TOPICS OF THE DAY.

MR. BALFOUR'S " CLEVERNESS." NOTHING is more painful at the present moment to those who are personally attached to Mr. Balfour, and who, in spite of his deplorably " hedging " attitude on the Fiscal question, still hope that he may in the future be able to regain something of his old position as a statesman, than to hear the panegyrics that are passed by those who profess to be "'cute party men on his cleverness and on the masterly way in which he has kept his majority together during the present Session. Such votaries of the school of Taper and Tadpole wax eloquent over the way in which the Premier has managed, while not breaking with the Chamberlainites, to keep the Free-fooders from actually voting against him, and speak with enthusiasm of the manner in which he has so bam- boozled both sections that his majority on a vote of censure at the end of the Session was considerably larger than that at the beginning. He has, they tell us, actually improved his position in the House, and we are asked to believe that this has been accomplished by a kind of supernatural cleverness of which he alone has the secret.

Yet in reality Mr. Balfour has done nothing but what has been done a hundred times before by adroit political tacticians. The whole secret of his alleged cleverness is laid bare, plain for all men to see, in that masterly analysis of the mind of the party politician which Lowell gave to the world sixty years ago in the " Biglow Papers." There is to be found, reduced to a formula which will fit all cases, the system which has enabled Mr. Balfour to keep his majority together without disclosing his own mind on the question which confronts the nation. Take, for example, the immortal declaration which ends the creed of the candidate for the Presidency. One has only to substitute one word in it, " Fiscal " for " Slavery," and we get a declaration which exactly describes, we will not say Mr. Balfour's real attitude in regard to Chamberlainism—we are as convinced as ever that he is at heart a Chamberlainite, though a Chamberlainite without the courage of his convictions—but Mr. Balfour's House of Commons attitude in regard to the question of Protection versus Free-trade. Whenever Mr. Balfour spoke in the House of Commons this Session in answer to attempts to draw from him his real opinion on the topic of the day, his words were always in effect an echo of the quatrain :- " Tell 'em thet on the Fiscal question

I'm right, although to speak I'm lawth ; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, An' leaves me frontin' South by North."

Again and again Mr. Balfour has left each side with the impression that he is " right " on the Fiscal question, and that, when the time comes to disclose his views, the other side will find that they have been entirely mistaken as regards them. But, of course, Mr. Balfour has given no pledges—or, at any rate, no public pledges—to any one. Like Lowell's candidate, he does not approve of pledges :—

" About thet darned Proviso matter I never hed a grain o' doubt, Nor I aint one my sense to scatter So'st no one couldn't pick it out; "I don't appruve o' givin' pledges ; You'd ough' to leave a feller free, An' not go knockin' out the wedges To ketch his fingers in the tree; Pledges air awfle breachy cattle Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out,— Ez long'z the people git their rattle, Wut is there fer'm to grout about ?"

Most certainly no one can accuse Mr. Balfour of having run any risk of having his fingers " caught in the tree." If it be cleverness to avoid such risks, he has without question shown cleverness. Very possibly Mr. Balfour has never read the " Biglow Papers," but in spite of that he echoes the sentiments of the candidate in spirit, if not in words. Take, for example, the emphatic way in which Mr. Balfour from time to time pronounces a very definite opinion on an indefinite point, or minor point which is hardly in dispute, and repudiates with scorn the possibility of there being any ambiguity or doubt as to his views :—

My love fer North an' South is equil,

So ru jest answer plump an' frank,—

No matter wut may be the sequil,— Yes, Sir, I ant agin a Bank."

The candidate was emphatically " agin a Bank," and Mr.

Balfour is as emphatically for " Retaliation " when it can be accomplished without injury to our trade. Again, Mr. Balfour makes a firm stand, like the candidate, in regard to being driven to answer questions, though he never has stooped, and never will stoop, to shunning the test pre- sented by public issues :- "Es to the anewerin' o' questions,

I'm an of ox at bein' druv, Though I :lint one thet ary test shuns '11 give our folks a helpin' shove ; Kind o' promiscuous I go it Fer the holl country, an' the ground I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, Is pooty gen'ally all round."

So much for Mr. Balfour's cleverness. It is, as we have said, nothing but the common form of the party politician in a difficulty who has no settled convictions of his own on the question of the hour, and who does not look beyond keeping his party toaether. Now, as our readers know, we are anything but enemies of the party system, and believe that, in spite of its obvious evils, it is a necessary and wholesome adjunct to representative government. Therefore, in the abstract we have no objection to the politician who tries to keep his party together. But such "keeping together" must be carried out with judgment and insight, and not be pursued in such a way as to defeat the desired end. The party leader and politician ought to realise that there are certain great questions which, if once raised and once before the country, must be faced fairly and openly, and that party unity cannot be maintained either by ignoring them or adopting'an ambiguous attitude in regard to them. Such ambiguity of attitude produces results more destructive in the end than a plain and clear decision. There is a story told of M. Thiers which well illustrates this point, and shows how difficult it is to get politicians to realise that they must look at the indirect and ulterior consequences of action or inaction, and not concentrate their attention merely on immediate results. After the fall of the Orleans Monarchy, a friend of Thiers asked him why he did not take a particular line of action in the year preceding the Revolution. "If I had done that," said Thiers, annoyed at the stupidity of his friend in not realising the tremendous danger of such a step, " the Monarchy would have fallen." He forgot to reflect that, though he did not take this dangerous step, the Monarchy fell, and that he did not, in fact, save it by refusing to run the risk. The case of Mr. Balfour is very much on all fours with this. Mr. Balfour prides himself on having refused to make clear his position in regard to the Fiscal question for fear the Unionist party should be broken in pieces. He forgets that, in spite of his refusal to speak out, it has been broken in pieces. In his excessive devotion to the ideal of a united party, he has lost the very thing that he has made such sacrifices to preserve, and, to adopt Congreve's description of the shepherdess, " he is the thing that he despises." He has not saved the Unionist party, and yet has destroyed that most valuable asset, the confidence of the nation in the straight- forwardness and unbending strengthof one of its chief public men. Had Mr. Balfour taken a firm line, and declared for or against Mr. Chamberlain, his party would not—could not, indeed—have been in a worse plight than it is ; and we should at least have had a Prime Minister not afraid to speak his mind to the nation. Once again we may go to the " Biglow Papers " to find Mr. Balfour's attitude defined, though this time not in scorn, but in sorrow:

"Afore men ? More. Man! It's there we fail; Weak plans grow weaker yit by lengthenin' Wut use in addin' to the tail, When it's the head 's in need o' strengthenin'? We wanted one thet felt all Chief From roots o' hair to sole o' stockin',

SquareTsot with thousan'-ton belief

In him an' us, of earth went rockin'!"

Alas ! neither for Free-trade nor against it have we found such a chief in Mr. Balfour. He has let the leadership of the country and of the party, if not of the House of Com- mons, slip from his hands, and he has not attained the object for which he has sacrificed himself, the unity of the party. That unity has for the time disappeared, and now will only be regained after a crushing defeat at the polls has made men realise that the country will not have Protection at any price. Then will come the time for re- union, and those Unionist Free-traders who have had the faith and the courage not to abandon Unionism, however great the temptation to join the Liberal party, will find their vocation in reuniting and reconstructing the Unionist party on a Free-trade basis.