TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE VOTE OF CENSURE.
WE should regret deeply the success of Sir M. Hicks- Beach's Vote of Censure, and this upon grounds in which all parties except the Parnellites may cordially agree. Such a vote must be followed by a resignation of the Ministry, or a dissolution, and either course might prove most disastrous to the interests of the country. There would for many weeks be no Government competent to take final resolutions. The Liberals would be paralysed until the country had delivered its verdict. The Conservatives have no Ministry ready or secure of sufficient support ; and a Dissolution, whether ad- vised by Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury, would probably result either in a " tie," with Mr. Parnell as arbiter of the situation, or, and much more probably, in the restoration of the Liberals to power, with a smaller and, owing to the increased number of extreme Radicals, a less co-
herent majority. In the latter event, the Government would have been weakened for nothing; while in no event except the improbable—and, indeed, with the Reform Bill still on the stocks, the impossible—event of a wave of Conser- vative emotion passing over the land, could a stronger Govern- ment be expected as the result of an election. Alternative Ministry, without a Dissolution, there is none to be seen. Mr. Goschen is" the only man who, perhaps, could form out of both parties an Administrative Cabinet ; but the position of that Cabinet, with the Tories sullen from disappointment, with Mr. Gladstone distinctly disapproving, and with Mr. Parnell boiling over with fury, would from the first be nearly impos- sible, and very soon result in a dead-lock. Demands for the Franchise Bill would be formulated and carried; and as Mr. Goschen could not accept them, after months of con- fusion the country would be just where the Vote of Censure would leave it,—without a practicable Government.
And for what is the country to risk such a situation as this ? In order to settle at once the destiny of Egypt ? Not a bit of it. Strongly as we desire a particular solution of the Egyptian problem, we shall never admit that in order to settle it a little more quickly or a little more logically, or, if you will, a little more finally, it is worth while to turn out a Government which on other matters deserves and possesses the full confidence of the country. But even if the purchase were worth the price, it would not be secured. There is no proof that the Tories would settle Egypt rightly, and much risk that the Continental Powers, in acceding to a Protectorate, might demand from them concessions to which the English people would not agree,— concessions involving in fact, if not 'in name, the partition of the Balkan Peninsula. Sir M. Hicks-Beach, indeed, carefully avoids in his motion any allusion to Egypt, confining himself strictly to the Soudan,—with the obvious intention, first, to secure as many votes as he can out of the popular feeling about Gordon ; and secondly, to leave his party free, should it come into power, to deal with Egypt as it pleases. No result, therefore, as to Egypt can be made secure by the Vote of Censure, and the advocates of a Protectorate would have no reason to support it, even if they thought the matter worth so great a change. The country, in fact, is asked to dismiss the Government for its conduct in the Soudan alone, and for choosing its own time for sending armed support to its agent in Khartoum. That is the whole issue, as pleaded by the Tory leaders' themselves ; and even if they were right, even if the Government had blundered in the Soudan, or had selected the wrong time to relieve General Gordon, the charge would seem to moderate men insufficient to justify a vote involving such disastrous consequences ,to the country. Upon the evi- dence, however, we contend that the Government have not blundered, unless it be in sending General Gordon—which the country demanded, and which the Tories have approved—and have rightly delayed despatching a military force to Khartoum.
We leave it to our correspondent, " Nemo," to dispose, as he has done, of the charges that General Gordon was not per- mitted to " Sarawak the Soudan," or to appoint Zebehr Viceroy there, or to visit El Obeid in order to make an agree- ment with the Mandi. The first charge is answered by the simple statement that General Gordon has never wished to found a dynasty in the Soudan ; the second, by the fact that Zebehr was not, on Gordon's proposal, to have been a Sultan, but a British Viceroy, assisted with British money and " moral support "—an impossibility, unless we were to annex the Soudan; and the third is made ridiculous by Gordon's own statement that he expected the Mandi to take him prisoner, an occurrence, which would have compelled us to conquer Kordofan. All these details are, however, mere parts of the main charge, which is, in plain English, that the Government did not do as General Gordon bade them. That is repeated everywhere ; and that, we do not hesitate to say, is nonsense. A British Government does not govern by self-derived and inherent right, but as trustee for the people, and has no more power or right to devolve its responsibility on General Gordon than to decree that Orders in Council shall have the binding authority of Acts of Parliament. It was bound to remain responsible to the people of England, and therefore to take its own course, with- out undue deference to any agent ; and it did take it to the best of its judgments and its lights. That course was to prohibit in despatch after despatch any attempt to keep the Soudan, or to make war on the Mandi, or to take any other than peace- ful steps to rescue the Egyptian garrisons along the river. A separate policy involving the use of force was adopted for the- coast of the Red Sea, which directly commands our water route to India ; but along the great valley from Assouan to the Lakes, this was the decision of the Government from which they never swerved. They would not send armies into the Soudan• on any pretence whatever, Lord Granville meeting every such suggestion with an unmistakeable negative. Do the Tories mean to say this decision was wrong ? If they do, let them say so, and await the decision of Parliament and the con- stituencies. If, however, they hold the Government to have been so far right, and a reconquest of the Soudan to be absurd, why do they make so much of General Gordon's angry telegrams, about the disgrace of abandoning him, and the meanness of deserting the garrisons of Dongola, Sennaar, and Kassala ? We do not complain of his anger, or of his advice either, though we hold the anger unreasonable, and the advice most dangerous, leading as it would to expeditions along the whole valley. Still, let every man speak his mind ; and General Gordon has a special right, having been asked for his advice, to give it freely. What we contend is that the Government, in pursu- ance of its policy, was bound to be unmoved by that anger, unless it thought it just, and to disregard that advice unless it thought it sound. Its first duty was not to General Gordon,. but to the British people. To listen to the Pall Mall Gazette,. one would think that General Gordon was, like his opponent, a Messenger from above, whose commands it is blasphemy to disobey and impiety to scrutinise ; but that is not the doctrine of grave men. The Government were bound to scrutinise, and as the General wanted no aid for himself, he being able to steam southward to safety, and only wanted aid to rescue garrisons which we had throughout refused to rescue, except by peaceful' means, they rightly rejected his counsel. If he has borrowed money in Khartoum we must pay it, and if he has given pledges we must redeem them ; but the function of declaring peace and war cannot be transferred to his hands. That he in his anger and unavoidable ignorance of the facts thinks the rejection of his advice "disgraceful," has no more to do with the matter than has the equally important fact that the Pall Mall Gazette thinks so too. The single question to be decided is whether it is disgraceful or not. We can see no disgrace in the matter, unless it was disgraceful to abandon the Soudan. The Government from the first said what it would do quite publicly, and received General Gordon's cordial adhesion to its plan ; and that he has changed his policy radically, and after counselling the evacuation of the Soudan telegraphs " Smash up Mandi "—with whom, while he stops in the Soudan, we have nothing to do—is utterly irrelevant to the matter. That we must smash up the Mandi one day, when he threatens Egypt, may be true—in our judgment, is true—but we are not therefore bound either to seek him in his stronghold, or to give him the enormous advantage of fighting where a defeat might not be a final blow to his pretensions. The Government is not to be deprived of its discretion and compelled to make war because a single honoured agent, living in the depths of the Nile Valley, without information and without advisers, remarks angrily that it is disgraceful not to send troops to Khartoum. That is General Gordon's opinion, and that is all.
Then comes the argument of undue delay. Well, there may have been undue delay ; but where is the evidence of it ? General Gordon says he can maintain himself for some months at Khartoum, and can in the last resort steam away southward. The experienced Generals at home say that while an expedi- tion will not be difficult when the heats abate, it would while they last, though still possible, be attended by a great loss of European life. Why, then, should the hot time be selected ? Because, is the real answer, the English people are so in-
terested about General Gordon that they do ' not like either to risk any chance of his being killed, or to see him retreat with his mission unaccomplished. That is quite natural ; but that is surely no reason for sending an expedition too soon, with the certainty that at least a thousand British soldiers, for whom the government is as responsible as for General Gordon; will- die unnecessarily if we do. Are we to sacrifice soldiers as the Romans sacrificed gladiators, to amuse a crowd, or even to relieve it of its melancholy ? The think is absurd, and would be seen to be absurd if anybody except a public favourite were enduring a "risk which, after all, is not a great one, and is only a natural incident in a soldier's
life. We will just ask those who are clamouring for premature action whether, if General Gordon escaped in a balloon or died of cholefa, they would send' an expedition in the hot weather to rescue General Stewart. They certainly would not ; and the answer shows that they have fixed their imaginations upon an individual until they have exaggerated the value -of his personality beyond all reasonable measure. It is, of course, open to any one to say that the difficulty is exaggerated ; that -English soldiers do not. die of heat if drink is -kept from them, and that marches as bad have been performed. before ; -but that is • surely . a ques- tion for the Generals. If they say that English soldiers under an African sun do fall out from heat-apoplexy, and that in such a march every man who falls out must be left upon the plain,. lest the advance should be reduced to the pace of an. ambulance corps, then the Government which risked that, misery solely to soothe popular impatience, and rescue a man who proclaims that -he can wait, would deserve impeachment. We should all say so, if the impatience were that of. a King ; but because it is that of a crowd, half of us doubt whether any considerations of common-sense or science ought to receive attention.
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