There is an England which stretches far beyond the well-drilled masses who are assembled by party machinery to salute with appropriate acclamation the utterances of their recognised fuglemen; an England of wise men who gaze without self-deception at the failings and follies of both political parties; of brave and earnest men who find in neither faction fair scope for the effort that is in them; of ‘poor men’ who increasingly doubt the sincerity of party philanthropy. It was to that England that Lord Randolph Churchill appealed; it was that England he so nearly won; it is by that England he will be justly judged.
APPENDICES
V
TWO ELECTION ADDRESSES
1886.
To the Electors of South Paddington.
Gentlemen,—A ‘people’s dissolution’ has come upon us. Such is the title given by Mr. Gladstone to the most wanton political convulsion which has, in our time, afflicted our country. The caprice of an individual is elevated to the dignity of an act of the people by the boundless egoism of the Prime Minister. The United Kingdom is to be disunited for the purpose of securing in office, if only for a little while, by the aid of a disloyal faction subsisting on foreign gold, a Government deserted by all who could confer upon it character or reputation.
Mr. Gladstone has reserved for his closing days a conspiracy against the honour of Britain and the welfare of Ireland more startlingly base and nefarious than any of those other numerous designs and plots which, during the last quarter of a century, have occupied his imagination. Nor are the results of the repeal of the Union, whatever they may be, a matter of moment to him. No practical responsibility for those results will fall upon his shoulders. He regards with the utmost unconcern, or with inconceivable frivolity, the fact that upon those who come after him will devolve the impossible labour of rebuilding a shattered empire, of re-uniting a divided kingdom. Let a credulous electorate give him, for the third time, a Parliamentary majority by the aid of which another Irish revolution may be consummated, and this most moderate of Ministers will be satisfied, will complacently retire to that repose for which he tells us ‘nature cries aloud.’ Nature, to whose cries he has for so long turned a stone-deaf ear.
This design for the separation of Ireland from Britain, this insane recurrence to heptarchical arrangements, this trafficking with treason, this condonation of crime, this exaltation of the disloyal, this abasement of the loyal, this desertion of our Protestant co-religionists, this monstrous mixture of imbecility, extravagance and political hysterics, better known as ‘the Bill for the future Government of Ireland,’ is furnished by its author with the most splendid attributes and clothed in the loftiest language. (1) Under its operation a nation of slaves paying tribute is to be filled with exuberant love for Britain which it now hates, but with which it is now on a footing of perfect political equality. (2) Persons who have subsisted and flourished on the effects of crime and outrage are to be immediately transformed into governors wise, moral and humane. (3) A peasantry which has for years exhibited a marked disinclination to pay contract rents to many landlords will instantly commence and for the next fifty years continue with cheerful alacrity and fidelity to pay rent to one single landlord; that landlord, moreover, assuming the garb of a foreign and alien Government. (4) A people without manufactures, longing for protection by which to create and foster manufactures, are to become in a moment ardent converts to the blessings of free trade. (5) A Parliament, in which any and every legislative project or deliberative proceeding or executive act, may be vetoed for three years, is to abound in rapid legislation, and to surpass our ancient historic Parliament in efficiency of procedure. (6) A financial system, under which by no possibility can revenue be adequate to expenditure, is to perform prodigies of economy and ‘to scatter plenty o’er a smiling land.’ (7) A pauper population is to roll in riches. (8) Law and order and rights of property are immediately to take their place as the most sacred and cherished institutions of a country a great portion of whose people hitherto, from time immemorial, have regarded them only to deride them and violate them, &c. &c.
The united and concentrated genius of Bedlam and Colney Hatch would strive in vain to produce a more striking tissue of absurdities.
Yet this is the policy, the last specific for Ireland, which is gravely recommended by senile vanity to the favourable consideration of a people renowned for common sense, the possessors of an Empire erected and preserved by the constant flow of common sense and, I doubt not, the progenitors of a posterity equally powerful, equally courageous and equally wise.
For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation, is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed, the British Constitution is to be torn up, the Liberal party shivered into fragments.