TOPICS OF THE DAY.
INTELLECTUAL INSINCERITY AND THE LIBERAL PARTY.
WE do not imagine that the Daily Mail's "sporting" attempt to " rally " the Liberal party by a £100 prize will have any very practical result Still, as it stands, this novel prize-competition is a very curious fact. It shows that a shrewd newspaper m'nager has seen that the Liberal party is so much at sixes-and-sevens in regard to its policy, its leader, and the problem of Home-rule, that there is opportunity for a public competition. There is a peg, in fact, for a " missing-word competition," because there is so much doubt and uncertainty in the public mind. As an indication of the condition of the Liberal party, the incident is therefore worth attention. No one in the old days of Liberalism, in the days, that is, before the adoption of Home-rule drove the best men in the party into political exile, would have dreamt for a moment of asking such questions as the Daily Mail asks. There would have been no point, no possible fun extract- able, in asking who led the party, or what were the main lines of its policy, because the public mind was perfectly at ease on the matter. A " find-the-missing-leader-and- missing-policy" competition has been made possible solely awing to the distraction of the Liberal party.
Our readers will, we feel sure, give us credit for sincerity when we say that the distraction of the Liberal party gives us no pleasure or satisfaction. That distraction is, we firmly believe, a national mis- fortune, and we would gladly see the Opposition restored to a position of political stability. The present Govern- ment has our general support and confidence both at home and abroad, but we cannot doubt that it is weakened, not strengthened, by the weakness and disintegration of the Opposition. We are Free-traders in politics as well as in commerce, and hold that monopoly and the absence of competition, wherever found, are injurious and demoralising conditions. Still, the facts being as they are, it is worth while to consider what are the causes that have led to the demoralisation of the Liberal party. We believe that what has caused its rain can be expressed in two words,—intellectual insincerity. For the last ten years the party has been trying to pretend that things can be and not be at the same time, and the result has been moral and intellectual damage such as even Mr. Kruger's lawyers would find it impossible to over-assess. The party and its leaders have ever since 1886 been pro- fessing, or attempting to profess, that you can at one and the same time destroy and maintain the legislative Union, that you can have Ireland governing herself and in a state of legislative independence and at the same time completely under the Parliament at Westminster, that you can have Irish representatives taxing us internally and making laws for England without the English and Scotch representatives taxing Ireland internally or making laws for Ireland. All these professions and schemes are based upon the notion that things can be and not be at the same time,—if only you have got a sufficiently able Parliamentary draughtsman. When it has been pointed out that you cannot both annul the essential principle of Union and maintain its integrity, the Liberal Home- rulers have always in effect replied that you can if you do it sufficiently carefully, and pay sufficient attention to popular feeling. Their position is, in fact, like that of the great Home-rule statesman who propounded to a man of science a plan for taking castor-oil without letting it come in contact with your lips and so tasting it. First, some water was to be put into the glass, then the castor- oil, and then some more water, which would cover the oil and so make a kind of liquid sandwich. ' But,' said the man of science, ' that is impossible, for whatever you do, the oil, being lighter, must inevitably come to the top.' Pardon me,' was the reply of the Home-rule statesman, ' not if you pour the water in very carefully.' Here is the matter in a nutshell. The eternal law that in human affairs things cannot be and not be at the same time was held not to apply if only the wordy water of rhetoric and fine sentiment was poured in carefully enough. This attempt, worthy of the Academy of Laputa, to keep the oil between the two layers of water has been going on all these years, and as effort has been made again and again to pretend that Ireland's demand for legislative inde- pendence is perfectly compatible with England's resolve- that she shall have nothing of the kind. Legislative independence has been explained to be only local govern- ment, and local government has been labelled legislative independence, but this, of course, has not in reality pro- duced any bringing together of two things that move on perfectly different planes. All that has happened is that the Liberal party has been demoralised and exhausted in its fruitless effort to square the circle. We may smile at the picture, but in reality it is no smiling matter to have the mental energy of half our politicians sapped by attempting these intellectual impossibilities- When in the time of James IL the Nonconformists— sorely tried, we admit, by the intolerance of the Estab- lished Church—tried to perform a similar feat, and endeavoured to obtain toleration by acquiescing in the setting up of the Roman Church and a Roman Catholic- Sovereign, they soon found themselves in an impossible position. It was then that Lord Halifax pointed out to• them bow impossible it is to build upon "a foundation of paradoxes." That is what the Liberal party is now find- ing out. They began to build in 1886 on a foundation of paradoxes, and after a dozen years they are discovering that all their toil has been in vain, and that not a single one of their walls can be got to stand firm.
It is the effects of this intellectual insincerity, not the- want of a chief or the want of a definite programme, that is ruining the Liberal party. If their leaders and their• chief organs of public opinion had refused to build on paradoxes, they would not now want both for men and measures. Were the party a set of straight-thinking men, they would soon throw up a real leader, and that leader would soon show them the game which it is the objeet of every political party to bring down. How long will the results of this intellectual insincerity last ? Not much• longer is our sincere and earnest hope. There may be better prospects in store for the Liberal party now that they have for the time at any rate abandoned the cause of Home-rule. If they would only make that abandonment clear and absolute, and, what is essential, final, we- believe that a revival of strength would at once set in. The temporary abandonment of Home-rule has done them good, but they cannot expect to reap the full results. until it is made clear that the Liberal party, once- and for all, discards the proposal to dissolve in any shape or form the legislative Union, and that hence- forth they will no more attack the framework of the, Constitution than their opponents. Let them make it obvious that they are as strong supporters of one absolute and undivided Imperial Parliament as are the Unionists,. and they will at once regain not merely a greater share of general confidence, but what is even more important to a political party, a real belief in their own proposals. As long as there is any colour for the belief that the Home-rule bogey has not gone for good, but is only round the corner, the leaders and the rank-and-file of the Liberal party will still be haunted men. To abandon Home-rule finally—that should be the next step of the Liberal party. This accomplished, the problems of leadership and policy which now perplex its members wilt• soon be solved.
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