POPULAR FOREIGN POLICY. AI R GOSCHEN, in his interesting speech at
Lewes on Wednesday, said that "our democratic institu- tions were against contracting" alliances ; that what he called the system of "barter," which had succeeded to the -"Balance of Power" theory of foreign policy,—he meant, we suppose, Prince Bismarck's "Do, 'at des,"—does not suit England, who desires to be free from entangling engagements, and not to exchange promises which may compel her to do what it might turn out to be anything but convenient to defend. before a great popular audience. We rather wish that Mr. Goschen had extended his remarks into a general exposition of the effect of popular institutions on foreign policy. None of our statesmen could have given us more help or clearer warnings as to the advantages and disadvantages of such institutions when we come to secure our position among jealous rivals. It cannot be doubted that the older aristocratic Govern- ments were better able to contract durable engagements, and to keep the pledges which were given to secure these engagements, than are the democratic Governments of the present day. Great democracies are not easily made to understand the value of such engagements, and are -very likely to break out into impatience when they find themselves involved in a network of conditional promises which do not strike them as obviously and directly for their benefit. "We soon find ourselves divided by a multitude of dangerous criticisms,—one party blaming the folly of such treaties and advocating the wisdom of denouncing them, another party per- -haps advising their immediate repudiation, and a, third pleading for their loyal fulfilment in a voice that -carries little authority with constituencies so little able to give continuous attention to the complex character of the conditions of these various undertakings. Undoubtedly a democracy, especially a democracy relying on the sea for its defence against its many irritable neighbours, is not very likely to form a good basis for an intricate 'diplomacy. Needing popular feeling to support its policy, it must keep its foreign engagements very simple and very few. And even then there are sure to be diffi- culties in getting popular feeling to enforce strict fidelity to the few great obligations which we must give and must abide by. At the present moment it is by no means certain that if England were polled for an answer to the question whether we ought to abide strictly by our engagements to the semi-independent Boer Republic -of the Transvaal, and to punish the violation of these engagements by Dr. Jameson and his colleagues, England would return the right answer in an unmistakable tone. There appears to be a distinct trace of impatience with the Conventions of 1881 and 1884, and of sympathy with those who, according to the popular view, went to the rescue of the downtrodden people of Johannesburg. It is quite conceivable that the apparent turn of the tide in three recent elections, may have been at least partly due to the wish to give the Government a reprimand for its fidelity to the Boers and its arrest of Dr. Jameson. Of course, no statesman who studies the explicit engagements of our conventions with the Transvaal Republic, will give any sanction to this popular impotence of plain con- tracts. But for all that, thus it may be, and even if no such impatience really exists, and the apparent reaction is due, as very likely it is, to purely general causes, like the universal English tendency to strengthen the defeated party after any dramatic victory, still the mere 'uncer- tainty whether popular opinion is or is not favourable to the breach of explicit engagements, is a very embar- rassing element in national treaties with foreign Powers ; those Powers watch with a kind of dismay such apparent vacillations of feeling, and ask how they are to depend on the fulfilment of our engagements to them, if our democracy shows such ambiguous symptoms of repenting its engagements so soon after giving them. It is true, no doubt, that even if any Government that faithfully kept the pledged word of the nation, were deserted by the people and defeated, its successor would none the less fulfil the unpopular engagements. But it is a very discouraging position for a foreign State to watch the popular distaste with which a Government is viewed that does nothing in the world to deserve displeasure except fulfil to the letter the promises given and received under circumstances which were not quite to the taste of the nation whose Adminis- tration gave and ratified them. If President Kruger should ultimately come to the conclusion that the English people are restive under the engagements which their Ministers have given him, it would not be very easy to blame him for looking out wistfully for other support not so dependent on a more or less capricious popular judgment. Of course we are putting this as a mere hypothetical case. There is no kind of evidence that the English people do wish to give the Govern- ment a snub for their prompt disavowal and. arrest of Dr. Jameson. The apparent turn in the tide of popular favour may be due to quite other causes, and in fact it would be absurd to draw any con- fident inference from so doubtful an event as the swinging back of the pendulum in a few constituencies. But, none the less, it illustrates the reason for keeping England as free as possible from complicated engage- ments, that it is really quite beyond the power of any national Government to make engagements which are sure to command the favour and the hearty support of our great democratic constituencies. Our statesmen may make them, and our statesmen may keep them, but it is one thing to keep them to the letter and to have to interpret them in their mildest sense, and get rid of them as soon as possible, and quite another thing to interpret them in the most generous sense and to hold by them as long as the nation with which we make them could reasonably expect. Undoubtedly it introduces an element of considerable difficulty into English foreign policy, that the power which really determines the attitude in which we are to fulfil our engagements, is almost inscrutable even to practised eyes, since it depends on a very ill-informed body of opinion subject to very spasmodic influences. The English democracy will have to cultivate not only its intelli- gence, but its power of self-restraint, if it is to count for as much as it ought to count for, in the region of foreign policy. If the popular feeling in our great constituencies is to be subject to every breath of mere national caprice which blows, of course our statesmen will not be safe even in signing the most necessary agreements with the full con- sent of Parliament, for the constituencies do not answer for the future, and an engagement given in one decade with the full sanction of Parliament may become so un- popular in another decade that it may become almost unworkable.
Of course, these considerations do not apply nearly as closely to a Continental democracy as they do to our own and the American democracy. On the Continent, even the democracies are profoundly penetrated by fear of their neighbours, and we see clearly in the case of France how deeply this feeling has influenced the mind of even the ordinary electors, and has made it a matter of the first importance to them to cling closely to any powerful ally like Russia. But the Atlantic in the case of America, and even the" silver streak" in our own case, does wonders in rendering the fear of invasion distant and shadowy, and if the constituencies are to support a strong foreign policy, they must first become what as yet they are not, —intelligent, reasonable, and self-2ontrolled.
Previous page
