THE CONSERVATIVE CHAOS.
THE Tories are hardly wise in flogging their naughty boys in. public. All decent schoolmasters, even the most Rhadamanthine, now perform that painfil operation in the seclusion of some decent privacy. It is not a spectacle for the public eye, and it injures the dignity of the wielder of the rod almost as much as it injures the dignity of the sufferer to admit witnesses to the painful scene. At the same time, it may be admitted freely that Lord Randolph Churchill is not the kind of boy to be quietly flogged in private, if he thinks it in the least to his advantage to get public witnesses of that operation. And, apparently, he has thought this to be for his advantage in his last quarrel with his leaders, though we cannot see what profit he is to reap from the public exhibition of his superfluity of naughtiness. Certainly.the scene has not cheered even those who are most disposed to support him. For example, the " Conservative Candidate who communicated to Wednesday's Pall Mall Gazette his hopeless bewilderment as -to the explosion in the Conservative Party, his weariness of Sir Stafford Northcote, his dissatisfaction with Lord Salisbury, and his confessedly vain cravings for Lord Randolph Churchill, pro- bably expressed, pretty accurately, the perplexity of thousands and tens of thousands of Conservatives' minds after the perusal of the correspondence of Tuesday and Wednesday, though this writer was fairly reticent as to the general dismay which that-perplexity must have caused. It is pretty clear that on February 29th the Conservative Party were tolerably united, and that the leaders were then well disposed to use the Puck of their party as the inspiring spirit of the new organisation. It is equally evident that before another month had elapsed the 'situation had wholly changed. On April 1st, Lord Salisbury appears to have written to Lord Randolph Churchill in a strain which provoked that self-confident young gentleman to an open mutiny, and induced him to write to Lord Salisbury on April 3rd with a scorn which leaves ns in some surprise that the explosion due to the slow-match which he then lighted was for another month delayed. In the
interval Lord Randolph went to Birmingham, where he did not mend the state of things -by expatiating on his wish to see the National Union of Conservative Associations emulating the Birmingham Caucus in all things lawful,—the one unlaw- ful thing being, according to -Lord Randolph Churchill, the attempt to dictate to Conservative Members what policy they ought to pursue. In ' all other respects Lord Randolph encouraged the Birmingham Conservatives to expect that- the National Union of Conservative Associations would emulate the proceedings of the Birmingham Caucus, and
referred to the disinclination at head-quarters to sanction such an improvement in their organisation as the obso- lete scruples of men who did not ' understand their times. That Birmingham speech did not improve the relations between the heads of the ConServative Parliamentary party and Lord Randolph and his National Union. And when at last Sir Stafford Northcote had accused him of playing " bonnet" to the Conservatives in the interest of the Government, the very Council of which he was chairman felt that they were becoming a revolutionary power, rather than a staff iu the hands of the Conservative leaders. Last Friday a motion was made in the Council to the effect that it was essential to the interests of the party that the Council of the Conservative Union should' co-operate heartily with the Central Committee of the party ; and the motion, which Lord Randolph Churchill regarded as one of want of confidence in himself, was carried by four or five votes. Lord Randolph, in consequence, resigned the chairmanship of the Council,-and on the same day voted against Mr. A. Balfour's amendment to the motion of the Government to devote morning sittings on Tuesday and Friday to Government business. And now the whole quarrel is openly confessed. We see that ever since April 1st—a very ap- propriate day—the struggle between Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Salisbury has been going on, and that at length, and for the present, Lord Salisbury has triumphed. The triumph, too, has been a double one. Not only has Lord Randolph been driven from the control of the Conservative organisation, but he has been tempted into publishing a letter which, when read by the side of the letter of April 3rd to Lord Salisbury which has also come to light, will certainly be thought any- thing but straightforward by the Conservative party at large. In the letter which appeared in the morning papers of Wednes- day, Lord Randolph twice denies that he had ever proposed to make the Council of the National Union " the Caucus of the party." The second denial may stand, for it only denies that Lord Randolph wished to make the Union " a Caucus which should dictate to Conservative Members of Parliament and te• local associations ;" a kind of Caucus which he has expressly deprecated. But the first denial, that he ever spoke at Birmingham of the Council in question becoming the Caucus of the party, is thoroughly uncandid. He did undoubtedly urge at Birmingham,—and he had urged still more explicitly in the letter to Lord Salisbury which was published in the Standard 'of Wednesday, the National Union of Con- servative Associations ought to be made the central organisa- tion of the party: all over England, not only in the great cities, but in the rural districts, and ought to emulate the Birming- ham Caucus in everything but its habit of dictating to Members • what policy they should pursue. In all other respects he praised the Liberal Caucus of Birmingham — not even objecting to the word,--and held it distinctly up to the emulation of the National Union. In the letter of April 3rd to Lord Salisbury he explains his meaning even more explicitly. This is what Lord Randolph wrote to Lord Salisbury on April 3rd :—" The Delegates at the Conference were evidently of opinion that if the principles of the Conservative Party were to obtain popular support,-the organisation of the party would have to becomes) an imitation, thoroughly real and bond fide in its nature, of
that popular form of representative organisation which had contributed so greatly to the triumph of the Liberal Party in 1880, and which was best known to the public by the name of the Birmingham Caucus. The Caucus may be, perhaps, a name of evil sound and omen in the ears of aristocratic- or privileged classes, but it is undeniably the only form of poli- tical organisation which can collect, guide, and control for common objects large masses of electors ; and there is nothing in this particular form of political combination which is in the least repugnant to the working classes in this country." That with this key to this meaning Lord Salisbury should have re- garded Lord Randolph Churchill's speech at Birmingham on April 16th as an avowal that he intended to turn the National Union of Conservative Associations into a strong Conservative Caucus, was inevitable ; and even without this private com- mentary, no sensible reader of his speech misunderstood, or could have misunderstood, his meaning. It is clear that the ambitious young Tory demagogue follows some of his proto- types in denying in the letter what is true• in the spirit ; and the evidence that this is so will hardly increase the popularity which he is so eager to attain.
It is clear, we think, that Lord Randolph Churchill, admir- ably fitted as he is for the part of the demagogue, is not well fitted for political strategy and mancenvre. lie has no finesse, no power of giving the turn he wishes to the tendencies with which he has to deal, without setting everybody in a fume. The letter which he wrote to Lord Salisbury on April 3rd, with the consent, he tells us, of the majority of his colleagues on the Council of the National Union, was a very rude and offensive letter, and yet without the smallest tinge of political earnestness to carry the rudeness off. No doubt it was the offspring of a series of quarrels with his leaders, some of which had taken place within the walls of the House of Commons, and some by letter. But a series of quarrels culminating in this fashion, is not a good evidence of tactical power. So far as we can judge, Lord Randolph. has none of his great prototype's reticence and detachment. He has something of the "barbarism " of the English Peerage about him,—that indifference to shades of feeling which makes it impossible for him to do anything effectual except by the vulgar method of " rushing " it. It was not in this way that Mr. Disraeli" educated " his party. A bull in a china-shop ex- hibits about as much dexterity and consideration for.the neigh- bourhood of delicate and costly things, as Lord Randolph has exhibited in the National Conservative Union. How differently Mr. Disraeli would have aced under the same circumstances How smooth he would have kept the relations with his leaders, until it was the right moment, if ever it had been the right moment, to break with them ! How profound and sad the sense of public duty would have been under which he would have separated himself from them in the course of such a negotiation as that which has been brought to light! How ten- derly he would have spoken of their view of the case, until they had declared open war upon him ! Lord Randolph has shown no qualities of this kind. He had evidently scoffed in private at his leaders long before it was in the least necessary to scoff in public. Nay, he scoffed at them in public,—in his speech at Birminghuna,—before the quarrel was final, and while negotiations for peace were still pending. All this is very coarse strategy, strategy not at all adapted to the public estimate formed at present of Lord Randolph's abilities, and of the extreme need in which his party stands of the help of those abilities. Clever as he is, he is evi- dently extremely ignorant,—so ignorant, that he has not even acquired the least knowledge of the depth of his own ignorance. Where that is the case, it is a mis- take to be malapert, for every exhibition of that character- istic is sure to make displays of ignorance more agree- able to others, and more certain to be shown up. The quarrel which the Tories have so injudiciously aired before the public exhibits not merely the extreme difficulty of reconciling aristocratic Conservatism with Tory democracy, but the special and aggravated difficulty which is encountered by Conservatives, where the leap into Tory democracy is advo- cated by a pert politician with no sense of the gravity of the change, no respect for the traditions of leadership, and no tenderness for the feelings of others. Lord Randolph Churchill acts like a youth who first suddenly draws away his father's chisir, by way of showing his high spirits, and then bluntly urges upon him the change of his profession. The shock pro- duced by the success of the trick is not the best preparation for the persuasiveness needed in order to give plausibility to a proposal so startling.
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