TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE COMING ELECTION.
EVERYBODY is prophesying about the result of the coming Election ; but nobody knows it, and very few pretend even to possess the knowledge. The better- informed a man is about the " signs " of popular feeling, the more gravely he shakes his head, and the more freely he confesses to his intimates that it "is even betting, and risky at that." If confidence means anything, the Glad- stonians have won already ; but then, it does not mean anything, except that those who feel it are confident—as were the Parisians before their last march upon Berlin.
The truth is, that as the voters multiply, and courage is further developed among those who dread pressure, the ballot keeps its secret more and more closely, for this very good reason. Nobody knows the opinions of the silent, or the undecided, or the liars ; and the proportion borne by those three classes to the noisy truth-tellers, tends, as the suffrage descends, to grow ever larger. The undecided are always numerous in any community; the liars, by which opprobrious word we mean the thousands who promise their votes according to their convenience, and then vote according to their prejudices, include whole classes ; and the silent are usually a clear majority. Reporters exhaust adjectives in describing the number of voters present in a public meeting and their enthusiasm, but they never mention the propor- tion which those present bear to the whole body of electors, or try to count those who stand smiling when their neigh- bours shout, delighted not with the arguments, but with the excitement which the arguments, the crowding, and the influence of noise on the nerves have all together pro- duced. The tone of the Press is no guide, for if there is one thing certain in politics, it is that newspapers sell irrespective of their opinions ; that, for example, the majority of those who buy Truth are immoveable Tories, as likely to be influenced by Mr. Labouchere as by the Pope or M. de Giers. The favourite local paper in Tory country districts is usually almost Red, just as the favourite paper of Scotchmen is sceptical and Unionist ; and the London Press and the London vote have frequently no relation at all to each other. They had none, it may be affirmed, in the last election to the County Council. The talk of tap-rooms, it is said, reveals more ; but the talk of tap-rooms is one-sided, the parties frequenting different public-houses, while an im- mense majority do not use such places for conversation at all. As for canvassing, it was a fair enough guide when the names of the voters were published; but now the expertest canvassers know, and if beaten confess, that their lists are usually only indications, hardly more trustworthy than the impressions they gather from general talk as they go along. How should it be otherwise, indeed, when in every Chamber which uses the ballot, the public vote and the secret vote are seldom in accord ; and when every Member in our own House of Commons confesses that if secret voting were adopted, the Whips could never foretell the result of any division ? All these causes tend to make prophesying vain ; and there are two others, neither of them much dwelt on, which help greatly to stultify calculations. One, and a most important one, is the double effect of promises. There is a notion abroad, stronger, we think, among Con- servatives than Liberals, that promises gain votes, and no doubt that is in part true ; but then—what everybody forgets—promises also lose them. A pledge is never given which does not alienate somebody. Whole classes of voters will vote, it is believed, in July, not from any view upon Home-rule, but because their candidates promise a short legal day, or the taxation of ground-rents, or a division of rates, or Local Option, or Disestablishment, or any one of the Utopian plans with which our political John Laws are going to extinguish poverty, hard work, and in- equality in men's stature. Nobody reckons up the voters who are disgusted with those promises, and either vote against those who make them, or silently stay away. There is a strong vein of scepticism in the English nature about the promise of pleasant things, and a strong proclivity to believe that the plausible are also the insincere. "He talk a deal too smooth, he do," expresses the thought of thousands who nevertheless applaud the " sentiments " which have made them doubt the speaker's worthiness to represent them. Everybody recognises this reflex action when the promises affect the liquor trade, but forgets that its influence extends to every promise whatsoever. There are thousands, for instance, in the country whom nothing whatever would induce, supposing the question serious, to vote for an anti-vaccinationist, who would, in fact, as soon vote for a murderer ; yet the theory in every great borough is that votes are to be had by promising to consider favourably the ideas of that special variety of misbelievers. Nothing could seem to many observers more fortunate than the energy with which Mr. Chamberlain took up the scheme of pensions for the old, so much so that his enemies pronounced it a clever "electioneering dodge ;" but now it appears that his proposal seriously irritates Friendly Societies with millions of subscribers. Promises of Disestab- lishment have a still wider and more uncertain effect, because they stir into action not only the voters who care on either side about that great change, but the immense- class of pious women, who have, it is true, no votes, but whose influence reaches to half the cottages of the King- dom. Of all promises, however, perhaps those of most uncertain effect are promises of municipal expenditure, which invariably arouse, besides the hopes of those whc. desire more work or wages, the fears of those who, paying no direct tax except rates, watch any increase in those rates with a suspicious anger of the most active kind.
The second cause of uncertainty to which we have alluded as on seldom mentioned, is one also which it is very difficult to estimate. It is the change which is always going on in the general appreciation of the character of public men. It is now six years since the last Election, and in that time hundreds of thousands of voters must have modified their judgment., favourably or the reverse, upon Mr. Gladstone considered as a ruler of men. It is simply impossible to tell in what direction, or to what degree, that change has occurred ; but that it has occurred in some direction and in some degree, is inevitable, as it is also inevitable that it will in a considerable measure affect the voting. Hundreds of thousands of votes will be given under no impulse whatever, except the voter's judgment as to Mr. Gladstone's personal character or capacity to govern ; and every variation in that judgment will be a perfectly unknown and unknowable factor of great influence on the result. The rise of Mr. Balfour, again, which is a new fact, having occurred since this Parliament was elected, will weigh with an untold multitude of electors, and in what way probably no human being could accurately decide. Any three politicians in any club, Tory or Radical, would give three different opinions, the first being that Mr. Balfour has "caught on," the second that Mr. Balfour has grown into a bogey, and the third that Mr. Balfour, though liked, has not yet touched the popular imagination.
We have not a notion, we frankly confess, as to which opinion is the correct one; but that Mr.Balfour's personality will be a new and an unreckonable factor in this Election, we have no doubt whatever. So also, though of course in a much, very much less degree, will be any change in the judgment passed upon any well-known leader on either side, a change which must have occurred, which must influence votes, if it be only in special districts, yet which is, so to speak, absolutely imponderable. There is no guide to the estimate formed by voters of persons, except the cheers with which their names are received, or the welcome their presence elicits ; and both indications, though not wholly fallacious, are capable of misinter- pretation. It is, we believe, quite certain that, tried by this test, Mr. Morley is the second popular favourite in England ; but that does not prove that, if we had the American Constitution, Liberal England—in the absence, of course, of Mr. Gladstone—would make Mr. Morley President. Crowds may be anxious to hear a man whom, nevertheless, they do not intend to follow.
The practical conclusion we draw from these data is that cocksureness about the Election on either side is unwise, and that the Gladstonia.ns in particular should study Hosea Biglow's advice. They all assume a majority for their chief, though they differ to a degree unusual with political prophets as to its extent ; but they all, we imagine, omit certain necessary elements in the calculation. The experienced men among them rely in part on the new electors, and in part on the return of electors who, like Sir G. Trevelyan, feel cold when outside the Liberal Party, into that comfortable fold. They may be perfectly right, and believing as we do that the ballot keeps its secret, we shall religiously abstain from prophecy ; but they are unwise if they forget,—firstly, that the solid block of Con- servatism is entirely unchanged ; secondly, that the heavy Liberal Unionist vote is unchanged about Ireland ; thirdly, that Mr. Balfour's personality is an absolutely new factor in the struggle ; fourthly, that they have no means of telling the precise opinion created by the intestine war among the Parnellites, and the probability that Mr. Healy will be the Irish Premier ; and fifthly, that wild promises or promises meant to be bribes, have quite as strong a repelling as an attractive influence, the only question being which is the wider spread.
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