TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPPOSITION.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN, in his remarkable speech at Greenwich on Wednesday, said that a Nemesis of disintegration had overtaken the disintegrationists. They had plenty of Home-rule among themselves, and no central control. That is perfectly true, and though Mr. Labouchere wishes us to accept his guarantee that the disintegration shall go no further than the subject of the Royal grants, you might almost as well accept a house- maid's guarantee that the crack in a plate which she had almost broken should never develop itself into a break. Mr. Labouchere has not the power to arrest " the logic of facts " just at the point at which it would be convenient to him to arrest it. Before he sets a train of political machinery in motion, he should be very certain that he has the command of a permanent brake by which he can bring it to a standstill, if his failure to stop it suddenly would fill him with dismay. In the present case, he has not the command of any permanent brake. He has been setting a bad political example of complete indifference to the authority of his leader as long as he has been in the House of Commons, and for him to assure us that when once the subject of Royal grants has been dealt with, the splits in the party exhibited in discussing them shall go no further, is even more laughable than the very best of those jokes with which he used to garnish his addresses to the House of Commons, and which he has now so abruptly laid aside. Mr. Chamberlain is quite right in saying that their own disintegration is a. Nemesis upon the disintegrationists. Is it possible that a party which begins by treating the authority of all the greater states- men of this century, on whichever side of the House they may have sat, as if it did not weigh a scruple as against the force of a purely abstract argument, can be expected to pay any deference to their own chiefs when they find themselves out of sympathy with them ? It is, too, a great mistake to suppose that, as a matter of fact, the Opposition are divided only about the Royal grants. They have shown themselves profoundly divided about the London riots ; about the proceedings of the London County Council ; about the public right to the "unearned increment; " about ground-rents and leaseholds ; about the hours of labour ; about compulsory vaccination ; indeed, about almost every- thing that raises the right of the individual to defy the State, and further, that raises the right of the poor as a class to control the State and use it as their instrument for improving their own social position. The most remarkable, perhaps, of all the results of Mr. Gladstone's great change of front has been the new indifference to authority which it has introduced into the heart of his own party. Till Mr. Parnell recently lent him the temporary use of the Parnellite legion, Mr. Gladstone may have been said to have been a General without an army, appealing in vain to his own followers to observe something like discipline, and not disperse themselves over the battle-field in the pursuit of their own ends. The Opposition has become a mob of free-lances. And even Mr. Labouchere himself will soon find that his own Radicals are quite as Radical in ignoring his authority as they are in combining to humiliate Mr. Gladstone. The whole tendency of that indifference to historical precedents and national unity which has marked the Home-rule campaign, has been to foster enormously the vanity of petty leaders. This it was which gave ut, first, Harcourts and Morleys and Lefevres, and next, Laboucheres and Storeys and Stuarts and Cun- ninghame Grahams and Cremers, who are all disposed to take their own line without serious reference to any one else, till political independence becomes sheer political anarchy.
But we do not care to insist on this anarchy merely by way of trampling upon that unfortunate party which contains the greatest number of fragments of what was once the great Liberal Party. We draw attention to the subject because we are so anxious to impress a useful lesson on the Government,—which is now so much stronger than it was, that there is too much reason to fear that it may not sufficiently guard itself against its own very con- siderable dangers. For it is not true that the anarchy of the Opposition implies the safety of the Government, unless the Government take very great care indeed not themselves to become rash, careless, and self-confident. It is clear that the tendency of a careless, selfish, divided, and self- willed Opposition to make a careless and divided Govern- ment is by no means inconsiderable. And we see in Lord Randolph Churchill's outbreak at Birmingham on Tuesday, how the force of such examples may work. He at least has publicly declared that, so far as. he is concerned, the compact between the Liberal Unionists and the Tories is at an end. He calls him- self a Tory, though he is about as little of a Tory as Mr. Chamberlain himself (and a much less trust- worthy Unionist), and he declares that if the Birmingham Tories wish him to fight their cause against the Liberal Unionists at the General Election, he will accept the office without reference to any one's counsel on the subject. In. other words, he will break the truce ; and if his example should be followed, the Unionist cause would be lost, and would be lost because Lord Randolph Churchill had been so much excited by seeing the riderless politicians galloping about in disorder in the opposite camp, and kicking up their heels as he loves to kick up his heels, that he could bear the reins of discipline no longer, and felt bound to join in the stampede. Indeed, he attacked the two most important policies of the Government, —first the foreign. policy, and next the Irish policy,—with a good deal of sub- dued bitterness, using mild words indeed, but committing himself very deeply to serious and subversive deeds. If the kind of disintegration which has gone on so rapidly in the Opposition is to spread to the Government, Lord Randolph Churchill's speech and example is the very agency by which it might be spread. While we are in the very act of helping the Khedive of Egypt to resist a formidable invasion, he calls upon Lord Salisbury to evacuate Egypt as soon as may be, and to make up all his quarrels with France and Russia. While Mr. Balfour is still fighting with Parnellites as St. Paul fought at Ephesus with the wild animals of the arena, Lord. Randolph lays it down with the most absolute dogmatism, that Irish Members should not be put in prison, and that collisions between the police and the Irish people should be sedulously avoided. In other words, he illustrates his willingness, nay, his eagerness, to defeat the Liberal Unionists in the name of the Tories, by showing that there is hardly a Tory anywhere, or, for the matter of that, a Liberal Unionist either, with whom he could co-operate. He is anxious, apparently, to break faith with Egypt ; and there is no manner of doubt of his anxiety to reverse the whole policy of the Government in Ireland. He wants to deal with the Irish Home-rulers as. the trooper who was escorting Rob Roy across the Forth in Sir Walter Scott's novel, dealt with that famous free- booter. He would not give them what they ask on any terms, but he would not object to put them in a position in which it would be quite impossible to prevent them from getting it for themselves. Rob Roy whispered to his captor just to set his arms free, and when his arms were once free, he very soon disappeared from behind his guard and that is what Lord Randolph whispers to the Government to do in relation to the Irish Home-rulers; and if they follow his advice, we may be quite sure that a like result would. follow. Indeed, Lord Randolph Churchill could not have made a speech which would have better pointed out to the world how anxious he is that the disintegration which has fallen on the Opposition should extend itself as soon as possible to our own ranks. Well, the question is, are we going to resist the disintegration by every means in our power, or are we going to let it creep in amongst us, and spread paralysis amongst our own ranks ? We trust that we are going to resist it, that we are going to follow Mr. Chamberlain's lead, and to let every one know how utterly mischievous and fatal we deem Lord Randolph Churchill's counsel. But if so, there should be a very prompt repudiation by Tories and Liberal Unionists alike of his assertion that the compact between Liberal Unionists and Tories as to the filling-up of empty seats is now at an end. If that assumption is not to be condemned with the utmost warmth, the Unionist cause is lost. We won the General Election only by reason of that thoroughgoing loyalty of Liberal Unionists to Conservatives, and of Conservatives to Liberal Unionists, which has marked their alliance hitherto, and which is absolutely essential to our victory over the Home-rulers. And if we were to begin dictating new foreign policies to Lord Salis- bury,—whose foreign policy even Mr. Gladstone has heartily approved,—and a new Irish policy to Mr. Balfour, we might just as well lay down our arms at once. It is not the disintegration of the foe that will help us if we allow a like disintegration to creep into our own ranks. Anarchy is an even more fatal disease to a Government than it is to an Opposition. Even a " fortuitous concourse of atoms " such as Mr. Gladstone now leads can combine for a pitched battle. But a Government that is at sixes and sevens cannot contrive to hold its own at all. It is of the utmost importance to the cause of the Union that Lord Randolph should be promptly and warmly disavowed by all hearty Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, and that his attempt to pass the apple of discord through the ranks of a thoroughly united and disinterested patriotic party should end in nothing worse than showing us -what we knew before, that we can no more trust Lord Randolph Churchill as a politician than Lord Randolph Churchill can trust himself.
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