MR. CAINE'S CANDIDATURE.
MR. CAINE is no doubt an excellent man, but he is not an excellent politician. In politics he makes that worst of all mistakes, confounding and in- verting the true proportions of things. And be not only confounds and inverts the true proportions of things, but when he has done so, he is positively proud of his achieve- ment, and calls attention to it by resigning and offering himself for re-election, that everybody may know how much he congratulates himself on that inversion of the true proportions of political values for which he is respon- sible to the public. He reminds us of one of those boys who transform themselves into wheels, and turn over and over beside you, and then expect a penny for the per- formance. Not that Mr. Caine is at all disposed to oscil- late in his deeper convictions, nor that he looks for any sordid reward for the highly patriotic sacrifices which he has made, and the noble disinterestedness of his resignation of his seat. On the contrary, he has been faithful enough to this own narrow ideal, and has been most anxious to convince the public that his whole action has been in the public interest ; and this, we have no doubt, is his own genuine belief. Only he is not unwilling to let the world in general know how public-spirited he has been and is, and to give some dramatic emphasis, some éclat, to the proceeding. As Addison is said to have sent for his young friend to show him bow a Christian should die, Mr. Caine wishes the world to see how a model advocate of Temperance (who also happens to be a Unionist) should act when the moment comes for choosing between the cause of Unionism and what he thinks the cause of Temperance ; how the former should to his mind shrink into its relative insignificance, and the latter dilate till its head is lost among the stars. And having given this object-lesson on the relative importance of the two causes, Mr. Caine seizes the opportunity of asking his electorate to pass a political judgment on his conduct. If they tread in his footsteps, and recognise the wisdom as well as the purity of his conduct, then he will have had the satis- faction of educating at least one English constituency up to his own high level. And if not, then he will have had that greatest distinction in life, the good man's martyrdom, the consciousness of having rightly incurred persecution from a misunderstanding and misbelieving world. As Kant recognised the sublimity of ethical firmness under temptation, and regarded it as the nearest moral analogy to the spectacle of the starry sky, so Mr. Caine feels that, should his constituents unfortunately resent his action and leave him out in the cold after his resignation., he will nevertheless present to the gaze of his fellow-men a spectacle as sublime as any which man can trace upon the field of vision. He will have rehearsed to the very mountains the Lord's controversy, and have strengthened even the strong foundations of the earth. He will have redeemed the stars from wrong, and the most ancient heavens through him will be fresh and strong. Even Mr. Caine himself will probably find it hard to say which fate he would prefer,—the triumphant vindication of his conduct by the votes of his constituents, or the temporary adversity which is the good man's best title to the gratitude of posterity. If " prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament," is not " adversity the blessing of the New " ? Can Mr. Caine receive a better title to the highest praise than the censure which the world passes on those whom it cannot understand ? So that, whether triumphant or despised, Mr. Caine will still have the approval of his own conscience, and the applause of the unworldly few who are of like spirit. We heartily hope that the unworldly of like spirit may prove to be very few. For if the unworldly who are of like spirit are numerous, we greatly fear that the future of English democracy cannot be bright. And though we do not in the least desire to see Mr. Caine suffer personally for what we sincerely believe to be an earnest though a faddist conscience, we cannot say that we should regard his triumphant return by Barrow-in-Furness as anything but a very dark omen for the political sagacity of the English people. What Mr. Caine has done has been to exalt one of the most trivial of English measures, even if his view of it were correct, into one of the most important, and to treat one of the most important which has ever been submitted to the people of Great Britain, as if it were one of the most trivial. He has been as wise as an 'archifiet who should give no attention to the foundation of his building, and should spend all his care on the lines of an oriel window,—or a painter who should carefully finish and elaborate the lace on his sitter's dress, and leave her face a blur. He has done all in his power to discredit the Unionist Government, just because he thought them mistaken in an honest attempt to forward the Temperance cause' by means which he thinks likely to delay it, though, whether the measure in question forwarded it or delayed it, it would certainly not affect it very materially, either in one direction or the other. If Mr. Caine's example is to be followed, we shall have Administrations formed before long to support the policy of advancing slightly the 'fifth standard in elementary schools and lowering the fourth, or of modifying the law of trade-marks, or of clanging the dog-muzzle from one form to another, or of ex- tending by a quarter of an hour the artisan's dinner- time, or of adding a quarter of an acre to his allotment, or of fining overseers if the windows of the casual ward are found open (or closed) at night. We are by no means of opinion that the Temperance question is intrinsically an insignificant one. If we could abolish drunkenness by any sort of enactment or repeal of enactments, there is probably no other reform possible in England that would contribute so much to the peace and happiness of the community. But we are perfectly certain that there is no change possible in our laws on the subject of the sale of drink which would alter very materially or per- manently the moral condition of the intemperate classes. Something, of course, may be done ; but, after all, the great question is one of the interior life of our people, and not one that any kind of legislation will profoundly affect. On the other hand, the political future of the United Kingdom is one which depends entirely on the form given to our institutions by legislation ; and if that is hastily altered, the whole history of the English people may be altered with it, and altered in a fashion from which the State may never recover. Whether the Licensing Bill was ill-considered or well-considered, it was at worst a well-intentioned Bill which might have done a little harm, and at best a well-intentioned Bill which might have done a little good. But the fall of the only Govern- ment from which we can at present hope for a solid and firm defence of the unity of the Kingdom, would be an event full of consequences so far-reaching that it is impossible for human prescience to foresee how great they may not be. This fatal disposition to confound small and great policies, to reject Bills which when rejected are nothing but strained-out gnats, while the men who move heaven and earth to reject them are perfectly indifferent whether the constituencies are or are not asked to swallow the camel, is the one great democratic danger ahead from which, if it is not clearly perceived and denounced by the con- stituencies themselves, we see no kind of escape. Mr. Caine is an excellent man, and in his heart a good patriot, but he has told the electors plainly that if he cannot support Mr. Gladstone's next Home-rule measure he would rather retire from Parliament than vote against it. In other words, he cares very little how that matter is settled, and very much how the licensing question is settled. Now, the more excellent the man and the more conspicuously upright are his motives, the greater is the danger that constituencies may be beguiled by him into seeing minutia; as if they were of the first importance, and things of the first importance as if they were minutiae. For our own parts, we cannot agree at all with that correspondent of Wednesday's Times who hopes that Mr. Caine will be returned again for his honesty and his good sense in remaining a Unionist, even though he has done all in his power to discredit the Unionist Government. We do not wish to see him punished, but we do wish to see the constituencies saying plainly that they discriminate little matters from great matters, and are not disposed to magnify narrow scruples so as to let them take the place of great policies. The best result would be that Mr. Caine should fall between the two stools of the Gladstonian policy for Ireland, and the Salisbury policy for local taxation, and that Mr. Caine's own poll should be very small. We should prefer the Conservative to be re- turned ; but even if the Gladstonian were to be returned, that result would be better than the display of any en- thusiasm for a conscientious man who has so conspicuously failed to appreciate the relative importance of a great policy and a petty endeavour.
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