TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BAD SIDE OF THE COUNTY ELECTIONS.
THERE is, fortunately, a good side even to the County Elections, but it is not possible to deny that, to a Liberal, the bad side chiefly predominates. Let us note the dark traits.
England has separated itself in the county elections from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Mr. Gladstone, whose name has acted as a charm in all the English boroughs, has been himself deliberately rejected in his own county, South-West Lancashire, for two Conservative gentlemen of no particular ability or repute. In other counties, seats carried by the Liberals only a year ago have now been lost, after a hard fight. Thus, for example, Mr. T. T. Paget, who carried South Leicestershire a year ago against Mr. Pell,—by a narrow majority, we must admit,—was defeated on Tuesday by the very same rival in the enlarged constituency by something like six times the majority which he then obtained. There is no special cause operating in Leicestershire, as there may be in Lancashire, to account for this. Nothing could apparently prove more clearly that either the ex- tended county franchise has admitted a more Conservative class than before, or that the whole county constituency has recoiled from Liberal principles on the special question now before the nation, the question of justice to Catholic Ireland. But whatever the cause, the number of Liberal losses and of Conservative gains in the English counties is so remarkable, that this great fact must be admitted, that England is divided against herself on the great issue. The boroughs great and small (a few of the great boroughs of Lancashire alone ex- cepted) go one way ; the counties, where chiefly the power of the English clergy is felt, go the other way. There is a large and probably the most comfortable section of the people which does not wish to give true political equality to the Irish Roman Catholics,—which protests loudly against giving it. Whether on other questions it would be as Conservative re- mains to be seen. We suspect from many small indications that it would, that it is not solely the influence of the clergy which has carried so many county divisions for the Tories. What are we to say of the evidently Conservative bias of the great suburban districts of London, Liverpool, and Birming- ham ? Take the case of North Warwickshire, which, with the £12 suffrage and the inclusion of the Manor of Aston, was supposed to be hopelessly Liberal, and which Mr. Newde- gate and Mr. Davenport Bromley contested almost as a forlorn hope, though they were returned by a majority more than .double that which the least popular of them gained over Mr. Muntz at the last election. The cases of Mid-Surrey and West Kent are quite as discouraging. In such county divisions the change can scarcely be due to the influence of the clergy simply. In the great suburbs,—amongst the great mass of semi-detached-villa residents, — the personal influence of the clergy is not stronger than the personal influence of any other class of like respectability and education. We suspect it must be conceded that the villa residents of the suburbs of great towns are a lukewarm class, who dislike all enthusiasm or the very sound of great sacrifices for the sake of justice to a poor people like the Irish; whom they do not respect. Not only has the influence of the English clergy been strained to the utmost in the counties against the Liberals, but the suburban voters seem to have come out as lukewarm politicians, who, in ordinary times, would probably vote for whichever party had the more popular leader, for Lord Palmerston if he proposed to do nothing great, for Mr. Gladstone if he were only reducing the Customs' duties. But the cry of "Justice to Ireland !" has filled them with disgust. The Irish don't make money, are thriftless, helpless. And then it is proposed to take away the only "highly respectable" class from among them. The villa residents do not like it. As Mr. Gladstone rises in stature, they feel more and more disposed to reject him. The county elections mark, we think, what we deem the ungenerous and selfish action of the English clergy on this question ; and mark, also, the lukewarm spirit of the suburban constituencies. It is also an unsatisfactory feature of the County Elections that they have not only brought out so strongly the opposition between the English counties and the English boroughs, but between the various Dissenting localities and the English Church counties. The decisive Liberal reply of Presbyterian Scotland, which returns 21 Liberals out of its 30 already elected county members; of Dis- senting Wales, which, from having returned only five Liberals among the 15 county members already elected, now returns (or more than one-half), and sends up 22 Liberals to 9 Conserva- tives taking the boroughs and counties altogether ; of Dissenting Cornwall, which returns all its four county members Liberals (and nine Liberals out of its 13 county and borough members together), is in marked contrast with the equally decisive Con- servative reply of Kent, which sends six Conservative county members to Parliament without one Liberal ; of Warwick- shire, which sends four Conservative county members to Par- liament without one Liberal ; of Shropshire, which returns four Conservative county members and not one Liberal ; of Leicestershire, which returns four Conservative county mem- bers and not one Liberal ; of Somersetshire, which has chosen four out of its six county members already without choosing one Liberal, and so forth. The effect of this marked and extreme opposition between the Presbyterian and Dissenting districts and the Church counties cannot but be mis- chievous, and is, as we think, a great reproach to the Liberalism of our own Church. But be that as it may, it is clearly an unfortunate circumstance that the Episcopalian counties should be thus markedly pitted against the non- Episcopalian counties on a question of justice to Ireland. Must it not deeply aggravate the dislike of the English Church already existing in Ireland, and too well justified by the policy of our empire in forcing on Ireland this alien Church ? Will not the Irish interpret the elections as showing that not only in Ireland, where there is a vested interest to defend, but in England, and Scotland, and Wales, the only hearty friends of the Catholics seem to be those who are not friends to the Episcopal Church ? Will not the Church, when disesta- blished. necessarily suffer, and suffer even relatively to other Protestant bodies, from the selfishness which it appears to be throwing into its last struggle for existence in Ireland ? Why, even in Ulster, if we may judge from the analysis we have seen of the Londonderry election, while about two Presbyterians out of every five voted for the Liberal policy, which means, we should remember, withdrawing the Regium Donum from Presbyterians no less than disendowing the Church,—the Episcopalians voted en masse for the Orange candidate, Lord Claud Hamilton. This is the Conservative analysis of the Protestant votes :- For Mr. Dowse Episcopalians 8
Dissenters 171 For Lord Claud Hamilton Episcopalians 300 Dissenters 270
And this analysis, though derived from an Irish borough vote, represents, we fear, too nearly the inference to be drawn from the proportion between the returns for the Episcopalian coun- ties and the non-Episcopalian counties in England and Wales and Scotland,—except, of course, that the Regium Donum not existing in England at all, and the anti-Catholic feeling being much less strong in England than in Ulster, the Dissenters here have voted for the Roman Catholics almost unanimously, and the Episcopalians, as we know, not nearly so unanimously against them.
On the whole, we must reluctantly conclude that the new county franchise has added, if not to the regular party- strength of the Tories, certainly to the inertia of the country, and its aversion to any great change ; that the new suburban constituencies are especially inert ; and that on the religious question the Irish have a right to conclude that wherever Episcopalianism is strongest, Catholic Ireland has least hope of justioe.