• TOPICS OF THE DAY SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT BREAKS SILENCE.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT has broken silence at last ; but either the gloom of the situation or some personal depression has paralysed his usually bright and vivid tongue. We have seldom read anything of his which was less stimulating to his discouraged party. We knew before that he loathed the Liberal Unionists, and he has told us that once more. Why he should loathe those who have overcome many of the objections of Lord Salisbury and the House of Lords to constitutional democracy, even more than he loathes those more pre- • judiced Conservatives who would have ruined the Parish Councils Bill as well as the Home-rule Bill, he alone knows. But perhaps an extreme and unreasonable antagonist is always more gratifying to human vanity than one who succeeds in making you hesitate as to the wisdom of your own proceedings. Indeed, Sir William Harcourt's only original suggestion is this, that the great extension of the suffrage in 188:5, which admitted the agricultural labourers within the range of the Constitu- tion, " has given the House of Commons a more indis- putable right to declare the will of the nation," and to brush aside the criticisms and objections of such a body as the House of Lr.rds. No doubt it has, so far as it does really express a clear, definite, and convinced state of the national will. But how if the very oppo- site of that appears ? How if, with every addition to the weight of the predominant party, there has been a more than equally weighty addition to the weight of the resisting party ? Sir William Harcourt speaks as if a trembling balance of very hesitating judgment were as good to proclaim the " national will " as a clear and positive judgment by the common voice of the nation. Is he not aware that when the great cities like London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol decide one way, and the newly enfranchised and undisciplined politicians of the rural districts, who are just waking out of sleep, decide the other way, and even then the result is so nearly balanced that Sir William Harcourt himself has to admit that the majority is so small that no prudent Government can, to use his own words, " play tricks " with it, the, "national will" has not really been declared at all ? Sir William Harcourt speaks as if the new millions had given a clear and unmistakable answer to the questions referred to them. So far is that from the truth, that if the older constituencies,—the con- stituencies which have exercised their political rights for over a quarter of a century,—were given the larger weight to which their longer experience of political life would entitle them, the will of the nation would be that of the Conservative side of the House of Commons, and not that of Sir William Harcourt's side. It is a monstrous perversion of true democratic doctrine, to make light of the vast number of great popular con- stituencies which have gone over to the party of caution, while so much stress is laid on the numerical weight of the -constituencies which have so recently been admitted to the franchise, and have declared for constitutional revolu- tion. To any judicial mind, the very narrow majority which a statesman so popular, so eloquent, so full of years and honour as Mr. Gladstone, obtained at the last General Election after a long course of political propagandism in Opposition, ought to speak for itself as to the hesitating and uncertain attitude of the national will. Aud when it is noted that no sooner is that great and justly popular influence withdrawn, than the enthusiasm of his party ebbs away, and we get such results as the Forfarshire, the Brigg, and the Evesham elections, the argument against the interpretation put by Sir William Harcourt on the attt floated and daily dwindling majority of his own party, becomes overwhelming. We have no hesi- tation in saying that whatever may be the political sins of the House of Lords, no Second Chamber in Europe would, under tl e circumstances, Lave hesitated to demand a renewal or revision of the vote of 1892 on the great con- stitutional issue before the nation. And even though it may true that the House of Lords demands that renewal or revision with less authority than it would have asked for it if the Lords were more in keeping with the popular feeling, • "et it demands it with the utmost rc as mwhen almost all the gnat cities of the Kingdom are with the House of Lords on this point, and when even the hesitating judgment which was pronounced in 1892 is in process of rapid reversal. Sir William Harcourt's own attempt to show that the present House of Commons represents the great majority of the people of the United Kingdom, was not even a candid attempt. It is true that the Gladstonians repre- sent a very much larger number of voters than they repre- sented before 1885 ; but it is also true that the Unionists represent a much larger number of voters than they repre- sented before 1885 ; and that this number is on the increase, while that of the Gladstonians is daily dwindling.. The only argument on which Sir William Harcourt relies to show the wickedness of the House of Lords in demanding a revision of the judgment of 1892, breaks in his hands.
Sir William Harcourt speaks as if the House of Lords had grown more and more crudely and flagrantly Conser- vative since the time of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. We are not great admirers of the House of Lords, and would gladly see it more nearly conformed to the opinion of cautious and yet Liberal-minded thinkers. But it seems to us childish to assert that a House which passed such a measure as the Parish Councils Bill only a year ago, and which was perfectly willing to pass the Employers' Liability Bill with a modification desired by at least a considerable section of the artisans, is much more reactionary than the House of Lords of the• Duke of Wellington's time. That is simply not true. It is true that the Home-rule Bill, which threatens the United Kingdom with dissolution, has combined against it almost the whole House of Lords, but it has also com- bined against it almost all the great cities of England,— indeed a very great majority of the English nation, though not of the people of the United Kingdom. Now, however unconstitutional it may be to count England as a separate element in the United Kingdom when the question con- cerns the United Kingdom alone, it is perfectly constitu- tional to do so when the question concerns the abrogation of a treaty which determined the conditions of union between Great Britain and Ireland. And nothing can I e: more unconstitutional at such a crisis than to propose silence the only authority which can delay a final decision on the greatest of all constitutional proposals, without suggesting, or attempting to suggest, any substitute for the•. functions of the House of Lords. What Sir William Harcourt desires is to pass a resolution of a kind which he describes as something like a "Petition of Right" to silence the House of Lords, at the very moment when the House of Lords, and the House of Lords alone, can prevent a hasty change of the fundamental con- ditions of our national life, on a point on which not only the aristocracy and the middle class, but the masses of our people themselves are most profoundly divided. We never heard of a more thoroughly unfair and monstrous proposal. If the House of Lords is a bad Second Chamber, let us substitute a better. But so long as it exists for the very purpose of preventing hasty decisions on questions of the most fundamental constitu- tional importance, and there is no attempt to substitute any better Chamber with the same functions, it is irrelevant to the issue to make the defects of the House of Lords the excuse,—for it is merely the excuse,—for getting rid by a, side-wind of the one obstacle in the way of that tremendous revolutionary change which every revising Assembly in the world would disapprove and oppose. A popularised House of Lords would reject the Home-rule Bill as inevitably as the existing House. What the Gladstonians are attempting is to get rid of every drag on the wheels at the very moment when any adequate drag would prevent a catastrophe, only because the existing drag is too strong. Perhaps it is ; but is that a reason for disusing it in the middle of a steep descent, when there is no other drag at hand ?
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