TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TONE OF THE OPPOSITION.
ON the whole, and with a certain exception, which is not in any sense due to the system of party Govern- ment, we have much reason to be satisfied with the tone of the Opposition, both in Parliament and in the Press. Of course, there has been a natural tendency to cavil. Party Government would not work well at all if there were not a decided wish to find fault with the Govern- ment of the day, and a bias which Lord Beaconsfield very pithily described when he called it the duty of an Op- position to oppose. That seems to us a very inadequate definition of its true duty. An Opposition exists for the sake of criticising, and for the sake of criticising keenly, for the sake of eliciting doubts and threshing out ques- tionable aspects of the policy of the Government, but not for the duty of opposing for the sake of opposition. And that is just what, so far as we can judge, the present Opposition, at all events in Parliament, and to a certain more limited extent also in the Press, is discharging very ably and without anything like extravagance. No doubt there are cavils, and a few mere cavils. Sir William Harcourt's amusing attack on Lord Salisbury for illus- trating the dangers and mischiefs of Home-rule from the difficulty of the Transvaal Government in keeping out of flirtation with foreign Powers, was an instance of such a cavil. Considering that the Government had publicly thanked President Kruger for his moderation and good sense in handing over Dr. Jameson and his colleagues to the British Government for trial and punishment, it was ridiculous to suppose that Lord Salisbury's use of the German Emperor's interference to illustrate the very great danger of allowing a State under the wing of the United Kingdom to feel its own independence so vividly that it is tempted to embroil us with foreign Powers, rather than submit to the smallest risk of the reduction of its inde- pendence, was a gross attack on President Kruger. There seems no doubt that an appeal to foreign Governments to interfere had, in the opinion of our British Agent in the Transvaal, been really made, and, as we know, not only made, but made with a good deal of success. We do not know that we can severely blame President Kruger for fearing keenly, under the circumstances, that Dr. Jameson's raid implied more serious dangers than, as a matter of fact, it did imply. And if it had been backed up by any official influence, no doubt it would be very hard to blame the Boer Government for crying out for help, even though the cry were evidently premature. But what can be more clear, and what can be more important to insist upon, than the light which this incident throws on the cmsequences which would follow if a semi-independent Ireland found herself in the same circumstances as the Transvaal State ? In the first place she would certainly not have a cautious Dutchman at her head, and in the second place she would certainly not have a reticent and more or less dumb Dutch democracy behind her chief magistrate. The Irish Minister would probably be ten times as anti-English as President Kruger, and the Irish democracy would be ten times as rash and screamy, and, indeed, ten times as eloquent, as the Boer burghers. The disposition to invite foreign interference which appears to have existed at Pretoria, would have been ten times as threatening and overbearing in Dublin. And we think Lord Salisbury deserved the hearty thanks of all patriotic Englishmen for pointing this out, and pointing it out at a time when, in consequence of the public expression of thanks to President Kruger, it could not have been sup- posed to bear hardly upon him. Thanks to Lord Salisbury, the lesson of the German Emperor's interference will never be forgotten, if at any future time the attempt to give Ireland a separate Legislature and Administration on condition that she should have no foreign policy or foreign relations of her own, should ever be revived. It was very natural for Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt to seize on this opportunity for finding fault with Lord Salisbury ; but in spite of the literary skill with which they both of them turned it to account, it was really a blunder on their part to bring out into such strong relief the immense danger of the policy which they themselves had, in relation to Ireland, proposed to pursue. Sir William Harcourt's criticism was more than a cavil ; it was a monstrous imprudence. And again it was, unfor- tunately, a mere cavil,—we wish it had not been a mere cavil,—to find fault with Lord Salisbury for following in Armenia the very policy of which Lord Rosebery had set him an example. If there had been any opening for a legitimate reproach on behalf of the last Government, chat Lord Salisbury had adopted a less courageous and less enterprising policy than their own, we should have been glad. Unfortunately, Lord Rosebery had not gone quite so far as Lord Salisbury in the direction of risking a great European collision, and therefore the reproaches directed to Lord Salisbury for his ill-success were singularly ill-timed. We heartily wish they had been more justified by the example of the previous Government, for in that case Lord Salisbury's own action might have been more heroic and more successful.
But with these exceptions, the tone of the Opposition has been, on the whole, both patriotic and statesman- like. Instead of acting as if the duty of the Opposi- tion were to oppose, they have, both on Venezuela and on the question of our naval armaments, lent the Govern- ment their hearty support. Their criticism has not been captious, has not been quarrelsome. It has been OR the most critical points sympathetic and generous. Sir William Harcourt, though he quizzed Mr. Curzon on his- very unfortunate anticipation of the peace and quiet which a strong Unionist Government would bring to England, made no attempt to charge the present Government with any responsibility for the present complications, and indeed gave them very valuable and hearty support. The criticism of the Opposition was cordial criticism. It went to strengthen the Government, not to weaken. it. And on the whole, we think we may say the same of the criticism of the Opposition Press, and especially of its ablest organ, the Daily Chronicle, which, though it has crotchets of its ow; has certainly done a great deal to strengthen the hopes of peace and to mature- the policy of the Government both in relation to foreign Powers and in relation to our South African possessions. And it has done so without ignoring the one anxious• question in relation to our South African possessions,— the motives which have affected the policy of the Chartered Company, and which may have had not a little to do with the recent troubles in the Transvaal. On that point we cannot say that the criticism of all the Opposition journals has been always bold and independent, though the Daily Chronicle has set so brilliant an example. But no point needs more careful scrutiny than the con- siderations which led to the raid in the Transvaal, and which appear to have been some time in operation before the attack was opened. That is a point which greatly needs elucidation, and we cannot say that all the Oppo- sition journals seem disposed to bring an adequate search-light to bear upon it. If there is anything in the world that we fear, it is that pecuniary considera- tions may be brought to bear on our political obligations, and may seriously complicate and discredit them. This. is a matter in which the adequacy of the criticism doe& not depend merely on party ties, but on the moral genius of the critic, whether he be on the side of the Unionists or on the side of the Opposition ; and we shall hope that the Unionists and the Opposition alike will unite in the effort to guard us against the terrible dangers of a Panama scandal in the United Kingdom. As yet we have every reason to hope that the Opposition, both as regards leaders and journalists, may lend us very efficient help in clearing up the dubious aspects of our Chartered Company's policy. But we can hardly expect that on points of this kind, there is more to be hoped for from the Opposition than from the Ministerialists, or from the Ministerialists than from the Opposition.
Previous page
