THE " SILVER LINING."
THE saying that " there is no cloud without its silver lining " must be true, or it would be untrue that the destiny of man is overruled by a perfectly wise and righteous mind ; but certainly the silver lining is often turned so ex- clusively upwards that we lose even the faintest glimpse of it. Nor could we discover much trace of a silver lining to the present dark cloud, if the Conservatives were really to be left dependent on the Irish Nationalist vote for their policy. But there is still hope either that the counties will give the Liberals a substantial majority, in which case the unpolled portion of the Scotch and Welsh majorities would nearly balance the Parnellite vote, or,—and this now seems the more likely event,—that the Tories may carry so substantial a majority in the counties as to save them, when assisted, as they would be, by the moderation of the Liberal Party in all serious crises, from leaning absolutely on their Parnellite allies. We ought to remember that it by no means follows, as a consequence of an adequate Tory victory, that the Tories need lean too much on the Parnellites. That would not be at all inevitable if Mr. Gladstone gave,—as he certainly would give, and as he knows how to give with inimitable grace and dignity,—the strength of his support to all the more reasonable acts of the Tory Govern- ment. In fact, it depends on us, in case the counties go against us, whether the Tories need rest on the Irish or not. So far as we can see, there is absolutely no need for it, unless, in their jealousy of the Liberals, they so much prefer to govern by favour of Mr. Parnell, rather than to govern by favour of Mr. Gladstone, that they would insist on embarking on adven- tures which it would be impossible for the great leader of the Liberal Party to support. We hardly think that, even from the point of view of Tory self-interest, they would choose the baser alternative. For they must consider the effect of that coarse on the solidly Conservative, and certainly strongly English, Constituencies to whom they owe the successes they have already gained. Orangemen who have gone side by side with Irish Nationalists, and even Fenians, to the various Lancashire polls, might perhaps be ashamed to accuse their leaders of treachery for doing in the House of Commons what they themselves have done in the polling booths. But how would the good Conservative Churchmen who have flocked so enthusiastically to the polls to vote for the Constitution as it is in Church and State, like to see Lord Salisbury or Lord Ran- dolph Churchill hazarding the Union, only in order to be able to play a freer part in Asia or Africa, and to repeat the disastrous blunders of 1878 ? We may depend upon it that even if the Tory Party retain their power through a majority given them by the Irish Nationalists, Mr. Gladstone will not so play his part as to leave them dependent on the Irish Nationalists for their future policy. There is a magnanimity about his statesmanship which is never shown better than under such reverses as that which now seems not improbable ; indeed, we may well apply the language which Mr. Gladstone used to Mr. Parnell, to Lord Salisbury also. Mr. Parnell, said Mr. Gladstone, could afford to treat the Liberals as if they were his deadliest enemies, because he knows very well that it will not prevent them from granting one single boon to Ireland which they believe to be Ireland's just due. And so we may well say that Lord Salisbury can afford to cast his flouts and jeers at the Liberal Party, because he well knows that it will not prevent Mr. Gladstone from giving him his support in any and every case in which that support will enable him to choose the moderate and wiser policy, and to avoid the ruinous course of accepting passively the dictation of Mr. Parnell. One of the uses of having a statesman at the head of our party in whom we can put implicit trust is that even our opponents can trust him too ; and that unless they are very wilful indeed, and very jealous of their chief antagonists, they may thereby be saved from the inexpressible calamity of leaning on such help as that which the fierce enemies of England could alone tender to them. We cannot help hoping, therefore, that even if the counties follow the lead of the greater boroughs, and show absolute ingratitude to the party which gained them their new rights, Mr. Gladstone's magnanimity, with the Conservative backing which it would undoubtedly receive, might yet save Lord Salisbury from the evil inspirations of Lord Randolph Churchill and his Irish ally.
And if this be so, there will undoubtedly be a silver lining to the cloud of Conservative victory. It is something to show the rasher Radicals that their attempt to snatch the lead out of the hands of wiser and more temperate men, has led to sheer disaster. This may teach them a really useful lesson, which, if they are as clever as we believe them to be, they will not soon forget. When Mr. Chamberlain supposed that by dangling the spoils of the Church, Free Education, and a prospect of land on easy terms, before the poorer classes of English society, he should win easily his political game, he little understood how profoundly attached to their great traditions the masses of the English nation really are. They love to show that they are not so easily moved to break with the past as Radical sciolists suppose. No doubt this deep-rooted conservatism has its evil side. Nothing can be more disheartening than to see one Metropolitan borough after another voting against any reform in the clumsy and complicated system of London government ; but for our own parts, we do not in the least believe that the London Municipal Question was the pivot on which the elections turned, though the polls will probably decide that question in the wrong sense. The worst of representative machinery is that it is impossible to convey to the man on whom, after a balance of all sorts of considera- tions, you fix your choice, which of his opinions you dislike and which you approve. It is probable enough that numbers of the Churchmen who voted for Tories because they were against Disestablishment, would have approved the reform of London, if they had been able to vote separately on that issue. However, the deep-rooted disgust of Englishmen for revolutionary policies will not have been expressed in vain, if it tames the rashness of Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke.
Another aspect of the Tory victory in the boroughs which, to us at least, is far from unsatisfactory, is that it increases the chance which a Liberal victory might have to some extent diminished, that our occupation of Egypt will not be abandoned till we have secured for the unfortunate fellahs some of the advantages of a steady and civilised government. We have never ignored in the least the strong grounds for Mr. Glad- stone's dread that by involving ourselves in the European whirlpool we may risk very seriously England's independence of action, and may even be dragged into a struggle of a very serious kind against our will. We are quite aware that that danger will be immeasurably increased if, under such states- manship as Lord Salisbury's, our occupation of Egypt should be indefinitely prolonged, and we greatly dread the consequences. But as we are now looking not so much at the many inevitable mischiefs of a Tory victory,—if it . should come,—as at the few counterbalancing advantages, we have a right to number amongst the latter the greater chance which a prolonged Tory Government might give to the Egyptian peasantry of profiting permanently by the results of our intervention. And we are, we confess, quite unable to ignore that aspect of the question, even while admitting the danger to England of being made the object of endless Continental intrigues.
There is yet another not impossible advantage which we may reap, if the counties should follow the unworthy example of the great boroughs,—we mean the possibility of reforming the procedure of the House of Commons with much less fric- tion than the Liberals, with the Tories dead against them, would have to overcome. If only the Tories can be persuaded that with the inadequate numbers they can in any case command, their right policy would be to lean on the Moderate Liberals and not on the Parnellites, they would very soon find that business would become absolutely impossible without a reform of pro- cedure, and they would carry with ease, with Mr. Gladstone's help, such changes as Mr. Gladstone could support, though Mr. Gladstone has never received, and would never receive, their help in attempting to carry those changes. The very first result of the Tory Government's leaning on the Moderate Liberals for help rather than on the Parnellites, would be a systematic Parnellite obstruction, and to put down that obstruction they would need Liberal aid which would be frankly enough given if they would only undertake to apply not a merely temporary, but a permanent remedy to the evil. Here, again, it would be the willingness of the Liberal Party to render good for evil on which we should rely for a satis- factory result. But of that willingness, under its present leader, we feel absolutely confident ; and, therefore, we must express our earnest hope that if the Tory successes continue, nothing may be either done or said by any of our Liberal leaders. which would tend to drive the Tories into the arms of Mr. Parnell. That they have been only too willing to accept his aid hitherto, we all know and deplore. But much might be done to detach them from that dangerous alliance, and so to paralyse the malign influence of Lord Randolph Churchill.
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