TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RESULTS OF THE CAUCUS.
THOUGH we were certainly right last week in antici- pating that the preference of at least half,—appar- ently more than ha]f,—of the Liberal party was with Mr. Forster, the choice of the party has fallen on Lord Harlington, for the reason we indicated a fortnight ago, that he is the leader who "divides us the least." It is greatly to Mr. Forster's credit and to the credit of his supporters that they are more willing to serve under Lord Harlington than Lord Hartington's supporters were to serve under Mr. Forster. And this has decided the matter. The 'Whig Chiefs preferred Lord Harlington. There would have been two irreconcilable factions, had Mr. Forster been chosen, the not very many Parliamentary representatives of Mr. Chamberlain's view,—though it is no secret that Mr. Dixon, the official Par- liamentary representative of the Education League, did not take any strong side with Mr. Chamberlain in this matter, —and the Conservative-Liberals who, whether from the sympathy which they feel for themselves and Mr. Disraeli, as in Sir William Harcourt's ease, or the dislike with which they regard the extension of the suffrage, as in Mr. Lowe's, would have been thoroughly reluctant to act under a man of such large popular sympathies as Mr. Forster. Add to this that Mr. Bright avowedly threw his influence into the young nobleman's scale, and that, if we may trust the Fortnightly Review as the apparently official expositor of Mr. Bright's policy, the followers of Mr. Bright have deliberately preferred to select the campaign against the Church,—a cam- paign for which, as yet, there is hardly a trace of popular sympathy,—as the great enterprise of the Radical wing of the party, instead of the campaign in favour of the popular cause of the agricultural labourers. In fact, the entire Left Wing has postponed the popular to the sectarian enterprise, and has given its adherence to Lord Harlington because that young nobleman's mind is supposed to be in the condition called by psychologists the 'liberty of indifference' on all Church ques- tions, while it is evident enough that whatever policy Mr. Forster may ultimately adopt on these questions, his sym- pathies with popular religion will always be heartfelt, and may therefore occasionally clash with the designs of Sectarian, Secularist, and Positivist reformers. It strikes with some as- tonishment those who remember Mr. Bright's earlier career and the bitter sarcasms he used to launch, in his Free-trade and Reform campaigns, against the aristocracy, to find him throw- ing all his influence into the scale of the Whig Marquis who walked out of the House when it was proposed to give household suffrage to the counties, and against that large-minded, popular statesman whose heart has always been with the people from his first entrance into Parliament. We remember hearing Mr. Bright say, in one of the great speeches at Covent Garden, "I attended a most respectable meeting in Hertfordshire last week, —a most respectable meeting ; two lords were there." He was the chairman of a still more respectable meeting on Wednesday, and gave all his influence to the aristocratic candidate, the candidate, indeed, who would never have been mentioned by Mr. Bright, or by any other Liberal, as even conceivable for the post of leader, if he had not been a peer of high rank. We are not going to depreciate Lord Harlington. Indeed, it may well be that, looking to the actual conditions of the case, the open defections on both the Conservative and the Radical side which would certainly have followed the choice of Mr. Forster, the best thing was done that could be done, namely, the decent disguise of the actual disorganisation of the Liberal party under the leadership of a great title and very indistinct views, appertaining as these recommendations do to a man of unques- tionably sound and masculine judgment. But we cannot feel any pleasure in the fact that the son of a Duke has been elected Liberal leader, not for any services he has rendered to the party, still less for great and splendid services like those of Lord John Russell, but because while high rank tends to unite Liberals of all shades, that deficiency in definiteness of political character which marks Lord Hartington's antecedents, and especially his deficiency in popular sympathies, serve, when taken together, to render him tolerable at once to eager Radicals who believe that he has no strong view opposed to theirs, and to semi- Conservatives who are aware that his position, if not his mind, sympathises with them.
Of Lord Harlington himself we share very much the view expressed at the meeting. He is unquestionably a strong man ; and he would not be so very so-so a leader, had he not hitherto been, considering his Ministerial posi- tion, so indifferent to political interests, and so much absorbed in amusements which do not easily lose their hold on the mind. We do not think he will often do foolish things, and if he ever does foolish things, it will be from want of care, and not from want of sense. There is a story of him which, whether true or false, very well marks the character for which he is given credit amongst his political friends, that in the middle of an early speech, in which he was hammering away with no great gain either to his own reputation or the satisfaction of the House, he visibly and unconcernedly yawned, and when taxed with it afterwards by a friend, replied with calm can- dour, " Well, yes, it was so dull." That aristocratic hardness which renders a man indifferent even to personal success is by no means a bad quality, if it can only be combined with enough political ambition and zeal to enlist a man's whole abilities in the service of the country. That is at present what we doubt about Lord Hartington. He may really devote himself to public affairs, and if he does, in spite of his wooden oratory, he will make a strong leader, though not a very popular one. Or he may not, and then the Liberal party will languish till weariness leads to his resigna- tion, or events carry him to the Upper House. Lord Har- tington as Liberal leader is at present an indefinite quantity.. We know perfectly well that he cannot be brilliant, and we also know pretty well that, except through despising his duties,. he can hardly be incompetent. But within these limits he may be anything,—a very vigorous and competent, or a very- indolent and inadequate leader. Rumour says that Sir William. Harcourt has ascertained from his friend, Mr. Disraeli, that while he will treat the Marquis of Hartington with all the respect due to the leader of a great party, he could not have accorded that deference to Mr. Forster. If rumour does not speak falsely, we could wish that the meeting at the Reform' Club had received that very significant message. It is likely enough that Mr. Disraeli so felt, though not, perhaps, quite so. likely that he was incautious enough to explain his feeling.. Speeches like the speech at Lewes will be very tempting speeches for Mr. Disraeli to reply to. Criticisms on Mr. Disraeli like the criticism at Lewes will be very pleasant. for Mr. Disraeli to listen to. The only danger is that Mr. Disraeli will trust too much to the indolence and indifference of his opponent, and let his wit "rust unburnished," instead of making it shine in use, as he did with Mr. Gladstone opposite him. We may, however, venture to hope that Lord Hartington's abilities will receive a certain stimulus from the new position which has been conferred on him. He wants moral stimulus more than mental force, and it is quite possible that the new opportunity may bring it So far, however, as any formative influence on Liberal tendencies and ideas is to be expected from a Leader, we can hardly look for it from Lord Hartington. He will put no new yeast into the party. His influence on it will be am inorganic, not an organic one. Indeed for a long time to come we must not expect more than the programme he put forward at Lewes,—namely, that under his guidance the Liberal side of the House will be Liberty Hall, and every man allowed to advocate his own programme ; while his own policy will be, 'Pick holes in the Tories, and for the rest, do nothing particular.'
What we regret most in the political situation is the indica- tion it gives that the leaders of the party, as well as some of their most impetuous, if not exactly their most earnest followers, have no real sympathy at the present moment for the popular as distinguished from the Liberal cause. It is clear that Lord Granville himself, though he very wisely declined the responsibility of appointing a Leader in the Lower House under such circumstances as the present, inclined and inclines to the choice actually made. Three of Mr. Forster's recent colleagues, and perhaps four,—only one of them in the House of Lords,—would have preferred him for their chief, but the rest undoubtedly inclined to the young Marquis ; and in all probability this consideration weighed with him in withdrawing his name. It is not pleasant and it is hardly desirable for the good of the party that a leader's chief colleagues in guiding it should be unwilling colleagues. However the fact has an ugly side to it when we consider what it denotes as to the real tendencies and purposes of what may be called the unofficial Liberal Cabinet. It means, we take it, that in some there was a decided dislike to Mr. Forster's known sympathy with the popular feeling about religions education ; that in others there was a still more decided dislike to his equally well- known sympathy with popular wants, such as the desire for compulsory education, and the desire for the inclu- sion of the agricultural labourer in the pale of the Constitu- tion.; and it means, perhaps, in the greater number of them a certain aversion to the popular grain of all Mr. Forster's sympathies, whether liberal or conservative in their political cast, and a preference for Liberalism of a more cynical type. Mr. Forster's liberalism, it cannot be denied, is of a democratic type, and his conservatism is of the same type ; he dreads to throw over recklessly what has a strong hold on the human heart in any large class; he loves to throw over the academic exclusiveness which has a strong hold only upon a privileged class. Mr. Bright at least ought to have sympathised with this tendency, but he did not. Nay, his political exponent, Mr. John Morley, in sounding the trumpets for the new campaign against the State Church, has even had the strange ignorance to say, in depreciation of Mr. Forster, that Mr. Forster's line in relation to the American Civil war no more showed him to possess true popular sympathies than did Mr. Disraeli's. He might with equal truth and equal false- hood have said precisely the same of Mr. Bright's line on the same subject. Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster both of them struggled passionately for the Anti-Slavery party, at the time when Lord Hartington was supposed at least to be as decided a Confederate as any member of Lord Palmerston's Government. But Mr. Disraeli, as far as we know, never in- dicated the least trace of feeling in relation to the moral side of the struggle. He had the keenness to perceive that the North had much the greater resources, and that it was no part of a Tory policy to sympathise with rebellion. But we believe that not a word dropped from him through the whole campaign indicating the least interest in the cause of freedom as such.
On the whole, the crisis has certainly proved that the leaders of the popular party are not only not in sympathy with the tone of popular feeling in 1865 and in 1868, but are almost as much out of conceit with it as the Con- servatives themselves. And it shows that what are called the most advanced politicians are not reluctant to throw over the cause of the great masses of the people for the sake of a somewhat doctrinaire application of the cry of reli- gious equality,—one which rises to enthusiasm only in those who really hope to strike a heavy blow at what they think popular superstition. In a word, the mass of our leaders are Whigs, and the advanced party are led away by intellectual hatreds into a path which is not the path of popular need. This is not a satisfactory outlook.
However, the choice of Lord Hartington has been made, and it only remains for the Liberal party to do their duty by him. Those who would have preferred Mr. Forster should, and we have no doubt will, give him a generous support. He is a man who, though he owes his political position to his social position, and not to any political achievements, may yet un- doubtedly, if he so chooses, make himself a power in the State. He has pride independence, clearness of head, and a party willing to do him justice. Nothing could be more unfair than for the supporters of Mr. Forster to visit on Lord Harting- ton their chagrin at the turn of events. It is not Lord Hartington's fault that Englishmen like Marquises and that English Ministers like Marquises for colleagues. He should be judged entirely by his own use of the great opportunity he has obtained, and it would be worse than ungenerous to criticise his first endeavours to deserve the place he now fills in any but a kindly and even hopeful spirit.
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