TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GOSCHEN AT BRISTOL.
THE ring of Mr. Goschen's speech at Bristol is of that sterling kind, now unfortunately a little old-fashioned, which has a special attraction for British ears. We value genius in a Minister, we value breadth, we value popular qualities, but we value most of all, perhaps, that tone of nerve, and, on great subjects, of moral inflexibility, which makes us feel that the Minister, in expressing his own mind, happily represents the self-respect and mettle of the nation. There was this ring in Mr. Forster's speech at Bradford a month or two ago ; and we find it again,— and find it with even greater satisfaction where the subject treated is the external power of the United Kingdom, its duties to our Colonies and to the police of the seas,—in Mr. Goschen's terse and masculine speech at the Colston Anniversary at Bristol. The Ministry, Mr. Goschen says, are at the pre- sent moment feeling "the ground grow stronger under their feet." If a wave of political earthquake can be charmed away by a Minister's voice, Mr. Goschen's will certainly have that effect. It breathed the strength of self-con- fidence, and of self-confidence founded on fixed principles and deliberate convictions. The Government are not ashamed of what they have done ; they are proud of having redeemed so many arduous promises ; they hope earnestly for the oppor- tunity to redeem more. They are not less proud of what they have refused to do. They have aliepated powerful classes at times, because they were strong enough to refuse to buy the support of any class, however powerful, at the public expense. They have not encouraged the disposition to panic which has become so violent of late years ; they will do nothing to countenance the impression "that this great old country of ours has at last got its nerves shat- tered, and can no longer contemplate the hardships of life with the same calmness as in other days." When tho pauperism of the country seemed on the increase, there was a panic and a powerful cry for Government emigration ; when a railway accident happened, there was a panic and a powerful cry for State management ; when we heard of a foreign Govern- ment beginning to build a single ship as powerful as any in our Navy, there was a panic and a powerful cry for more ironclads. These panics Mr. Goschen condemns as weak and unmanly, and the Government are not disposed to lose their confidence in deference to them. They do recognise the duty of keeping up the external power of England, and especially—as himself responsible for the Admiralty—says Mr. Goschen, of keeping it the most powerful Navy in the world, and indeed one equal to the united navies of any two or three other Powers. Especially do they recognise the Imperial duties of England to defend her Colonies, and to clear the seas of the slave- traders. They do not regard 'Imperial' as an obsolete word, whatever the new-fangled Liberal theory may say. In point of fact, no sooner does an occasion arise on which some of these duties are called in question, than the Liberal party rally as one man to the old cry. Mr. Goschen distinctly declares that "he had never known any project submitted to the present Govern- ment for the disintegration of the Empire, and he never had been and never intended to be a party to any such projects." With regard to the Dissenters, i.e., we suppose to the Die- establishment cry, Mr. Goschen is equally firm. He recognises the great debt of the Government to the Dissenters, and their great power in Borough elections. He is aware that but for them the present Government would not be in power. But they will not budge one inch from the course they believe to be the true one, in order to earn the favour of the Dissenters, any more than they will tamper with socialism, and promise every labourer "a cottage and a pig," in in order to win the suffrages of the poor. "While we are in favour of progress, we are also in favour of the old English spirit of self-reliance. We do not wish to substitute Govern- ment action for the action of individuals and classes. We wish to deal in the spirit of those who take a strong, manly, sturdy view of English politics, and we wish to say to our supporters, and that they should say to us, Quit you like men.' "
There is true fibre and grit in the speech that we have thus resumed. We do not ourselves agree with all of it. Mr. Goschen must have been conscious that the illustration of panicmongering taken from a great railway accident and the sensational remedy proposed that the State should take the Rail- ways into its own hand, was a forced one pressed into his service for the sake of illustration, and that in point of fact no suck remedy has been ever suggested, except by those who, for other and Much more cogent reasons, believe that a natural monopoly like our Railway system cannot be and is not worked- by competing Companies with any of the efficiency and energy of private enterprises. We regret that he should give his- high authority to the statement, which we believe to be contradicted by experience as well as general reason, that "individuals and private companies" can discharge the func- tions of railway directors better than the State. But that is a mere grain in the anbstance of the speech. What is re- markable in it is the strong sense of British and of Ministerial dignity it shows,—the satisfaction it gives to the very legiti- mate desire of the nation to see its attitude and character distinctly represented by its Government, so represented as to. convey a true impression of what we are and what we intend,
to external observers. We call this desire a legitimate one, because in point of fact nothing is more useful politically, both to us and to other nations, than to have such representative statesmen always before our eyes. The power of thus representing us truly, is a power which might well cover a multitude of other political defici- ences. It was in great measure both Lord Palmerston's and' Lord John Russell's recommendation as Prime Ministers that they possessed it in a high degree, the latter in almost too high a degree, as he reflected faithfully even the momentary starts and panics of British impatience, over which a strong Govern- ment should, as Mr. Goschen says, hold a strong curb. It was the late Sir Robert Peel's one leading deficiency as a, statesman that while he probably understood the House. of Commons better than any Prime Minister of his own time, he was too much of a pure administrator, too completely wrapped, up in the internal politics of the State, to give anything like the same sharp impersonation of British character to the out- side world. And somehow or other all those who studied in. his school have repeated the same deficiency. Mr. Gladstone,. with all his genius for legislation and all his wonderful parliamentary ability, has never been able to master the same difficulty. His genius delights in solving particular problems, and has no faculty for graphic out- lines of policy, even if he heartily sympathised, which he- does only incidentally, with the general tone of British senti- ment. If he has to express the English view of a great International question, like the Indirect Claims, for example, he can, of course, do it with unexampled power, but he is apt to overdo it. He does not "hold himself well together," as the horsey people say. He expatiates too much here, and is too reserved there. He has not the art of representing the com- posed, tenacious, positive attitude of the nation as the United Kingdom like to see it expressed. And as is Mr. Gladstone, so is his Peolite colleague Mr. Cardwell. There is no abler Parliamentary tactician than Mr. Cardwell, but none who has less of the faculty of which we are now speaking. He is a departmental man with considerable Parliamentary gifts, but not a touch of that distinct political personality about him which is essential to the statesman whose' words are likely to be received both at home and abroad as characteristic of the whole nation. To Mr. Lowe, on the other hand, no one can deny plenty of political personality. But then it is eccentric political personality, not the political personality of a people. Mr. Lowe is some- thing of a wit and a good deal of a doctrinaire. He takes hasty views, formed on narrow considerations. If he expresses anything, he is as likely as not to express the very opposite- mood of mind to that which is uppet most in the mind of the nation. Mr. Forster and Mr. Goschen alone, we think, of the present Cabinet, have the invaluable art of saying what the English people are thinking with much more than the force- and dignity of any one English politician. Many, perhaps most, of the Cabinet, are far from being party men in the narrower sense ; neither Lord Granville' nor Mr. Chi- chester Fortescue, nor Mr. Stansfeld, nor Mr. Bruce shows anything of this fibre ; (the Duke of Argyle has, perhaps, the most of the old party rigidity in him) and some of them are true statesmen. But it is not the intellectual or moral qualities that liberate a man from party pre- judices which give him the power of which we speak. The possession, in enhanced intensity, of the better side of the British faculty for government, is necessary as well. Lord Granville, for instance, with all his true aristocratic sang-froid, is half- French in the literary, ease of his political fence. Mr. Stens- fold is half Italian. Neither of them has the obvious political solidity of the English political nature. But Mr.. Forster has, in enhanced intensity, the spirit of fairness, the respect for opponents, the inability to take any oblique moral advantage of his foes, even when he is wiisatling with them most strenuously, which always marks the genuine national pluck. And Mr. Goschen, again, has, in enhanced in- tensity, the deep self-respect and keen pride of the British political nature. You see it shining right through this speech, and giving it all its dignity and vigour. His satisfaction in all that has been so pertinaciously done by the Government, and his almost greater satisfaction in what has been refused ; his contempt for nerveless panics and the wild catching at impossible as well as unnecessary remedies ; his pleasure in showing that during his administration the Admiralty have completed so many arrears instead of filling the fire with new irons all of which could not possibly be heated at the same time ; his haughty remark that the great new ships of the Devastation kind, which are not ocean cruisers, will, in case of war, liberate the Fleet of England for its true work,— the onslaught on their foes in their own waters ; his stern resolve finally to put down the Slave trade ; his scornful repu- diation of the policy of the disintegration of the Empire ; his respectful but unyielding tone towards the Nonconformist seces- sionists; his cold depreciation of the dependent politicians who hang entreatingly on to the skirts of the State, and can trust nothing to individual energy and enterprise,—all breathe, in a form of enhanced intensity, one of the most characteristic and one of the most valuable qualities of British politicians,— the self-respect and pride which saved India to England in 1857, and which may go far to save England to the Liberal party now. Mr. Goschen's speech is the second great blow which has been struck this autumn for the Administration. It marks an era in the history of this Government, because it gives us what we have so seldom had,—a glimpse into the strength of the materials of which it is composed, and a most satisfac- tory glimpse, a glimpse showing the world something of the old heart of oak inside us.
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