TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TWO ELECTIONS. THE Walworth and West Dorset Elections confirm in every respect the confident impression we have formed, that a wave of Conservatism is passing over the whole people, alike in the counties and the towns. For a metropolitan constituency we could hardly have had a more instructive one than that at Walworth. It is in the East of London. There is a considerable body of costermongers in the constituency, on whom the Daily News appears to look down, and whose leaders wished them to vote for the Gladstonians. But the costermongers would not follow their leaders, and the constituency has turned round from its somewhat hesitating adhesion to Mr. Gladstone in 1892 to a more decided adhesion to the Unionist party in 1895. We hope that the lesson may not be lost on the Gladstonians, and that it will teach them not to be so very anxious to increase the power of the resi- dent occupiers as distinguished from that of the freeholders who come from a distance. We believe that the election was carried by the impatience of the costermongers of this helpless revolutionary Government. And if the outside voters had been even less weighty instead of more weighty in the constituency, the Unionist feeling might only have been still more strongly marked. We have contended for many years that the attempt to alter the relative -weight of parties on the assumption that the resi- dent householder is always more Radical than the free- hold voter, is a mistaken one. If the momentary wave of feeling is Radical, then no doubt the resident voters will probably show it in greater strength than the plural voters. But if the momentary wave of feeling is Conser- vative, then the resident voters will show it as strongly or perhaps even more strongly than the outvoters, who will hardly take the same pains to express their feeling. Abolish every plural vote to-morrow, and the effect, we believe, would be almost nil on the General Election, and might very possibly be favourable to the Unionist party. It is a total illusion that the poorest part of the population is always more revolutionary than the class which possesses property. The effect of excluding all proprietary votes is to increase the vehemence of the feeling of the hour, rather than to increase the strength of any particular party. The wave of Conservatism affects the masses at least as much as, probably even more than, it affects the pro- pertied classes. The poorest class is even more sensitive to the political emotion of the day than the semi-inde- pendent class, chiefly because the latter is not so closely identified with the place to be represented as the former. You may increase the swing of the pendulum by extin- guishing all outside voting, whether it be towards the side of change or towards the side of resistance to change, but you will increase it quite as much on the side of tem- porary Conservative feeling as you will on the side of temporary Radical feeling. The masses may be somewhat more easily moved by the wave of popular feeling, but they are not at all more easily moved by it when it is impatient of the established order than when it is im- patient of the barren promises of the party of innovation. The influence of property is rather regulative than merely Conservative. It increases the stability, or rather, diminishes the instability, of the popular balance, rather than swells the vote on either side.
The election in West Dorset, where the Conserva- tive majority is much greater than in 1892, and even rather greater than in 1886, is still more impressive as showing that Mr. Gladstone's resignation of the helm has greatly diminished the eagerness of the rural voters to support the present Government in the carrying out of the Newcastle programme. While he was at the head of affairs, the new voters, who were quite Aware that they owed the franchise to him, and who had the greatest confidence in his age and experience, did all in their power to strengthen his hands. But now that the magic of his name has ceased to influence them, they have begun to share the general dissatisfaction of the country with this Government of large promises and small performances. The attack on the House of Lords has not prospered, in spite of Mr. Gladstone's legacy of his political influence in favour of such a movement. The people do not like to see all the great historic features of their country threatened at once with erasure. And to supple. ment a movement against the Union, and against the National Church Establishment, with a movement against the House of Lords, seems to them like sweeping away all the familiar objects of political interest at one fell swoop. The Newcastle programme was revolutionary enough ; but when the Newcastle programme was eked out by the Leeds programme, popular Conservatism shrank from the enterprise, and only the very popular local candidate in East Leeds itself could be found willing to endorse it. The people know that the House of Lords is by no means disposed to stand out against all the people's wishes, if these popular wishes are strongly expressed. But the popular wishes of the last few years have not been strongly expressed, indeed very weakly expressed, and the people have become more and more doubtful of their own mind since they have been asked to erase one feature after another of the national life in order to please the party that is greedy of change. Now at last they are putting their foot down against the growing exactingness of the innovators. When the cat is asked to attack the rat that ate the malt in the house that Jack built, the people may acquiesce, but when it becomes necessary to invite the dog to worry the cat, and the stick to beat the dog, and the fire to burn the stick, for the purpose of getting this long succession of causes into working order, the English people get impatient and think that something is wrong in the policy which demands so laborious and interminable a series of small expedients, to work it out. The necessity for the ex- traneous Leds programme gave the final coup de grcice to the Newcastle programme, which had so long barred the way by its unwieldy bulk.
That the Unionists will get a large majority at the General Election we feel no doubt at all. East Bristol, East Leeds, and Ipswich count for nothing against such a series of omens as we have had of Conservative feeling in Scotland, in the North of England, in the Midlands, in East Anglia, in London, and in the South of England, on the other side. The people are tired of a Govern- ment which began with a small majority and a very revolutionary programme, and has been losing ground steadily ever since Mr. Gladstone's retirement. The really difficult and interesting question is, how long the Conservative wave of feeling will last. And that must depend on the character of the next Unionist Government. If it is as exclusively Conservative as the Gladstonian Government has been exclusively revolutionary, it will not last long. Even the middle-classes who governed us be- tween 1832 and 1867, would not stand a Government that did not know how to combine Liberalism with Conserva- tism. They turned out Lord Melbourne and welcomed Sir Robert Peel, because the Whigs showed themselves blundering economists and bad financiers. Ultimately, they preferred Lord Palmerston to Lord Russell because he knew better how to combine wholesome change with a. deep Conservative bias. Now that the transient Radicalism of the household suffrage enthusiasm has spent itself, and that the new voters are beginning to feel their responsi- bility for the historical development of the English people, we believe that we shall find evidence of a similar preference for wise but very cautious change. If the next Unionist Government proceeds on the lines of the last, and allows as much influence as it did then to all reason- able concessions to popular feeling, we shall, we think, find the Conservative wave of emotion to be durable as well as cordial. But if the blind and shortsighted jealousy of the Liberal Unionists of which the Standard, untrue to its traditions, is making itself the unwise organ, is to gain any ascendency over the Conservative party, we shall soon see the beginning of a reaction. England is either Liberal-Conservative or Conservative-Liberal, but it will never again be reactionary. And this childish petulance against Mr. Chamberlain's influence with the Conservative party is far the worst symptom we can discern for the durability of the new wave of feeling. We do not believe that petulance to be at all deeply rooted in the Conservative party. But nothing is more difficult than the discrimination of the shades of popular feeling, and if the Unionist leaders do not take great care to eschew extreme counsels, we shall soon find the Conservative wave of feeling ebbing away as fast as the Liberal feeling has ebbed away under the unfortunate policy of concession to the Irish revolutionists. The attempt to denationalise England has been a. fatal blunder. But the attempt at reaction in England will be a still more fatal blunder, if the Conservatives should think themselves strong enough to inaugurate it.
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