THE WASTE OF THE SESSION. T HE House adjourned yesterday till
Wednesday next, after the longest and most barren Session which any one can remember. The early portion of the year was employed in putting a great many measures on the stocks which the Government perfectly well knew there was no possibility of proceeding with. The middle of the Session was fully taken up with forcing a single gigantic measure through the House of Commons, and preparing it for a happy despatch in the House of Lords. The autumn Session has been occupied chiefly in the attempt to render two other measures, which, with the help of a little modera- tion and conciliation, might easily have been passed in a very practical and useful form, as unpalatable as possible to the House of Lords, in order that the conduct of that Assembly may be made to appear as obstructive as possible in the eyes of the country. Now it seems probable that a great part of January will be taken up in so altering the Poor-law, that the House of Lords may be inclined to reject that part of the Local Government measure, in which case the House of Commons would, of course, sacrifice the whole rather than accept any compromise proposed by the Lords. That is exactly what seems to have happened already in relation to the Employers' Lia- bility Bill, the Lords' amendments on which were dis- agreed with by the House of Commons without even any suggestion of possible compromise. And if this course is also followed in relation to the Local Government Bill, we shall come to the end of the Session, as we have already come almost to the end of the year, with not a single great measure passed, with an utterly exhausted House of Commons, and with no result to show for the almost immeasurable labour of twelve whole months, except a new cause of quarrel between the two Houses, by the help of which Mr. Gladstone hopes to carry the next General Election and, therewith, his own discredited Irish policy. What is to be said of the statesmanship which can only boast of having sown the wind, in the earnest hope that it will reap the whirlwind ? In the first place, we should say that there could have been no worse ground of quarrel with the Lords than the judgment they passed on a purely, or almost purely, con- stitutional question,—namely, the expediency of relaxing the Union with Ireland. There could not by any pos- sibility be a subject on which "the masses" are more completely ignorant. And, indeed, they have shown their ignorance by their profound apathy. Mr. Gladstone's own course illustrates and demonstrates that apathy. It is precisely because the masses enter. so little into the Irish demand for a relaxation of the Union, that Mr. Glad. stone dare not seize upon that issue as the ground of an appeal to the people, and feels compelled to avail him- self of the advice given in the Newcastle Conference to sandwich Irish Home-rule between English measures which the masses do understand and care about, and to rest the appeal chiefly on those issues, and not on the issue for which he himself cares most. The appeal to the people has to be diverted from the question of the Union which is all-important,. to comparatively insigni- ficant matters which are relatively unimportant, so that the people's apathy on the big question may be concealed under their interest in the small questions. That is in itself a very serious blot on Mr. Gladstone's statesmanship, that he has had to appeal from an independent Assembly's opinion to a democratic Assembly's opinion on a subject on which the democracy, as such, have really no opinion at all, though many of them are passively inclined to take the opinion of a venerable statesman who is opposed by almost every independent thinker. of his own class. He cannot even say that he is deferring to the will of the people, because he dare not consult the people without mixing up the issue which they do not even suppose themselves to understand, with other issues which they do more or less understand, and on which they agree with him and not with his opponents. If we had the least reason to think that the masses seriously resent and reject the opinion of the classes on the Union with Ireland, we should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that in bowing to the popular will, we were yielding to the inevitable ; but we have no reason at all for so thinking. On the contrary, it is almost certain that Mr. Gladstone himself would not hope for a victory if he consulted the people of this country on Home-rule for Ireland, and on that subject alone. The very reason why the Session has been se utterly wasted is that he entertained no such hope. Instead of appealing to the constituencies directly the House of Lords rejected his great measure, he was obliged to prolong the Session to an intolerable length in order that he might forge new causes of quarrel with the House of Lords, in lonsequence of the profound apathy with. which the English people regarded the one main cause of quarrel which he had elicited. The first of all necessities for him was to draw a red-herring across the track, in order that electors who were perfectly in- different about a Dublin Parliament, might appear to be in earnest, in their zeal for Parish Councils and the compensation for working men's injuries. The first flaw in Mr. Gladstone's strategy is, then, that it is a strategy intended to divert the people's attention from the real point in dispute, just as a conjurer who wants to per- form his tricks without being found out, draws the atten- tion of his audience to an irrelevant detail of no significant* at all, that he may effect his purpose unobserved. The Employers' Liability Bill and Parish Councils Bill are effecting a necessary diversion from the subject of the Irish Home-rule Bill, and quarrels are being engrafted on them which would hardly have been stirred at all had it not been necessary to irritate the people against the House which rejected the Home-rule Bill. In the next place, not only are false issues being grafted on a democratic policy of great importance in order that the true issue may be decided otherwise than on its merits. Nit the false issues so raised have a direct tendency to hurry the democracy into a dangerously sudden absorption of power, when it would otherwise have been quite natural as well as wise to make that absorption of power very gentle and gradual. The ques- tions raised on the Employers' Liability Bill between the Trades-Unions and the railway einp1oy6s, and the questions raised on the Parish Councils Bill between the ratepayers who will pay for the support of the poor and the com- pounders who will pay nothing, but who will often reap the advantage of an easier Poor-law, are both of them ques- tions of immense moment, if only that they are the great questions on which the new voters will learn to gauge their power, and to recognise that, if they choose to use it unscrupulously, they clearly can. Mr. Gladstone's own bias would, we are sure, have been towards the utmost caution,—towards the most earnest wish for a, very gradual initiation of the people at large into the handling of the political and social power they are gaining for themselves, if it had not been for his feud with the Lords and his wish to establish a great grievance against them. As it is, he is urging the people into a sudden and abrupt consciousness of their power, in order that he may use their influence for the overthrow of the one obstacle which stands between his policy and its success. He is making the social and local measures of the democracy far more sudden and violent in their operation than he otherwise would do, just because he wants to fill his sails with a popular breeze which he could not otherwise hope to obtain. Not only will the Irish question be settled on a false issue, if it is settled at all, but the English questions raised will be settled in a far more threatening and dangerous form than. they would have assumed, if Mr. Gladstone had had no arri6v-pensee beyond those social and local issues on which they ought to turn. The waste of the Session will be a treble waste, It will involve a waste of time and temper. It will involve a perversion of the popular judgment on the Irish question, by misdirecting the public attention to wholly irrelevant English questions. Ad i d t will injure the popular judgment on those English issues themselves by the necessity which the Government feel for irritating public feeling artificially against the House of Lords.
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