THE FORLORN HOPE OF THE GOVERNMENT. N OTHING has shown so
completely how true it is that the party who call themselves Liberal are really essentially Gladstonian and nothing but Gladstonian, than the little speech which Mr. Gladstone delivered (sitting) to the Armenian deputation at Hawarden last Saturday, and the excitement which it created. The excitement was like the hubbub which bees make when they swarm,—not that any one made a tanging on a brass kettle, indeed that is, we believe, an exploded superstition for the successful conduct of a swarm, and Mr. Gladstone's speech was an excellent as well as a marvellous speech for a statesman of his age. It alarmed the pro-Turkish party into an almost hysterical shriek that Mr. Gladstone ought to be muzzled, while it flushed the pale faces of the supporters of the Government with a fond and delusive hope that they might yet again become the darlings of the people during a brief but effectual restoration of their great chief to power. There was something extremely impressive in the horror of the Turkish party when they saw Ulysses once again handling and drawing Ulysses' bow
One hand aloft displayed The bending horn and one the string essayed, From his essaying hand the string, let fly, Twanged short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry. A general horror ran through all the race, Sunk was each heart and pale was every face."
That was just the effect produced on those who still cling to the Turk as their ancestors clung to him before the Crimean War. And as for the Gladstonians, they almost deemed it, as Homer deemed it, an omen from the sky. They girded themselves as wistfully for the battle as Telemachus girded himself when Ulysses ,was "fired by the call of Heaven's almighty lord." They felt themselves almost returning to "the quarry whence they were chopped." Here were the old auguries again,—the old man rising in his strength and achieving what no one else could have achieved. Why might there not be another brief, even if hectic glow, of the old enthusiasm? Why might not 1880 return in 1895? Why should not the hot fit of the popular enthusiasm come back, and the party shed its ineffectual Rosebery, and replace its Harcourt in the old position of a mere henchman to Mr. Gladstone, while Mr. Gladstone himself for yet a few months more, like Napoleon on his return from Elba, might display his own unique mastery of the secret of popular enthusiasm ? It was like realising Burns' dream of "One hour of Wallace wight, or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight, and cry St. Andrew and our right," and the consequence might easily be that " Flodden would be Bannockburn." But, alas, the age of eighty-five is not the same as seventy-one, and a speech in an arm-chair at Hawarden is not a triumphal procession in Midlothian ; and the dream soon faded. Every one feels that Mr. Gladstone's great spurt of energy was due to the complete rest of the last eleven months, and could never bear the renewed strain of heavy and complex responsibility. Though Mr. Gladstone might achieve the overthrow of his own friends by showing the immense difference between a Rosebery and a Glad- stone leadership, he could no longer form anew the broken ranks, and grasp again the great standard which he had been compelled to resign.
But the great lesson is not one that we can afford to ignore. It shows how completely the party of the Government is not a Liberal but a Gladstonian party,— a Gladstonian party minus Mr. Gladstone. The incident depended on his singular magnetism for its liveliness, and the Gladstonians know that, without that magnetism, they have not the remotest chance of carrying the people with them. It is quite true, of course, that the Opposition have no such magnetism at their command. The Duke of Devonshire is great in his singularly cool and strong iudgment ; Lord Salisbury is great in his keen and satiric wit ; Mr. Balfour is great in the candour and lucidity of his appreciation of the strength and weakness of his opponents ; Mr. Chamberlain is great in his marvellous power of Parliamentary debate, but none of them possess that personal magnetism which has a magic of its own for the popular mind, and which appears to move a great party as a strong brain moves the body which it inspires. That no doubt has been the key to our history since 1885. But the master-key, though not lost, is no longer available except to show what locks it could once open as if by a sort of talisman, but can open no longer. It was the strength of the party. And it is the strength of the party no longer. The party without Mr. Gladstone is Samson shorn of his hair.
What the Unionists depend on is not a man of genius, but principle and a policy. They would not have Mr. Gladstone's singular prestige in dealing with the Armenian question, but then they would not display Lord Rose- bery's and Lord Kimberley's hesitating and vacillating opportunism. They are not men to carry a popular policy with a rush, but they are men to stick to the old lines, and hold fast by a great tradition. They will hardly inspire the enthusiasm which Mr. Gladstone would have inspired, but they will not inspire the distrust which Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt are actually inspiring, the one a man who recants, as soon as he has made, a strong statement, the other a man who watches his own oppor- tunities, rather than the opportunities of the nation. We have no sort of wish to depreciate the value of Mr. Glad- stone's wonderful magnetism. In crises like this Foreign Office crisis, it is worth a whole Blue-book of remon- strances and negotiations. It produces an electric thrill, and nobody can overrate the importance in international concerns of exhibiting the full momentum of a great and absolutely united people. The worst of it is, that this magnetic force depends on laws of its own, and not on the soundness and justice of its cause. Mr. Gladstone's great impulses are always generous ; but they are not always just. They are somewhat irregular and uncertain. They are always magnanimous ; but they are a little arbitrary. They lean always to knight-errantry, and though knight- errantry may be most beneficent, it may also be dangerous and capricious. Mr. Gladstone's statesmanship has been singularly wise as regards the Christian populations overridden by the Turks ; but it has been questionable towards the Boers, and singularly hasty and imprudent as regards the claims of Ireland to a quasi-indepen- dence of its own. Had Ireland been stronger instead of weaker than England, no one would have resisted her monstrous claims with more indignant energy than Mr. Gladstone. Yet his is the kind of arbitrariness which saps the strength of a popular Government, for it leads the people to look for great emotions rather than for a reasoned and consistent policy. The securities which the Union offers Ireland against oppression are far greater than any which Mr. Gladstone, with all his energy, could secure for Armenia, but just because be has passed through a sort of spasm of Hibernian sentiment, he insists on making light of these great securities which the Union with England gives to Ireland, while he magnifies the securities which Lord Palmerston's Government obtained for the Druses and Maronitas of the Lebanon, and which he himself helped to obtain for Bulgaria. There is nothing so dangerous to a democracy as this taste for irreguls... bursts of volcanic sentiment, sometimes very vehemen,, sometimes very feeble. It weakens and renders uncer- tain all its policy. Combined with great genius, such irregular sentiment may gain much good ground ; but it may also lose and abandon much that was good, and can never be properly retrieved. The Union with Ireland was exactly such ground as this. And Mr. Gladstone endangered more when he endeavoured to make the United Kingdom abandon it, than be gained when he gave up the Ionian islands to Greece, enfranchised Thessaly, and helped to secure the self-government of the Balkans. Even the most brilliant of his achievements would not compen- sate for the most daring of his attempted surrenders.
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