THE LEEDS DEMONSTRATION.
THE " finding-out " of a flashy Government by a largo Democracy such as ours, is a slow process, and it can hardly even be said that this process, which, as the Duke of Argyll truly declared in the House of Lords last May, was then beginning, is even yet complete. But meetings like those of Manchester and Leeds show that it is going on rapidly,—rapidly enough to make the result evident long before the Parliament which has not yet found out the Ministry, is sent to its account. Mr. Forster, as truly as epigrammatically, said in his morning speech at Leeds that. though it might be very well to let " the dead past bury its dead," the past of this Ministry is not yet dead enough to bury, and indeed, we fancy it can only be safely buried in the same grave with the Administration it- self. It is, indeed, the weak side of a democracy that the Nemesis on blundering and mischief-making statesmen,—if only they manage to throw a little showiness and superficial vitality into their miscluef,—comes with so very halt a foot. She comes, but the mischief is done and often almost beyond being undone, before she overtakes the braggarts ; so that the story of a democracy is very apt to consist for years together in the extremely gradual exposure of an association of clever mountebanks. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note what the political mistakes are which find their way down quickest to the imagination of the multitude, and which affect them most deeply ; and for discovering this, the Leeds demonstration of last week—.first, the luncheon at the Victoria
Hall, with its popularisation of the Ministerial blunders for some 700 or 800 of the Leeds manufacturers and trades- men, and then the mass-meeting held in the evening at the shed of Messrs. Fowler, of Hunslet Lane, where more than 20,000 people collected to listen to the Duke of Argyll, offers us excellent materials.
It would be hardly possible to give a better, i.e., a more suc- cinct, and more temperate account of the fatal mistakes which have made this Ministry sink in the respect of a hard-headed middle-class, once greatly inclined to favour them, than Mr. Forster gave in his speech to the Leeds manufacturers. The pith of hie indictment was that the Government have apparently taken pains to increase simultaneously and almost pari passu the incitements to war, and the difficulty of
making war with success. Either charge alone would be very heavy. The first, the charge of pursuing a deliber-
ately irritating policy, is nearly the most grave that can be brought. But that this Government has done so, and done so with something like ostentatious arrogance, not to say effrontery, in its various public utterances,—long ago at Guildhall, when Lord Beaconsfield spoke of the number of campaigns we could afford to wage, and again, only two or three weeks ago, at Manchester, when Lord Salisbury spoke with the utmost defiance of Russia as our open and admitted foe, against whom it was lawful to employ even the worst and most dangerous tools for the purposes of de- fence,—no one now denies. Well, that is a very heavy charge indeed. To sow the seeds of war is nearly as heavy a political crime as you can commit. It is, we suppose, the crime of which the Greek myth as to the dragon's teeth, which, when sown in the earth, immediately sprang up in a phalanx of armed men, was the symbol. But, as Mr. Forster pointed out, this Government sows the seed of war, without even taking the precautions of war. The dragon's teeth have been sown, but the armed men have not sprung up. On the contrary, what the Government have been chiefly aiming• at apparently, is to multiply a hundredfold the need of armed men in case of war, while pro- viding none to meet the need. One permanent danger of ours, as Mr. Forster said,is the possible interruption, at any point, of our long line of communications with our distant dependencies. Of that long line, Egypt is, perhaps, the weakest point, and the Government have done all in their power to weaken
our hold on Egypt ; to place that point under the control of French influence, without drawing any closer,—perhaps even estranging,—the statesmen of France. But that is the smallest item in the charge. We are certainly in a more risky position in Egypt than we were, but still, we might find that a little energy would make our way through Egypt safe. The worst blow struck at our power, in case of war with Russia, is, as Mr. Forster pointed out, the deliberate undertaking to defend a long and very difficult land frontier in Asia Minor against Russia, which we have no good means of getting at, to which the Government have now added the obligation of holding a vehemently hostile country of hardy mountaineers against either Russian intrigue or Russian invasion. Mr. Forster put it very effectively, when lie said :—
"But the supporters of the Government aro constantly talking of such a war. The members of the Government aro constantly hinting at it, and I do not deny that there is a possibility—nay, even a pro- bability—that if the present Government remain in powor—if Lord Beaconsfield is to meet the Lord Mayor this time next year at the Guildhall, we may have a war with Russia. Now, the; I want to ask you, and I want to ask men of all parties,—supposc that war was to break out, ought the guidance of public affairs to be left to a Government who, finding the relations of the two countries to be these, that we could attack Russia by sea, and Russia could only attack us by land, and that over deserts and over mountains, tho Government has brought us to the position that we go into the mountains to meet Russia, with mountaineers not our friends, but our enemies. These Afghan mountaineers might have feared and hated Russia. They now fear and hate Us, and Russia can at any moment oblige us to march our army hundreds of miles over a diffi- cult country into the mountains of the Caucasus, far away from our own resources, to meet her legions, close to their resources. That is the danger in which the Government have put us, if there is to be a war with Russia. She could never have attacked us with deserts and mountains between us, and now it is easy for her to make us go to meet her upon the mountains of Asia Minor, and for her to find us engaged in the Himalayas."
So that while the war feeling has been stimulated, the danger of war has been multiplied a hundredfold, though nothing at all has been done to make ready for war. Formidable re- sentment has been invited, even courted, while we were doing all in our power to make the outburst of that resentment, when- ever it may come, almost overwhelming to us, -where formerly it would hardly have been even alarming. As Mr. Forster wisely teaches, it cannot be prudent or even sane policy, at one and the same time to provoke the sting of a potent enemy, and to expose to that sting a large and wholly dun- protected surface of a highly susceptible kind. Mr. Forster made one other remark, taken up and popularised by Sir Wilfrid Lawson at the evening meeting, which went, we believe, to the very heart of the distrust and contempt which this Administration has begun to excite in the people of England. He said that, do what we will or may in Asia Minor, "John Bull cannot give the Turkish people good government through the Turkish Pashas." No, said Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his very clever speech, no more than you could convert the people of Leeds from intemperate habits by" a society composed of licensed victuallers, headed by Mr. Wheelhouse." The ex- treme silliness of the attempt to reform Asia Minor by the agency of a Turkish Administration has laid, we believe, almost as much hold on the minds of the people of England, as the foolhardiness of the attempt to irritate Russia, while exposing ourselves, as we have never been exposed before, to the attacks of Russia.
Owing to certain physical causes, the Duke of Argyll's speech at Leeds was not nearly so effective as his speech of last May in the House of Lords, but it contained points which evidently carried the minds of all who could hear him enthu- siastically with him ; and perhaps his best touch was his demonstration that the very ease with which the Indian Government has overrun Afghanistan, is the best evidence we could have that the Ministerial policy in Afghanistan has been thoroughly superfluous and bad :—
" You have seen it said over and over again, All you prophets of evil have boon disappointed; we have conquered Afghanistan with the greatest facility.' Why, gentlemen, the facility with which Afghanistan could be conquered was part of our CafI0, and not of theirs. We always said, You Call conquer Afghanistan at any moment you like.' That was the security of our position, and Lord Lytton himself wrote to the Ameer and said, We can overwhelm you before a single Russian soldier can come to your assistance.' And that was perfectly true, and that increased the cruelty, and I will add, the baseness, of attacking the Ameer on account of conduct into which he Ld been forced by the violence and deceit of our own Government."
That is an argument of which every one can understand the weight, and which added greatly to the effectiveness of the Duke's attack on the deceitfulness of our Afghan policy, for unfortunately, there are in England too many Jingoes who are little influenced by being shown that a policy is dishonourable, unless they can also be shown that it is silly. But the clearest sign that the Government is already found out, is the evidence of the avidity with which personal criti- cism on the different members of the Government is received by the people. Sir Wilfrid Lawson's amusing description of the Duke of Argyll's onslaught on the Government last May was, perhaps, the most successful bit of popular oratory in the Leeds demonstration ; and it showed that the people are beginning to understand thoroughly the personal weakness of the Government, and to relish extremely everything which brings that personal weakness home to them more vividly. Here was Sir Wilfrid Lawson's most successful passage :—
we have in the chair a nobleman who has the courage of his convictions. Deeply do I regret that the unavoidable confusion at the beginning of this meeting prevented all of us hearing the remarks which he made. But we have road his speeches at other times. Wo have read that oration which last summer he made in the House of Lords. That was a grand moment in the history of the House of Lords, which has not many grand moments. I was there : I saw the noble Duke who is in the chair stand up and face his opponents. There was the Tory Government over against him. There sat the audacious Lord Beaconsfield; there sat the pugnacious Lord Cranbrook ; there sat the sagacious Duke of Northumberland ; and there sat the vera- cious Lord Salisbury. Up stood the noble Duke who is in the chair, unabashed by what ho saw before him, undeterred by the audacity, pugnacity, sagacity, and veracity ; and in tones of burning invective, which will long be remembered, he summed up the black catalogue of the crimes against England which the Tory Government had com- mitted. And then pointing at the condemned culprits before him tho finger of indignant scorn, he said, 'My Lords, you are beginning to be found out.' rhe noble Duke found them out ; have you found them out ?"
Now, when once that kind of attack catches hold of the people, you may be sure that the Government attacked is coming to its end. The popular ridicule which dissolves an Administra- tion is evidently at work, and the people heartily believe that that popular ridicule is deserved,—which, in this case, it cer- tainly is. The demonstration at Leeds shows us that, after line upon line and precept upon precept, the middle-class is at last fully penetrated with the rashness andfolly of this Government, and the democracy itself with its weakness ; and when matters have gone as far as this, we may be sure that the life of a Government cannot be long.
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