TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLA.DSTONE'S THUNDERBOLT. HAS Mr. Gladstone upset the coach by his speech on Mr. Baines's Franchise Bill? We are not sure, for it is doubtful whether the old Conservatives who form Lord Palmerston's Reserve Guard consider that the Premier is the Government, or the Premier and the Cabinet. If they hold to the personal theory as they have once or twice done already they may growl and go on, but if to the constitutional one the first party vote may see the Ministry overthrown. Mr. Glad- stone is not Mr. Lowe to be let drop whenever he brings his chief into a serape, and though he did not avowedly speak for the Government, as the Times says he did, there can be no marked repudiation of his opinions. Whatever the party effect of his speech, however, this much at least is certain, it has placed Mr. Gladstone in a different position towards the Liberal party. He intends to lead them, and not simply to neutralize their movement, as Lord Palmerston does, and the very fact of his leadership re-binds their organization. There may be various interpretations of his views on the suffrage, and still more various opinions on the expediency of those views, but this much at least is clear, reform has become once more a substantive party question. Mr. Gladstone repudiates all the trickery by which the discussion of the subject has been marked during the last six years. He does not deem it decent, as so many Liberals have done, to treat the whole subject of suffrage as one on which the nation The only defect of his speech, in our judgment, was its incompleteness. Mr. Gladstone was delivering a manifesto, and not merely a speech, and he should have accompanied it with the reservations which would enable the country com- pletely to comprehend his ends. As we understand him, he is not prepared to destroy or even to seriously impair the repre- 'entation of the nation for the sake of the representation of a class, but only desires to include the classes who are new left outside, to give by degrees a fair share of power to every man on whom rests liability to taxation. It is difficult to conceive Mr. Gladstone desiring to swamp all classes under the numerical weight of one, however competent or how- ever enlightened, to give all power to artizans any more than all power to Peer,. This, however, is the very gist and essence of the twitter, the point upon which alone Liberal thinkers entertain a strong doubt, and it is upon this he should have dilated much more fully. By what machinery does he propose to introduce all working men, or a very large. section of working men, into the Constitution, and yet not place. the suffrage in their hands alone ? Mr. Baines's Bill would not do any mischief in that direction, for though it would double the constituencies in the great towns, it leaves the distribution of seats, the counties, the medium boroughs,. the nominee boroughs, pretty much where they were, and the House now elected would probably be returned by the new as by the old constituency. But the principle of Mr. Baines's Bill is that of simple reduction according to rating, and must end sooner or later in a household suffrage without modifications, that is, the autocracy of the working class. Whenever they were united, no other interest, or set of ideas, or kind of culture could obtain even a hearing, and they would be united whenever they were strongly moved. That they might use their power very fairly we should be the last to deny, for we do not believe working men .to be the enemies either of property or the Throne. But we deny their right to possess such exclusive power just as much as the right of the Peers, or of the employers of labour, or of the middle class. It is the nation which is to be represented, not one section of the nation, and the moment one class is supreme it ceases to be altogether trustworthy. Mr. Gladstone praised. the working men with great force, and much justice, but they at any rate are not better politicians than the Peers, or the landed gentry, or the middle class. Would any sane man give the Peers all power ? The landed gentry had it, and they gave us a debt of eight hundred millions, the corn laws, the system of protection, and a government of Ireland almost as bad as that of Poland now is. The middle class have the whole power now, and though it is composite, and corrected by the strength of the aristocracy, it is often intolerably selfish. In every dispute between capital and labour it is always in favour of its own side,—few middle-class men are quite sane on the subject of strikes,—and though it has for some years been just in the matter of taxes, we are by no means sure that the justice will last. If it sees a chance of being rid of the income-tax it will not, we fear, hesitate long because without the income-tax labour will pay more than wealth. The present holders of the franchise govern decently, and so would working voters ; but the nation ought to govern itself, not to be governed by any person or class. Mr. Gladstone might support Mr. Baines's Bill with safety so far as it went by itself; but unless we misunder- stand him, it is not for the principle of that Bill he contends, but for something widely different, not for a gradual slipping down until we reach democracy, but for the maintenance of the Constitution with working men admitted to their share of its power. If this is not his meaning he is bound to explain himself, and tell us the grounds on which he believes that a suffrage based on numbers alone will not end in the exclusion of the educated and the rick in the extinction of all variety, in a uniformity fatal to all the higher objects for which we guard the national life. He says the working men will elect men belonging to those classes who guide them now, but that unfortunately has very little bearing upon the matter. Mr. Bentinck and Mr. Bright if elected by the same people are pretty sure to vote substantially alike, and it is uniformity of direction, not mere uniformity among representatives, which it is essential to avoid. The speech is absolutely right in principle, and will give Mr. Gladstone a firmer hold over Liberals ; but before thinking men can follow him blindly lie must be more detailed.
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