TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MARCHING-FORCE OF DEMOCRACY.
NO man can see the future ; but it is more than possible that the historian may one day point to the short Autumn Session of 1884 as a landmark in European history. Certainly in our time—now, alas ! covering a large portion of the half-century--there has been no such evidence given of the self-acting, self-derived marching-force of Democracy. There was a dramatic manifestation of that force in France when, in 1871, M. Thiers, himself a Constitutional Monarchist, decided provisionally for the Republic; and again in 18M, when a Chamber ruled by a majority of Clericals, Legiti- mists, and Orleanists, definitively established the Republic ; and once more in 1879, when Marshal MacMahon, in possession of all the springs of authority, with Reactionary Ministers, Absolutist Generals, and Royalist officers all round him, was beaten by invisible opponents, silently surrendered power, and went out into an obscurity never since broken by a word. But those incidents, though more effective for the historic drama, were in reality not more important and scarcely more genuinely dramatic than the one now occurring in our midst. A year of talk, an autumn of struggle, a week of conferences, and amid the dismay of " classes " and " influ- ences " and "ancient powers," Democracy, not enraged, not elated, not even sardonic, marches gravely forward to its seat, the unquestioned and irresistible master of the Empire. Whether Tories or Radicals will rule is matter for doubt, or argument, or grave inquiry, ending possibly it may be in convictions which hitherto have not been classed among recognised faiths, but that when the next Parliament assembles the People will be in power, is beyond discussion. The whole mature manhood of the country will be in posses- sion of the franchise, and their representatives will be elected "substantially in proportion to the electors' numbers." Not to speak of the strength it derives from its historical ascend- ancy, and from the conviction of statesmen that it is the grand safeguard against anarchy, the new House of Commons will be supported by irresistible physical force, by a body of electors who, in the event of insurrection, could almost strangle opponents with their bare hands. The representa- tives of such a body of power cannot be openly defied ; and Democracy, we may depend on it, whatever direc- tion it may take, will be irresistible. Yet that posi- tion has been attained for the People almost undesignedly. The Liberal leader is on many subjects almost a Conservative, the Conservative leader is a determined Tory, who sometimes speaks more like a French Reactionary than an English poli- tician; yet a force above them both has compelled them momentarily to agree, and in agreeing, to take a stride for- ward in the recognition of popular power such as the strongest Radical hardly dared to hope for. A suffrage such as would have alarmed Earl Russell is to be exercised in a way which will in all times of excitement enable the masses of the people to throw their weight irresistibly on the side of their opinion. We question if even the Reform Bill of 1832 was such an advance, for although that Bill broke the power of the great families, it broke also a popular power—the power which rioters who were aided by a silent sympathy in the masses exercised over Governments. Westminster was enfranchised, • and quiescent. A grand measure could no longer be rejected by a caste ; but then, also, it could no longer be rejected, as Walpole's Excise Bill, for example, was, by the populace. The governing power, approved by the new authority, will be beyond all mob-terrors. Nor is this all. Let our graver readers just consider for a moment what actually happened in the House of Commons on Friday se'ennight. Mr. Labouchere, an extreme Radical, who is frequently—though, we think, unjustly—denied his claim to be a serious politician, introduced a motion which, though worded to snit unwritten rules of the House, meant, as he carefully explained, that the Commons desired the abolition of the Lords. That meaning was accentuated and driven home by an ultra-democratic speech from his seconder, Sir W. Lawson, which left no doubt on the mind of any hearer that the speaker detested aristocracy at least as much as the unreasonable privilege of the corporate House of Lords. Yet though the mover was no leader and the • occasion was inaptly chosen, and the General Election is in full view, but for the personal ascendancy of Mr. Glad- stone nearly two hundred Members would have voted for the proposal. As it was, seventy-one Members did so, and among them are representatives of some of the largest boroughs in the kingdom, and five men heretofore understood to be old Whigs. And, moreover, it was known to every man present in the House that even the vote which would have been east had Mr. Gladstone not made such an appeal to his fol- lowers' sense of opportuneness, failed to represent the full strength of opinion, that Liberals had brought up from every part of the kingdom the strongest impressions of the decision of the electors that the House of Lords should be moved out of the way,—that a plebiscite, in short, would be fatal to its existence. Even the Premier, who during the agitation of the autumn consistently sheltered the Upper House, founded his appeal mainly on opportuneness, and em- ployed conventional arguments, such as the hereditary ability of some families, at which at another time he would have smiled, knowing that, except in Peers, ability is never pleaded as a reason for irresponsibility. Just compare the whole scene, the Conservatives mostly absent, the Radicals sanguine, the Members from great boroughs convinced, the Premier pleading for delay, the air of the Chamber full of Democratic feeling, with the scene when Mr. Auberon Herbert, in 1872, was literally howled down, and mark the extent of the change. The Lords are what they were, possibly abler than they were, cer- tainly not less active in politics ; but their House rocks where it stood firm. It is their foothold in the people's mind which has slipped away. Silently, almost imperceptibly, the Democratic impulse has arisen in all minds, until the agitation of an autumn is sufficient to make of a remote dream of thinkers an article of popular faith ; and it is revealed that the grand old mansion which looked so strong and had stood for centuries four-square to all the winds of heaven, can hardly be kept up, if at all, by alterations which will leave it a mere adaptation from the past. No leader directed that agitation. All ordinary leaders declined to act. Not one really great and exhaustive speech by a politician in the front rank has been uttered against the House. Democracy only, self-impelled, has moved forward, as if without conscious volition, against it, and every wall is cracking with the impact. The force of resistance appears to be gone ; and while, perhaps, half of the ablest among us regret the fact, there is no competent politician who does not know that if a strong Premier gave the signal, the House would after one election be a memory.
On the causes of this singular stride forward in the opinions of a nation, this advance visible at every debouching point yet even now ill-defined, historians will write volumes, and perhaps arrive at no more satisfactory conclusion than that such was the tendency of the time. They will speak, of course, of suffrages, and no doubt the suffrage will be one cause; but it does not explain much, for on great questions the English people have always had an informal vote, and till 1884 it was not used against the House of Lords. They will speak, too, of that strange mental process of the century, visible in all countries and only partly explicable in any, the decay of deference, of the habit of respecting without an assignable reason, which is shaking so many institutions, and even destroying ideas once held as principles not to be discussed. They will dilate largely on that new reliance, often a superstitious reliance, on "reason," and "evidence," and "analysis," which is so felt in the political as well as the theological domain, and threatens in places and among classes to strip man altogether of his mental clothes. And they will say a little of the results of education, which, small as they may appear, increase by hundreds of thousands a year the number of those who think it humiliating, and even a derogation of duty, not to have formed an opinion on any subject before the country. And, perhaps, they may also dwell on that new force of which none of us—unless, indeed, it be the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette —knows anything certain, not even whether it is really a force, that impatience of privation and want which shows itself here in an animosity to rent, there in a hatred of the prosperous, and in yet another place in a resolve to endure starvation rather than accept low wages. To which cause the ultimate palm will be assigned, as the one most operative, we cannot venture to predict ; but we wonder, as we record the list, whether the minute causa means which the Peers fastened on in 1860 will be found among them. Was it mere prejudice, or a pre- monitory instinct warning them of a great danger to them- selves, which in 1860 induced the Lords to risk a quarrel with the Commons, rather than give up the duty on paper, under which no popular Press could ever have seen the light ?
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