TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW WHIGS ON THE HUSTINGS.
THE "educated Liberals," as it is becoming the fashion to call them, will, it is evident, muster very strong on the hustings, if not at the polls. Their idea is the idea of to- day, the idea of to-day always attracts the young, and the number of young candidates will in this election be very con- siderable. They will have, too, the accidental aid of the very powerful class which, Liberal by tradition and habit rather than by conviction, sees in the support of the " educated" candidate an alternative between abstention from the polls and voting for a candidate who will reject all re- form. Those who wish to rat, but dare not, are sure to vote for the men who, being Liberals, are nevertheless denounced by Radicals as Conservatives. They have also the sympathy, open or secret, of nearly the whole of the literary class, whose instinct is progress, while their temptation is fastidiousness, and they may, if they will but speak out, secure the alliance of the ilite of the working men. In Scotland particularly and north of the Humber there are non-electors by the thousand, who only want leading to pronounce for a suffrage which shall represent every class and yet leave no class dominant, who acknowledge the unfairness of the vote by num- bers, which nevertheless they scarcely see how to avoid. They may therefore, if they are bold, come into the House next Session in a phalanx which will enable them to hold the scales, compel the Tories to consent to a reform, and the Radicals to accept a reform not based upon a blank and uniform reduction of the rent limit. But de- spite these favourable signs coming up from all parts of the country the New Whigs are exposed to three very considerable dangers. They are not sufficiently careful to show that they are really in favour of a broad reform, of one that will materially and visibly improve the political position of the unrepresented class ; they do not meet the storm of chatter about fancy franchises with a sufficiently vehement denial ; and they are too fond of offering crude plans which their leaders have not accepted, which break down one by one, and which in breaking down increase the popular im- pression that anything except blank reduction is " impracti- cable."
We object altogether to the production of a hundred or so of amateur plans before the half-amazed and half-disgusted constituencies of country towns. If any candidate thinks he has a plan which is original and which will hold water, let him reserve it for the House, or if he really cannot contain himself, publish it in some short and readable, but well-con- sidered form. To bring out novel schemes, hampered with a half-considered terminology, before an audience which has not time to consider them, and amidst the excitement of public meetings, is worse than folly. Nothing is ever accomplished in England until the recognized leaders have moved, and the true policy is not to advocate this or that scheme, but to lay down the principles within which the leaders must frame their plan, and leave the details in their hands. Mr. Gladstone is certain to be at least as inventive as any young member, or old one for that matter, and it is nearly certain that Mr. Gladstone will in the end produce a Bill which will precisely meet the object educated Liberals have at heart. His utterance at Chester, when speaking on behalf of his son, was unusually significant. He accepted Mr. Disraeli's unfortunate phrase,—unfortunate because unintelligible to the mass,—of " lateral extension," and regretted the abolition of the scot-and-lot constituencies. In other words, he would be willing to include all property-holders in the franchise without reference to their occupancy of houses, and to pro- vide for the election of a number of members in the great cities by manhood suffrage—that is, he would do exactly what is wanted, restore the old right of the handicraftsmen to return members of their own selection without drowning all the existing constituencies. Even if he does not mean this, it is quite certain that no Reform Bill can be carried in the teeth of his opposition, and the wise course therefore is to impress and support him, not to take the matter out of his hands. A promise to support Mr. Gladstone in any Bill having for its object the adequate but not universal repre- sentation of the unrepresented is the wisest pledge which thoughtful Liberals, if they must pledge themselves at all, will, we think, be able to devise. It avoids all premature discussion and criticism, warns the Tories that the subject is neither dead nor dying, and at the same time warns the Radicals of the compromise which in the end willingly or reluctantly they will be compelled to accept.
It averts, too, or will, if they are decently fair, that charge of supporting "fancy franchises" which the " advanced" Liberals are so fond of bringing forward. There never was a more un- fair charge made against any considerable party. The new- Liberals are not asking for fancy franchises, but for a reform which in its principle is as simple as any ever suggested in British political history. They ask that the vast body of handi- craftsmen whose labour has made England a storehouse of wealth, who have executed all that thought has devised and capital paid for, who fill our armies and man our fleets, who con- tribute one-half the revenue, and who are admittedly unrepre- sented, should be admitted within the pale of the Constitution. They ask also that their admission should be so arranged that no class now wielding any share of power should be disfranchised,, that no interest now represented should be swamped, that the infinite and beneficial variety among the influences which press upon Parliament should not be diminished, that, above all, the. power of cultivation, and property, and experience should not be nullified by the mere power of numbers. No plainer re- quests were ever made to Parliament, none more definite, few —pace men like Mr. Leathern, to whom everything outside their formula seems impracticable—which could be so easily granted. The scheme embodied in Mr. Gladstone's brief hint would secure all that is required, and is not only practicable,. but has been for ages practised. The talk about fancy fran- chises is mere rhetoric, intended to convey to the humbler electors the idea that something is to be attempted which will not be simple enough for them to understand, that classes they care nothing about are to be admitted, and the body of the people, for whom they do care, to be left out. It is the ex- clusion of workmen from their fair share of power, not their admission to it, which constitutes "fancy franchise," the franchise which admits the greengrocer who can barely write his bill and excludes the engineer who has devised an improve- ment in rotatory engines.
Above all, the new Liberals must avoid addressing all their arguments to the Tories. They have done this already to such an extent that the advocates of Mr. Baines's Bill and similar measures are enabled to charge them with crypto- Toryism, to assert that they are tricking the nation, seek- ing to give with one hand and take away with the other, to render the very reform they offer utterly in- operative. This accusation is dangerous, for the new Liberals are as yet a little in the position of the Peelites in 1854—a strong body of officers without soldiers to com- mand. To make a party strong it needs support from a strong body of the people, and if the masses are once deceived into a suspicion that they are being tricked argument will be lost in anger. The truth is, and it is this which above all others should be made plain to the non-electors, that the Liberalism of "the educated " far surpasses that of Mr. Baines. Ile offers them nothing except the right of assisting the middle-class to elect the men who are now elected—we offer them a substantial share of power, a compact body of mem- bers instead of a mere scattered body of voters. Moreover, he has so arranged his plan that if it is accepted the workmen as a class will probably be excluded for ever. For not only does he adhere to house-rating, while the tendency of good work- men is to prefer well ventilated lodgings to fetid houses of their own, but he increases the constituency to such an extent that the new electoral aristocracy can thenceforward, if they please, defy all external pressure, the middle and upper classes when aided by half a million from the lower, being absolutely irresistible. They would win in a mere conflict of fists. Even the advocates of manhood suffrage are less Liberal than the new Whigs, for while the former are promising what they know perfectly well they cannot perform, the latter are offering nothing which the next House of Commons may not be induced to concede, and which if conceded will not driye the Peers to a despairing resistance. The difference between the mere right of voting for representatives and the power of selecting representatives needs to be made clear from the hustings, if the educated Liberals are as a political party to possess bone and muscle as well as brain.
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