Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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Democracy and Liberty - William Edward Hartpole Lecky


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have risen to a higher plane of fortune and instruction; the continual degradation of the suffrage to lower and lower strata of intelligence; attacks upon institution after institution; a systematic hostility to the owners of landed property, and a disposition to grant much the same representative institutions to all portions of the Empire, quite irrespectively of their circumstances and characters, are the directions in which the ordinary Radical naturally moves. In hardly any quarter do we find less constructive ability, less power of arriving even at a perception of the new evils that have arisen or of the new remedies that are required. To destroy some institution, or to injure some class, is very commonly his first and last idea in constitutional policy.

      We have a striking instance—though it was not of a democratic character—of the manner in which changes in taxation may be made use of for electioneering purposes in the conduct of Mr. Gladstone in making the abolition of the income-tax his election-cry at the general election of 1874. The circumstances of this election may be briefly told. Mr. Gladstone was not obliged to go to the country. In spite of his defeat on the Irish University question in the preceding year, he had still a considerable and unbroken majority, though several defeats at bye-elections showed clearly that his power was declining, and especially that the upper and middle classes, who were the payers of income-tax, were profoundly shaken in their allegiance to him. The income-tax-payers, it is true, were not even then an absolute majority of the electors, but they formed a much larger proportion than after the Reform Bill of 1885. They included the great majority of the voters who could influence other voters; and they were a body so large and so powerful that there was no reasonable doubt that a general movement among them would decide the fate of the election. The fortune of the ministry was tolerably certain to turn upon the question whether the defection in this notoriously wavering class could be arrested.

      It was under these circumstances that Mr. Gladstone, much to the surprise of the country, suddenly dissolved Parliament; and he issued a programme to his electors which, if the report of those who are likely to be best informed is not wholly erroneous, was as much a surprise to most of his colleagues as to the public. The times were very prosperous, and a great surplus was gathering in the Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone, throwing all other political questions into the background, resolved to utilise this surplus for election purposes,


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