SIR WILIT A WI HARCOURT ON POLITICAL PROSPECTS.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT thinks that the anticipa- tions of the Unionists as to the insurmountable difficulties which will attend the attempt to put Mr. Glad- stone's policy into practical operation, if he should win the General Election, is very like "the consolation which a lady sometimes takes to herself, when another has been preferred, in the spiteful satisfaction of thinking how miserable the wedded pair will be." Possibly. But does it not generally happen that where there is bonei-fide evidence of want of confidence between the affianced pair, these predictions, whether spiteful or not, turn out to be true ? What better preparation is there for an unhappy marriage than concealments such as those which the Gh,d- stonian Party is doing its best to excuse, of the intentions of the suitor, if he may but• succeed in obtaining the con- fidence of the object of his affection without giving his own confidence frankly to her as to the settlement he proposes ? We have all of us heard of cases in which the lady was only too willing to ignore the most pertinent of all questions as to the future purposes of the gentleman, lest the investigation should end in breaking off the match ; but we do not usually find that weakness of that kind ends satisfactorily for either party. Nothing certainly is more conspicuous, and, we might almost say, more ostentatious, than the ominous silence which Mr. Gladstone and all his lieutenants keep on the two most important of all questions as to Irish Home-rule. What do they propose to do with a steadfastly irreconcilable Ulster ? And what do they propose to do in the way of reconciling the Irish demand for an independent and uncontrolled Par- liament in Dublin with the English demand for the power and right of overruling the decisions of that Parliament in the interests of justice and of the United Kingdom ? These are not minor questions. They involve the most obvious and far-reaching interests, and it is impossible to pretend that a contract which is made without any understanding at all as to the decision of either question, can be fulfilled without leading to the most bitter mutual recriminations. Even if Sir William Harcourt were right in attributing to mere spite the pre- diction of an unhappy future for any arrangement which leaves the settlement of these matters out of account, is it not a kind of spite which has only too solid a ground for its evil anticipations ? When a Catholic marries a Protestant without any previous agreement as to how the children are to be brought up, do we not all know that, as a rule, the issue is full of unhappiness ? Yet that is precisely the situation as regards Mr. Gladstone's obstinate silence as to the fate of Ulster after the con- cession of a Dublin Parliament and Administration has been made. And that, too, is precisely the situation as regards Mr. Gladstone's obstinate silence on the relations between the Irish and the English Parliaments after the new arrange- ment shall have been carried out. These delicate subjects are avoided lest the discussion of them should break off the match, without considering how big with future quarrels this short-sighted and ill-omened silence must be.
• But, after all, it is by no means certain that this short- sighted and ill-omened silence can be maintained. Sir William Harcourt thinks it can, and maintains it ; Mr. Morley, too, indulges the same hope, and even heaves in public his sigh of relief that Mr. Blane has withdrawn his motion ; but some of the most keen-witted members of the party are beginning apparently to think otherwise. Sir Charles Russell, who made a speech for the Gladstonian candidate at North Hackney on Tuesday, described the issue before the country as "Home-rule all round, Home-rule for the English, Welsh, and Scotch counties, and Home- rule for Ireland." Unless the English, Welsh, and Scotch counties are to be satisfied with County Councils, in which case they have it already and have not yet to get it, that is one way of saying that this delicate subject can no longer be avoided, and of announcing that the question raised, directly Mr. Gladstone gave up the exclusion of Irish representatives from Westminster, as to the relation of the Irish Legislature to the Legislature of the United Kingdom, can only be solved by the disinte- gration of the United Kingdom into parts, and the federa- tion of these parts again into a Congressional whole. Now, that is giving up the policy of reserve altogether, and though Sir Charles Russell is not one of the official leaders of the party, his position is prominent enough, and his influence with the Irish Nationalists is weighty enough, to be significant of the increasing difficulty of preserving the mysterious silence to which Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley have as yet so obstinately ad- hered. But if it should prove that the hush is to be broken, and that the delicate questions which have been felt so dangerous as to render both parties un- willing to open their mouths lest the match should be broken off, are to be bluntly canvassed and deter- mined, we are by no means without confidence that even at this eleventh hour the country will decline the perilous leap which it is proposed to take. When you press a break-neck leap on a great people, the best chance may be to get it taken in the dark. So soon as the precipice becomes plainly visible, and the hopelessness of reaching the other side in safety stares us in the face, even the most passionate and ardent of political disciples may start back. And for our parts, we cannot believe that the calm proposal to cut up the United Kingdom into bits and cast it into thin Medea's cauldron in the hope of renovating its youth, can ever be enthusiastically accepted even by the most enamoured of the Gladstonian constituencies. The notion of having one Parliament and Ministry for England, and a quite different Parliament and Ministry for the United Kingdom, is so genuinely monstrous, so preposterously absurd, that even the least educated democracy must shrink from a course so capricious and perverse. You might as well propose to federate Russia, the Caucasus, and Finland, so that Russia should have one Legislature and Government, the Caucasus another, Finland a third, and. the Federal Power representing the Union of Russia, the Caucasus, and Finland, a fourth and distinct Legislature and a fourth and distinct Administration, which might happen to be quite opposed to that of Russia. Such a proposal would be laughed out of court, yet it would hardly be more preposterous than that which should set up a Federal Government of what we now call the United Kingdom, in which England might be visibly overpowered and con- trolled by a combination of the majority in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales with the English minority against the will of the English people. No stable equilibrium could possibly result from setting on foot so absurd a rivalry as that between the great majority of 24,000,000 of people of largo resources, and the composite State comprising 35,000,000 of people amongst whom the 24,000,000 were included. It would be about as wise as to allow the two men whom the strong man, Mr. Sandow, ran into Nice the other day, holding them at arm's-length, to outvote the man who ran them in, and yet expect him to obey their majority of wills, while the muscles of the minority of arms so easily overruled the muscles of the majority of arms. Mr. Gladstone talks of the mystery in the policy of the Government, though he cannot lay his finger on a single inexplicable or even paradoxical element of its policy ; while he himself, with his finger on his lips, enjoins a political hush on all his followers, though this enforced silence is becoming, as we see by Sir Charles Russell's example as well as by Mr. Asquith's, absolutely intolerable to the most sagacious of his followers. Mr. Asquith has told his constituents in Fife that of course the Irish Legislature must be virtually independent, and that its decisions can- not possibly be overruled at Westminster, except under pain of bringing back all the evils which the concession of a separate Legislature and Administration to Ireland is intended to remove. Sir Charles Russell indicates the same solution ; while Mr. Fowler, and others of the Glad- stonian Party, are preaching everywhere that of course the Parliament at Westminster will be answerable for the justice and fairness of Irish legislation. Hitherto, no doubt, the English democracy have not taken these contradictions fairly in. And Mr. Gladstone apparently, seconded by Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley, hopes by vehemently discouraging all this comparing of political notes, to keep the English democracy in its half-conscious and almost narcotised condition. But it is not an easy matter. The attempt to suppress all talk of the settlements before a marriage comes off, and this, too, in the presence of those who must bear the blame if the settlements are unsatisfactory, is not a very hopeful one. It may succeed, in spite of such spoil-sports as Sir Charles Russell and Mr. Asquith. But if it does succeed now, it will only succeed at the cost of causing a great reaction when the blunder is exposed. And for the leaders who originate this policy of mystification to charge the Government with mystery, is indeed unfortunate and mal-a-propos. Mr. Glad- stone should have carefully avoided yesterday week, instead of introducing, the subject of political mystification. While he is doing all in his power to keep his own secret, if, indeed, it is not a secret even to himself, concerning the scheme which is to replace the scheme of 1886, it displays a singular want of tact to assail the Government for the mystery which it makes over the postponement of its Irish Local Government Bill. Mr. Balfour replies quite frankly that there is no mystery about the matter ; that, the Opposition having threatened that Bill with the most determined obstruction, it did appear well to the Government to secure the progress of other measures which are not so threatened, and not to play into the hands of the Opposition by placing in the front of the battle a measure which is to be so vio- lently resisted that the whole Session might easily be wrecked if all other measures were to be postponed to it. No reply could be franker. Let Mr. Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. Morley imitate that frankness, and we shall no longer despair of a good majority at the General Election.
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