TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR GLADSTONE'S LINE ON THE SUEZ CANAL.
RUMOUR, of a kind which is not at all likely to be quite without foundation, persists in attributing to Mr. Glad- stone an intention of declaring himself hostile to the Govern- ment's purchase of the Suez Canal Shares, after a fashion which will have grave results, both for the unity of the Liberal party and for what, at the present moment, we care even more about, Mr. Gladstone's own name and fame as an English statesman. That it is the duty of the Liberal party to criticise the policy of the Government in this matter freely, and point out whatever may seem unfortunate or defective in their plans, we do not at all question. And that it is Mr. Gladstone's perfect right to deliver his own personal criticism on those plans, if after mature deliberation he is satisfied that Parlia- ment would not sufficiently apprehend the danger involved in them without one of his great speeches, we are quite assured. But we do think that before taking a line distinctively his own on the subject, and throwing himself into it with his usual force, he ought seriously to weigh the effect that his speech may have upon the constitution of the party which he used to lead. It is impossible for Mr. Gladstone to be Mr. Gladstone, and nothing more. He is, and always will be, while he remains in the House, the leader to whose splendid achievements and brilliant eloquence a great section of the Liberal party will look back with pride, as marking the high-tide of English Liberalism. If he takes on any question of first-rate moment a line entirely distinct from that of the present Liberal leaders, he will necessarily carry a good fraction of the party with him. It is not only the prestige of his name, but to some extent, too, the cast of his sympathies, which secures for him the adherence of many of the Radicals. His religious devotion to the policy of administrative economy, or we might say even administra- tive parsimony, if we use the term in its strict and not in its opprobrious sense, his dread of political entanglements abroad, his bellicosely-pacific turn, the individualism of his national interests, and his persistent belief that the exercise of moral influence is enough to settle almost all the great questions of foreign policy, and to settle them in the right way, are all so much in sympathy with the ideas of a particular section of the Liberal party, that whenever he may choose to make a great effort in the line of those convictions, he cannot help exercising over the Radicals the influence not merely which the voice of a great leader always exercises, but also that which the voice of their inner minds, expressed as a great orator only can express it, must command. Now, we are very far from denying that if Mr. Gladstone really holds a very strong and maturely formed view on the subject of the Suez-Canal purchase, it might be his duty to the nation, to his constituents, to his conscience, whatever the result to the Liberal party, to express that view, and to express it with all his wonted force and eloquence. In all supreme questions, party considerations should wholly dis- appear, and if Mr. Gladstone believes this to be a supreme question, we at once admit that what we have to say on the subject does not apply. But if he takes a less serious view of the emergency than this, let us entreat him to consider how greatly Lord Hartington's difficulties will be enhanced by having a section of his party led off by Mr. Gladstone in a direction widely divergent from his own, on a ques- tion of the first importance, and on the very morrow of his election as Liberal leader. Of course, such an event must tend to increase that disorganisation of the party of which we have heard so much, and even for a time at least, to subdivide it into two, with different objects and distinct policies. Of course, too, the effect would be felt on a variety of other questions. The Radicals, led on this question by Mr. Gladstone, would begin to feel for the main body of the party under Lord Harrington just what the Dissenting wing of the party, who had no conspicuous leader, felt during the last Parliament for the main wing of the party in relation to Mr. Forster's Education policy. They felt sore at the desertion, as they thought it, of true Liberal principles by the Government, and expressed, on almost all questions, a feeling of disloyalty to the Government which probably had as much effect as any other political cause in breaking up the Liberal majority. Well, what the Dissenters and their allies, the friends of secular education, then felt, it is quite certain that the eager opponents of English Imperialism will feel, if they have their views expressed for them by Mr. Gladstone with all his usual brilliancy, and yet find the main body of their party playing, as they will call it, into the hands of the Conserva- tives, just as they accused Mr. Forster of playing between 1870 and 1874. Now, is Mx. Gladstone's view on this Suez- Canal policy so strong that considerations of this kind dwindle into insignificance beside it If so, we have nothing to say. But if not, it cannot be denied that he will be inflicting a very serious additional blow on the organisation of a party by no means in a very prosperous condition as it is, if he puts him- self at the head of all the non-interventionists and all the economists and all the foes of an extending empire and the friends of a Dutch modesty of aim, and so revives in a new form the Manchester School of I 854-5. The Education feud is hardly yet healed. And if a new split is made in the composi- tion of the party, and that by an exercise of the authority of its most brilliant leader, we confess that we should not envy Lord Hartington his very difficult and responsible post. It was a. great blow to lose Mr. Gladstone as leader. But it will be a greater blow still, to recover him only as leader of a new body of seceders, who will again loudly accuse the official chiefs of Opposition of greater sympathy with the principles of the Conservative Government than with those of the Liberal tradition.
But for our own parts, we confess that we care far less for the danger to party organisation which will result from this ex- pected move of Mr. Gladstone's, than for the result to his own name and fame as a statesman. We have often been accused. of blind and fanatical hero-worship of Mr. Gladstone, of a loyalty to him so unffiscriminating and so little in relation to the political course of his government, that it was sometimes treated as a sort of political craze. But in fact, we were, never much in sympathy with Mr. Gladstone in relation to his foreign policy, except in reference to the few and not very important speeches he has made on the unity and independence of Italy. Our loyalty to him, like that, as we believe, of the great bulk of the Liberal party, has been awakened by the singular sincerity of his Liberal professions, the splendid: intrepidity with which he endeavoured to redeem, and did redeem, his promises to Ireland, in spite of the gigantic diffi- culty of his task, the extraordinary clearness and breadth and success of his financial policy, and the masterly complete- ness of his legislative and administrative measures. The set-off against these great merits has always been, to our mind, the want of definite character in relation to foreigir policy which marked his administration ; the occasionally grudging spirit in which he treated our colonies ; the tendency to save money at the expense of what was, in our estimation, far more valuable than money, the elasticity and vitality of our Empire abroad ; and, in one word, the deficiency of his Govern- ment in a historical spirit such as, because it is chiefly fed by great traditions, the Tory party have always vindicated for them- selves, without, however, assigning any reason why it should not be as it has so often been, the Liberal spirit also. During Mr.
be, administration, the questions which seemed to indi- cate this deficiency were not, however, of the first importance. We regretted the tone taken when Russia so cynically tore up the Treaty of 1856. We regretted the want of firmness which was shown at first under the Alabama Treaty in relation to the 'Indirect Claims.' We regretted the waiving of the Canadian claims for Fenian aggressions. We regretted the cavalier and almost supercilious treatment of New Zealand. But even the most important of these faults were not of great signi- ficance when compared with the great deserts of the last Government, the unwonted sincerity of its promises, the swift- ness and thoroughness of its performances, its impartiality to- wards all religions, its equal-handed justice to all portions of the United Kingdom, and to all classes in relation to taxation, its true zeal for education, its honesty in applying to England the principles which England urges upon other nations, and its enterprising spirit in relation to reforms which would have daunted any other Government that England has ever known. For all this we felt and feel profound gratitude to Mr. Gladstone as to a statesman who has dissipated the distrust usually felt of the hollowness of party promises, and who has more than redeemed in office the hopes he held out in Opposition. This is the light in which, as we be- lieve, the English people still regard Mr. Gladstone, and itis the light in which we should wish to see his administration regarded in the estimate of historians still unborn. But will it be so if he now throws himself with his usual zeal into a policy which we shall all think the very opposite of a national and historical policy ; which, if it should succeed, would have the effect of relaxing our hold on India, and terminating for a long time to come our influence in Europe ; which would make the prospects of our Colonial Empire doubtful, and would undermine the elasticity and self-confidence of our national life? Is it not as clear as day that if we throw away our chance of getting a firm hold on the nearest route to India, and allow other nations to whom it is relatively of no importance to bar our way there, or even to obtain the right to bar our way, and so to divide us against ourselves, our interests against our national conscience, —the result would be a great and permanent shock to the vitality of our political power ? Can it be anything but a calamity if the name of the man who is chiefly associated with the new spring given to the internal resources of England, should also be chiefly associated with the new blight cast on the external resources of England? We are no apologists for the boastful spirit of national self-will. We have no sympathy with the desire to ride down other nations. But if anything is clear, it is that Englishmen have a talent for governing Oriental peoples of different races and creeds without pressing too severely on their social freedom, and that while we are thus of use to them, we find our work there increase our own hopefulness and our capacity for the moulding of our own future. Is it too much to entreat Mr. Gladstone to think twice before associating his honoured name with a policy which we believe to be both narrow and injurious, and which, in any case, will certainly associate him with unpopular views which he is hardly likely ever greatly to advance, while he may, by advocating them, be depriving the Empire of a possible resource in the confidence which Liberals still feel in the political genius of his brilliant career.
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