MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S POSITION.
THROUGHOUT the late Election Mr. Chamberlain was attacked in the constituencies with a bitterness and with a persistence which people who only read the more prominent of the Home-rule papers have hardly yet realised. Things have been said and believed about his political action which would seem unworthy of comment, or of contradiction, were they not in many cases the hallucinations of earnest and re- spectable men. Not only has he been accused of the most shameless sacrifice of principle in order to gratify his personal ambition, but of openly and coarsely abusing and vilifying his former colleague and leader. We need hardly say that such stories are the most wanton and malicious absurdities. For years Mr. Gladstone has been the victim of equally ridiculous and equally unfounded attacks, put in circulation designedly, and too often believed in by those who seek some cause of per- sonal detestation in one from whom they differ politically. Yet the very men who are so justly indignant at the want of chivalry,—nay, at the want of ordinary manliness,—in the purveyors of such fictions when they concern the late Prime Minister, now seem the first to catch up and give currency to stories inspired from similar sources, and, to any but a strongly biassed judgment, bearing at every turn the same obvious marks of fabrication and unreality. The general notion that the motives which have actuated Mr. Chamberlain in his late action were personal and base, and that his aim was to rise by the fall of his leader, is, in fact, as ridiculous as are the par- ticular stories of vulgar threats and silly imprecations. In truth, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose by remaining with Mr. Gladstone. The temptation to remain in office was as great as any statesman has ever had pre- sented to him. Had he stayed at Mr. Gladstone's right hand, no earthly power could have prevented him from becoming the leader of the Liberal Party. In the first place, he would have gained complete command of the caucus organisations throughout England, for from them would have been driven out that Whig element which in former years had often presented a strong resistance to his influence. He could, in fact, have used Mr. Gladstone to transfer to himself the control of the party. Mr. Schnadhorst had never before this Election been officially summoned to Downing Street. On the present occasion, however, the old central organisation gave way to its provincial rival. Had Mr. Chamberlain clung to place, the Central Liberal Association would have been conquered in his name. How easy, too, was the road of self-persuasion open before him ? How easy to pretend to himself that Mr. Glad- stone's schemes were in no marked way different from his own. He had never, like Sir William Harcourt, declared emphatically against trusting the Irish ; he had none of those utterances to get rid of which are so hard for strong and proud men to swallow. Indeed, if he had followed Mr. Gladstone, his former speeches could hardly have been challenged at all on the ground of inconsistency. Yet, with all these temptations, he did not yield to the sophistications which were so passionately and so persistently pressed upon him in order to show his plans and the Prime Minister's homogeneous. He preferred to lose the certainty of the leadership of his party, and to put himself in a position where he was of necessity to some extent under Lord Hartington. He broke with his old leader, and, far more than this, he broke with the great organisations that were his political offspring, and which he had been accustomed to look to to support him and his policy in the country. He risked the loss of his popularity in the great democratic centres, and dissolved the allegiance of the Radical Clubs and the Radical Press. No one who realises what was Mr. Chamberlain's position in the National Liberal Federation will think it easy to over-estimate the sacrifice. Lord Hartington's political
friends and associates were eager and willing to follow him. Mr. Chamberlain's were determined to desert him if he persisted in his course. One was urged forward by his asso- ciates, the other was implored to stay still. We have not the same faith in Mr. Chamberlain's statesmanship in regard to Ireland ; we do not consider that in the last crisis he showed himself as wise or as far-seeing as Lord Harlington; but that does not prevent us from recognising, and recognising to the full, that the sacrifice which Mr. Chamberlain was called upon to make, and which he did make, in order that he might remain true to his political convictions, was far greater than the sacrifice which was demanded from any other of the statesmen who refused their assent to Mr. Gladstone's policy.
The position which Mr. Chamberlain now occupies in the House of Commons and in the country is unique. There is little doubt but that in the former he must assume an influence in direct proportion to his great Parliamentary gifts. Those who count the number of Unionist Liberals who are supposed to belong to Mr. Chamberlain's wing, and finding their number small, estimate from that the strength of his position, must prepare themselves to be surprised. In the first place, Mr. Chamberlain's following is unanimous, and will vote solidly with him. A leader who has only a following of six—and Mr. Chamberlain will have more than that—counts twelve on a division, when he passes from one side of the House to the other. But when we add to this an immense power not only of telling attack and defence in debate, but of impressing the House by the strength and volume of his eloquence, there is little chance of a man in Mr. Chamberlain's position becoming, as some fancy- he will be, powerless in the new House. No one except himself and Lord Harlington can enter the lists against Mr. Gladstone, and, after an encounter, be regarded by the House as not to have suffered in the contest. In such conflicts Lord Harting- ton, however, succeeds not so much by power of speech, as by ccimplete indifference to all oratorical stratagems and devices. Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, need not fear to meet the muter of Parliamentary eloquence on his own ground. This power will probably be of the greatest use in the coming House. Lord Randolph Churchill is not likely to be able to do much to neutralise the appeals which Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the Opposition, is certain to make to the Liberal- Unionists. Lord Harlington, with all his manly sincerity, and with all his power of helping men to think as clearly and as honestly as himself, has hardly dialectical skill enough to throw himself successfully into the smaller confficts of debate, and to prevent at the outset an affair of outposts developing into a dangerous general engagement. Mr. Cham- berlain has ; and we believe that as this is recognised in the new House, the strength of Mr. Chamberlain's position will increase. At first the cry was raised that Mr. Chamberlain was found after all to have no influence in the constituencies. This was repeated, and again repeated, by Home-rule speakers and writers all over the country, till the belief became almost universal. It lasted, however, only till the polls. Then defeated candidates began to remember that in their constituencies there had been strange retirements from the Associations by Radical artisans, that groups of influential though silent working-men had taken up a steadily hostile attitude towards Home-rule, and that when such men were canvassed they refused to accept any guarantees on the Irish Question, or any compromises of detail, which were not clearly consistent with Mr. Chamberlain's views. Everywhere through- out the country there were to be found such knots of Chamber- lain-Unionists. In some constituencies they were numerous, in some they were few, but there were always some, and they were always devotedly loyal to the man whom they regarded as the exponent of their political aims. Then, too, and this was especially true of the agricultural constituencies, there were the voters who, though they con- sidered that they owed their first political allegiance to Mr. Gladstone, were hardly less closely politically bound to Mr. Chamberlain. Such voters, if they could be properly reasoned with, really went with the balance of argument. They were vety loyal to Mr. Gladstone ; but when they began to hear the reasons against Home-rule, and to waver, their political attachment to Mr. Chamberlain, seeming to take away from the abandonment of their former leader the taint of apostacy, rendered their conversion by no means difficult. Truth this week is very indignant at the idea of Mr. Chamberlain having carried voters with him ; but for all that, there is not the slightest doubt of the fact.
We trust most sincerely that Mr. Chamberlain will realise clearly the strength of his position in the House of Commons and
in the country, and will draw the proper conclusions from the premises. If he now—at any rate, on all Irish Questions— puts himself frankly under the leadership of Lord Harlington, he will still further strengthen his influence. He has already given such great proofs of a patriotic and conscientious desire to serve his country, that this course could leave no doubt of his sincerity in the most hardened disbeliever. Nor would such action be in the least derogatory for one who naturally and rightly aspires to lead one day a united Liberal Party. In acting with Lord Hartington, not merely accidentally but concertedly, Mr. Chamberlain would in a great measure control the policy of the Liberal-Unionists. If, how- ever, from any defect of temper, or from inability to realise his own strength, he should unhappily consider that, in the interest of those democratic measures which he has so much at heart, he ought to stand out and accentuate his distance from Lord Hartington's followers, he will make a disastrous mistake. He would then drift more and more apart from the main body of Liberal-Unionists, until ultimately it would be most difficult for him not to rejoin his present enemies, and to rejoin them without their giving up those disruptioniat schemes which he detests. This we do not believe he would ever do ; but yet the alternative might not impossibly, had he alienated the rest of the Unionists, be political eclipse. That anything of this kind will really happen we do not, however, in the least believe. Mr. Chamberlain must, we feel convinced, see that he is strong enough, and independent enough, to work on this question frankly with Lord Harlington, without losing any of his freedom of action, if on another occasion he should feel it necessary to separate himself on any of the great questions of home reform. Mr. Chamberlain has sacrificed too much already to the main- tenance of the Union to make it arguable, even for a moment, that he will do anything which may lead to the return to power of a Home-rule Government.
Previous page
