TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE DISSOLUTION.
IT is, of course, quite possible that after all there may be no Dissolution, but all the signs point in the opposite direction, and as we write it seems not unlikely that at the Council to be held by the Queen on Monday next the formal acts required before an appeal to the people can take place will be duly accomplished. Assuming that this is the case, and that within the next few weeks we shall be in the thick of a General Election, it is necessary to inquire what is the duty of Unionists. First, in our opinion, is the duty of remaining Unionists and maintain- ing intact the party organisation. It isneedless to remark that we do not say this because we put party above country, but rather because the collapse of the Liberal party and its present condition of demoralisation is a terrible warning of what happens when the party ties are lightly and wantonly relaxed. It is right and necessary that men should abandon their party when some far-reaching and all-important question is involved, but they must take care that such abandonment is always based on sound reasons, and not on mere weariness or restlessness or on petty and personal grounds. Our Parliamentary Constitution only works well under a properly organised party system, and hence he who breaks up the party system without due cause, and takes action which tends to substitute the dangerous and demoralising system of groups, is doing an injury to the best interests of the nation. But to say that Unionists must be loyal to their party is by no means the same thing as to say that they must b 3 blind and uncritical supporters of any one body of men, or to argue that because the existing Cabinet is a Unionist Cabinet absolute confidence must be reposed in all its members. To ask for such an attitude is to demand not loyalty, but slavishness. It is in the highest sense a mark of party loyalty to insist upon administrative efficiency, and to require not merely that we shall have the best political principles, but also the best men and the best organised Cabinet to lead us and to give effect to those principles. To put the matter in a nut- shell, Unionists who are restless and dissatisfied, and who look with misgiving upon much that has been done in the past by the present Ministry, ought not therefore to desert the Unionist cause, but ought rather to insist that the guardianship of that cause should be more efficiently carried out. Th3 rank-and-file of the party have the power to do so if they will only use their power. No one wants slavishness in the leaders any more than in the fol- lowers, but, after all, the leaders are in effect chosen by the rank-and-file and receive their mandate of authority from them.
The principles which must specially influence members of the Unionist party at the General Election are not difficult to state. In the first place, there is the main- tenance of the Union with Ireland, and the absolute refusal to countenance in any shape or form the disin- tegration of the citadel of the Empire,—the United King- dom. Next, there is the securing of a settlement in South Africa which shall place the late Republics beyond all possible risk of being again severed from the Empire, shall secure equal rights to all white men, and shall make any return to a racial ascendency for the Dutch impossible. Again, there is the reorganisation of the Army into an efficient war-machine. Beyond these specific points there are also the requirements of a sound foreign policy, conducted without either weakness or jealousy, and of general ad- ministrative efficiency. These, we take it, are at the present moment the things which Unionists of all shades of opinion most ardently desire,—the things which they regard as of overwhelming importance. When a General Election is upon them it is the business and duty of all true Union- ists to consider how they can best obtain them. Can it honestly be said, however much they may be dissatisfied with the present Government, that they will obtain them by putting a Liberal Government in office,—a Govern- ment of which all the members will of necessity be theo- retical Home-rulers, of which many members will certainly be inclined to a weak and sentimental handling of the South African settlement, and of which a considerable portion will regard expenditure on the Army and Navy with jealous if not actually hostile eyes ? But if the way to get what Unionists want is not to fling the Government of the country into the midst of that free fight called the Liberal party, how else is the Unionist elector to obtain it ? Not, he will very naturally feel, by giving a blank cheque to the present Government constituted and organised exactly as it is. Very possibly the criticism of the present Ministry has gone too far ; very possibly its faults are exaggerated and its virtues overlooked. Still, the fact remains that though the confidence of the country may be undiminished in individual members—personally we believe it is undimin- ished in Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach—it is very much diminished in regard to the Cabinet as a political entity. There are, we believe, thousands of electors who would refuse to give a vote that would keep the Government as at present constituted in office. Such men argue that unless and until they receive some outward and visible sign that things will not go on after the Election exactly as they have been going on during the last five years, with "all the old men in all the old places," they cannot support the Govern- ment. Now we do not altogether agree with this atti- tude, nor could we light-heartedly adopt it. Anxious as we are for reconstruction, and none could be more anxious, we feel the danger of putting a Liberal Ministry in office —constituted as a Liberal Ministry must be—too acutely to make us favour any action tending to that end. A very large number of Unionists, however, and especially those who do not study the political situation very closely, do not realise the risks that would be run from a Liberal Ministry just now. They are willing, that is, to ignore the remoter convquences of abstention, and think only of marking clearly their disapproval of certain aspects of the present regime. In other words, they will not vote unless a reconstruction of the Cabinet takes place before the General Election. Any other course, they declare, will stereotype an Ad- ministration with whose internal organisation and way of conducting public business they are dissatisfied.
That being so, we appeal to the leaders of the Unionist party to announce the reconstruction of the Cabinet before the General Election, and not after it. If they do that, and do the work of reconstruction thoroughly and well, they will, we believe, retain for Unionist candidates in every con- stituency hundreds of votes which otherwise, would not be cast at all, or might even in certain cases be given to members of the Liberal party. If the Government go to the country with a reconstructed and rejuvenated Cabinet they will, we believe, once more receive the con- fidence of the general body of Unionist electors. If they insist on going to it just as they are, and on leaving the country under the impression that the nation, if it wants a Unionist Government, must be ruled for another six years by exactly the present Cabinet and by no other, they court a most severe rebuff. To postpone reconstruction till after the Election is to miss the chance of retaining the help of thousands of men, who will otherwise remain neutral, or even fall away altogether. And why should not recon- struction take place before instead of after the Election ? It is admitted by the inner circle of politicians, though the fact that they make such an admission is unfortu- nately not realised by the rank-and-file of Unionists, that some reconstruction must take place. If it takes place before the polls, the new Cabinet may rightly feel that it has been endorsed by the I nation. If reconstruction follows the polls, the new Cabinet will not have received that stamp of confidence. Hence, as firm and convinced Unionists most anxious that the Unionist party shall retain power and that the country shall be governed on Unionist principles, we desire that recon- struction shall precede an appeal to the people. If we wished the Unionist party ill instead of good nothing would please us better than to see the Ministers go to the country with the cry of " The Cabinet, the old Cabinet, and nothing but the old Cabinet." It is because we are loyal Unionists that we ask for reconstruction, and call on all Unionists who share our views to use their best endeavours to bring this view of the question home to the leaders of the party.
It is not for us to state how the difficult and anxious work of reconstruction ought to be carried out. We can, however, and will, state what we believe are the principles upon which earnest Unionists throughout the country desire that reconstruction should take place. They are not the " fads" or " whims" of any one writer or any one news- paper, but the crystallised opinions of thinking men throughout the party. We may tabulate them as follows :- (1) The new Cabinet must have a real Prime Minister, —i.e., a Prime Minister who does not hold a great office, but is a true foreman of his gang and super- intends, and to a certain extent co-operates in, the work of every Department,—and that Prime Minister should be Lord Salisbury.
(2) In the new Cabinet the office of Secretary of State for War must be placed in the hands of our ablest and most vigilant administrator,—a man who will know what he wants and be able to insist on getting it.
The new Cabinet must be constructed on the prin- ciple that the strength of a chain is its weakest link, and none but men of really high capacity must be included.
(4) The new Cabinet must be reduced in numbers, for experience has shown that the largeness of the present Cabinet has not conduced to efficiency.
(5) The new Cabinet must be rejuvenated by the inclusion of a larger number of young men, for while a composite body like a Cabinet needs experi- ence, it also needs vigour and initiative.
What members of the present Cabinet should be asked to retire or who should take their places cannot profitably be discussed in a newspaper, but it is obvious that among the younger politicians on the Unionist side are sevetal men of a high degree of administrative ability. Lord Selborne and Mr. Brodrick, for example, to mention only two, are both men fit for the responsibilities of Cabinet office. With equal certainty can this be said of Mr. Gerald Balfour, who has shown during his tenure of the office of Chief Secretary that he has many of the highest qualities of statesmanship. In spite of the grossly unjust way in which he has been attacked by a section of the Irish loyalists, he has pursued the policy which he knew to be right, and has proved himself worthy of the confidence of the nation. But it is not our business to suggest the names of the younger politicians. All we desire to insist on is that if our leaders mean to do their duty to the Unionist party and to the nation, they must go to the country with a reconstructed Cabinet. Only in that way can they reinvigorate the party and rally its full strength to support the cause of the Union, of the Empire, of a sound and final settlement in South Africa, and of an efficient administration in the matter of national defence. (3)
Previous page
