"BEADING OUT."
SOISE of the Liberal leaders are becoming so exasperated with the Unionists, that they begin to use threats to them. With a singular contempt for logic, they argue that although the Unionists may be justified in disliking and re- sisting Home-rule, they have no right to keep the Conservatives in power by voting with them on ordinary questions. If they do that, it is maintained, they become Conservatives, and ought to be finally "read," as renegades, " out " of the Liberal Party. To vote for a Budget which Mr. Gladstone disavows, is treachery ; while to support a Crimes Bill which he re- pudiates as insulting to Ireland, is nothing leas than treason. Mr. Labouchere has been Baying that all along ; many journals in the Liberal interest constantly repeat it ; and now Lord Rosebery, in his carefully prepared speech at Glasgow, has emphasized this view. Tolerance for the Unionists, he says, has arisen solely from the long-suffering of Liberals, who have turned first one cheek and then another to the smiler, but who are fast coming to the end of their patience and of their cheeks. "A separation exists which may soon become a schism." If "you forget your party too long, your party may forget you, a consideration I recommend to the favourable attention of Liberal Unionists." The "end of all this will be a General Election ; a broad line will then be drawn ; on one side of that line will be the Tories, and on the other side will be ourselves," the Liberal Party. There is no mistaking the meaning of sentences like those. If—as is probable from the position of the speaker—they have been uttered with the consent of Mr. Gladstone, they involve a distinct menace that at the next Election Unionists will be regarded by their former colleagues as enemies, and will be treated as such, and will either be driven from their seats as Laodiceans, or compelled to declare themselves Conservatives. Considering that he is talking of colleagues as honest as himself, and far richer both in experience and the equipments of statesmanship, Lord Rosebery might word his threats less bitterly, and might express them with more sense of regret for the losses which he believes to be inevitable ; but there is nothing in the threats themselves to excite in Unionists either irritation or alarm. It is perfectly natural that such threats should be made. Every party which has been induced to take a new departure looks upon those who will not follow as rene- gades or deserters ; and it is hard for leaders, when they see themselves baffled or defeated by men whom they have led, not to regard those whom they cannot convince as the most dangerous of their foes. No resistance is so trying as that which arises from mutiny within the household. Mr. Gladstone feels when Unionists vote for Mr. Goschen, as Englishmen feel when Irishmen pray that the enemies of England may defeat her in the field. If the Liberals think it, they have a perfect right to declare their ancient comrades schismatics, and this even though the schism has been made solely by themselves, the renegades having adhered steadfastly to the ancient creed. Parting is parting, whichever is treading the ancient path. There is ground for regret in such Liberal action, if it is really taken, because it involves the rupture of old friendships and the dissolution of old party ties ; but there is little for irritation, and none for fear. The Unionists knew perfectly well what theyrisked when they allowed Mr. Gladstone to rush on unaccompanied by themselves. They understood per- fectly well how the charm of his name would deepen the reluctance of the English people to recognise more than two parties, and how likely it was that they themselves would, after an interval, share the fate of the Peelites, and be compelled either to retire from politics, or to allow themselves to be absorbed in a party less or more liberal than themselves. They saw at the last Election that if the Conservatives did not vote for them, they would all be stranded, and they recognise that at the next Election no Liberals favourable to Home-rule will give them any quarter. They are quite prepared to face that danger, even should it involve political extinction, and they do not see that it will be increased by their formal dismissal from the Liberal ranks. Indeed, it will be diminished. No
Unionist elector will desert his representative because a Dis- unionist leader calls him a renegade, and any Conservative who desires to vote for him will vote the more readily because the candidate has been openly repudiated by the other side. The Unionist electors may not be numerous, but their convictions are inflexible ; and there are thousands of Con- servatives throughout the country who are in reality Whigs, but who still feel the influence of names and badges, and who will support the Unionist standing on his cause alone, far more readily than the Unionist who remains in name a member of the Liberal Party. No Unionist, unless his personal standing is very high or his personal influence very great, now hopes much from any Home-ruler's vote. The cause of difference is too large, the difference itself is too extensive, the feeling developed by the contest is too hot, for any compromise or bargain, and the Unionists must and will appeal to their cause on its merits and to the general conservative sentiment of the King- dom. If they are read out, they are read out, and except in the faint regret which expulsion must excite in their own minds for the new fanaticism of their old party, the reading will make no difference.
It will be well for Lord Rosebery, however, and those who think with him, to consider whether, in coming so early to so final a resolution, they are not a little precipitate, and unduly influenced by pique. The Unionist conflict must end some day, and probably in some way which none of us foresee ; but it may last for years, and during all that time the Liberals are sentencing themselves to a hopeless exclusion from power. The Unionists will not give way ; their cause is one which cannot lose its hold upon the national mind ; and whether they stand alone, or merge themselves in the Conservatives, or absorb the Conservatives in themselves, the chances of the Liberal Party mast decline. If the Unionists can stand alone, Lord Rosebery will admit that he has little hope ; while if they cannot, they will increase indefinitely the working strength of the Conservative force. They will bring to it exactly the men it needs, moderate yet strong politicians, accustomed to affairs, apt in administration, yet thoroughly understanding the wishes of that great section of the people which is conservative not by party so much ashy mental habit. They will enable the Tories to break loose from some old ideas, fears, and ways of thought which only fetter them ; they will give them energy ; and they will bring to them that success in affairs for whirl the people long. Above all, they will liberate them from that nervous fear of the people which still actuates their leaders, and make them understand the great truth that democracy loves decision. Lord Rosebery may smile, and say this is all self-praise ; but if he doubts it, let him study the effect Mr. Goschen has had upon this Cabinet—how he has solidified it, how he has given it energy—and then ask himself what will be the effect if eighty men of Mr. Goschen's views, though not of his powers, are flung at once into the Conservative camp. If he is still uncon- vinced, let him ask any Conservative what he now thinks of the recently distrusted recruit; and if he doubts on yet, let him study the negative result of the strenuous resistance made to Mr. Goschen's Budget. He will see, we think, that Conservatives are not the same army as Conservatives modified by Unionists, and will hesitate, out of mere pique and chagrin, to increase the proportion of the chemical which makes the liquid so strong. He has recently been in India. Would he, if he had to defeat a Sikh, or a Mahratta, or a Deccanee army, send it first of all a body of European officers ? That is what he is doing with his threats ; and anything more unwise, more utterly reckless from a tactical point of view, we cannot remember in party warfare. It is not, of course, for Unionists, but for him and his colleagues to decide. They are entirely within their right in reading all Unionists out ; but as they are trustees for a great party, they should consider the conse- quences fully, and remember what part it is that breeze plays in giving solidity to brick. What kind of a future Cabinet will that be in which Mr. Gladstone is absent and no Unionist finds a place?
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