THE DEMOCRATIC ASPECT OF THE GOVERNMENT.
ris obvious that for the present at least the new Govern- ment is to be much more Democratic than Tory. What will happen in case the General Election should turn out in their favour we will not say. In that case, doubtless, with the prospect of a full Parliamentary term of Government before them, the old Tory heart would break out again, possibly even in the chief representative of Democracy himself. But for the present it is made clear, by a considerable number of different indications, that the Democratic policy has triumphed. In spite of his own personal adhesion to Mr. Childers's principle, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has declined to balance the new impost on Income-tax payers by any burden on the masses. Further, he has committed the Government to the Medical Relief Bill, as well as to a sweeping condemna- tion of the principle of coercive measures in Ireland, a condemnation which is almost comic in his mouth. Also, on two somewhat remarkable points of minor im- portance, it looks as if Lord Randolph Churchill were likely to .overrule the Cabinet in the Democratic direction. Observe the emphatic protest which he made, without any repudiation on the part of his leader, against engrafting on the law of England the Scotch law which permits the preliminary examination of witnesses on oath when a crime has been com- mitted, but before any person has been accused of that crime, for the purpose of discovering the origin of that crime. Observe also the hope which he held out that, in relation even to the Crofters' Bill, which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had declined to carry further, the Government might reconsider their deter- mination, in deference to Mr. Gladstone's strongly-expressed opinion that some such Bill is required if order is to be re- established in the Highlands. So far as we can see, the Democratic policy has, for the present, triumphed all along the line. First, the Tories gracefully evade a tax on poor con- sumers which they think demanded by principle. They are eager to guard against the danger of depriving something like a quarter of the number of agricultural labourers otherwise entitled to a vote, of their privilege, in consequence of their having inadvertently received medical relief from the parish doctor. Nay, the Tories publicly express horror at the notion that any man's liberty of keeping silence as to the origin of a crime should be designedly overruled, in order that the authors of those crimes may be discovered,—a most remark- able innovation on the old Toryism. And most curious of all, the Tories having decided to burke a Land Bill the principles of which they regard as an attack on landlordism, are to be called upon to reconsider their determination at the suggestion of the great author of the Irish Land Acts. And as for asking for any renewal of the more useful instruments for repressing crime in Ireland, the Tories are positively scandalised at the notion,—so shocking do they deem it to all well-constituted political minds. All this must be very " upsetting " to the old Conservatives. They must feel very like the man in the sedan-chair without any bottom, who said that if he did not know he was riding he should think he was walking. They must feel that if they did not know they were under a Tory Government they should think they were under a Radical Government. For the Tory Government, like the old sedan- chair, has got the bottom knocked out of it, and it is only so far as "the name of the thing" goes, that the genuine Tories can regard themselves as being in power at all.
The danger of the position is greatest in relation to Ireland. There a Tory Government, which governs by favour of Mr. Parnell, is far more dangerous than a Liberal Govern- ment which is bound to show its independence of Mr. Parnell. Already the violent party in Ireland are seizing their oppor- tunity. At Holycross, near Thurles, on Sunday, there was held a meeting of the National party, which was ad- dressed by Mr. John O'Connor, M.P., one of Mr. Parnelrs most devoted followers. In speaking to a resolution describing the landlords as "unjust and inhuman," and the recent reductions of rent as entirely inadequate, Mr. John O'Connor is reported to have said that, "although that, perhaps, was as far as they dare go at present, he would take the liberty of dissenting from the last speaker, and saying that he thought no rent would be a fair one at present," an assertion greeted with "enthusiastic cheering and waving of hats." "He held with the early programme of the Land League that the Land Ques- tion would not be settled until landlordism is abolished root and branch [great cheering], until rent had been made to cease in reality as it had already ceased to exist in fact." The hon. Member did not explain how that which had ceased to exist in fact, had not ceased to exist in reality. "Rent," he went on, "could not be paid. [Cheers.] They were on the eve of a new struggle, in which it would not be necessary to issue a No-rent manifesto [cheers] to bring the Irish tenant-farmer up to that sticking-point when he would put his back against the ditch saying, Here I stand, I will pay no rent, and I will stick to my farm at the same time.' [Great cheering.]" Now, this open avowal of the policy of plunder on the part of the Member for Tipperary, at such a moment as this, is a very dangerous omen indeed for the future of a Government which has begun by flaunting in everyone's face the boast that they will avoid anything like coercion. We do not suppose that Mr. Parnell has at present any wish at all to see a new No-rent epidemic. He knows well enough at bottom that it would mean the first step towards the cessation of all respect for civil contract in Ireland ; in other words, the cessation of civilisation there. But Mr. Parnell, Irish king though he may be, is Irish king only while the people are satisfied with him. He may find it quite impossible to resist the effects of such speeches as Mr. John O'Connor's speech last Sunday at Holycross, a speech the popular influence of which will spread like lightning through the land. The pressure on Mr. Parnell to originate, or at least sanction, a new No-rent agitation, may easily be too strong to be resisted. And with a Tory Government who have positively condemned their predecessors for even thinking of renewing the more reasonable provisions of the Crimes Act, provisions which, as Mr. Gladstone justly said, so far from being coercive, are the very provisions which some eminent and able lawyers think it would be wise and safe to extend to the whole United Kingdom,—with such a Government, we say, committed by its first act to a policy decidedly more Democratic than the policy of the Liberals, to meet the rush of a new tidal wave of lawlessness higher and more formidable than that of 1881, will. be most difficult. If the Liberals had been in office, they would at least have felt that they could rely for assistance in firmly resisting such an agitation on the Tories. But the Tories are in office without their principles. They are outbidding the Liberals in their appeals to the Irish people. Truly Mr. Gladstone might well say that the act of the new govern- ment in pronouncing their disapproval of any exceptional strengthening of the law, after the expiration of the Crimes Act, had laid upon them one of the heaviest responsibilities which a Government could well incur.
There is another serious aspect in the Democratic attitude of the new Government. Supposing it to fail, as we believe it will fail, in taking the wind out of the sails of the Liberals,-- which is, of course, what is desired,—will it not succeed in taking all the confidence out of Conservative hearts,—which is not at all what they desire ? Will it not rob the Govern- ment of all the natural support on which they ought to be able to rely, without giving them the unnatural support for which they probably hope ? If Mr. John O'Connor's very broad hints are taken in Ireland, what will English Conservatives say ex- cept that the refusal of Tories to come up even to the Liberal standard of caution, had been the cause of this renewed. and disastrous agitation ? Will not that destroy their confi- dence in their party and their party leaders, and take all the- heart out of them for the future? Can we for a long time to come look to Lord Salisbury and his colleagues as the repre- sentatives of the traditional Conservatism of the English. people ? And will not the loss of such a make-weight in the Constitution be one of the most serious losses imaginable to the future steadiness and evenness of progress in English political life ?
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