LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S STATESMANSHIP.
-NAT .t.1 do not understand the admiration which we hear some Liberals express for Lord Randolph Offorchill'a speech of Monday on the Address. It was a clever and striking speech, no doubt; for the late Chancellor of the Exchequer never opens his mouth without drawing attention or making points which extort at the moment cheers from one side or the other. The attention, however, is as often as not the atten- tion of resentment, and the points are constantly made at the expense of his own reputation as a consistent statesman; and on Monday his tergiversations were of the most extra- ordinary kind. The best passages in his speech were those in which he pleaded for economy in the name of the taxpayer who contributes so much to the Treasury, either through the Income-tax or in payment for his luxuries, or in both ways, and suggested one excellent and one unconstitutional device for securing more control over the Estimates ; but the Members who cheered him could hardly forget that it is but two years since the speaker declared that the panacea for Ireland was a large expenditure within the island, and but eighteen months since he said, in Dorset, that his policy was to create an " overwhelming Navy." His passion for economy has only been developed since he pledged himself to secure reduc- tions, and discovered, or thought he discovered, that the way to make his colleagues accept his foreign policy was to refuse them the supplies necessary for theirs. What, too, could be more nonsensical, in a cycle of scientific warfare, than his asser- tion that a country could be best defended "by a frugal husbanding of resources in time of peace, in order that in time of war they may be displayed in all their exuberant might I" That is either a needless truism, or an assertion that armies can be improvised. The next best passages were those which announced his continued devotion to the Union, and his resolution, if need were, to strengthen law in Ireland ; but those who heard him could not forget that he had just given the heaviest blow in his power to the Union by resigning his place in a Cabinet which only exists in order that the Union may be preserved. The place he gave up, be it remembered, was not that of Chancellor of the Exchequer—though as Chancellor he might next year, with the remains of the lapsed Terminable Annuities to help him, have carried out a policy of retrenchment on the most effective scale—but the lead in the House of Commons, a post of vital importance which, in his own judgment, he alone in his party could effectively fill. We are not making imputations on Lord Randolph when we say that he at least does not believe Mr. Smith to be his Parliamentary equal, and he probably never thought of Mr. Goschen as his successor. We do not blame him for his belief in himself, self-confidence, however extreme, being a relief amid the general self-distrust ; but in order to obtain reductions com- paratively unimportant, except to his personal standing in the country—it is he himself who admits that, when he talks of being " pledged to retrenchment up to the eyes "—he shattered a Government which, if it falls, must, as he himself put it, be followed by another which will dissolve the Union. His grand duty, he confesses, is to keep the old ship from sinking ; but nevertheless, when his advice as to her course is rejected, he pulls out a good big plug.
And, finally, what could be less consistent or statesmanlike than the taunts he flung at the Unionists I It is barely four months (October 2nd) since he told that party at Dartford that their " loyalty had raised the Tory majority from forty- three to a hundred ;" and that " the union of the Unionist Party, to which we owe much of our existence, and much of our efficiency, is our cardinal principle," repeating the latter sentence two or three times in the self-same speech. Yet on Monday, after describing some one, believed to be Mr. Goschen, as " perambulating the streets crying out, ' Great is the Union Diana of the Epheeians,' " he described the Unionist Party as a Tory " crutch, which his own party must ultimately throw away :—" I notice a little tendency of the party of the Union to attach too much importance to precarious Parliamentary alliances, which are as transient and uncertain as the shifting wind, and too little to the far more important question,—how to keep the English people at the back of the party of the Union. When Irmo in the Government,I made it my constant thought and desireto make things as easy as possible for the Liberal Unionists, to introduce such measures as they might conscientiously support as being in accordance with their general principles, and to make such electoral arrangements as might enable them to preserve their seats. But I frankly admit that I regarded the Liberal Unionists as a useful kind of crutch, and I looked forward to the time, and no distant time, when the Tory Party might walk alone, strong in its own strength and conscious of its own merits ; and it is to the Tory Party, and solely to the Tory Party, that I looked for the maintenance of the Union." The Unionists have filled the gap left by Lord Randolph, and therefore he, who in October held the Unionist Liberals to be indispensable allies, in February threatens them that at the next Election they shall be thrown over, and that the Tory Party will preserve the Union by its own strength. What could be the effect of such an utterance as that, except to increase the uneasi- ness of faltering Unionists, and thus provoke them to accept the schemes of compromise which Lord Randolph himself rejects, or, in other words, to weaken that Union to which he pro- fesses himself devoted I Unionists will not desert their banner because of anything Lord Randolph Churchill may say. But what sort of statesmanship ie that which thus taunts faithful allies, and does it immediately after a speech which acknow- ledged that he himself, and the Government of which he formed part, owed everything to their fidelity I If that is not reckless- ness, where are we to seek in politics an illustration of the word ? Lord Randolph may say that he was only speaking of the future ; but the boisterous laughter of all Home-rulers, and the anxious compliments paid by his colleagues to the Unionists, both showed the meaning attached to hie gibes on either side of the House of Commons. Or he may say that he was only alluding to Mr. Chamberlain, at whom he directed several special shafts ; but he was careful to point them by adding that the negotiations at the Round Table, " from which Tories might learn the danger of their position," were " not without the consent and approval of the Marquis of Hartington." If implications are ever clear, these words imply that the "loyal " Unionists, to whom the Tories owe their majority, contemplate, with their chief at their head, an act of treachery. The battle is joined, the victory hangs in the balance, and the second person in the Tory ranks tells all his troops publicly, and his allies, that he expects those allies to desert not only the Commander-in-Chief, but the cause. If those are
the tactics of wisdom, what are the tactics of fatuity Either we must condemn Lord Randolph Churchill for incapacity to lead, or we must believe him to have been so carried away by resentment at the conduct of the Unionists in filling his place —which was, when appealed to, their clear though painful duty—that, rather than not punish them, he will run the risk of sowing dissension within his own ranks, and so ad- mitting a Government which he himself says is pledged to dissolve the Union. There never was a more mischievous speech made, and we, at least, cannot see in it that evidence of capacity to rule, the display of which is by some politicians considered sufficient excuse for any amount of wiliness, or in- consistency, or carelessness of the national weal.
The speech, however, has in it one great lesson for Liberal Unionists. The whole course of the recent debate, as well as all the language used outside, shows that the grand hope of the English Home-rulers is that the sharp lines of cleavage which no doubt exist, and must exist, between Liberal Unionists and Tories will presently be accentuated until the alliance becomes no longer workable. That hope, in our judgment, is a delusive one ; for if the alliance broke up, a dissolution would follow, and England, face to face with her problem, would remember Ireland only, and return a solid Tory majority ; but that is, for the moment, the Gladstonians' hope. If they can drive in the wedge, the Government will fall in pieces, and then, they think, Mr. Gladstone's influence, the weariness of the country, the whole chapter of accidents will be on their side. Under those circumstances, the duty of the Unionists is clear, —to sacrifice everything except principle to the Union, and support it steadily on all crucial occasions, even if they are not contented With the demeanour of their allies. It does not matter one straw whether the Unionist Party is considered a crutch or not, not even if it came to believe that Tories would on the first opportunity throw the crutch away. Its members did not take their course in order to preserve their seats, or to gain power, or to protect this or that comparatively indifferent policy, but solely to preserve the Kingdom from being launched on a course which, in their judgment, must end in disintegration. They must therefore, while that danger lasts, pursue their course imperturbably, as unmoved either by taunts, or by ingratitude, or by fear of consequences to themselves, as by opposition. A Government faithful to the Union must be kept in ; and to do it, Unionists must on many points suppress themselves consistently. There is no other way ; and hard as the way may be made for them—and
on Monday it was not smooth—they have only to tread it in patience, confident that the country will in the end recognise the wisdom of their action, or certain that, if it does not, their own duty will have been faithfully done. "Crutch!" —there is often no position nobler than that of the living crutch.
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