SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN'S SUCCESS.
Wfrankly admit that Sir George Trevelyan's success at V V Glasgow is complete and conspicuous. None the less we do not think that it ought to dishearten the Liberal Unionists in the least degree, and we believe that it will only dishearten those who forget, what it is, indeed, by no means easy to remember, that a great popular vote is determined by very much simpler and more general considerations than a Member of Parliament's vote or a journalist's judgment. We do not suppose that there is a greater delusion prevalent anywhere in the political world than that which pervades the articles of an evening contemporary, that the conces- sion made by Mr. Gladstone in reference to the retention of the Irish Members at Westminster has borne fruit in these recent elections at Spalding, Basingstoke, Coventry, and Glasgow. Mr. Gladstone's promise that the Irish Members shall be retained at Westminster has had as much to do with the matter as the building of Tenterden steeple had with Goodwin Sands. The popular vote is barely influenced at all by the kind of considerations which chiefly determine the lobby into which Members of Parliament go. It is no doubt here and there determined by such broad and selfish interests as the hope of " three acres and a cow," though we believe that even that hope affected ordinary voters infinitely leas than the much more important impression which they received of the existence of a friendly and disinterested sympathy, or of the absence of such a sympathy, with their class, from the speeches of the candidate. A hundred votes were, we believe, given by rural voters in 1885 to Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Chamberlain, or their nominees, as "the people's friend," to one which was given in the hope that the cow would be driven into a convenient paddock near the voter's cottage within a few weeks after the General Election. What determines the popular vote is chiefly, we believe, the impres- sion formed by the average voter as to the heartiness and dis- interestedness of the candidates between whom he has to choose, and it is a very great mistake to imagine that he is in- fluenced by very refined considerations in forming his judgment even on that subject. Nor, on the other hand, is he greatly influenced by coarse or selfish considerations. Mr. Gladstone never made a greater tactical mistake than in dangling the temptation to be rid of the Income-tax before the eyes of the voters in 1874. In the first place, a very moderate number of the voters paid the Income-tax. In the second place, the shrewdness of the voter is just sufficient to make him feel suspicious of anything like a promise of this kind. It was not a promise either to be made to the electors or to be kept to them ; it was a promise which concerned the Legislature, and those more elaborate financial considerations which cannot be at all properly discussed except in an assembly containing a good many financial experts. The electors felt that it was not to them that a particular feature of the coming Budget should have been explained, and heartily as we supported Mr. Gladstone, we believed and said in 1874 that the virtual promise given would injure his position rather than improve it, as in all probability it did.
In the present instance, Sir George Trevelyan, in our opinion, for the first time in his life deserved to be rejected, and yet he gained his most triumphant success. But we cannot say that we are at all troubled by the result. The constituencies cannot look into these matters as we look into them. They take, and must take, very much foreshortened views of the qualities of a candidate. They knew a good deal of Sir George Trevelyan, and comparatively little of Mr. Evelyn Ashley. Sir George, as they were aware, was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet in 1886, and resigned rather than agree to the Home-role Bill. It was obvious, therefore, that he was open to the higher moral considerations which overrule a selfish love of position and power. For a year he stood aloof from the Liberal Party, while declining to give any active support to the Conservatives,—the latter always a creditable feature in the eyes of constituencies, which are as jealous of disloyalty of this kind as they are of disloyalty to a religious belief. Now Sir George Trevelyan tells them, for reasons which in all probability they do not take any particular pains to understand, that Mr. Gladstone has removed his objections to the Irish policy proposed last year, and that he is quite satisfied that he may return to a hearty support of Mr. Gladstone without danger to the country. Of course, they accept the assurance of so distinguished a man,—a man, too, whose air and speech are winning,—who has given up so much for his convictions, and do not particularly puzzle their heads as to the reasons why Mr. Bright and Lord Harlington and Mr. Chamberlain wish them to vote one way, while Mr. Gladstone and Mr. John Morley wish them to vote the other way. The situation to their minds speaks for itself. A distinguished Cabinet Minister, who had also for two terrible years beqn Irish Minister, and had been as thoroughly riddled as a political St. Sebastian with poisoned Parnellite arrows, tells them that he distrusts the Parnellites no longer, that they ought to be treated with deference and respect, and that he hopes to win them over to the cause of the Empire. Of course, they were impressed by the spectacle of such apparent generosity, and gave Sir George Trevelyan a majority such as that division of Glasgow has not yet given to any candidate, and may perhaps never give to any candidate again.
We deeply regret the result. We know, as the mass of the electors do not know, that Sir George Trevelyan asked last year for guarantees of which he has obtained not a fraction or a trace. We know, as the mass of the electors do not know, that the retention of the Irish Members at Westminster has no more tendency to secure the adminis- tration of impartial justice in Ireland than the retention of a weight in one of two scales has to secure the equilibrium of the scales. We know that Sir George Trevelyan now speaks of the control of the Irish Constabulary, and of the appointment of the Irish Judges, from Westminster,—for neither of which concessions he has obtained any guarantee,— as sufficient to prevent serious injustice from being done by a Parnellite Legislature and a Parnellite Administration, and we know that there could be no greater delusion. We know that, in his idolatry of Liberalism, Sir George has thrown up the cause for which he pleaded so boldly and so well last year, and that he mat now be regarded as an ordinary Home-ruler. But the electors of a great popular constituency did not know these things, and never could enter into considerations of this class ; they must judge in a rough way by the chief features of a public man's career, and, on the whole, we believe that they formed as good a judgment as could be expected of them. Sir George Trevelyan had a great deal to be proud of. We are not surprised, and in a certain sense not sorry, that the mind of the constituency was influenced by the leading characteristics of his career, though it was misled by them. Of course, we should have much preferred that they should have taken Mr. Bright's word for it that Sir George is going wrong now. We believe that
Mr. Bright had even more claim on their confidence than Sir George Trevelyan ; but very naturally, they set off Mr. Glad- stone's wishes in one direction against Mr. Bright's in another. And perhaps that was as near to a reasonable judgment as an average elector, without the opportunity of studying the minute points of the case, could get. What we mean when we say that, on the whole, we are not sorry that popular constituencies should form such judgments as the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow formed on Tuesday, is this,—that if they began to form their judgments generally on less popular considerations, we believe that they would go much oftener wrong than they now do. None the less, Mr. Evelyn Ashley has deserved the highest honour for the gallant fight that he made, and will gain by it in the respect of all trained politicians. And Sir George Trevelyan will find, whenever he has to face the Irish Home-rule problem again, that he has to choose between a new change of front, which would make him ridiculous, and abandoning all the guarantees for justice in Ireland on which a year ago he laid so much stress. Indeed, it is the honour with which he then covered himself which has so admirably served his purpose now, though that purpose is, as we view it, one which must cancel a great deal of the esteem in which we formerly held him, and place him on the common level of vacillating politicians who either do not know their own mind, or when they know it, have not the strenuousness of nature to act upon it.
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