WHY GREAT LIBERAL MAJORITIES DIE YOUNG. AiDn his Greenwichspeech oncaovnignig.atsuularyteivd
survived or hifm- GE w
r e enaws eci n h three full years in spite of his great majority. Liberal Ministries with great majorities behind them, he remarked, so far from having unusually great chances of life, have, as far as precedent goes, unusually great chances of speedy dissolution: —"Perhaps you will be surprised when, not dealing with argu- ments but with facts, I inform you that we are the first Liberal Government that ever subsisted for three years with a large majority. In my time there have been three Liberal Govern- ments with large majorities. One was the Government of Lord Grey, which had an enormous majority returned to sup- port it in the month of December, 1832. It survived 1833, but in May, 1834, it was broken by schism. In June of the same year Earl Grey was put out, and in November that great Liberal Government was finally extinguished. Well, the next Liberal Government that had a large majority was the Govern- ment of Lord Palmerston in the year 1857, when he appealed to the country, and the country returned a majority of about 80 to support him. That was in the month of May, 1857. In the month of February, 1858, the Government of Lord Palmerston was displaced by a vote of the House of Commons. In 1866 the Government of Lord Russell met Parliament with another large majority—a majority of 70—and before the end of that Session the Government of Lord Russell came to be counted with the things that were." Such are Mr. Glad- stone's precedents, and though taken alone they are certainly not•numeroue enough to constitute the materials for an induc- tive law, taken with the considerations which we shall suggest, they will, we think, satisfy thinking men that Liberal Administrations have more to fear than to hope from signal victories at the hustings. We say especially Liberal Administrations, for what is it that gives a Liberal leader an unusually large, a signal majority ? It is, of course, the power of popular hope, to which Conservatives do not so strongly appeal. "A wave of popular enthusiasm " springs from the hopes inspired by a particular leader and a particular programme ; and there is nothing more certain to recede, and usually with the strong backward suck of a retreating breaker, than a wave of popular enthusiasm ; moreover, whether it be on just or unjust grounds that it dies away or is metamorphosed into popular distrust, does not for the present purpose matter at all. Sometimes legitimate expectations are rudely dis- appointed, sometimes unreasonable expectations are thus disappointed ; but be it the one or the other, the Minister from whom the people look for great popular victories is sure, within a very short time, to be measured by some standard by which he will be found wanting. For even if the hopes first excited are satisfied, hope fulfilled provides no longer the propelling force which springs from hope expectant. And nine times out of ten hope is far brighter than the reality ; and hope disappointed is as strong a disintegrating power as hope excited is a creative power. Thus the great Reform Ministry of Lord Grey excited the most extravagant hope of satisfaction for popular wants. When it was discovered that, so far from inaugurating a paradisiacal period for the people, a rigid poor-law was (greatly to the credit of that Government) carried and forced; that the misery of the people did not disappear, and that their discontent was met (greatly to the discredit of Lord Grey's government) by cruel and most indefensible prosecu- tions, under a completely misapplied statute, of Dorsetshire labourers for combinations of the Trades' Union kind, while in Ireland the symptoms of deep-seated social maladies only multiplied in number and force, it followed most naturally that the enthusiasm turned to indifference, and even par- tially to disgust. The very intensity of popular hope is a brilliant light by which all shortcomings would be sure to be detected, even if the Minister who had excited that hope could always be marching forward in the path he had indi-
cated. And since usually he cannot do this, the greater the enthusiasm of anticipation, the more painful is the reaotion of discontent. Raise popular feeling to red-hot temperature on any one subject in appealing to the people, and on that one subject, in all probability, the Ministry will be eventually compelled to meet its condemnation. Minis- tries which coins into existence as the representatives of ultra-popular principle, fall through the real or supposed necessity of coercion, and coercion bills, as did Lord Grey's and Lord Melbourne's administrations. Protectionist ministries like Sir Robert Peel's fall a victim to the necessity of Free Trade. Ministries based, like Lord Palmerston's of 1857, on the grand repute of a "spirited foreign policy," die of real or sup- posed shortcomings in such a policy, as that ministry did, in the following year, of the imputation of sub- mitting tamely to foreign insult. And so it is that we find a ministry like Mr. Gladstone's, which was returned on the strength of the keen desire for religious equality, likely to run its greatest risks in relation to its imputed shortcomings in satisfying this desire. The process is very simple. Where- ever there is an unexpectedly large popular majority, there has been the kindling of a new hope. Either a com- plete or incomplete satisfaction of that hope is a guarantee for its growth in urgency, for its eager demand for more victories after any victory has been attained. The party which has given the Government a triumph is naturally in the ascendant, and presses imperiously on the Government the principles for which that triumph was won, and probably in an exaggerated form. And if the Government, which repre- sents not merely the party by which the impulse of enthusiasm was chiefly generated, but the whole nation, cannot and dare not accept the new development, or it may be the caricature, of those principles, the enthusiasm turns to discredit, discontent, and paralysis. A small majority, repre- senting far less vivid hopes, and therefore a far less exigeant spirit, will be far less likely to find excuses for displeasure and disgust. In the face of an enemy known to be nearly equal, there is already a disposition to find some modus vivencli with which the majority themselves may not be quite satis- fied, but in which they are willing to acquiesce. But in the face of a vastly inferior force, there is not unnaturally an expectation of Bismarckian positiveness of demeanour, and a sense of waste and disgust if the success does not seem com- mensurate with the magnitude of the forces which won it. Yet it can rarely be so. For no majority will continue to be united for purposes widely distinct from those for which it was elected, even though they be purposes most dear to that section of the majority which itself felt and communicated to others the greatest enthusiasm for the Liberal programme at the time of the election. Large majorities cut loose from the special work for the achievement of which they were elected are as likely to dwindle away as a large army cut loose from its base of supply. Yet they excite as much expectation of great things, and seem to reflect as much discredit on a ministry which cannot keep them together after the particular work for which they were elected is achieved, as they did before. In a word, they lose the cohesion and fighting strength, without losing anything of that air of large pro- mise and formidable appearance which leads to the indulgence of false expectations and vain dreams. They are as showy and suggestive of victory as ever, after they have lost the bond which alone made them really victorious. Hence, as modera- tion of aim becomes more necessary, it does not become more easy. With the appearance of large and even lavish moans, you have to make what are really very small means do, and to encounter at once the reproach of actual weakness and the imputation of potential omnipotence.
If Mr. Gladstone's vast majority has eseaped,—and it has even as yet but very narrowly escaped,—these dangers inci- dental to a party with a vast majority, we should be in- clined to ascribe it to a characteristic of his government, not particularly to our own liking, but for which it has had the discredit without the credit, its political humility. It has been very keen and even high-handed while carrying out the programme proscribed to it at the hustings, but it has not shown the slightest sign of domineering temper since. The abolition of the Purchase system by Royal Warrant was no exception, for if that were an imperious act at all,—which we do not believe,—it was not so towards any section of the popular House, but only towards the ill- advised action of the hereditary House. Mr, Gladstone and his colleagues have borne mortifications of all kinds with tolerable meekness in spite of their majority, perhaps because they were perfectly aware of its frailty. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster have both offended the Dissenters deeply, but they have never treated them as Lord Palmerston treated members below the gangway, as, for instance, when he told Mr. Cobden ',to stick to his last ;' they have, on the contrary, always
treated them with even anxious respect, Mr. Gladstone has given bitter offence both to the ecclesiastical, pro- prietary, and caste feelings of the Opposition ; but he has always treated those feelings with a real sympathy, and. spared them as far as possible, even when, as in the resist- ance to the Army Bill and Ballot, the Conservative strategy was carried, beyond the limits of fair warfare. Indeed, though Mr. Gladstone's Ministry has not unfrequently been hot- tempered, it has never been insolent or aggressive. It has, if anything, been too pacific, and turned one cheek when the ,other was smitten rather than take revenge. It has taken back Bills, utterly transformed its Budget, and after moving for Secret Committees consented to have them open ; in short, it has in every way deferred to the will of the HOMO of Commons, almost as placidly as Mr. Disraeli's Government, which was in a minority, was wont to do. And so by soft answers it has more than ones turned away wrath that would have been fatal to it. Now this is almost a new feature in a Government backed by a great majority, especially when that .majority was won almost by a personal reputation. Such governments, borne upwards on the hopes of the community, have usually been rash, not to say insolent. Lord. Brougham, who was the first to warn the first Liberal Government of the Reformed Parliament, that of 1832, that it was too strong., nevertheless himself obtained for it a reputation of insolence when he paraded in Scotland his influence with the King, and almost insulted Lord Durham for his eagerness to redress the wrongs of the people. Lord. Palmerston, after his great suc- cess of 1857, began answering questions in the House in a manner that showed him to be tclte exaltde by the popular confidence reposed in him, indeed swollen with pride and "fullness of bread," as the Jews called the presumption of earthly prosperity. But Mr. Gladstone, though his faults of manner have not been few, though he has been accused of all sorts of inconsistencies, of petulance, arrogance to the Peers, subservience to the Peers, extreme pride, and unreal humility, has certainly never assumed for a moment the tone of a dic- tator, indeed, has leaned too much to the side of meekness. Besides being a Christian at heart, and earning in some degree the blessing of the promise to the meek that they shall "inherit the earth," he has been a little afraid. both for his majority and of his majority, and the result has been that his Government has still more influence both with the mem- bers below the gangway and with the members opposite, than any ministry which began with so great a success ever had at the end of three years. He has certainly taken a leaf out of Mr. Dieraeli's book, who has always studied successfully how to disarm needless opposition on both sides of the House. And he has his reward in still having a great majority, which, however troublesome and incoherent it may be, holds its own, .spite of having won great and most exhausting victories.
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