TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE U UltE OF MODERATE LIBERALS.
LORD HARTINGTON'S declaration at Nairn on Tuesday that be still remains a Whig, will be received with a certain shock by a great many worthy people. The great facts which stand to Whig credit in our history, the facts that the Whigs carried through and limited the Revolution, that they supported an unpopular but neces- sary dynasty until it became national and popular, that they built and transformed the Colonial Empire, and that they carried peacefully the grand proposal to trust the body of the people with the control of the Executive as well as the law-making power, have been of no avail to prevent the word " Whig " from falling into such dis- credit that thousands of those who follow the Unionist leader will think that he risks some of his authority by calling himself by such a name. It is easy, too, to detect the cause of this apprehension. It is one of the many vague impressions which are just now dis- organising politics that there is no future for Moderate Liberals, that the progress of opinion is all on the side of the Radicals, and that Liberals who reject either their name or their opinions will be regarded by the body of the electors as trimmers, Laodiceans, politicians neither cold nor hot, who cannot be trusted, except perchance as momentary alternatives during intervals after exhaustion. So strong is this impression among politicians, that it makes Home-rulers of men who hate Home-rule, and that old Tories, we mean men of the true Reactionary type now so uninfluential, hope to see themselves again a party with followers, and to convert at least a perceptible section of those who have begun to recoil in fear of the domination of a party of destructives. Upon Members the impression is even greater, and we do not hesitate to say that among new Liberal candidates there is a distinct tendency to put forward any violent opinions they may entertain, and to conceal reservations which, nevertheless, they know to be indispensable. If this belief is well founded, it bodes ill for the future of the country, which, to use the Continental terminology, would then be governed alternately by Blacks and Reds, parties so divided that they could compromise nothing, and that no policy requiring time could ever be steadily pursued. It seems to us that the plainest disproof of this dangerous belief is the concrete one,—the existence of Lord Harlington himself. There you have a true Moderate, a " Whig," as he called himself at Nairn, whom both the parties allow to be competent to govern England, and who, if the Irish Question were out of the way, would in all human probability be set to do it. Certainly no national anti- pathy to him would stand in his way. If the dislike or distrust of moderation has grown so keen in England that no Moderate Liberal will again have a great career, how does it happen that during an acute crisis Lord Harlington, the embodiment of distinctive moderation, is so popular, escapes so completely the obloquy poured upon Mr. Cham- berlain, and retains so strong a hold upon the respect even of extreme Radicals ? They ought to loathe trim, not only because he wishes to keep Ireland, but because upon all other questions he is a Liberal of the precise type they are believed to hate. It is no answer to say that Lord Harlington has adventitious advantages, and that his solidity of character renders his opinions less offensive, for the certainty that he must be a Duke is the gravest obstacle to his career, and his personal force should only make his Whiggery more annoying. If the people only distrust moderation in weak men, they do not distrust it at all, no man loving opposition in the precise ratio of its efficacy. If he distrusts it, he wants to fmd it weak, and not strong. The truth is, that the English people, though they have contracted a dislike for the word " Whig," which con- veys to their minds the idea of a man who defends privilege, have no dislike of moderation at all, are nearly as ready as ever to believe that moderation is sense, and have a positively dangerous inclination to think that even upon the Irish Question the parties are immoderate, and that compromise is possible. Nothing less like a desire for the absolute, or radical, ever was seen than that strange outburst in the very midst of the English Home-rulers of a nearly universal desire that the Irish should still sit in Westminster. That desire, so strong that even Mr. Gladstone has bowed to it, and that Mr. Morley, who has not, does not pour on it the scorn he would like to drown it with, is the very essence of Whiggery, and feeble Whiggery too, the moderation which thinks that the adoption of mutually destructive policies indicates practical ability. Men really pining for Radicalism in its proper sense would never have dreamt of such a plan, any more than they would have dreamt of creating a Par- liament and refusing to its elected Executive the control of the police. They hit on impracticable ideas, but they were instinctively hunting for compromise. The " people ' were moderate or conservative even upon Ireland, a subject on which they are wont to be less reasonable than any other ; and about all other questions they appear to be ultras only because we hear the voices of those alone who attend public meetings, and who are fain, in default of eloquence, to raise excitement by sensa- tional opinions. Mr. Haldane, a very shrewd man, a little given perhaps to watch the cat, sees this to be true even in Scotland, which is much more inclined to be absolute than England ; and in this month's Contemporary he warns his friends that they must remember the silent, and beware of outstripping opinion in the philanthropic direction. The people, he says, will not long support anything unjust. He is, we are convinced, much more nearly right than the men who think that moderation is extinct in England, because orators and journalists, in the fierce competition for notoriety, have become immoderate, and seek to gain a hearing by proposals which, even if accepted, would be whittled down into innocuousness in the process of debate. That there is much want of moderation in proposals we admit, and an extraordinary readiness, especially among journalists and public speakers, to consider everything an open quee- tion ; but the nearer the time of action approaches, the more influential do the moderate men become. It was when the Bill was formulated that Lord. Harlington carried away a third of the host of Heaven, and the country declared against it ; and so it would be with any great project of confiscation, or of socialistic reform. The English people are emotional, and in times of excite- ment hot-headed in speech ; but when action commences, it is the hard-headed, each man acting in his own little circle, who ultimately create opinion. Of course, there are fanatics, and fanatics of ability accrete followers - but did anybody ever meet the local referee of a small place who was not, as compared with his followers, a reasonable man ? The "great voice of the people" is a voice which is put into them by a class, and- the proportion of this class which is moderate, cool, and Whiggish in its advice as to action, is still exceedingly large, and grows larger as to each special reform with every year during which that reform is discussed. People who would nationalise the land, for example, have it their own way in many meetings ; but it is not the advocates of that scheme who are selected as candidates, but men who, while desirous of a change, advocate measures well within the limits of discussion. The proposal is " to divide the land among the poor," but the Bill is to allow those who desire it to hire allotments at reasonable rates. We believe that the moment the country grows anxious about measures unconnected with Ireland, this, its natural disposition, will be displayed still more strongly, and that Moderate Liberals, so far from being dismissed will receive a favourable hearing from the people. They do even now, for the ruling majority is very nearly of that type ; and the bitterness about Home-rule which is sup- posed to be their grand support, in reality diminishes their authority. But for it, as we said, Lord. Harlington would be welcomed as head of a Government, and moderation incarnate would be enthroned. Home-rule, so far as it means a separate Parliament for Ire- land, admits of no compromise ; you must be for it or against it, and that fact makes thousands of Liberals support it " in principle " who, when it comes to action, will fall, as they did about the representation of Ireland at Westminster, into a passion of conservatism. Those are all Welsh Radical Members except one who are opposing the formation of a Welsh National Party, and behind them, we may depend, are ranged quite sufficient Moderate Liberals to defeat, or at least to cripple, that dangerous project. There are no democracies so perfect as the Dissenting Churches ; but we do not perceive, as time goes on, that it is the moderate ministers among them who are growing silent from despair.
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