THE PRESSURE ON THE MODERATES.
IF Lord Salisbury has any control over his colleagues at all, he is ill-advised in allowing Lord Randolph Churchill to make these perpetual appeals to the Moderate Liberals. He should keep such matters in his own hands. Lord Randolph is himself the great obstacle to the formation of a new party capable of carrying on the Government efficiently. His endless inconsistencies, his habit of making bids, and his poli- tical unscrupulousness disgust thoughtful politicians as much as his recklessness alarms them, and make them inclined to wait on almost too long rather than formulate any scheme in which he shall bear a part. All those statistics in which he indulged on Wednesday at Manchester about the comparative voting power of the groups in the House of Commons are rubbish. It does not matter one straw whether Lord Hartington's "personal following" is fifty, or thirty, or thirteen. The contest, if it ever comes on—and it has not come on yet, being still dependent upon Mr. Gladstone's unknown policy as to Ireland—must be waged on a higher plane than any pottering and temporary party combinations can reach. There must be distinct issues of policy specified, both as regards Ireland and as regards the series of ideas badly described as Socialism," which the country can understand,- and on which the country can not only decide, but decide for a generation. Nobody is going to form a Cabal, or a Cave, or even an observant group. Any such course would, we are convinced, be as opposed to the ideas of Lord Hartington, Sir H. James, Mr. Goschen, or any other of the Moderate chiefs, as it would be to the cause of good and efficient govern- ment. The governing thought of these men, if we understand them at all, is that their policy, the ancient Liberal policy, is, both as regards Ireland and as regards economics, better for the United Kingdom than the one universally assumed—but still only assumed—to be in the ascendant ; that the country, when appealed to, will accept it ; and that patriotic Conserva- tives will see that there is more safety for them, and more honour, in supporting the Moderates than in forming any separate, and therefore comparatively feeble, combination. The appeal the Moderates will make will not be to this or that knot of Members, or even to the House of Commons as a whole, but to the entire people of the United Kingdom, who in the long-run are masters of their own fate. If the people choose to divide the Monarchy, or to demoralise politics by a huge system of philanthropic bribes, they must do it, and Moderates can only protest that those proposals are not within the con- fines of true Liberalism ; but at least they shall have the opportunity of judging, without being compelled, in giving judgment, to abandon the hopes of years and the convictions of a lifetime by merging themselves in the old Tory Party. Let those who agree with the opinions of the Moderate chiefs— and we doubt if 10 per cent, of all cultivated politicians dis- agree—follow them ; and a party which can govern, and not merely criticise, will grow up of itself around them, as one did around the Peelites. They ought to have with them all true Conservatives, all Moderate Liberals, all sound economists, all men who believe that government is a difficult and arduous task, and all that vast section of the electors who are un- willing, for no adequate reasons, to plunge into the unknown depths of Federalism, and of a reconstituted social system.
But, it will be said, this is not practical politics, for it proscribes the Tory chiefs, and hands over the future to other leaders. It does nothing of the kind. The new party would proscribe no one who could either heartily accept or cordially acquiesce in its leading ideas, and would be as content with Lord Salisbury, moderated by Lord Hartington's Premiership, as with Mr. Trevelyan, if he stood again upon his old political platform. Its first idea would be to reject no one, and to con- quer the country, which is, and will remain for ever, the ultimate arbiter, by its policy and its ideas. The Moderates are not differing with Mr. Gladstone in order to get an abler leader. They will never get anyone half so good, if only he would adhere to the tried and proved ideas of Liberalism as it has existed and has triumphed all through his life. Nor are they differing with him in order to obtain power, which they might have had in ample measure, and with his full consent, if only they had subordinated their convictions to party feeling. They will secede from him, if that sad necessity arrives, only to carry out a policy, and no one who accepts that policy and the ideas which lead up to it can be an unwelcome ally. What is unwelcome to them is the suggestion, so pressed on them in many quarters, to merge themselves in the Tories, whom they could not convert into a majority, and so to become, instead of an alternative Government filled with special ideas, mere partisans. They must stand by themselves and their prin- ciples; and if the country will not rank itself behind them. they must endure their defeat, confident that they have done all they could to make sound views prevail. The Moderates want to be a party behind which the country, Liberal or Con- servative, can, if it desires the reign of law in Ireland and the reign of justice in economic measures, range itself with ease.
Lord Randolph Churchill, in his speech of Wednesday, says that, as one alternative, he is willing to accept this position : but the assurance is required from other lips than his, and after the Government plans have been disclosed. He looks too much to momentary successes to be trusted ; he himself. whatever else he is, is no Moderate ; and he is altogether premature. Nothing can be done, or even thought out, until the plans of the Cabinet are before the ccuntry. Mr. Glad- stone's demand for time was perfectly reasonable, and must have been made if any other Minister, situated as he is. occupied his place. The attempt to force his hand, now that he has pledged himself to a date, is factious, and will certainly receive no kind of Liberal support. The crisis cannot arrive until after the Premier has spoken ; and should it arrive, this will, we hope and believe, be the attitude of the Moderates, —a deep regret at their compulsory solitude, a distinct statement of what their policy is, and an appeal to the whole country to follow them in making it successful. That is a far wiser course than any coalition, which the country, if it is, as we believe, Liberal, but Moderate, would distrust from the first, and would from the first assail as at heart .Old Tory. Moreover, coalitions are weak, and the work to be done will need not only strong men, but men who could keep their unity under the severest pressure. It is not to a coalition, or even a fusion of parties, that we look, in the lamentable contingency of a secession from Mr. Gladstone being inevitable, but to a Government of Moderates, acquiesced-in rather than supported by two-thirds of the people of the United Kingdom.
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