THE FIRMNESS OF THE MINISTRY.
THE main charge brought by serious Tories against Mr. Gladstone's Government is that it lacks manliness. The St. James's Gazette may believe that Lord Granville is un- patriotic, or Mr. Lowther may imply that Mr. Gladstone is a bad financier who does not understand trade, or Mr. Mallock may credit that Lord Hartington is willing to assail property ; but these denunciations are accepted for what they are, mere evidences of general dislike to the tone of the Administration. The real charge which affects the popular mind, and irritates thinking Tories into action, and makes sincere Liberals pause, is that of unmanliness,—of a disposition to recede before oppo- sition, and especially armed opposition, with a readiness un- becoming to a great Government, and injurious to a people which holds its possessions in some degree by the tenure of a universal belief that it will fight, if menaced in them. That is the charge which is repeated, not only day by day, but in every article in the country Tory papers, which always elicits sympathy in Conservative meetings, which is regarded as un- answerable in London society, and which suffuses like a dominant colour every speech of the recognised Tory leaders. Of course, the charge is very differently put. The country leader-writers say the Government is "cowardly," in so many words. The graver Jingoes say it degrades the country, by argu- ing when it should insist. The Tory leaders declare it leaves undone, from weakness and over-fear of consequences, acts it is bound to do. That is what Sir Stafford Northcote really intends, in every sentence of his speech at Hull that is not devoted to disguising his own opinion upon Fair-trade, by all his references to Egypt and the East and the Cape, and above all, to Ireland. He does not say what should be done, but intimates, in unmistakable fashion, that in what it does, or leaves undone, the Government is paralysed by want of nerve.
There never was a more unfounded charge made. That the Liberal Government does not quite understand the inner temper and special foible of the new Sovereign, the House- holder, and makes the mistake of avoiding too carefully all that is scenic in its acts, of minimising its own decisions, and of exaggerating the impression of its own patience, is true, and has been true of it ever since the entire leadership passed into Mr. Gladstone's hands. He never will allow that a emu), when it occurs, is anything but the last legitimate and not very striking step in a long chain of actions, or that an Act can involve anything revolutionary, or that a menace, like, for instance, the tremendous one which really freed Thessaly, is anything but a hint of ultimate possible results, and so loses half the popular advantage of his own courage and breadth of grasp. And Mr. Gladstone either did not perceive or deliber- ately refused to take advantage of the suffocating rage with which seven-tenths of the population of the United Kingdom regarded Irish Obstruction, of the joy with which they would have welcomed strong and even violent action for its repression. But that is a defect of omission, not of action, and in the action of this Government we can see no want either of decision or of audacity. On the contrary, we should say this Government was almost too obstinate in its firmness, too immovable in its decisions, too resolute in its adhesion to its own policy. That its policy is not the policy of the Tories is of course true, but the firmness of a Ministry must be judged by its pursuit of its.
own objects, not its pursuit of the objects its adversaries desire. You do not call a policeman a coward because he does not kill the criminal whom he intends to arrest, but holds on to him, in spite of blows ; still less do you consider the lawyer humili- ated because he sues a debtor, instead of kicking him. Its objects granted, this Government has adhered to its resolves with almost bull-dog tenacity. In the East, in spite of the most shameful treacheries, and some moments of most serious danger, it held on to its resolve that Europe, and not any one Power, should execute the Treaty of Berlin, increasing the pressure at every fresh evasion, until even Turkish obstinacy gave way, and those "impossibilities "—the cession of Dulcigno, the cession of Thessaly, the autonomy of East Roumelia, and the halt of the Hapsburgs in their southern march—were all secured together..
Dulcigno is Montenegrin, and at peace ; Thessaly is welcoming its Greek Sovereign ; East Roumelia is quarrelling in comfort both with Constantinople and Sofia ; and the Austrian papers are declaring with one voice that they never heard of Salonica, and do not know where the 2Egean is. Ask Baron Haymerle, or the Sultan, or the Greek Cabinet, what they think about the " weakness" and "irresolution" and "cowardice" of the British Foreign Office. It does not want to shed blood needlessly, but shedding blood is not of itself a final proof of courage. Turn to Egypt. Having decided that the Joint Protectorate must be maintained, or England left sole Protector, the Govern- ment has maintained its purpose steadily, consistently, and so far successfully. It has shirked no duty, though conscious of great danger. Sir Stafford Northcote hints that it is going shortly to do something weak about Egypt, but where is there even the vaguest evidence of any such purpose ? Is it in the instant change of the French and Italian tone about Tripoli, after Lord Granville had announced that Tripoli lay too near Egypt for England to see its occupation with indifference ? Do the Tories think it a light thing to make an intimation like that to a Government which, as regards its power of affecting English interests has twice the force of Russia, and at least the means of Germany ? Or are they really so far gone in the hunger for theatrical display, that they would like Lord Granville, who never puts out a claw till somebody hurts him, to go down to the Mansion House and shout about English ability to encounter three campaigns ? Ask M. St. Hilaire if he thinks he is nearer the possession of Egypt, for M. de Granville's fears. Take Afghanistan. TheGovemment said from the first they should leave Afghanistan when and how it suited them, and in spite of the wrath of their opponents, and the criticism, much harder to bear, of their supporters, they have left and are leaving it, just when their action made their policy successful. Lord Hartington has clung to his declared view with an obstinacy which seemed to half the Liberal Party, and certainly to ourselves, perfectly wooden, but it has been successful. It takes courage to wait as he has done, and he has waited till the precise hour struck. Why is that weak ? We shall have the Transvaal thrown in our teeth ; but in what single point has the Government, though under the pressure of nearly irresistible temptation, departed from the design approved by Parliament, that of restoring the Transvaal to its. previous owners, so far as was consistent with its obligations to the native population ? We do not approve that policy, holding that the Transvaal was fairly ours, and that we should have kept it ; but that was not the policy of the Ministry, and they have adhered to their own, with their usual tenacity. They have shed as little blood as they could, which is right, but they have insisted on terms which bring them no good whatever, which they could easily have given up, and which are so annoying to the Boers, that the ratification of the Treaty is still doubtful. Then, intimate- the Tory writers, they will recede. Where is there a particle of evidence for that ? We are not their supporters in this matter, but we believe that in regard to it they will be harder than the Boers, will disregard all menaces and all dangers, and will in the end not only insist on their own stipulations, but will see them carried out to the letter.
But Ireland! Well, the Government may have committed any number of faults in Ireland ; but surely those faults have not been those of weakness, or indecision, or cowardice. If ever there was a Government which, as regards Ireland, went forward steadily on its own path, pushing aside opposition, disregarding criticism, utterly reckless of threats, it is this Government. It stated from the first that it would remedy the grievance it had admitted, would lock up persona dangerous, not to itself, but to the country, and would enforce the law ; and it is doing all those things resolutely. We all know against what obstacles the Land Bill was carried, what threats are used on behalf of the "suspects," what kind of resistance it is that is offered to legal eviction. The Government, after passing the Land Bill by a dead-heave such as only a Govern- ment of iron could have accomplished, releases or detains "suspects" at its own discretion, and on grounds clear only to itself ; and is at this moment, against its own will, but in accordance with its declared policy, levying legal arrears of rent by military force. It is threatened with insurrection, it is threatened with dynamite, it is threatened with assassina- tion ; but it tramps on steadily to its goal, the restoration by legal means of the authority of Law. It should, it is contended, declare a state of siege, arrest the Land Leaguers, and shoot anybody who resists the processes of the law, but it avoids those things, not because it is weak and vacillating, but because it is strong and determined. It takes ten times more nerve to govern Ireland by law than by a state of siege. The country is no more prepared for insurrection than it ever was ; indeed, insurrection would make all things easy for England, and if the history of Ireland teaches anything, it teaches this, that if the Government to-morrow proclaimed martial law in Munster and Connaught, disorder and resistance would vanish in a moment. It is not in human nature for the Government not to recognise that, and if it were weak it would act upon the knowledge ; but being strong and tenacious, and unusually indifferent to danger, it rejects that plan, and instead of binding its refractory patient in a strait-waistcoat, determinately strives to cure him. Weak ! If we had to characterise Mr. Forster's action throughout the last twelve months from his enemies' point of view, we should assert that nobody but a born Quaker could be so intolerably obstinate in adhering to his own view, so foolishly audacious, in the face of dangers from every side. That the Government may have been unwise, or over-sanguine, or over-lenient in Ireland may prove true, but no man not rendered irrational by party feeling can pronounce it weak. That is as if we should pronounce Lincoln weak, when he announced his policy in the words, "We must keep pegging away."
The plain truth is, that this Government is one of the most tenacious, most determined, and most courageous which ever governed the country ; but it is very slow, till an absolute necessity appears, to shed blood, more especially the blood of its own subjects ; and to men wild with dislike and impatience, that looks like cowardice, just as to men of Continental opinions reluctance to kill an adversary in a duel looks like cowardice. The reluctance is not cowardice, nevertheless, but a moral aversion to shedding blood, strengthened by a pro- found political conviction that the result attained by blood is often not worth its cost. That conviction may, of course, be pushed too far, and we are not sure that it is not pushed too far, when mobs are permitted to defeat soldiers. We believe that a Government has a moral right to insist., in the in- terest of the sanctity of human life, that if the soldiers are produced, overt resistance shall be considered insurrection, and.to authorise its officers to meet force by force. Its re- sponsibility is rather for producing soldiers prematurely, than for using them when produced. But that reluctance, born, as it is, of deep moral feeling, and making, as it does, a most painful demand upon the firmness of rulers, is neither inde- cision, nor vacillation, nor cowardice. It is consistent with unswerving tenacity, and with the audacity so often found in deeply religious soldiers. This Government, once clear that fighting was indispensable, would fight till it won, and pro- bably strike much harder than a Government of men who think that blood-shedding is a light matter, and that it is much easier to mow down a mob, than by slow and painful persistence to convince them that law is irresistible, even when it is not backed by all the terrors of military execution. At all events, whatever the Ministry may do in the future, they have, up to this time, moved forward with a force and a decision before which all obstacles have gradually disappeared, and which have created in the minds of their adversaries a belief, not in the weakness of the British Government, but in its unreasoning, unsympathetic, almost unendurable obstinacy, in pursuit of its own ends.
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