SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT ON ETERNAL PRINCIPLES.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT told the National Liberal Club on Wednesday night that in social gatherings he holds " nothing more noxious than speaking," but as that remark was the introduction to a speech, inspiring though short, he clearly holds that there are some speeches which have more in them of the character of silence than of the character of speech, and that the one he actually made was of the former type. And perhaps he was right, as the only thing which he really said in his brief address was of a meditative nature, and even, as we might say, of the character of soliloquy. " The principles upon which the Liberal party rests are indestructible and eternal, and as long as we have the faithfulness to adhere to those principles and to maintain them alike in the hour of defeat and in the moment of victory, so long the Liberal party will have a history in the future as glorious as it has had in the past." There, no doubt, we have some- thing of the true essence of soliloquy. No one could say of that remark what Hamlet said of the book he was reading when Polonius approached him, that it was " Words, words, words." On the contrary, it was meditation. Sir W. Harcourt was not so much heard by the Liberal party, as overheard while anchoring his soul to eternal realities. Like the eloquent preacher who took his text from the procedure of the captain of St. Paul's ship when it was cast as a mere wreck on the coast of Malta, he had evidently de- termined to " cast three anchors out of his stern and wait for the day." His faith was deep in the eternal and indestructible principles of true Liberalism. He was endeavouring to raise the thoughts of his party above the fretful waves of party conflict, and to address to them that true Sursum Conk to which he was attuning his own political soul. Let them concern themselves no more with the fitful chances and changes of political life and the caprices of a thoughtless residuum ; let them ignore defeat, and not even allow themselves to be exalted by victory, but determine only never to desert that which is indestructible and eternal in their ultimate creed, and then, come joy or come sorrow, they would still be their true selves. There is something very grand and inspiring in that attitude of mind, and it is no wonder that Sir William Harcourt thought that could he but infect his noisy followers with so spiritual a resolve, he should have given them something more than words, something that would lift their politic, souls to the true calm and dignity of immovable conviction.
But unfortunately example is more persuasive than pre- cept, and when Sir William Harcourt's hearers considered the phases through which their leader's own mind had passed, they must have been puzzled to identify the " indestruc- tible and eternal " principles of Liberalism with either h. is past or his present convictions. So far as we can interpret his meaning, he suggested that when the party was scattered to the winds in 1895, it was still contending for the " indestructible and eternal " principles of Liberalism, and that its strength and constancy would be tested by its steady adherence to those principles for which it had suffered defeat. But if so, what becomes of Sir William Harcourt's vehement attack on those principles ten years earlier, when he pro- posed to let the allies of the Parnellite party " stew in then own juice," and repudiated entirely those Home-rule doctrines which he subsequently embraced with so much ardour ? Who is to decide for us whether the indestructibility and eternity of Liberal principles should include Irish Home-rule or exclude it, when the Sir William Harcourt of 1885 held that it should exclude it, and the Sir William Harcourt of 1895 held as firmly that it should include it ? It becomes a very delicate question where indestructibility and eternity really begin, when within ten years the spiritual being who aspires above everything to anchor himself to eternal truth, has discovered that the eternal truth of the earlier period was a mere floating iceberg to which it was about as safe for him to anchor himself as it would have been for Nausea to hold on to a floe that was turning southwards when he desired to get nearer to the Pole. Eternal truth is, no doubt, very stimulating and bracing to the soul of man ; but eternal truth that shows its mutability within much less than ten years is hardly what even Sir William Harcourt would wish it to be. For the purpose of attain- ing meditative strength and fortitude, it is hardly suffi- cient to find that the indestructible and eternal principles of Liberalism have so fundamentally altered within far less than ten years ; that what tran- quillised and strengthened the soul a very few years ago, only agitates and depresses it now. For party purposes the creed of one decennial epoch is the very opposite of the creed of the next, and that surely should be a warning to Sir William Harcourt that it is not so easy to escape the mutability of mortal things even when he is endeavouring to heighten the enthusiasm of one political party, and to assure it that it is quite unmoved by the temporary vibrations which shake the confidence and undermine the convictions of the other.
On the whole, we can hardly congratulate the leader of the Opposition on his ambitious endeavour to raise the spirits of his party by suggesting that there is anything of even comparative indestructibility and eternity in the convic- tions of his friends, which cannot also be found in the convictions of his foes. The truth i3 that political differences have very little to do with the eternal principles of things. There is a mutability about this region which it is not wise for either party to ignore. The principles of Liberalism are no doubt as eternal as the principles of Conservatism, but not more so. Wise advocates will admit that it is for both parties alike a question of more or less, to which of the two they should belong, and not a question of eternal truth. Conservatives are as eager as Liberals to extend liberty, but they do not quite agree with them as to what liberty, means. Wise Liberals are, we believe, as ready as Con- servatives to avoid needless and dangerous change, but they do not quite agree with them as to what needless and dangerous change means. There is something very refreshing in Sir William Harcourt's eagerness to raise the minds of his party to the spiritual and eternal prin- ciples of things, but it is rather an audacious and hopeless kind of enterprise. Indeed, if such an enterprise were pardonable in any statesman, we hardly think that Sir William Harcourt would be selected as the statesman in whom it would be specially appropriate. If any man has been a thoroughgoing Opportunist, it is the present leader of the Opposition. The only excuse for this bold excursion into the region of Platonic and eternal ideas, is that it must have seemed a very bracing douche of cold water to that most expert of all Opportunists in the art of catching at straws. But to have treated " indestructible and eternal principles" as if they too were straws. certainly illustrates the audacity of the brilliant leader of the Opposition as nothing else in his political life had hitherto illustrated it.
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