THE UNION OF THE LIBERAL PARTY.

WHATEVER differences of opinion there may be as to the next general election, there is universal agreement as to the importance of the issues which it will decide, and as to the influence which that decision is likely to exert on the future of the country. The prolongation of the present Tory rule for seven more years is a prospect which it needs some courage to contemplate with any degree of composure, and that is what a Tory victory in the constituency really means. No doubt the unforeseen continually happens, and it would be rash, almost to madness, to speculate on the possibilities of seven years; but it would be rasher still to build upon the occurrence of unforeseen circumstances which may alter the current of events, and change the relations of parties. It is more than possible that the Tories may suffer from those evils which are sure, sooner or later, to result from a long tenure of power. Intestine divisions may, and probably will, develope themselves; a sense of security may breed insolence, and insolence produce revolt within the Ministerial ranks and reaction outside them; the seeds of discontent, which the most cautious and able government is sure to scatter, will spring up in a plentiful crop of personal and class grievances; and a hostile public opinion will be silently formed whose strength will be unsuspected until it is revealed in overt acts of opposition; blunders are sure to be made, possibly jobs perpetrated, and thus public indignation roused to a fury which no Ministry would be able to resist. These and other casualties must undoubtedly threaten the permanence of any victory which may be won at the poll, in 1879 or 1880. But it would be worse than folly to calculate on such chances, which, be it remembered, are always less menacing to a Tory than to a Liberal administration.

There is a compactness and coherence in the force of Conservatism which it is absolutely certain the friends of progress cannot attain. Nothing is more common than to taunt Mr. Gladstone with having dissolved in five years the splendid majority with. which he took office, while his great rival has, during a period of the same length, increased rather than decreased his available force. Considering that Lord Beaconsfield has succeeded in driving from him two of the ablest and most honoured statesmen of his VOL. VI.-No. 30. BB

party, and has tried to fill their places with two obscure politicians, whose presence in the Cabinet, as heads of our military and naval forces, must be as great a surprise to themselves as it certainly is to the country, the justice of the comparison between the two great rivals is at least open to question. But it is a correct representation of an essential difference between the two parties. The most remarkable feature in the present condition of the Tory party is the amount of unity and strength which it preserves, at least to the outside world, notwithstanding the defection of men like Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon. A similar secession from the Gladstone administration would have meant the resignation of the Government, if not the collapse of the party. If, for example, Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll had abandoned Mr. Gladstone because of irreconcilable differences on questions of policy, is it at all probable that he would have been able to continue in office? It is conceivable that, if the differences had arisen relative to some reform, on which the party was unanimous, and on which it was backed up by a strong national opinion, but which was too advanced in character to be accepted by these noble lords, the popular feeling would so have welded the party together as to have preserved it from the disintegrating influences which under ordinary circumstances must have been fatal. But in the case of the retiring Tory Ministers there was no sign of the universal sympathy of the party with the Premier in opposition to his colleagues until they had actually resigned. Before the step was taken it was supposed that they represented a powerful element in the party; but no sooner had they retired than they became mere ciphers. The party could not afford dissensions, and it was content to sacrifice men whom it had honoured, and to crush any lingering sympathy which there might be with them, rather than give a chance of victory to a hated enemy.

It is difficult to believe that some of the members of the party are not in their secret heart ashamed of the manifest weakness of the Ministry. Mr. Newdegate gave expression to a feeling of the kind when he sarcastically asked whether the Estimates were in the charge of the member for Louth or of the Secretary to the Treasury. The spectacle of this estimable official quietly doing the bidding of Mr. Parnell, postponing such votes as the member for Meath said ought to be delayed, and gratefully accepting those which he permitted to pass, was a humiliation to Parliament as well as to the Government; and Mr. Newdegate cannot have been alone in his indignant protest. But the Ministry accept the rôle, complain of it to the country, and when the session ends, without having any result to show, will throw all the responsibility on the handful of obstructives, and it may be will appeal to the constituencies on this very ground. The sense of humour must be strangely lacking in the Cabinet, or they would be conscious of the ridiculous aspect in which they present

themselves as the chiefs of invincible legions thus checked by a dozen Irishmen. Numbers are on their side, precedents are all in their favour, the gentlemanly instincts in which the House is never wanting, all tell powerfully on their behalf; but they can do nothing. Sometimes they bully after the fashion of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, at other times they coax, as did Sir H. Selwyn Ibbetson; but of the control of a strong leader at the head of a docile majority, and in this case sustained by a House practically unanimous, there is no sign. It is useless to lay all the blame on Irish offenders. Deliberate obstruction can be put down without new laws and regulations to which, in my belief, neither Parliament nor the country will listen. At least, before the old traditions of Parliament are cast aside, it would be well to make the experiment of new leadership. It is too much to conclude that the failure of a Ministry which is strong only in numbers is decisive as to the necessity of fresh laws. Possibly the management of Parliament, like most other things, has to be done by brain.

At all events the statesmen who have lifted the flag of England out of the dust in which it had been allowed to trail by the weakness of Liberals; who have made the name of their country respected and feared throughout Europe; who have struck awe into the hearts of those three Emperors who had assumed to dictate law to the Continent until Great Britain appeared on the scene in the person of the two illustrious diplomatists who were able to assert the great principles of international law; who, above all, have put a decisive check to the ambitious designs of Russia, and given a new lease of power and security to that noble and faithful ally of their country, the Ottoman Porte, can surely afford to endure a little raillery from those whose criticism only expresses the bitter disappointment of men irritated by a sense of failure and the exposure of their own preten

sions.

Alas! there is a suspicion which betrays itself even in these laboured apologies, which are said to be no apologies, that all these grand achievements are nothing better than the airy fabric of a vision.' 'My lords, you are found out,' said the Duke of Argyll, in words which condensed the force of one of the most powerful speeches to which the House of Lords had listened for many a day, and which must have struck home. It may be possible to dismiss such suggestions when they come from political opponents at home, but it is very different when they are repeated by those intelligent and independent foreigners, whose eulogies were paraded with such an air of triumph twelve months ago, as an answer to all the snarlings of Liberal orators and journalists in the country. There can be no question that at that time [Lord Beaconsfield and his policy were extremely popular on the Continent, and especially in France. I happened to be in Paris at the time, and had some opportunities of ascertaining the feeling of some ardent French Republicans. It is

strange,' I observed to a French lady, an ardent admirer of M. Gambetta, that you Republicans should all be so enthusiastic in your sympathies with our Tory Government, and so opposed to Mr. Gladstone and his policy. Surely it is the Liberal party in England who have always been the friends of the Republic, whereas their opponents have, at the best, only tolerated it as a necessary evil.' 'Ah!' was the reply, it is international law against the mere rights of conquest which Lord Beaconsfield asserts, and for that we admire him. If he had been in power in 1870, we should never have lost Alsace and Lorraine.' It was in vain to argue or remonstrate. There was the fixed idea, that our Tory Ministry were the champions of a principle which would limit the rights of conquerors, and as France had to accept terms in 1871, instead of dictating them, this view was especially popular among her people.

How is it now? It would be too much to say that we have been on the verge of a rupture with France, but all the efforts which have been made to put the most favourable aspect on the relations of the Government have not been able to conceal the fact that grave differences have existed, if they do not exist still, and that French views of the policy of England are very different to-day from those which prevailed at the time of the Berlin Congress. Nothing could show this more clearly than a recent article in the République Française, which may still be regarded as expressing, especially on points of foreign policy, the views of M. Gambetta, though his direction of it has ceased. It is not necessary to remind our readers of the court which was paid to the great Republican chief, or of the satisfaction with which the approving expressions of the République Française were quoted, as a proof that the Liberal opinion of Europe was opposed to the factious Liberalism of this country. Liberals may now hail the journal as a very Daniel come to judgment. Its opinion after experience is that the difference between the Gladstone and the Beaconsfield policy consists solely in the introduction of an element of 'bunkum' in the latter which did not exist in the former. The practical result is the same in both cases, but there was an amount of tall talk about the present Ministry which excited expectations never fullfilled. The Gladstone Ministry professed a policy of absolute non-intervention, but the Conservative Government talks big, promises much and does nothing; subtract his speeches and his rodomontade, and Lord Beaconsfield follows precisely the policy of Mr. Gladstone. You can't build upon a shifting sand, and Lord Beaconsfield discourages the best intentions and the most sincere sympathy.' This is the unkindest cut of all. It is bad enough for a Minister who had posed before the world as the one champion of British honour to be told that he is a mere pretender; but for a statesman who, if he has not an original and daring foreign policy, has nothing, to be held up as no better than a pacific Gladstone,

plus a good deal of fanfaronnade and bluster, and that by one whose disinterested praise had been regarded as a compensation for the injustice of political rivals, is a humiliation and indignity which it is not easy to brook. It was bad enough to hear a hostile Duke declaiming, but it is infinitely worse to have his keenest words accentuated and emphasised from France, by a voice once so friendly, with all Europe looking on and echoing in scornful laughter My lords, you are found out.'

Even the consciousness of the injustice of the allegation is hardly sufficient to sustain the spirit under such cruel unkindness. It is true that the Ministry has not been guilty of the crime of lighting up the flames of war anew in Europe in order to satisfy a sentiment about Greece, that it has acquiesced in the arrangements in Eastern Roumelia by which the Berlin Treaty has been violated in spirit if it has been maintained in the letter, and that it has allowed its vaunted protectorate in Asia Minor to become a nullity. But has it not secured a scientific frontier' in Afghanistan, and obtained an absolute control over the foreign policy of its prince, who has consented to maintain British interests so long as British bayonets maintain him on his throne and British gold provides him with luxuries? To reproach a Ministry which has the laurels of Afghanistan wreathed around its fasces, and which hopes soon to add to them those of a South African triumph, is the climax of unfairness. But so is the world apt to judge its great men, and the only satisfaction that remains to those who are thus misunderstood is that amid every change of fortune outside, and every variation of national or European opinion, they have still the assurance of the steady support of the faithful followers who raised them to power and who will spare no effort to keep them there. If there are limits to their devotion, they have not yet been reached, nor is there any sign of them in the immediate prospect.

It is for Liberals, instead of indulging in anticipations of some probable breaches in the ranks of their opponents, to consider whether it be not possible to oppose to this solid array a force as united and still more powerful. The habit of setting up some single question, or even a set of questions, as a test by which all candidates are to be judged, which has been so common of late at elections, has wrought considerable mischief, and can work nothing else. Without venturing to say that there never can be any circumstances which would justify electors in thus disfranchising themselves, and so giving an advantage to the party from which they disagree on all vital points of principle and policy, I am prepared to maintain that those circumstances are extremely rare. A large section of a party which has contributed greatly to its success, and which feels that not only are its own wishes treated with contempt, but the principles on which the party itself is constituted are violated, may decline to support leaders in whom it has ceased to