Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

ing, and that the fog-signals are the detonations of shells from hostile batteries; or think that Vesuvius, when about to overwhelm Pompeii, began by rolling forth such a cloud down its sides. You will soon find it terribly picturesque. And, therefore, if the fog is not so, that arises only from our associations, disagreeable indeed, but without the element of grandeur that might attach to them.

London, the metropolis of the world, is unique; it is meet that its beauties should be unique also. At the hour when the charms of Nature vanish from sight, or only come forth if the heavens lend their aid, London, all the year round, spreads before all beholders a constant panorama of splendour and of brilliancy. In the lowest depths, in the mud-abysses of this ocean of humanity, we often and often perceive wild glimpses of rude and savage, but joyful and exuberant life. And at those seasons when the enchantment of verdure ceases in the groves, when the magic of sunlight loses its power in meadow and field, the enchantment of another magic lends to the buildings and the streets of London a mysterious charm for him who has eyes to see.

M. H. DZIEWICKI.

ELECTORAL FACTS OF TO-DAY.

In the short but eventful Parliament of 1885-6, to which exactly one moiety of its members had been returned as Liberals, threefourths of that moiety recognised and adopted the claims of Ireland for Home Rule as a Constitutional claim. It was Constitutional, in that it was advanced for the first time by an overwhelming majority of her representatives in Parliament, and in that it was a claim for domestic freedom without prejudice to Imperial supremacy. Recommended by the responsible Ministers of the day, it was supported on a division by 315 voices. But these voices having been a minority, and the Parliament having been dissolved upon the question of Home Rule, the Liberal party was severed almost completely at the election from its dissentient members, and suffered the heaviest defeat which it had undergone certainly since the epoch of the first Reform Act, perhaps since the memorable victory of Mr. Pitt over the Coalition. Its numbers were reduced to 192: more than one-fourth, but less than one-third, of the House of Commons. After reckoning the Nationalist votes, it was in a minority of 114. The figure last given has been reduced, principally by a nett gain on the bye-elections of eleven seats, to eighty-six. This is rather a remarkable decline. The question arises whether it has a political meaning: whether it constitutes a political omen. The statesmen enthroned in Downing Street and Dublin Castle reply that it has none whatever. It would be so bad a compliment to treat this answer as a product of their understandings, that good manners compel me to take it simply as an expression of their wish.

In the October number of this Review, 1887, I endeavoured to place upon record the signs, which had then become visible, of a change in the public mind with regard to the great question of Home Rule in Ireland. This change was radical and fundamental, but was only in its first stage. It was only from the 1st of July in that year that it was possible to date even its beginnings: and the limited range of the area from which the facts were drawn naturally gave scope for the contention that they might be accidental, and that the indications, which they furnished, might, upon the field of a larger experience, be not only qualified but reversed. It was then evidently

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

possible that proof might thereafter be afforded of the continuing adhesion of the country to the decision of 1886.

The facts, however, were even at that time as significant as limited facts could be. It was shown that while the freshness of the Register is known to be favourable to the Liberal strength, we had, in the elections contested since the 1st of July, maintained under an old register the full strength which we had shown in 1885 under one quite newly framed. It was shown that we had been defeated at the General Election by an adverse majority of 6 per cent. at the polls, whereas the elections contested since the 1st of July, 1887, gave us a majority of 22 per cent. There had indeed been obtained by the anti-Irish party, in the heat and dust of our discomfiture, no less than seventy-eight uncontested seats in excess over the uncontested seats taken by the Liberals. But, even after allowing to the adversary the questionable assumption that a like number of seats would continue to be theirs without dispute at the next general election, it was impossible, upon the evidence as it then stood, to conjecture or compute the Liberal majority of the Parliament to come at less than one hundred voices.

Two years and a quarter have since elapsed. The time embraced by the inquiry which was then under thirteen months is now three years and a quarter, or full half the extreme known life of a Parliament. The contested seats (from and after August 1886) were then twenty-five. They are now sixty. The total number of elections from after the first re-elections, which was thirty-four, has now grown, excluding Universities, to eighty-four. It has become hardly possible for the most daring controversialist to deny or to attenuate the force of facts presented on such a scale in their bearing upon the question what would be the result of a General Election, were it to happen at the present juncture. Decisions, numbering more than fourscore, can hardly be set down as so many pure accidents, all erratic, all incapable of falling into line. But, before entering upon particulars, I must notice a preliminary controversy.

The anti-Irish party hold that bye-elections supply no real test of the movement of opinion. The Liberal party contend that they do supply such a test, though one varying greatly in value and completeness, without doubt, according as there is or is not a clear and broad issue placed before the constituencies. We often pass through a series of years without the presentation of such an issue. There was nothing of the kind for example at the general elections of 1859 or 1865. But there was such an issue in 1831 as to Reform, in 1841 as to Protection, in 1868 as to the Irish Church, and in 1886 as to Home Rule. In this last case, as the matter was not at once disposed of, a similar issue has continued to govern the bye-elections. In our view, indeed, the argument to be drawn from these occasional elections, where it is in our favour, is an argument a fortiori. They are in their nature less favourable to us than a general election, because VOL. XXVI.-No. 154.

3 Z

they are more open to the influence of the property vote: because a certain proportion of them are deliberately invited by the official managers of the party in power on the very ground that they are believed to be safe: because there is a sentiment, particularly among Liberals, indisposed to closing the door of Parliament against persons appointed to office: because we benefit by a fresh Register, and general elections are sometimes, bye-elections never, appointed with reference to the freshness of the Register: lastly, because popular sympathies work best in extended spaces, and at a general election, but not at a bye-election, may flow out freely over the whole surface of the land.

I am aware of no counterpoise on the Tory side to these considerations, which in their aggregate are of no trifling weight. In the present instance, the Tory journals have for the most part taken refuge from the argument by simple flight into a thicket of generalities. But a bolder and more ingenious method has lately been pursued by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., of whom I for one freely admit that he usually makes the best of his case, whatever that case may be. Let us see then what it is, as presented in a review for the month of November. The case he allows to be very bad: still there is some solace left. He finds it in the history of the byeelections during the Parliaments of 1874-80 and 1881-5. Now the bye-elections of the Beaconsfield Parliament of 1874-80 prove the very reverse of Mr. Russell's contention, and show that, while they have comparatively little significance in the absence of a broad public issue, they become highly significant when once such an issue has been raised. At first sight Mr. Russell appears to make a good case when he shows, that the Conservatives in 1874-80 gained twelve seats and the Liberals only thirteen, and that these balanced numbers gave no promise of the great Liberal victory of 1880. True: but let us divide the two first Parliamentary years of that Parliament, which were singularly pacific, from the four last, which witnessed the memorable and persistent struggle on foreign policy in the Levant and in India. In this Review for November 1878, I pointed out that in 1874 the Government actually won four seats. In 1875 its gains and losses were equal. But in 1876 the Eastern question began to burn, and before November 1878 the Liberals had on the balance gained seven seats: a change which, as I then argued, clearly foreshadowed the Tory catastrophe in 1880.

Of the thirteen seats gained by the Liberals in that Parliament, only one was obtained before, and twelve in or after, the year in which the Bulgarian horrors began the work of stirring up the country.

Mr. Russell then contends that in the Parliament of 1880 the Liberal Government lost a balance of fifteen (it ought to be fourteen) seats, and that, if bye-elections are really prophetic, the Liberal party ought to have been shattered at the General Election of 1885, whereas it returned nearly (he should have said exactly) half the

1 New Review, No. 6, p. 561.

House. Sir W. Harcourt has, however, pointed out that the Tory gains were largely in the boroughs, and that such gains were again largely exhibited, to our dismay, at the General Election. But the Counties had before them the fact that the franchise had in that very year been given to the peasantry by the Liberals, and, in the freshness of this recollection, they retrieved in the main the losses in the Boroughs. Thus there was a double proof, first that bye-elections are predictive, and secondly that a broad and clear idea presented to minds prepared for its reception has a powerful effect on the choice they make. Both these considerations apply in full force to the bye-elections now before us.

Mr. Russell observes that at that period he did not hear from the Liberals complaints that Parliaments under the Septennial Act were too long. The answer is that the Liberal Parliaments were not too long, so far as depended upon them. The Parliament of 1868 was dissolved after four full years. The Parliament of 1880 had its knell rung in 1884 by the introduction of the Franchise Bill. But this observation opens the question whether, under our Constitutional system, a Government should have some regard to the state of opinion out of doors, or only to its actual majority in the House of Commons. On this subject I have no new doctrine to propound. On the 24th of April, 1874, Mr. Smollett, M.P., moved a censure on the then recent Dissolution. In defending it, I am reported to have used the following words:

My regret is, not that the Dissolution took place when it did, but that it did not take place before, for I am not willing to hold office under any circumstances, with a minority either in this House or the country.

It is repugnant to my feelings, and not compatible with the best interests of the country, that a Government should continue to govern, even with a numerical majority, when its strength is falling away, and when there are daily increasing evidences that it no longer represents the will and opinions of the constituencies. That is the regret of which I have to make a frank expression. Had I known as well as I know now what was to take place, it would not have been upon the 24th of January or on the 24th of December, nor upon any day in January or December, but at a much earlier period, that my colleagues and myself would have advised the Crown to dissolve.

That is the reply which I have to make to the hon. gentleman's motion.3

Failing, however, everything like argument on the recent byeelections, recourse has been precipitately had to the elections for municipal councils. It happened in 1888 that the municipal election in Birmingham was promptly known, and it was assumed that the Birmingham of to-day, as of the past, would lead the nation. It was announced by the Times that on the whole' the Unionists were 'making way in the country.' And a Minister declared that the municipal elections were 'a most encouraging and reassuring sign of

[ocr errors]

2 Even in the midst of the rout and scattering of 1886, the Liberals recovered eleven of the seats for boroughs which were Tory in 1885.

'Hansard's Debates, vol. ccxviii. p. 1126.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »