TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE AND THE GLADSTONIANS. THERE is one marked fact about the present situation which hardly receives the notice it deserves. Hardly any Unionist leader, scarcely any Unionist journal, in referring to Home-rule, attempts to answer, or even refers to, any opponent save Mr. Gladstone alone. Mr. Goschen this week, at Edinburgh, had practically no brief but Mr. Gladstone's speech of last week ; Lord Randolph Churchill defends the Lords only against him ; the Times fills columns with leaders intended only to show that his policy is altogether wrong, and he himself a deceiver of the community. This is in no degree the result of any weight in Mr. Gladstone's arguments, for of late he has produced none, except that " Man ought to trust the Irish because I do ;" nor is it a testimony to his eloquence, for except as regards the audience before him, that is declining in its influence,--it is the result solely of his personality. He is the majority which carries Bills. The Cabinet has in public discussion no existence ; and even the Gladstonian Party is mentioned only as the instru- ment with which their leader's feats are to be accomplished.
The Gladstonians, both in public and private, are apt to complain of this, to affirm that in many cases Liberalism ought to be condemned, and not Mr. Glad- stone ; and not infrequently to insinuate that a kind of personal antipathy to the Premier has much to do with the way in which he is singled out for applause or con- demnation. It is not so, even with those, to whom we do not belong, who are personally antagonistic to Mr. Glad- stone. The concentration of their watchfulness arises from a sound instinct as to the situation. Advanced in years as he is, and monopolised as he is said to be by a single preoccupation, the passing of a Home-rule Bill, Mr. Gladstone is still the Government. There is, except for details, no Cabinet. One leader, Lord Rosebery, holds a tolerably independent position,---first, because Mr. Glad- stone cares little for foreign politics ; and secondly, because the Crown has in that department of the national life an exceptional influence, but no other Minister is anybody in the nation's eyes. Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Morley, and Mr. Asquith, are the most prominent among them, and the retirement of any one of the three would create only a little ripple in newspaper discussion. The great sea of ^pinion would remain unmoved ; while of the re- mainder any one might be drowned without the bystanders on the shore noticing that the waters had parted asunder. On the other hand, if Mr. Gladstone retired either from ill-health or dissatisfaction, not only the Government but the majority which supports it would cease to exist. The keystone would have dropped out of the arch. A great many people are constantly saying that any dogma ac- cepted by the Liberal Party must ultimately prevail, and that Home-rule for Ireland is therefore inevitable ; but they know all the while that, even granting the truth of their apophthegm—which they usually utter as if it condensed the wisdom of ages—the ruling party is the Gladstonian and not the Liberal Party, and deprived of its raison d'être, which is to support Mr. Gladstone, would drop at once to pieces. We think nothing of personal jealousies, which seldom resist the pressure either of self-interest or of patriotism ; but the cleavages affect the very soul of the party, and but for the general order to support the aged chief, would rend it into fragments. There is no bond of union between Whigs like Sir William Harcourt and Radicals like Professor Stuart, between governing Liberals like Mr. Asquith and anti-rule Radicals like Mr. Burns, between even Scotchmen and Celtic Irishmen as bodies, except the broad fact that if they oppose Mr. Gladstone their constituencies will turn them out. They were elected to help him, not to help on their own ideas ; and even if their constituencies have revolted, it is not through the present Members that their change of opinion would in the next election be expressed. Naturally, in such a position, Mr. Gladstone is still absolute, and, naturally also, all opponents watch his utterances with a keenness born- of the belief that in his own party his ideas—or, at least, the idea@ which he sincerely cares about—will prevail.
It is this convietion which makes all predictions as to the course of affaivs seem to us so unreal and so much like guesses, The Gleidete4i.4144 keep on saying that they will next year send up a host of Bills to the Lords, each of which will win them fresh following, and that the Lords will not venture to throw them out, and that then they shall be safe in appealing to a delighted country. They may be right, though we think they are wrong ; for the Bill on which they mainly rely—the Bill remodelling Registration—cannot pass the Lords without a logical Redistribution Bill tacked to its skirts ; but granting that they are right, are they judicious in being quite so confident ? Have they obtained a pledge from Mr. Gladstone to consent to their course ?—a course distinctly contrary to all the influences from within and from without which will so strongly press upon him, so much at variance with the aspirations of Ireland as well as with his own perception of his own increasing age. We doubt it very much ; and if they have not, they are only beating the air. Suppose just before the commencement of next Session Mr. Gladstone tells his Cabinet that the remaining business of his life is to give Ireland Home-rule, that at his age and with his slowly-failing powers he has no right to delay ; that this, moreover, was, as he told the Edinburgh people, the national mandate, and that the Bill must be reintroduced. and passed at once. What do the Gladstonians expect their Ministers to do P Resist in words ? Mr. Gladstone, besides being nearly irresistible in conversation, is a hard man to move from his purpose when it has once taken hold of his mind, and Ireland is not only in his mind, but on it. Or are they to resign in batches, and so prove to the world once more that Mr. Gladstone can shed colleagues as an oak sheds leaves,—that is, with no loss beyond a certain appearance of bareness in his own magnitude and strength ? The Ministers will do nothing of the sort ; they will yield, and then it will be for the Gladstonian rank and file to yield also, or decide whether, in spite of pledges, they will face con- stituencies whose one preference for them is as supporters of Mr. Gladstone. The Welsh might kick ; but what would be the use of that, when they cannot and their Church without Mr. Gladstone's permission and that of the Irish Catholics, and Mr. Gladstone had made up his- mind to release Ireland first P The party would be very like a flock of sheep in a rage with their collie,—all scattering, all bleating, but all somehow finding themselves on the road he intended. We do not say, be it remem- bered, that this is the course Mr. Gladstone will pursue. We cannot ourselves conceive of his deliberately waiting till his eighty-sixth year to carry out the desire of his heart, or caring a twopenny-piece for anything wire-pullers may say ; but still, he may by possibility surrender not only his judgment, but his instinctive sense that with him Home-rule is bound-up, and so give way. All we maintain is that the decision rests with him, and not with irrespon- sible talkers, and that, as yet, the only insight we have into his mind is that contained in his assertion at Edin- burgh that Home-rule would very soon emerge above the waves under which it seemed to be buried.
But, we shall be told, though the Home-rule Bill will be introduced again, it will be sent up to the Lords by some means more rapid than debate, and then the Session can be given up to " popular " English measures. Wait a bit ! Apart from the constitutional difficulty of a violent course, which would justify the Unionists in discussing estimates for at least three months—they will, be it remembered, be estimates including new taxation—how would this plan improve the situation of which Mr. Gladstone is the pivot? If he is determined to pass his Bill, and pass it without delay, waiting till '95 will be precisely what he will not desire ; and the astute plan suggested involves waiting till '95. The Newcastle programme has to get through the Commons before it gets to the Lords ; and driving a dozen contentious Bills through the Commons, in the teeth of a minority superior in debating power, and nearly equal in numbers, is next to an impossible task, more especially as the Bills, unlike the Home-rule Bill, will not be under Mr. Glad- stone's charge as pilot. The Bills cannot possibly reach the Lords till November, 1894, and even then formal work will delay the Dissolution. We venture to doubt if the Premier will like all that debating, with the chances it will involve of great secessions on points about which the constituencies are themselves uncertain ; and if he does not like it, how is it to come off P We see no way ; for let the wire-pullers threaten or wheedle as they will, the final authority, the power of saying " Yes " or " No," still remains, and will remain, in their master's hands.
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