes. Mr. Gladstone, indeed, repealed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, disestablished and disendowed the Church of Ireland, and carried the Reform Act of 1885. But then he also failed, and failed very re- markably, to pacify Ireland by even his greatest legislative feats ; while Mr. Disraeli succeeded in his ends almost as completely a,g he did in his means, though no one would think of speaking of Mr. Disraeli as a sanguine politician. He was perhaps the least sanguine politician who has ever been at the head of affairs in England. Sanguineness gives Mr. Gladstone his perpetual youth, and that no doubt, on the whole, adds to his influence in the country. But it is a quality which certainly has cost him at least as much as it has gained for him. It predpitated him jag one lution which proved ruinous to his party in 1874, and it precipitated him in 1885 into a policy which it is hard to think that he would have adopted, if he could have anticipated the number of obstacles that would be placed in his way, and the disapprobation of so many colleagues on whose judgment he had till 1885 been accustomed most to rely. Indeed, throughout the whole of his Irish policy Mr. Gladstone has been too sanguine, so sanguine that when a policy of strict justice towards Ireland did not succeed, he was tempted by the enthusiasm of his belief in the solution of the problem at which he had arrived, to double his stake, even though that double stake risked the safety of England, on the minute chance that Ireland would be at length heartily conciliated, and would identify her fate with ours. It is only a man of very sanguine temperament who is disposed, when fortune goes against him, instead of " hedging," that is, so arranging- his policy as to diminish his liabilities on every side, to prefer the course of playing double or quits. Yet that has certainly been Mr. Gladstone's course in Ireland. When, after cutting away the three branches of the upas-tree, Ireland proved herself to be still more alienated from us than before, he vastly enlarged his offer in relation to the land. And when that bid utterly failed, he threw up his Crimes Act altogether, and offered the rash bribe of Home- rule. It was like the British attempt to buy off our Saxon invaders. The more we paid, the more invaders crowded to our shore. And so, too, the more lavish were Mr. Glad- stone's bids, the more coy the Irish Party became. If latterly they have seemed a shade more anxious to close , with his terms, it is the apparent strength of Mr. Balfour's resistance, and not the prodigality of Mr. Gladstone's offers, which has reduced them to something remotely resembling a tone of moderation. If Lord Salisbury's Government were to disappear, Mr. Gladstone-would soon find that even the Anti-Parnellites would at once raise the price of their support. In dealing with such a country as Ireland, the statesman's sanguine disposition is the people's most serious danger.
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