CONSERVAMES AND LIBERAL UNIONISTS. T HERE is nothing more difficult than
to form a sure judgment on the political influences which sway con- stituencies, or even to determine whether party leaders have or have not made a grave mistake after their course has been taken. Mr. Edward Dicey expresses in the Nineteenth Century this month, a very strong opinion that the Liberal Unionist leaders made a grave mistake in 1886 in not fusing their party with the Conservatives, so far as it was in their power to do so, and in not taking office with the Conserva- tives. He thinks that such a course would have made a very much greater impression on the mind of the nation than the course which has actually been taken ; that though it might have led to the breaking-off of a certain section of the Radical Unionists, under Mr. Chamberlain, and perhaps to the retirement of Mr. Bright from political life, it would have terminated all jealousies, and the possi- bility of jealousies, between the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, and that it would have so strengthened the Conservative Party, and the flow of the younger politicians towards that party, that we should have fought the next General Election under much more favourable conditions than we can now hope to fight it. Indeed, he thinks that even now it would be better late than never ; that though a fusion now would not bring us the advantages of a fusion three years ago, it would bring us some advantages, and guard us against the danger of party jealousies such as the alarm at Birmingham displayed. We were disposed three years ago to agree with Mr. Dicey, partly bemuse we thought that Lord Hartington's administration of Ireland would command much more general confidence in the nation than Lord Salisbury's, partly because we felt, with Mr. Dicey, the great difficulty of fighting under two flags when there is but one cause. But though we agreed with him then, we have long come to the conclusion that, on the whole, we were wrong, and that the Liberal Unionist leaders came to a wise conclusion in postponing fusion for the present at least, and probably till after the next General Election has defined more clearly the ground which the Conservative Party, modified by the great transforming influence of the new county suffrage, will take up. We read the lessons of the last three years differently from Mr. Dicey, and will try to explain on what grounds we do so. In the first place, we read the lesson of the Local Government Act of last year in a sense which seems to us fatal to Mr. Dicey's view. No one who watched that Bill carefully,—no one who watched the language of the Conservative Press on that Bill,—can have failed to see that it was a most unpopular Bill with the rank and file of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, and with the organisers of Conservative Associations through- out the country. It was openly denounced far and wide as a Bill for which there was no demand and which would end in pure mischief. We do not believe that if the Liberal Unionists had been a mere item in the Conservative Party, their influence would have availed to carry such a Bill, as it did actually avail when they represented, as, of course, in their separate organisation they did represent, the casting-vote in the House of Commons. It is one thing to say, • We cannot continue to give you inde- pendent support, unless you give a liberal measure to the country ;' and quite another to say, We are going to desert you, unless you give a liberal measure to the country.' The former is a perfectly natural and matter-of-course proceed- ing; but the latter is an illy-Mous threat which would only have roused bitter feeling between the two sections of the party. When a disinterested support, proceeding from a party who have not shared any of the so-called prizes of office, is given to an Administration, that Administra- tion, of course, expects that it must make concessions, and does not feel these concessions a grievance. But when two parties are really fused and share alike in the Administration, it is a very invidious thing indeed to threaten a formal rupture because the judgment of the weaker section is not accepted by the leaders of the stronger section. In our belief, the Local Government Act could not have been what it was, if the Liberal Unionists had really been merged in the Conservative Party ; and as a result, we believe that the Conservatives might have lost the credit which they gained with the constituencies, of having become a really popular party, a credit which the influence of the Liberal Unionists, acting from their independent position, alone secured for them. Now, as a great deal depends at the next General Election on the popularisation of Conservatism, we hold that the leaders of the Liberal Unionist Party have done more for the success of their cause at the next General Election, by securing a great step in the direction of this popularisation, than they could, have done in any other way ; and we do not believe that they could have secured that step without holding aloof and using the influence they had gained by their steady, independent support of the Government. No doubt fusion will come at last, but the whole issue seems to us to be this, whether fusion would have done half the good before Conservatism had been thoroughly popularised, that it will do after that operation has been accomplished. We think not. The whole tone of the Conservative leaders and organisers was till last year founded on the prepossessions of the previous era,—the era before household suffrage in the counties had been granted,—and that tone needed a great deal of modification before it could be at all adapted to the tone of a thoroughly popular party.
Then, again, as to what Mr. Dicey calls "the Lesson of Birmingham," is it clear that he reads that lesson aright ? No doubt there was a good deal of jealousy in Birmingham between the leading men of the Liberal Unionists and of the old Tory Party, and no doubt such jealousy was very mischievous. Mr. Balfour's visit and his very persuasive speech had the happiest effect, and it is barely possible that without that visit and persuasive speech, matters would have gone wrong, while it is certain that they would not have gone as well as they did. But when everything has been allowed for, did not the result probably show that there was really very much less danger of a catastrophe than had been supposed ? that the rank and file had far more sagacity than the party managers? that they understood perfectly the wisdom of showing that the hearty sympathy between such men as the late Mr. Bright and the present Government had not diminished, and that Birmingham retained its pride in Mr. Bright's great name, in spite of the attempt to magnify the claims of the old Tories to a larger share in the representation ? Our own impression is that the constituencies are less prejudiced as to party names than their leaders ; that the Conservatives at Birmingham, for instance, required no urging to vote for the son of Mr. Bright, and that the Liberal Unionists in the Enfield Division of Middlesex and elsewhere required no urging to vote for the Conservative candidate. The great mass of Conservative voters have, we think, been as anxious to see Conservatism thoroughly popularised,—thoroughly disinfected from the old doctrines of privilege,—as the Liberal Unionists themselves. And this, we believe, could • not have been effected without keeping the Liberal Unionists distinct and independent for some years at least.
Mr. Dicey is much impressed by the notion that the adhesion of a considerable body of Liberal politicians, headed by Lord Hartington, to the Conservative Party, would have a great effect upon the mind of the English people. And this we do not deny ; but we do doubt very much whether in 1886, or even now, that great effect would have been of the right kind. There is deep down in the mind of the British elector a much greater dis- position to suspect interested motives in political conver- sions, than society at all allows for,—indeed, much more than is reasonable. The true question as regards the con- stituencies is this,—Which course would have impressed them most deeply with the disinterestedness of Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain,—their refusal to merge themselves in the Conservative Party and to join the Govern- ment, or their willingness to do so ? We hold, from a careful consideration of the course of events, that their refusal to merge themselves in the Tory Party, and their cordial bat perfectly independent action, have had a much greater effect in convincing the constituencies of the sincerity of those statesmen, than the willingness to co-operate with Lord Salisbury in the ordinary manner, would have done. No doubt fusion is a question of time ; there we fully agree with Mr. ])icey. And the time may come within a very few years when it will be mere pedantry for Liberal Unionists to hold aloof, if once the Conservatives show themselves to have been thoroughly liberalised. But the time had not come, we believe, in 1886. And we do not think that it has come yet. The nation needed evidence of two things, before it would have been satis- fied of the good faith of a perfect fusion,—evidence that the Conservative chiefs had abandoned all the leaning towards privilege which was the distinctive mark of the older Toryism ; and. evidence that the Liberal Unionist chiefs had acted from the purest patriotism, and not from any desire for power. The delay in fusion is giving the nation satisfactory evidence on both these points, and we believe that without that delay, no satisfactory evidence on either point could have been afforded.
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