TOPICS OF • THE DAY.
LORD HARTINGTON'S FORECAST. T401W HARTINGTON, in the important speech which he made at Bury on Wednesday, expressed his belief that the effect of the democratic settlement at which we arrived in 1885, must be to take a considerable class of questions out of the hands of party settlement, and to compel the co-operation of both parties in the solution which will be ultimately arrived at. He thought that there were other questions which would continue to be settled in the old way by party appeals to the country, and by the legislation of that party which might succeed in securing a majority at a General Election, and he took as examples of such questions, those of Church Establishments and the reform or abolition of the House of Lords ; while the questions which he regarded as likely to be settled by public opinion virtually imposing a compromise upon the conflicting parties, are questions more or less of social interest, such as the licensing question and the regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors, the reform of the Land Laws, the removal of restrictions on the free sale of land, the provision of technical education for the, industrial classes, and the legislation affecting the better housing of the poor. Moreover, Lord Hartington evidently hoped that public opinion would ultimately snatch the Irish Question out of the category of party questions, and dictate its solution in a sense that may give it some of the authority of a national resolve. We quite admit the tendency of the democratic settle- ment of 1885 to compel the adhesion of both parties to certain principles which virtually determine the character of a good deal of our legislation. The Reform Bill of 1885 was, indeed, itself an example, and a very remarkable example, of the power which democratic opinion wields in crushing the resistance of the party from whom resistance is most to be expected. It was Mr. Gladstone who carried that settlement, but he could never have carried it as he did if the Tory Party had not been well aware that resistance on the old lines,—resistance in the interests of the privi- leged classes,—was a thing of the past, nor if the Liberal Party had not been well aware that they must give as full and fair a representation to the strongholds of popular Conservatism, as they proposed to give to the strongholds of Radicalism. But as the Reform Act of 1885 was certainly in a sense taken out of the hands of a single party and settled by negotiation between the two parties, and as the Local Government Act of last year was virtually settled in the same way, Mr. Ritchie considering the demands of the Radicals at least as much as he considered the prepossessions of the Conservatives in preparing it, and as Lord Harlington hopes to see even the Irish Ques- tion ultimately withdrawn from the battle-ground of party, why should he draw the distinction that he does draw between the social questions on which public opinion will virtually dictate the lines of settlement, and a constitu- tional question so enormously important as the reform of the House of Lords, or a religious question of such supreme significance as the preservation or partial destruc- tion of national Establishments ? It seems to us that neither on the question of local government nor on that of the tenure of land or the housing of the poor, has there been so remarkable an example of the submission to a sort of latent authority in democratic opinion, as there was in the case of the Act of 1885, which virtually constituted the democracy, and anticipated the embodiment of the very opinion which it obeyed. There could not have been a fiercer combat between the two parties than there was before 1885, as to the details of reform. As everybody knows, the House of Lords was at that time itself in danger. And if democratic opinion triumphed at a time when democratic opinion had received no adequate constitutional expression, and so prevented an immediate attack on the House of Lords, why should it not equally override resistance to a popular reform of the House of Lords, and also to any modification that may be needed in the religious Establishments of this country, under- taken to render them more genuinely subservient to the moral and spiritual improvement of the whole people ? We quite agree with Lord Harlington that whenever a demo- cracy gets its principle firmly embodied in a constitutional form, there springs up at once, and often in spite of still more embittered relations between the leaders of parties, a tendency to count on the help of the rank and file of the- opposite party for any really popular measure, and that this operates equally whether it is the Radical who pro- poses a measure and the Conservative chiefs who see that they cannot afford to resist it, or the Conservative who proposes a popular measure and the Radicals who feel that they cannot venture to offer it any serious resistance. Mr. Gladstone illustrated this tendency in 1885, when he avowed and boasted of his (apparently repented) wish to do justice to Conservative feeling in his last Reform Bill. Mr. Ritchie showed it when he carried the support of the Radicals for his Local Government Bill for England. And the Lord Advocate gave us an example of the same tendency when he introduced his Local Government Bills for Scotland. For ourselves, we cannot imagine that the same tendency will not make itself visible as much in the proposals that may be made for dealing with Church endowments, and for recasting the second Legislative Chamber, as in the cases to which we have referred. If it should be a. Radical Government that undertook any measure of the former kind, it would not have a chance of success unless it recognised most fully the Conservative feelings with which the English nation at large regard all legislation affecting the religious teaching of the people ; and if it should be a Conservative Government which introduced any such measure,—which is, of course, much less likely, unless some of our Established Churches become far less popular than they now are,—it would not have a chance of success unless it showed the most cordial desire to improve the opportunities of the poor for religious teaching, and to. redistribute endowments with a special view to the interests of the poorest and most destitute classes. And similarly, we do not believe that any reform of or scheme for re- placing the House of Lords, introduced by the Radicals, would have a chance unless it showed the clearest wish to embody in the new Chamber the most stable and respected elements of society in the United Kingdom ; nor that any measure introduced by the Conservatives would have a. chance unless it largely accepted, in one shape or another, the principle of conceding to popular choice,—though it might be the popular choice of very carefully sifted bodies; —the command of a majority in the Upper House. If this necessity of Radicals for consulting the popular feeling of the Conservatives, and this necessity of Conservatives for consulting the popular feeling of the reformers, is to show itself in any class of measure, social or otherwise, we believe that it will show itself equally on those even greater questions which affect the religious interests. of the people, and the constitutional checks upon hasty legislation.
We hold, then, that Lord Harlington is right in main- taining that it is the tendency of a democratic Con- stitution to take questions more or less out of the hands of party, and to determine their solution in a sense which neither party, if acting as parties acted in the olden times, would have approved. And perhaps this even accounts for the growing amount of irritation between the two parties, for the party leaders are so much vexed by the feeling that they can no longer control their own policy as they would have done in former times, that they are all the more sensitive to attack and all the more prone to aggression. But we do not see that social questions are at all more likely to be settled by this dictatorial function of public opinion than any other questions, unless it could be shown that the masses are more keenly interested in those social questions than in any others, or that they are comparatively indifferent .to the mode in which religious questions and constitutional questions shall be deter- mined. Is this what Lord Harlington means ? And if it is, is he right ? We doubt very much whether the masses would show a keener interest in any question than in the determination of the attitude of the State towards the Churches, or than in the constitution of the ultimate check upon the House of Commons. Hitherto at least, no issues have seemed to fascinate public attention more than the House of Lords question and the Establish- ment question. Both of them were very prominently raised in 1885, and on both of them a great deal of vehe- ment and even excited public feeling was expended. We doubt very much whether even the "three acres and a. cow" excited so much attention in the electoral campaign of 1885 as Mr. Chamberlain's attack on the Establish- ment, and the Liberal attack on the House of Lords.
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