TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD ROSEBERY'S RESIGNATION.
LORD ROSEBERY'S resignation of his Under-Secretaryship does not signify much in itself, because in the form which the Government is assuming no resignation signi fies very much. People wonder a little at the slight effect produced by the secession of men like the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Forster, all of them Ministers of the first force and all of them representative men, and every now and then some Tory says or writes that such losses must ultimately be fatally felt. In truth, however, though the individual is not dwindling in politics—think of Germany without Bismarck—the importance of individual Ministers is. In France they are shadows, in America names, in Germany clerks. This Government, like the one whichpreceded it, sheds Ministers without pain or injury,—not because, as its enemies say, it is so molluscous that it feels no change of structure ; and not because, as its friends say, it is a tree too full of vitality to miss even healthy branches, but because it derives its power from a constituency so extensive that it hardly recognises persons. Whoever goes or comes except Mr. Gladstone, there is "Mr. Gladstone's Government.," erect and untouched, and that for the Householders is sufficient ; as also, when Lord Carnarvon seceded," Lord Beaconsfield's Government" sufficed for them. Cabinet Ministers, being human, would be rather tried, we fear, if they knew how many of the electors recognise only one name in the Cabinet, or at most two or three, or how many more would fail in the effort to repeat the names of the Governing Committee, entrance into which is such a prize. Lord Rosebery's departure, therefore, would matter little, even if he had been a Secretary, which he was not ; and if he had gone off angry, which is by no means the case. Lord Rosebery's Liberalism is of a very staunch quality, and he will be back in a short time, and remain a steady supporter, and not a candid friend, in the interim. Still, he is a man of unusual abilities, great power of speech, being nearly, if not quite, the only humourous Peer, and of special position in Scotland, and we should like to know a little more exactly why he resigned. The official explanation is that another Under-Secretary was wanted to aid Sir W. Harcourt in the Commons; and, no doubt, that is true, but then is it the whole truth ? Any Secretary of State is glad of help, but the Department is not overworked just now in the House, and though it is overworked in the Bureau, where, for example, Sir W. Harcourt has elaborated his London Bill, Lord Rosebery could give as much help there as any other man, and much more than most. It looks as if there were something else, and as the " else " is not any secret revolt of Lord Rosebery from a Government he cordially approves, we have a little human curiosity to know what it is.
We might not feel that curiosity, but for the rumour, repeated everywhere, and on Thursday emphatically denied both by the Home Secretary and by Lord Rosebery, that Sir W. Harcourt was glad to be rid of his Under-Secretary. The denial disposes of the rumour, but it does not dispose of the state of affairs which made the rumour seem probable, and induced even serious politicians to believe it. Mr. Rylands, whose function just now is to exude rather vitriolic criticism on his political friends, who have perhaps felt his priggishness as much as his untiring laboriousness and zeal, raised a discussion on Thursday week on the question whether the Under-Secretary for Home Affairs ought not to be in the Commons. The Radicals below the gangway, who did not care a straw where he was, but who are a little sick—not unnaturally sick—of the preference still accorded in politics to the caste, cheered Mr. Rylands ; and Sir W. Harcourt remarked, in his most aggressive manner, that Lord Rosebery's appointment had never been intended to be permanent, and that it was "only a sop to the Scotch Members." It was instantly, and not unnaturally, believed that Sir W. Harcourt thought Lord Roseberv's appointment bad. As the Home Secretary must agree to the appointment of his subordinate, he had, we suppose, a right to make the remark, though it would have seemed more in its place from the Premier, who represents the appointing power ; and its ungraciousness is only a mistake of manner, which the House regards as a trait of individuality. Still, it cannot be denied that the remark was unexpectedly crude in form, and suggests, with other things, that Sir W. Harcourt's own idea of his own place in the party is very high. He does not, of course, think of himself as Mr. Gladstone's heir, for that is Lord Hartington's position ; but Lord Hartington has always a coronet hanging over him, some day to crush his head, and it is quite conceivable that the ultimate leadership of the Liberalsin the Lower House is already an object of ambition. We hope it is not, for we want a long term for Lord Hartington, and dread the dissolving influence of such ambitions, and theirtendency to induce men who feel them to push against all rivals ; but still, it may be. Even Americans catch the Presidential fever, and we know of nothing in Liberalism which should exorcise human nature, or induce a man to reject the instinctive thought that if justice were done, and all men were wise, and circumstances were favourable, he would be a long way up the hill towards the top of the world. It is quite possible that two or three " leaders " are thinking of the future, and dreaming dreams, or even conceivably laying farsighted plans.
And yet it must be unjust to Sir William Harcourt even to fancy that he dreams of himself as Leader in the House of Commons. With his keenness and experience of men, and long habit of the House and of politics, he must be welt aware that, unless he changes greatly, no such leadership will come to him. He has quite sufficient power of oratory, though he makes, for a leader, the mistake of using the whip too often, and of exasperating opponents needlessly; he is a fair, or we may even say successful, administrator; and he may have proved himself, in this coming London Bill, a legislator of some acumen and largeness of view. But he has never established sympathetic relations either with the party or the country, never excited the smallest enthusiasm, never left the quite essential impression that he is a representative man. Whom or what does he represent, except Sir William Harcourt ? He either has so few convictions, or he has allowed so few to manifest themselves,. that men doubt to this day, after his long and, on the whole,, successful public career, whether he is Whig, or Liberal, or Radical in his sympathies, or whether, indeed, he has any ; whether he does not think, with his friend Lord Beaconsfield, that a statesman should use ideas, but not be governed by them. Nobody would know, if the Queen sent for him tomorrow, what his Government would be like, what would be its tendency, or what ends it would seek, except, possibly, the passivity in Ireland which is so often mistaken for peace. It is not that the views of a Harcourt Administration would be unknown, for that often happens, but that its tone would
be undiscoverable in advance. It would not even be Opportunist, for Sir William Harcourt can occasionally, when events press sharply and men grow excited, be inopportune. We have nothing, as matters stand, to say in reprobation of his intellectual position. There must be a Times in every Cabinet. Liberalism, like every other system of ideas, benefita by the adhesion of clever men ; and the Member for Derby makes as good a Home Secretary as we shall find. But in that position a man, unless he has, like Lord Beaconsfield, a separate and unmistakeable genius, rarely finds solid foothold in this country ; and Sir William Harcourt has not got ityet. If he seceded to-morrow, men within the House would be interested, and Tories would be delighted, because a. most dangerous Free-lance was at liberty again, and there would be hard knocks going, and Ministers would be worried ; but the constituencies would be quiescent. They are not to be moved in our days by cleverness, however remarkable, or speech, however sharp, or manceuvring, however adroit, but only by certain forces of character which we should find it hard to define, but which all politicians will allow that the Home Secretary either does not possess, or does not display. He could lead the Lords well, because the Lords, granted certain conditions of birth and knowledge of the world, greatly appreciate intellectual cleverness, and listen to oratory like Sir W. Harcourt's with a sense of sipping champagne. The fizz is pleasant to them, as well as the flavour. But to lead the Commons is to lead the constituencies, and the constituencies ask something—call it character, or morale, or the stream of tendency which makes for steadfastness, or what you will—which they do not see in Sir William Harcourt. They do not distrust him so much as they feel inclined to ask seriously what are the reasons for trust. Sir W. Harcourt is not the man to be a self-deceiver, and must see all this far better than we can ; and, therefore, we disbelieve that he exaggerates the position which, from his ability, his standing as Minister, and his undoubted cleverness, must belong to him. If he does, he will find, and his colleagues will find, that he has reckoned without the people, who now-a-days make leaders of the Commons by a very direct, though informal, method of election.
THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH ON THE CHURCH.
THE Bishop of Peterborough compares the position of every ecclesiastical reform proposed to the House of Commons, to that of a chubby little boy left for the first time remote from loving parents and sisters in the play-ground of a great school, and rapidly surrounded by treacherous playmates, who, under the disguise of deep interest in his welfare and his person, proceed to all the well-known amenities of crushing his hat over his eyes, pulling his hair, pinching his arms, chalking " ass " upon his back, and overwhelming him with every kind of practical joke and indignity. The picture was a lively one, and suggests to us that Dr. Magee must once have understood perfectly the art of making the early school experience of chubby little boys severely instructive to them. Even now, if some wellknown Dissenter should be made a Peer, we do not feel quite sure whether Dr. Magee might not find it in his heart to revive in some more dignified, though not, perhaps, less exquisitely painful form, on the stage of the House of Peers, those innocent tortures which he so well remembers and so graphically describes. But however this may be, we cannot remember that any Bill for the real reform of the Church of England has been treated in the House of Commons in tho manner which Dr. Magee so vividly and significantly suggests. No doubt, such Bills when sent down very late in the Session to the Lower House have been snuffed out by the Radicals, who insist that all ecclesiastical measures shall be fairly discussed, and not slipped through sub silentio in thin houses at the fag-end of a Session ; nor do we think that Radicals are greatly to be blamed for insisting on such full and adequate discussion. But it is easy to recall ecclesiastical Bills which have been most fairly treated by the House of Commons,—the Bill, for instance, giving power for the amendment of the old Table of Lessons ; the Bill for altering the form of the clergyman's adhesion to the Articles and Prayer-book ; and most of all, we should say, the Burials Bill, in relation to which we wholly deny the Bishop's statement that it was desired by the enemies of the Church, and deprecated by its friends. As for the enemies of the Church, everybody knows that the passing of the Burials Bill was a serious blow to the Disestablishment agitation, and that many of the Liberationists avowed their regret that they were losing the help of so substantial a grievance in their campaign against the Establishment itself. Moreover, if the laity of the Church of England, as distinct from the clergy, could have been polled, there is no manner of doubt that an immense majority of them desired to see the passing of the Burials Bill, for the very reason that they regarded it as an act of justice which would tend to restore the Church to her true position as the Church of the nation. Doubtless, some of the laity and some of the national Clergy objected to that Bill, just as some of the laity and almost all the clergy objected to the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill ; but in both cases alike the true friends of the Established Church saw clearly that, so far from the Church suffering by this measure of justice, a most telling weapon was in each case struck out of the hands of the advocates of Disestablishment and Disendowment. So far is it from being true that the Liberal party in the House of Commons object on principle to all measures which render the Church of England more popular, that we sincerely believe the worst ecclesiastical measure passed within recent years, —that measure for "putting down Ritualism" which had the assent of the great majority of the Bishops,—was passed solely in the view, a very short-sighted view, we confess, of meeting the popular demand, and removing one of the most unwelcome features in the services of the Church of England. So far as we can judge from close observation of the House of Commons, the Bishop of Peterborough's ideal Dissenter—can he, by the way, name the man, or is he a mere legend I—who piously prayed that the Church of England might grow worse than she then was, in order that she might stink in the nostrils of the English people, has absolutely no existence amongst the Radicals of that House. When they oppose an ecclesiastical reform brought forward in time for a fall discussion, it is not because they fear that it may improve the Church of England, but because it is, in their opinion, a change for the worse.
"The Church of England," says Dr. Magee, "has not yet earned from the Prime Minister the dubious and unfortunate compliment that she is the backbone of the Liberal Party." Certainly nob; and such speeches as Dr. Magee's show why she has not earned that compliment. She is not only not the backbone of the Liberal party, but so far as her Bishops and Clergy are concerned, she must be said to be the backbone of the Conservative Party. We do not deny, of course, that there are exceptions to this rule, that in the mind of the Bishop of Exeter, and, perhaps, of the Bishop of Oxford, there may be a true sympathy with the great masses of the people ; that there are a few clergymen who, like the Dean of St. Paul's or Canon Liddon, or Mr. Llewelyn Davies, think of the true interests of the innumerable poor first, and of the numerable rich afterwards ; but on the whole, the Clergy of our Church are "the backbone" not of the Liberal, but of the Conservative party, and anything more contrary to fact than to speak of them as in any sense "neutral," which was the mild word chosen by Bishop Magee to describe their attitude towards the two great political parties in the State, we cannot well imagine. There are clergymen—we hope Dr. Magee is not one of them —who, if they had been asked to anticipate the Beatitudes, instead of giving them as St. Luke gives them, would have put them all the other way ; who would have described as the grossest Socialism and Radicalism our Lord's blessing, "Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled
Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh But woe unto. you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep," and who would have described this as the partisan blessing bestowed by a bitter revolutionist on the dregs of the earth. Indeed, it is because the Liberal s,—some of them, no doubt, without the least sympathy with the religious motive of our Lord's blessings, more of them, as we hope, in the eager desire to realise the full force of that religious motive,—attempt to diminish the great gulf, both physical and moral, which separates the rich from the poor, that the dignitaries of the Church of England look down upon them with such profound distrust, and even contempt. Mr. Gladstone was unfortunately right when he described the Dissenters as the backbone of the Liberal party in England. And it is not because we cannot afford to resist Dissenters, as Dissenters, but because we cannot afford as Liberals to resist those who wish to do something towards attenuating the awful contrast between the lot of the poor and the lot of the rich, that we must recognise the greater number of Dissenting Churches as the backbone of the Liberal party. It would indeed be a good day for England if the clergy of the national Church ever became as truly national, as truly neutral in mere politics, as heartily willing to take up a Liberal measure if it promises to win our poor to a better spirit, as even Lord Shaftesbury, whom we regard as, in this sense at least, much more of a Christian than a politician. It is the bias of all who hold sway in the national Church in favour of the petty oligarchy of the rich, which keeps our Church where she is in popular esteem. If there were men in her who, like a very few of the Evangelicals, more of the Broad Church, a few of the High Church, and the greater number of the small party of extreme Ritualists, appear to know nothing of party ties when they interfere with the deeper spiritual ties, there would be none of the coldness towards the Church of England in the House of Commons, of which Dr. Magee complains, but which he does the best that his genius and eloquence can do, to increase. The neutrality of the Church, indeed ! Why, Dr. Magee and most of his brother-prelates are about as neutral in politics as the prelates of the Church of France are neutral in any contest between the Republic and the White Flag. Which would be the more difficult to the majority of our English Prelates,—to believe their Christianity mistaken and their politics true, or to believe their politics mistaken and their Christianity true I Let them answer that question to themselves honestly, and jndge by it which is the deeper in their character, the Conservative politician, or the Christian disciple.
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