LIBERAL "BITTERNESS."
THE Tories are displaying the defect of the strong-minded women, who can bear anything better than sharp criti- cism, more especially if the criticism is flavoured with a touch of humourous scorn. They are always complaining that the Liberals hit so hard. They resent epigrams as insults, and when they are chaffed grow red with moral indignation at such indecent flippancy. They cannot help laughing with Sir Wil- frid Lawson, though the laughter is at themselves, but if any- ly,dy else laughs at them, and especially if his laughter is effective, they pout in a way which, in men so burly, is irre- sistibly funny. They will not be so treated, no they won't ; and those who do it are savages, so they are. Sometimes, indeed, their indignation rises to the tragic point, as tragedy is under- stood in a fishwives' quarrel. The Telegraph, for instance, on Thursday published an article which, if it means anything, means that the Duke of Argyll ought to be lynched, or at the very least, " cut" by Canadians and citizens of the Union, for his wickedness in resisting the policy of her Majesty's Government, and especially for "indulging himself" in "the oratorical luxury of saying what he pleases." True, he is only "a little urchin in the backwoods, trying his,puny hatchet on the stem of some huge monarch of the forest," and •the "tree does not mind it, nor anything nor anybody else ;" but still, " the sentry before the door of the Viceroy of Canada. might claim just now to be- a better friend and servant of the.Eng- lish Commonwealth " than the Duke of Argyll. This, how- ever, is not so odd as the complaint of the •Times about Mr. Chamberlain. The Member for Birmingham, accustomed to a Warwickshire audience, usually puts his meaning plainly, and uses sometimes rough similes, with a sort of Cobbett flavour about them —we do not mean that he is in the least like Cobbett—which his audience receive with instant compre- hension and approval. To them they are epigrams, and have just the effect of epigrams, their exaggeration giving such metaphors just the force of impact which edge gives to epigrams among the cultivated. When Mr. Chamberlain, for example, calls the Ministry the "Tory_ Long Firm," he means precisely what the epigrammatist means when he writes of the Government that it gives liberal orders for glory, but forgets to pay for it ; and when be likens the Cabinet to a Board of Directors who obtain money under false pretences, and pub- lish reports calculated to deceive the public, he• only throws into popular form the accusation brought by every statesman in Parliament who has exposed the Government budgets, and ridiculed the Government boastings about peace with honour. The Times, however, cannot away with such coarse language, and in tearful, but nearly speechless indignation, moans out that Mr. Chamberlain has called the Ministry "thieves," which, while the Ministry has a majority, is a shooking insult to the•" whole public life of England." " The Long Firm," whines the Times, "is simply a slang name for a gang of thieves "- which it is not, being the slang name, or rather the short name, for a particular kind of trading swindlers—and Mr. Chamberlain, in using it, "passes the bounds of decent politi- cal warfare." " You have found the Whigs bathing, and stolen their clothes," hissed Mr. Disraeli, amidst the delighted laughter of all Tories, and of all who can understand a biting jest ; but according to the Times, he only called Sir Robert Peel a thief, and entirely outstepped the decorums of English political life.
All this is surely a little absurd. We need not say we heartily wish that the political combat could be carried on entirely with polished weapons, that the electors could under- stand wit as they can appreciate humour, that innuendo would tell with them as forcibly as denunciation, and that politicians would satirise one another like French Academicians who object to a new confrere. It is always the interest of journalists that in the battle of words skill should be substituted for force. But speech must be made intelligible to those who bear it, and it is vain, when public men are speaking• to a mass meeting, and have good cause for showing themselves bitter, to expect them to use only the language which, in an assemblage able to catch the faintest equivoque, might be more effective, as well as more polite. Liberals cannot afford when they are boiling with- moral indignation to leave the weapon of plain speech entirely to the Tories. When one complains to the police about the abstraction of spoons, one calls it usually a theft. The Times- forgets that Liberals like Mr. Chamberlain—men• with whom, be they wrong-beaded or not, Liberalism is not a taste, but a religion —do not see in the policy of the last five years merely the expensive mistakes of a well-intentioned but rather feeble Government. They see a Cabinet presided over by a politician far too clever to make mistakes, and far too- cosmopolitan to feel prejudices, who has deliberately used his knowledge of an English weakness to lead the people to the verge of war as the best method of ensuring the continued, authority of his own party ; who has deliberately carried through a needless campaign in order to obtain an appearance of glory; and who has spent in a period of depression enormous sums in order, not that England might be strong, but that ignorant electors might believe she was so. He has raised expenditure to its highest level, and cannot fight a savage tribe. We freely admit that it is,
at all events, perfectly possible that this view of the Tory Premier may be incorrect ; that we may discover, when the true history of this reign is written, that Lord Beaconsfield was eo political con-
juror, but only a feeble statesman ; that he thought a war re- quired, and only shrank from his own conclusions ; that he fought in Afghanistan in ignorance of 'geography ; and that he spent money not to retain power, but because- his only idea of a policy was to imitate Lord, Palmerston. But
that is not the view of men- like Mr. Chamberlain, or the majority of Radicals interested in foreign polities: They think
the nation is not being so much misled as befooled, not so much misgoverned as used as an instrument, not so much set aside as derided, and it is impossible, so thinking, for them not occasionally to be rough, and sometimes even rude, of speech, —not to use words which convey their moral as well as their political indignation. The " Tory Long Firm" is no more injurious, though it is coarser, than the " organised hypocrisy " which was Mr. Disraeli's description of Sir R. Peel's Administration. Such Radicals may be in complete error in their thoughts—and undoubtedly they do not make sufficient allowance for the deficiencies of the Tory mind, the quality in it which Mill called stupidity, but which is rather ineffectiveness—but they are unable to believe that Lord Salisbury can maker secret agreements with Russia, and believe Russia utterly treacherous ; that Sir Stafford Northcote can have altered all in a moment his opinion about Afghan wars, or can have unlearned or rejected all the principles of Peelite finance ; that the War Office can have been convinced of Lord Chelmsford's efficiency in March and of his incompetence in May ; or that a great Government can have been dragged into a great war by a retired Anglo-Indian without a following among the people. They resent such statements as men resent statements which assume the incompetence of the audience, and resenting them, their language is necessarily that of men determined to expose an imposture. They may be wrong, and as we say, we believe they are wrong in part, this Government being constantly suspected of evil plans when it would give its ears for the power to devise any plan at all, and of subtle designs when it is only trying to live from hand to mouth ; but it is that belief which animates the Duke of Argyll, when he pours out fiery words which pierce even Lord Beaconsfield's brazen armour, as well as Mr. Chamberlain, when he turns on the jet of muddy jokes which makes theTinzes,having no brazen armour, but only a quilted jacket, shiver and wince. The Tory advocates seem wholly unaware. that their statesmen have converted many of their opponents from politicians into political moralists, men burning with indignation at what seem to them unjust wars, unrighteous threats, profligate waste of public resources amid the public misery, and ask in wonder why the country should be asked not for measures, but merely to turn them out. They might as well ask why men ask for honest police, before asking for new laws against wrong-doing ? The country wants men it can trust, first of all. In the eyes of those Liberals who think this Government clever, now a rapidly decreasing fraction, it is not the measures only which are wrong, but the men who are bad, whom it is a moral duty by all legitimate means to assail, and specially to assail by exposure of their deceptions upon the people. If ever there was a duty recognised as incumbent on a Councillor of State, it is to tell the Sovereign when he is beguiled, and that is the duty which the Duke of Argyll, and Mr. Chamberlain, with equal intent, though with far unequal powers, perform, when they tell the ultimate Sovereign, the country, that it is deceived. " You • are beginning," says the great Peer, " yon are beginning, my Lords, to be found out." This Ministry, says the great Mayor, is " only a Long Firm." Eachis giving,expression.to a thought which, if he thinks it, it is the first duty of his political trust to proclaim, and is no more •to be condemned for intolerable rudeness than the Duke of Wellington, when he told his feebly-petulavnt master, pleading his character as gentleman against a necessary re- form, "Your Majesty is not a. gentleman, but a King." Why does not the Times denounce the balladmonger—far more dangerous than either Duke or Member—who, feeling that the depression of the country and the badness of its Govern- ment are somehow connected, sings in a refrain which may prove as dangerous to Tories as " Lillibullero " was to Jaco- bites,—" For the Tories are up, and the Wages are down."
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