111E DEPTH OF POPITLAR SOBRIETY.
AIR. CHAMBERLAIN and Mr. Broadhurst have both given us a striking lesson during the week on the best way to secure popular sobriety in England ; and the Trade-Unionists have doubly shown how popular sobriety can be. The best way to make it so, is so to organise the expression of opinion amongst the millions as to render the multitude perfectly conscious that if they faithfully follow their most successful leaders, they will unite a far greater number of followers than by taking up the sensational cries of new men who have not made their own way in the world. Now success is in itself a guarantee of sobriety. Men do not succeed in the world, as Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Broadhurst have succeeded, without a very considerable amount of sobriety at the back of their heads. If they find that they can throw themselves on the instinctive liking of the people for sobriety of the same kind as that which they have exhibited, and can secure a victory against their assailants which is all the more brilliant the more cordially they have proved their confidence in the loyalty of the multitude beyond their personal reach to such leaders as themselves, we may feel pretty sure that however seriously the Democracy may now and again mis- take the path of sound political development, they will never go very far wrong without recovering themselves. Mr. Chamberlain has taken the boldest possible course at Birmingham to show his confidence in the Unionist feeling . of the Liberals of that city. He has made an appeal to the Liberal Unionists which not only involves a very large association of electors at the bottom, but very large and popular committees in all the wards of Birmingham. The total number of the members of the Liberal Unionist ward committees in Birmingham is no less than 5,400 ; and the Grand. Committee, consisting of all the Divisional Councils, numbers between 2,000 and 2,500 members. The Central Association has already an income of £800 a year from the subscriptions of members, which Mr. Chamberlain hopes to . see increased to £1,000 a year before their next annual meeting. And Mr. Chamberlain is confident that he can increase the number of members of each ward committee till no one of them numbers less than 1,000 members. Such an organisation as this, which Mr. Chamberlain truly says is unexampled in the rest of the Kingdom, bears very striking testimony indeed to the immense breadth of Mr. Chamber- lain's influence in Birmingham, and has even convinced some of his most bitter opponents in the Press that it is no longer possible to pooh-pooh the wide range of Birmingham Liberal Unionism as it had been pooh-poohing it within the last few weeks. Doubtless it will be said, and said truly, that these enormously numerous ward Committees are very unwieldy bodies, and so unquestionably they are. But the choice in such cases is between unwieldiness and unpopularity, and unwieldiness is certainly the less evil of the two. If these large ward Committees result in making the opinion of Liberal Birmingham unmistakably and emphatically Unionist, they will have done exactly what Mr. Chamberlain asked of them, and will have justified amply his confidence in his own power to guide the local opinion of Birmingham in the direction which seems to him the most sober and the most statesman- like. And the same lesson is taught by Mr. Broad- turst's striking victory at the Trade-Union Congress over his assailants. We cannot say that we are able to follow the ins and outs of the charges brought against him, or of the answer to those charges. But what he has shown most effectually is that the most successful of the organisers of Trade-Unions, the man who from the position of a stonemason was elevated to be Under-Secretary of State to the Home Office, can trust his brother Trade-Unionists to support him when he shows perfect confidence in them, and to defeat the attacks made upon him,—it is believed by the more socialistic of his brother Trade-Unionists,—with a completeness that bears the most ample testimony to his power of guiding those with whom he has hitherto acted. The majority of 177 against 11 by which Mr. Broadhurst was supported, shows to demonstration that Trade-Unionists, like other people in England, are not only willing but anxious to be guided by those leaders who have themselves exhibited most prudence and success in the moulding of their own fortunes.
These lessons appear to us very impressive, and should teach the more timid of our politicians a little confidence in themselves when they find themselves opposed by a noisy agitation, and listen in vain for the evidence of that support which they believe themselves to deserve, but apparently fail to get. The truth is, that the soberest opinion in England, though it may be very widespread, is also apt to be very silent, until it gets some recognised and constitutional mode of expressing itself. Nay, it is not merely silent in such cases, it is not unfrequently a little apathetic. It does not see the need of speaking before it is asked, and though it may, when challenged to speak, give out a very prudent oracle, the very prudence which it dis- plays prevents any noisy demonstration of a premature and unnecessary kind. If Mr. Chamberlain had not gone out of his way to get up those great ward Committees of Liberal Unionism in Birmingham, he would hardly have had any answer to those who asserted so lately that the strength and depth of the Liberal Unionism in Birmingham was extremely doubtful. It was only when the opportunity of serving on Unionist ward Committees was presented to a very large number of respectable citizens, that Birming- ham really discovered how very much sober Unionist opinion existed there, how profoundly the proposal to break up the United Kingdom,—to multiply parliaments and administrations which would be sure not to agree,— had revolted the judgment of plain men in Birmingham,. and how heartily they supported their most popular citizen in his resistance to that proposal. And so, too, it was only when Mr. Broadhurst appealed to the Trade-Union Con- gress to judge between him, who had fought his way up from the position of a mere labourer to be the colleague of statesmen, and flighty assailants of ambiguous opinions, that it became apparent how very few were the antagonists who had made so much noise. It is the same with the Eight-Hours Question. You hear of nothing but the determination of the men to limit labour to eight hours absolutely, until you really try to get at the silent working men. Then we find a great indisposition to answer at all among the more prudent Unions, and a positive deter- mination not to commit themselves to an imprudent decision in favour of the eight-hours limit among the great majority of those who do answer. We believe that if the same sort of judgment could. be taken on almost all the cases of hasty popular agitation, we should find the same result,—a very much wider prevalence of the sober view than anyone had anticipated ; the very sobriety of the view, disinclining those who hold it to rush into public with it, as the faddist or the fanatic who thinks that he alone possesses the key to the truth, is disposed to rush into public with his fad or his fanaticism. Supposing we could have polled the public with regard to the verdict of the jury in the Mavbrick case, we wonder what propor- tion of them would have been found amongst those who were disposed to hoot the Judge small jury for the result of the trial. We believe a very proportion indeed. The quiet-minded people held their tongues, and were just those who would have held their tongues till they were challenged. to speak in some constitutional way. It was the very hastiness of the opinion on the other side that made it appear so much more formidable than it really was. There is a proverb in England, " Little pot soon hot," meaning that those who have the least body of thought to heat, boil over much the soonest. That is, we believe, a most sensible and shrewd proverb. The mass of men in all classes, and quite as much in the class of labourers as in any other, follow the leaders in whom they have most confidence. And they have most confidence in the leaders who have shown the most capacity for carving out their own fortunes successfully. We do not, of course, mean that those who have been most selfish command the greatest confidence. On the contrary, the selfish men of business who devote their whole time to amassing large fortunes for themselves, command little con- fidence. But when politicians like Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Broadhurst show both the shrewdness necessary to men of the world, and so much sympathy for the less happy of their brother citizens as to devote a large part of their time to the amelioration of the lot of those fellow citizens, they are followed loyally and faithfully, as well for their shrewdness and prudence as for their disinterestedness and public spirit. We may depend upon it that the mere agitators make a great deal more show in the world than is at all proportionate to their real influence. If we could only command some constitutional way of polling the silent opinion which shows its calmness by its reticence, we should find that half the sensations of the world, whether political or social, were founded. on a very shallow and un- trustworthy stratum of public opinion. In England at least, it is the noisy and confident who agitate. It is the taciturn and often even the indifferent who rule.
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