THE WISBECH DEFEAT. T HE Gladstonians have a good right to
exult in the victory at Wisbech. To turn a victory in which their opponents won by 1,087 votes into a victory in which they won by 260 votes, is a perfectly legitimate subject for pride. In fact, the Gladstonians have almost regained the position they held. in 1885 (when they had a majority of 323), and have made their great defeat of 1886 appear an empty dream. It is evident that the Wisbech Division of Cambridgeshire is the kind of constituency which may serve admirably, like the proverbial straw, to show which way the wind blows. When some seven hundred voters turn round twice in six years, first from Gladstonians to Unionists, and next from Unionists to Gladstonians, we cannot suppose that the constituency holds any very fixed or eager view on the subject of the main question in dispute. The electors of Wisbech constitute an excel- lent weathercock. In 1885 they showed the prevalent enthusiasm for Mr. Gladstone ; in 1886 they showed the prevalent disgust at his surrender to the Parnellites ; in 1891 they show the return to enthusiasm for Mr. Gladstone again. Obviously their political stability is not great ; their political sensibility is great ; they register the political bias of the hour, and make it clear to us that the hour at present favours Mr. Gladstone, just as in 1886 it favoured Lord Salisbury and Lord Hartington.
At the same time, it is the bias of the present hour only which the election gauges ; and there is no reason at all why the bias of the next political hour should not be different. We have every reason to believe that the difference between this hour and the last is not that the opinion of the country on the Irish Question itself has changed, but only that the opinion of the country on the significance and importance of the Irish Question has changed. Mr. Brand, the successful candi- date in the Wisbech Division of Cambridgeshire, like Mr. Leon, the successful candidate in North Bucks, are both stated to have kept the Irish Question as much in the back- ground as possible. Indeed, that has evidently been the policy of the whole Gladstonian Party during the last eight months, since the break-up of the Parnellite Party ; and as a consequence of that change in tactics, what seemed to be at first sight a great catastrophe for the Gladstonians has apparently turned out a great advantage to them. It has helped the ordinary elector to believe, what he was only too willing to believe, that there is no longer any real force behind the Irish Party ; that its loyalty or disloyalty is a " negligeable quantity" which need not be taken into account at all ; and that it is now safe to follow the old leader to whom, for his age and character, his eager popular impulses, and his delight in thinking of even the poorest electors as his "own flesh and blood," the heart of the people inclines. In the Wisbech Division this bias had all the greater weight, because a very popular candidate, the son of Mr. Gladstone's former Speaker and former whip, had been wisely chosen, and chosen in good time to canvass the constituency ; while the Unionists, in consequence apparently of some blunder at head-quarters, rejected the candidate whom the retiring Unionist Member, Captain Selwyn, had pointed out, and had not substituted any other popular candidate in his place in time to give him a fair chance of success. It is natural enough that a large rural constituency whose political judgment is not very highly cultivated, with a candidate like Mr. Brand on one side, and a candidate who was comparatively new to them on the other, should follow the name they all know and the man they all know, especially when he points the way to the leader who first gave them their political power, and whom very naturally they all wish to support.
What the Unionists have to do, is to endeavour with all their might to show the English people that the danger which they rightly judged to be great in 1886, is not passed away, would indeed be rather aggravated than diminished, if instead of an Irish Parliament dominated by a single states- man who knows the relative importance of the different elements in the United Kingdom, we are to have an Irish Par- liament at sixes and sevens, some leaders pulling one way and some the other, none of them adequately understanding the true weight of Ireland in the State, and all of them eager to compete with each other in making it appear a great deal greater than it really is. We have yet time to choose candidates in all the constituencies where candi- dates are not already chosen ; and it becomes evident that we ought to impress upon them how very serious the result will be, if the split in the Home-rule Party in Ireland is to be taken as in any way securing England against the dangers of a mutilated and dislocated. and dazed govern- ment of the United Kingdom. It is not wonderful that the importance of a constitutional question of this sort should not be half appreciated by a great rural constituency new to political life. But if the leaders only take care to insist on the confusion which will arise if Irish questions have to be carefully separated from British questions, and the quarrels which must result from that im- possible attempt, surpassing, as Mr. Gladstone said "the wit of man," are to be allowed to paralyse the central power and to distract all the Cabinets of the Queen, we hold that it will be quite possible to re-excite before the General Election the general feeling of alarm which turned the popular vote in 1886 so decisively against Mr. Gladstone. No doubt a great deal of the indifference of the last two or three years has been due to the perma- nent conviction of British constituencies that by-elections are not of the utmost importance ; that there will always be an opportunity of reversing the choice made in these by- elections when the great crisis really comes ; and. that in the interim, therefore, it is quite permissible to follow the natural bias of a grateful elector who wishes to pay a debt he keenly feels unless a positive obligation to his country forbids him to do so. But whatever allowance may be made,—and we believe much may be made,—for this feeling, it is evident that the peril is extreme, and that it will take all the force of Unionist conviction in the country to prevent this bias from undermining the constancy of the country when the General Election comes, enfeebled as it has been by this habit of inconstancy at the by-elections. It is the cue of the Gladstonians to divert attention as much as possible from the true significance of the contest. It should be our duty to con- centrate attention as much as possible on the true signi- ficance of the contest,—on the peril to Ireland in handing it over to intestine quarrels of the most frightful kind; on the peril to the whole country of breaking with history, and substituting a clumsy and unmanageable federation for a single Administration conducted on the responsibility of a single great Legislature ; and on the absolute folly and imbecility of allowing questions of this magnitude to be kept in the background, while such trumpery matters as allotments legislation, or Parish Councils, or "One man, one vote," are allowed to appear to the voters the chief issue on which the Election ought to hinge. By the irony of political destiny, it seems to have turned out that the one event which should have brought home to every one the unfitness of Ireland for a separate Legis- lature and Administration, has really had the effect of persuading a good number of people that, after all, Ireland does not matter, and that, settle the controversy as you will, Ireland should not count for much in political con- troversy. In truth, Ireland. need not count for more thas Ireland (though she ought always to count for that) if she be kept in her proper subordination to the United Kingdom. But let Ireland once get into a position in which she can scotch the wheels of the whole political machine,—and that is precisely what Mr. Gladstone's policy will enable her to do, though he calls it the policy of removing a great obstruction,—and then Ireland may count for everything ; for a. crippled Parliament ; for a feeble Cabinet, or rather, for two feeble Cabinets competing with each other; and, in short, for a disunited and disintegrated Kingdom.
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