TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLITICAL LULL.
THIS Recess is, and probably will continue to be, a bad time for journalists, who are so pressed that the Times devotes a leader to a man who said he would swim the Channel, but did not ; but, it is a worse time for politicians. They are evidently puzzled to death to find anything to talk about. They are afraid of the only subject which seriously interests and divides people, the strike of the agricultural labourers,—for neither Sir J. Pakington nor Lord Lyttelton seriously enter into it, contenting themselves with vague kindli- nesses ;—there is no other topic, even remotely political, of any immediate interest, and they have not apparently any cues as to the attitude to be taken towards the few measures known to be forthcoming. Even Mr. Childers, at Pontefract, said nothing which the London papers found worth reporting, except that the Government had performed all its promises ; while Mr. Lowe, at Wick, was driven to compliment the Scotch on their fidelity to the Liberal party, and to express his decided approval of the new Scotch Education Act. Lord Frederick Cavendish, who, as Mr. Gladstone's private secre- tary, knows as much as a Minister, spoke pleasant things to the Liberals of the West Riding about the fortunes of the Liberal party, which has been defeated there, he thinks, mainly through negligence ; but the only thought he offered his audience was a clever apology for the reduction in the voting lists caused by the Ballot. He thought it had released from pressure all those voters who, caring nothing for politics, had hitherto voted under compulsion, and now abstained because they always wished to abstain, a process which must be more or less beneficial. That may be true, but as Lord Frederick does not know who voted and who abstained, his speech has only the value of a plausible political guess. Mr. Roebuck at Sheffield uttered a clever sentence or two of the patronising kind,
• advising the working-man to cultivate society and make a gentleman of himself ; but his advice was scarcely political, any more than it was practical, and he avoided all topics of the day. As to minor politicians, they content themselves for the most part with platitudes, or if Tories and very hard pressed, abuse Mr. Gladstone, denounce the House of Commons —that is quite a new trick—and make furious love to the Established Church. Mr. Stanhope, in the West Riding, by way of discrediting the House with the masses, says it has passed a Ballot Bill which will enable the electors to pass any measure they please,—in other words, it will do exactly what the masses, whom he wants to conciliate, would desire to be done, the oddest attempt to make a reform
distasteful that has been made for some time. Mr. Cavendish Bentinck declared, at the recent meeting in Cumberland, that members now-a-days were not inde- pendent, that they were afraid of their constituents, which has been a complaint ever since representative government began ; as has Mr. Hodgson's, that the Ballot Bill would never have passed if its opponents had been more numerous, a remark which had at least this merit, that it will never be denied either by enemy or friend. As for poor Mr. Holker, he is in a position truly deserving of pity. He is the Conservative candidate for Preston, and as the seat will be contested, his followers expect him to speak at length and often. He grati- fies their expectation, and of course, as a practised pleader, he has plenty of words, but his perplexity to find a subject is almost comic. His party has no programme unless it be perversity, and no watchword unless it be sewage, and Mr. Hollter is therefore compelled to declare for the Con- stitution, which nobody is attacking, and the Church of England, which never was so safe, and the House of Lords, which never lived down an attack so easily as it did the one raised by its opposition to the Ballot, and the sacred right of Englishmen to get drunk, which was never exercised with more complete freedom from restraint. This is not political speaking as political speaking was in the days when men were interested in some definite proposal, or feared some imminent change; or hoped for some well-defined reform. It is political "swearing at large" or blessing at large, and about as interesting as the malediction of an angry bargee or the invitation to all mankind offered by an over-contented diner-out, things curious to hear, because one wonders so at the object of their utterance, but not exactly provoca- tive of thought. We doubt if there is a man in England who a week after reading these speeches could remember a
sentence in any one of them, unless it be Mr. Cavendish Ben- tinck's, that abasing this Cabinet was "kicking a dead, donkey," and this he would remember only because it was so exceedingly characteristic.
The entire lull in the political world is the more remark- able, because it is not in the least degree the product of con- tent. Our political annals are very tiresome, but our political people are by no means happy. Members are thinking about things and talking about things which, though they do not. speak in public about them, are for them very unpleasant things. If they sit for great boroughs, they are uneasy and restless about the operation of the Ballot, which may work in the oddest way in boroughs returning two mem- bers, and will certainly demand an extra amount of exertion,. watchfulness, and stump oratory. They quite shiver- for their seats. If they are members for medium, boroughs, they have to see what can be done with the- Licensing Bill, and to dread local hostilities now ex- pressible in secret, and to give advice about the Act for. Public Health. If, on the other hand, they sit for counties, they have to meditate over the coming Local Government Bill, and decide what to do with a measure which their tenants will like and they will not ; and4 to make up their minds as to their course about cattle. importation ; and to settle how much and how little they dare say in Parliament about the Labourers' Unions. We- never remember a subject except Governor Eyre's conduct upon which opinion was so divided or so bitter, as
it is upon these Unions, so like its old kind of con- dition, when men honestly hated one another for differ- ing with them in policy. If they are Liberals, they have a secret trouble, a doubt whether they like the new Reform, Bill of which no one but Mr. Stanhope has yet said a word,. though we may in a few months hear of nothing else ; or if they are Tories, they have a fear lest if they concede the vote. their leader has often advised them to give to the county householders, it may be used to settle the land question; in an unacceptable way. There is no tranquillity, for all the silence, and for all the reticence no love between the- parties, which are only waiting for a cue to fly again, at each other's throats. Most Members we suspect, are actually longing for one, if only to give their thoughts. a definite turn ; but none comes, and probably for months hence none will come. Mr. Gladstone has am idea that it is easier to pass measures when they have not previously been talked about, and his Cabinet keeps its secrets. as none other has ever succeeded in doing, and Mr. Disraeli has- no measures to propose and no secrets to keep. His easy game is to wait till Mr. Gladstone makes blunders and then profit by them, and his followers know but one enemy, and that is the Premier. It is most amusing to watch the way in which., the Tory journals bridle, and frown, and smile when asked. what their policy is, and hint that they have got one ready to. produce in good time, and put on an air of hopeful energy,. and then, for want of something to do, scold away at Mr. Gladstone again. He is always there and always visible, an& so on in default of measures to carp at they, though almost weary themselves of their never-ending task, carp at him, varying the amusement mainly by little flirtations with the- Church. They turn aside for a moment sometimes to look wistfully at a new idea, examine it, like it a little, and then drop it lest it should not be Mr. Disraeli's. The Pall Malt Gazette, for instance—which would be Conservative, but for its brains—the other day suggested that as the Tories- were hungering for a cry, they might take up that of indi- vidual freedom, which is just now being assailed in a good; many ways, and will be defended by a great many classes with little-anticipated vigour. The Tories liked that hint amaz- ingly,—it would enable them to pose in their old and favourite attitude of the bold Britons who never would be slaves, ancl would besides give their young men most acceptable excuse for diatribes against narrow-minded Puritanism ; but they laid it down with a sigh, for had not Mr. Disraeli preached the- exactly opposite doctrine that all England ought to be made. healthy, whether it liked it or no, and had not the Conservative democracy strong ideas about competition, and had not they been raving for a twelvemonth about the superiority of social
over political legislation. They must wait, they see, and so must the Liberals, and while waiting both parties, when occasion for oratory arises, are utterly puzzled what to say, and end by bespattering either the Constitution or the Age with unreadable praise.
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