LORD SALISBURY.
IT is with a double satisfaction that we welcome the choice by the so-called Die-Hards of Lord Salisbury as their leader. Our first cause of satisfaction is in the character of the new chief of the free Unionist Party— that is, of a Party independent of Coalition ties and pledged to follow the personal lead of a free Unionist and a true Conservative, and not of the great opportunist who, however favourable the view we may take of his character, policy and action, is not a Conservative, a Unionist, a Moderate, or il, Constitutionalist. Nor is Mr. Lloyd George a votary of low taxation and of national thrift. Again, he is not a Democrat in the true sense. He is not a man determined that at all costs the State shall be controlled by the Will of the Majority and not of a minority. It is, indeed, almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Lloyd George. No one, summing up their characters and esti- mating their mental attitudes, could possibly doubt which was the better fitted to be the leader of a Unionist Party. Lord Salisbury does not equal his great father in the matter of pure intellect. Very few people do. Nor, again, has he that peculiar distinction m oratory which belonged to his father. The late Lord Salisbury was one of the very few speakers who never wearied that large class of people who have a natural disinclination to what Lord Salisbury himself called " the dreary drip of dilatory declamation "—the people who would endure any punishment rather than that akin to what Sydney Smith called being " preached to death by wild curates." Again, the present Lord Salisbury cannot boast his father's extraordinarily expert knowledge in all matters of foreign policy. But, in spite of that, he has, we must admit, certain qualities which may well make him a better Party leader. To begin with, he is more a man of the world, in the proper sense, and there- fore is less likely to frighten people by the dread of his intellectual fastidiousness and isolation. The late Lord Salisbury was, no doubt, a man of exceptionally kind heart and generous intent, but there is also no doubt that he terrified the ordinary man out of his wits. He was too much given to the poignant phrase and the knockout word. He did not remember Bacon's warning that kings and great men should beware of " those short, sharp speeches which fly abroad like darts." He was always sending out dialectic darts. It amused him and also delighted people of like mind beyond measure. But the short, sharp sayings of Bacon's warning were simply unintelligible to the man in the street or else they put his back up and made him think he was being laughed at or treated sarcastically. The present Lord Salisbury, with his lifelong experience of parliamentary and administrative life and public service, which includes, it may be remembered, the command of a militia battalion on active service in South Africa, his personal management of a big estate at a very difficult time, and his participation in county administra- tion, has a wide and sound knowledge of his countrymen. No one could call him an intellectual recluse, as people used to call his father. In a word, there is nobody in public life who is better able than he is to keep his finger on the pulse of central English public opinion and to understand its beatings. Lord Salisbury, to sum up, is in every way the kind of man who inspires confidence in reasonable Englishmen.
Though he would probably—no doubt sincerely— reject the statement, he is the Left Centre personified; or, to put it in another way, he is the very opposite to an extremist. In nothing can you find him making absolute and unlimited statements or accepting absolute and unlimited propositions—except in matters of personal and public honour. There he is adamant. Look at his record in regard to Protection and Free Trade. It will be remem- bered that he did not take the whole-hearted Free Trade Unionist line adopted by his two brothers, Lord Robert and Lord Hugh. Instead, he remained in Mr. Balfour's Coalition Government after the Unionist Free Traders had resigned. But he did so without making any attempt to drive out the Unionist Free Traders, and he never over- emphasized the Tariff Reform policy. We should guess, indeed, that he was not a Tariff Reformer on argumentative grounds, but probably thought the Free Traders pushed their point too hotly and too strongly, and on a choice of evils held it better to make concessions in the -matter of Free Trade than to let the Unionist Party be broken up. Again, take the questions between Capital and Labour. Though Lord Salisbury, no doubt, takes the ordinary Conservative view and is an anti-Socialist, he has never pinned himself to the extreme individualistic system. Instead, he has always shown his desire to temper his opinions in favour of free exchange and free contract in our internal economics by the dictates of humanity.
It is hardly necessary to say that he is not one of the ...upholders of aristocratic privilege. Practically, such people do not exist outside a few academic cranks—usually, oddly enough, persons who are not notable for birth, position, or wealth, but are merely addicted by nature to _aristocratic principles. Lord Salisbury is a thoroughly sound Democrat in principle, a Will of the Majority man. That, of course, does not make him prepared to say that there is a kind of divine inspiration to be found in all the Acts of a Parliamentary majority. He does not pretend to think that a log-rolling agreement sanctifies all measures passed by a Government based on a federation of groups. Take, again, Lord Salisbury's views on the Irish question. Though we should have liked to have seen him take an earlier and a stronger line, he has always maintained the Unionist view, though he has had, as a man who might himself be called to the helm, to consider, not the abstract merits of the case, but the case viewed on the principle that the King's Government must be carried on. In a word, though a convinced Unionist, he has, rightly or wrongly, never taken the extreme, the naked Unionist view in respect to Irish affairs. His moderation, though here again we personally have not been in agreement with him, while respecting his standpoint, has been shown in the campaign in favour of national economy. All he has said on this point has been thoroughly sound ; but we are bound to add that we were disappointed that he was not prepared to take at an earlier stage stronger measures to rouse the country in every constituency to the duty of considering the present over- taxation and the over-expenditure which is the natural and inevitable result.
We shall only quote one more example of Lord Salisbury's habitual and, as a rule, most useful habit of taking the Left- Centre view, though there are dozens of other instances that might be produced. His recent speech on the Honours question was a masterpiece of sensible, moderate and reasonable argument by a man who has known the responsi- bility of high office in the past, and who has felt very strongly the possibility of being called at any moment to a position in which he might have to carry out those responsibilities again. It is quite right that journalists like ourselves should put the abstract view in its fullest and strongest form. The ideal should be known and understood, even though it cannot be reached in practice. Practical statesmen, though they may be, and we believe are, glad to see the full case set forth, cannot themselves indulge in undiluted statements. They must put the water of common sense and compromise into their wine. Lord Salisbury's speech on the Honours question is a wonder- fully good example of what we mean. Most people in dealing with this question pushed the extreme view so hard that they have come to feel or, at any rate, to talk, as if all Honours ought to be abolished, which is, of course, impossible considering the nature of mankind Man is a decorative animal. Others hold that the restrictions should be so rigid that no one would be allowed to accept an Honour who could not practically show that he was a pauper, or, at any rate, that he had been so careful, or indeed so narrow, in his public action that, even though he was fully persuaded of the justice of a particular set of political opinions, he had never backed his view by dipping into his purse. He had never, that is, been willing to try to convert the world by preaching and teaching in combination with other like-minded men the views which he held necessary for the national welfare.
Indeed, if we were- to go to the lengths of some speakers in Parliament and writers in the Press, the only man eligible for Honours would be someone who was either a prig or a pauper, or preferably both. Lord Salisbury, in spite of the fear of being thought lukewarm—the thing of which over-zealous people always accuse careful people —insisted most rightly that riches, and the willingness of their owner to spend. those riches on a cause in which he honestly believed, must not be held to constitute a ban upon Public Honours. Here we are thoroughly with him, and so we believe is the mass of the nation. All that is necessary here is to say that no Honours must be given to men who have not got absolutely clean sheets, especially in financial matters, and again, men who have not shown in their lives a real devotion to public interests and a willingness to use their money for purposes other than those of selfish indulgence.
We have said enough to show that Lord Salisbury is in every way the right man for the post for which he has been chosen, and we feel that it would be distasteful to him and out of place to indulge in any further strain of eulogy of his appointment. He is the last man to want, or even to tolerate, laudation.
Our second ground of satisfaction in this appointment is the light it throws upon the views of the majority of the so-called Die-Hards—a name to which we have always strongly objected, because it marks an over-zeal and extremist tendency which is neither desirable nor really representative of true Unionism and true Conservatism. The selection of Lord Salisbury affords irrevocable proof that the so-called Die-Hards are, after all, sensible English- men and not zealots or fanatics even in a sound cause. The choice is, indeed, extremely characteristic of the essential national temperament—that temperament which a great Frenchman once described with- felicity and insight. " The English people," he said, " are always Left. Centre." They are, that is, in Lord Halifax's sense, " trimmers "—men who want to " trim " the boat and so keep her on an even keel.
Having found that they were of late-going too much to the Right, what do the Die-Hards do ? Instead of rushing on with a' logical velocity and intensity, they call a halt and correct their extremist tendency by putting up the most cautious, moderate and left-centre man they can find to lead them. It is an example of English Left-Centre- ishness which is almost uncanny in its perfection. What makes it the more complete is that probably Lord Salisbury and the people who chose him would neither of them own our soft impeachment for fear of carrying their principles too far.
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