TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PARTY FUTURE OF THE LIBERALS.
NOTHING can apparently be more vain than to predict, or even to consider, the immediate future of the Liberal party in Parliament. It has just suffered the most severe, and to its leaders perhaps the most unexpected defeat, of this century. Its numbers are few, and some of its most spirited debaters are not among them ; and though others may crop up among the new men, still time is requisite to secure them opportunity and recognition. It has no policy, or appearance of policy, except to watch and wait ; its rank and file are, if not in mutiny, at least in high debate ; it is said to have no Whips at all, and its leadership is in commission between men who differ, and differ widely, in everything except honesty of purpose. And yet we are not inclined to despair, not ready to believe in forty years of unbroken Conservative rule, not without some faint glimmer of light, wholly apart from any which may shine through chinks already beginning to be perceptible in the adversaries' armour. We have a good deal of reliance on the force of concurrent circumstances, and a strong opinion that this force may be exerted, after a longer or shorter delay, to drive the leaders of the party in a single, and in many respects a somewhat novel direction. It is, or, at all events, it seems to us, quite clear that no one of the old objects will act any longer as a rallying-cry ; that the Liberal programme of the last generation has been used up ; and that Liberals must find, either in the proceedings of the Tories or in their own minds, some new point of departure. This cannot, for the present, or, as we hope, for many years to come, be Disestablishment. If the recent Elections prove anything, it is the immense influence of the Church, whenever the middle-classes think or fancy it is threatened, and the extreme disinclination of all classes to the introduction of a purely secular spirit into politics. Of course, the Church can destroy herself, if she chooses ; and if her ministers are determined to become a sacerdotal caste, and reveal their determination by devotion to symbols which either mean sacerdotalism or silliness, her term as an endowed esta- blishment may be counted by years. But apart from this internal danger, great and serious as it is, the Church, with a few concessions to the laity—concessions chiefly intended to give them their rightful voice in her management—may outlive all of us, and would certainly outlive any form of attack that could now be organised against her. Non-intervention will not do either, for besides the discredit already brought upon the party by their propagation of that idea, there is the cer- tainty that it cannot last,—that the very moment the country is attacked, or affronted, or menaced with either attack or affront, in a way common persons can understand, non-intervention will go the way of all other such doctrinaire absurdities,—that is, will be voted down as the friends of the peace with China were in 1857. Nor do we believe that anything will ultimately be made of any question between labour and capital, that either party will be induced by any amount of coaxing to do anything except leave both as free as they can be made, with due regard to the dangers which may arise from the existence of monopolies like water, gas, railway communication, and to a lesser extent, coals. We cannot avoid the belief, in fact, that the more the subject is studied by party leaders, the more party feeling revives from its momentary depression, the more the strength of the new Government is perceived, the more clear will be the decision that before any new step whatever of any high importance can be taken, the counties and their population must be regained to the Liberal cause. Speaking broadly, we have lost them all in England, and we have well deserved to lose them. From the day when the Whigs in 1832 submitted to the Chandos Clause, and so made every tenant- farmer a political slave, rather than quarrel once more with the House of Lords, the Liberal party has been in tone a citizen party, has relied upon the cities, and not upon the country ; has satirised the farmers as over-fed bucolics, they being meanwhile the least prosperous of all manufacturers ; has scorned the country tradesmen, whom the Railway system did not make less numerous, but did impoverish to a startling degree, and have neglected the agricultural labourer, till when, in 1872 he mildly and humbly asked for a vote, he was stared at as if he had been a horse suddenly gifted with in- explicable speech. The farmer's wants have been not only disregarded—that must happen to all classes—but have been ridiculed ; his appeals against taxation have been contemptu-
ously rejected, his prayer for some share in the education granted to his labourers has been treated as inconvenient, and his great social grievance, his deprivation of nearly all munici- pal power, has either been ignored, or so postponed and so feebly pressed, that it has never till the last two Ses- sions been embodied in a Bill. Forty-one years of legislative. progress have done literally nothing for the agriculturist except diminish the nuisance of the tolls. The reward has been that the Liberals have now, apart from the Cavendish family, just nine county seats ; that the farmers disbelieve their promises, even when signed by Mr. Gladstone ; that the labourers doubt their honesty ; and that Mr. Disraeli can con- struct an entire Government, with a casual exception or two, out of county Members, and be certain that they will all be returned without serious opposition.
Facts like these are certain to force themselves upon the Liberal leaders, be they whom they may, when the hubbub is- over, and they have time to think. They have not a chance of calling up a new constituency from the strata below the householder, for the proposal would turn all England into Conservatives. They have not the right to touch the Establish- ment until the country population, which is most affected by its action, has been allowed to become articulate for or against a measure it hardly yet comprehends. They have no new allies to gain, for Scotland is still in bulk Liberal ; they can acquire but few more votes in Ireland, and they may before they have done yet find that the axiom "a Catholic is a Conservative either in esse or in posse is not limited to the Continent. They must, besides re- gaining the medium towns, regain the country, and that will tax every form of ability and every kind of energy of which they are possessed. We know that it is distasteful work, that it will involve a new redistribution of power, from which. we at least shrink with a feeling of weary reluctance ; and' we are quite aware that it will involve difficulties of the most complex kind,—the difficulty of managing the Lords, yet giving their tenants tenure ; of conciliating the farmers, yet giving the vote to their labourers ; of giving agriculturists local power, yet resolutely refusing an elective magistracy—an evil which would overbalance any conceivable good—but nevertheless the task will have to be faced, and have to be carried through. Mr. Disraeli sees that. Look at his offer to the farmers of a legal two years' notice ; at his appointment of Mr. Clare Read, after that thoroughly honest Member had claimed a full right to independence about tenure ; at his preparations for dealing with local taxation in the rural sense, and at his keen resentment at any charge that he treats his own labourer& in any way except the most liberal and considerate. Look at the men he finds among the " fat-sided " county mem- bers, while we have scarcely one upon the benches, and at the pains he takes to give the younger generation of country gentlemen their fair chance. Mr. Gladstone scarcely gave any youngster a chance except Mr. Winterbotham, for Mr. Lyon Playfair, though a new man, was over fifty when he was. appointed. The Liberal leaders will have to imitate Mr.. Disraeli from a different point of view ; to remem- ber that prejudice must be cleared away before county conversions can be expected, and above all, within the counties, to raise a new army from the ground. Fortu- nately for them, their three greatest obstacles are being cleared away. The dense ignorance of the agricultural voter has been materially lessened by cheap newspapers and some slight tincture of education, his ingrained timidity by the operation of the Ballot, and his distaste to combination by the Union. The fear of equal electoral districts has diminished, for the large towns must be split, or taught to vote some other way than the present,—say, by the cumulative vote, or Hare's plan, or the French plan, all of which make it easy to keep redistribution within historic limits ; while this greatest terror of all, the dread lest the agriculturists should be Tories, has been suddenly dispelled. If every man of them were an Eldon, the Liberals could scarcely show a worse aspect in the counties than they do now.
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