Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/21

 PREFATORY ESSAY

xv

sporting phrase, “ to go one better ” than the Conservatives; and the responsibility for the reforms under which, for the first time in British history, supreme electoral power was entrusted to the hands oi the most numerous, the poorest, and the least educated classes of the community, rests, for evil or for good, on the shoulders of both parties alike. So far the new agricultural franchise has told m favour ol the Conservative party. In 1886, in 1895, and again in 1900, the constituencies returned large Conservative majorities. As long as the attention of the country is occupied with foreign or Imperial questions, or with issues not bearing, except indirectly, on labour and its relations to capital, the voice of the working-class electorate is likely, in normal circumstances, to be in favour of the Conservative party. Equal confidence is not possible as to what may be the result when foreign or Imperial questions may be in abeyance, and when party questions are raised on one side or the other involving the acceptance or rejection of legislation calculated, in the opinion of the working-class electorate, to affect the real or supposed interests of Labour as opposed to Capital. The British Parliament, for the last quarter of the 19 th century, has been mainly occupied with the irrepressible Irish question. In its vicissitudes were included the commencement of the Fenian outrages, the Prevention of Crimes Act, the Irish Land League, the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish in the Phoenix Park, the formation of a united Irish parliamentary party under Mr Parnell, the attempt to obstruct all legislation at Westminster by an abuse of the rules of the House, the enactment of the closure, the coalition between the Liberals and the Irish Nationalists, the introduction by Mr Gladstone of a Bill for the Repeal of the Union, its rejection owing to the secession of the Liberal Unionists, the Pigott trial, the downfall of Mr Parnell, the disruption of the National party, and the rejection of Mr Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords, followed by his final retirement from public life. Great as was the interest caused by these events at the time of their occurrence, it may be doubted whether they modified materially the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Their chief result was to show that the proposal to confer legislative independence upon Ireland excited little sympathy, and still less enthusiasm, among the British working class, and tended, m so far as they had any effect at all, to range them on the side of the Unionist party. The statement made by Lord Rosebery on his accession to the Premiership in 1894, to the effect that Home Rule could never be carried till the measure had commended itself to the opinion of the “predominant partner” in the Union, though it was afterwards explained away by its author, was approved by the good sense of the British public, and there seems as yet no prospect of any change of popular sentiment m England or Scotland with reference to the inexpediency of any repeal of the Union, under which the United Kingdom has grown in strength and prosperity. In other respects the political machinery of the United Kingdom underwent but slight change during the last quarter of the 19 th century. But the reaction against « democratic ” Liberalism has been conspicuously shown by the popular acquiescence in the apparent decline of the power of the House of Commons as such, and the concomitant increase in the power of the Cabinet. Very much the same significance must be attached to the fact that, m spite of the extension ot the suffrage, and the multiplication of elections for local government, the main feature of the elections has always been the prevailing apathy of those entrusted with the privilege, or duty, of voting, and the comparatively small proportion of the electorate which is sufficiently interested to go to the poll. In France, where constitutional changes are matters of far more common occurrence, the position remains much the same as it was on the downfall of the Second Empire after the surrender of Sedan. The Third Republic has remained in power for a longer period than any regime which held European sway in France during the 19th century. The great majority of the present generation of developFrenchmen have been brought qp under Republican institutions, and it is only a comparatively small and rapidly diminishing minority which can have any personal recollection of either Empire or Monarchy. Moreover, the deaths of the Comte de Chambord, the Comte de Paris, and the Prince Imperial removed the only representatives of the deposed dynasties who appeared likely to have any hold on French popular sympathies. In these circumstances, it would seem antecedently probable that the Lepu ic should have taken firm foot in French soil. So far, however, this anticipation has not been rea ize lb iUim The French Republic, as it has existed since 1870, is a parliamentary government, am