THE LIBERALS AND THE SITUATION.
THE Liberal Party have no grievance against the Govern- ment,—which has contended with the embarrassments of a very complicated situation with all the strenuous tenacity of a Government determined to do its duty, however uncongenial that duty might be. We ourselves, indeed, have always regarded it as a great misfortune that the remedial measure for Ireland should not have been put in the front of the battle, and the coercion measures made milder, We hold that had that been done, its only efficient weapons might have been broken in the hands of the Land League, and that the milder coercion would have been the more effectual. But holding this very strongly, as we do, it is childish to deny that the Government represent truly enough advanced Liberalism, and are better qualified therefore to determine the true judgment of the Liberal party as a whole, with all its Whig, and all its commercial-Liberal, elements, than any one Liberal journal. As they decided that it was either impossible to mature a great remedial measure in time for its early introduction, or that, if possible, it was undesirable till the anarchy had been first put down, even those who differ from them are bound to support them, and not to insist captiously on their own crotchet. And during the last ten days, a now arrest of remedial action has been put in, in the shape of Mr. Gladstone's serious accident, which rendered it practically impossible that ho should have expounded his proposals for Ireland with safety to himself at any time during the week which has now elapsed. We hold, therefore, that the Liberal party have no grievance against the Government for what is now happening. But the situation is most grievous, for we are already in the ninth week of the sitting of Parlia- ment, and have not even come in sight of any measure that Liberals, as Liberals, can take the least satisfaction in. We have passed one Coercion Bill and the half of another, the Tories assisting us, or even spurring us on. Nay, for anything we can Bee, the great Liberal ma- jority is utterly paralysed. Without the great engine of "urgency," nothing can be. got through Parliament that
the Land Leaguers choose to obstruct, and " urgency " can only be obtained for measures in which the Tories warmly concur. The Liberal Government , is in fact playing to an enthusiastic Tory audience, and succeeds only so far as it pleases that audience. Sir William Harcourt gets ringing cheers for hie defence of the Arms Bill, but when the Irish Land Measure comes on, unless its provisions be of a kind which the Irish faction dare not venture in the interests of their own clients to obstruct, no progress can be made without a three-fourths majority ; and a three-fourths majority is what no Government of recent times has ever commanded,—or is ever likely to command. There is something very grim in the irony of the situation. The Irish Land League have succeeded, apparently, in what, for anything that appears to the contrary, they really intended,—that is, rendering it very difficult, and perhaps nearly impossible, to carry an Irish reform, but compara- tively easy to pass the measures they profess most deeply to resent. They have compelled the invention of a most for- midable engine for sweeping away their own resistance when that resistance is offered to the application of physical force to Irish violence, and have only secured for themselves this compensation,—that they can foil, and are irritated into the mood in which they are well disposed to foil, the intentions of the Government, when those intentions point in the same direction as the popular feeling of Ireland, and therefore run counter to the creed of the English squirearchy. They can prevent, and may possibly do their best to prevent, the pass- ing of any measure that would undermine their own power in Ireland ; but they cannot prevent, and perhaps at heart take a certain satisfaction in knowing that they cannot prevent, the passing of measures mortifying to Irish pride, and adding, in the Irish imagination, to the number of unpardonable sins which England has committed against Ireland.
Nor is even this the worst of the situation. It may, and we hope it will, prove that whatever the Land Leaguers may wish, they will not dare to obstruct a measure so welcome to their constituents as the Irish Land Bill. But undoubtedly they will dare, and will not scruple, to obstruct English reforms comparatively indifferent to Ireland, whenever they can secure the alliance of the Tory party. And for this purpose, unfortunately, obstruction will be effective. It is nothing that the Liberals can, in any given division, defeat the Tories and the Land Leaguers combined. They cannot defeat them by a three-fourths majority, and that majority has, very pro- perly in our estimation, been required, before the enormous power of the " urgency" screw can be applied. It seems, then, that unless the country grasps the situation in all its embarrassments, and insists on restoring the majority to the legi- Create powers of a majority, in spite of the Irish Land Leaguers, we shall get nothing this session out of the groat Liberal majority, except the responsibility and the reputation of doing with a high hand Tory work which the Tories themselves would have done with much •less efficiency and promptitude.
No Liberal can look on such a prospect without dismay. It is not merely a dishonour to the great party which returned the present Government, that their most cherished wishes cannot be carried out ; it is a discredit to Parliamentary Government altogether, that a great majority, on .which- ever side of the House it may sit, should in this way be crippled and stripped of all its power. What is the legitimate remedy I' Clearly not, we think, to take away the legitimate rights of minorities by accustoming the House to apply such an engine as that of " Urgency" to the whole of its party debates.
Thatavould bring with it more evil than good. The remedy, as we coneeive,lies in a. different direction, and must cc:Insist in applying rigidly to the individuals of the Obstructive party:, whenever they can be clearly convicted of habitual obstruction, the penalty agreed upon during the Tory re'llime, which suspends them from the power to obstruct during the remainder of the Session. Our Parliamentary system is out. of order not simply when measures cannot be carried on which both parties are fully agreed, but also when the more powerful party cannot make its power felt in the legitimate way by carrying its measures, after full and fair debate, against the weaker party. And it is clearly too much to hope for, it is hardly even a thing to hope for at all, that any party should concur in passing measures which it thinks hurtful, only because.
it 'perceives that but for the wilful obstruction of a clique, they ought to be carried. Moreover, it is essential for the tlignii y of Parliament that this obstructive policy should be put down even phen it happens to sub- serve the political purposes of a large and non-obstructive minority. It is not sufficient to have the means of putting down a mere clique. There must be the means, also, of putting down a kind of resistance which makes a majority helpless. And the only way of doing this is to punish the individual members of the obstructive party for their individual obstruc- tion. We hold that the country ought to make its will clearly known on this head ; that the Speaker must ba encouraged to declare that, without indulging any party feeling, he is determined to exercise his, right of suspending any Mem- ber, who, in his clear judgment, clogs the free move- ment of the Parliamentary machine. And as the third suspension will last Lill the end of the Session, unless Parlia- ment deliberately revoke it, this remedy would really weed out all those who are trying to apply to the movement of the wheels of Parliament the principle of the "continuous brake." The Speaker will need popular support,—indeed, the manifestation of a very determined popular will,—before he can effectually use his authority in this direction. The obstructors are already cautious enough to make it very difficult to pitch upon any act of direct defiance of the Speaker's authority, and it is essential to the effectual application of it that lie should be sustained in the attempt to form a clear judgment on the Parliamentary conduct of individuals as a whole. For if the Liberal majority is not absolutely to he paralysed, —if the great victory of last April is to bear any legitimate fruits at all,—the Liberals must regain the power of carrying, after full and free debate, even measures of which the Tories disapprove. At present, they certainly have not got this power, and do not seem, without some great effort, at all likely to regain it.
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