The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-01-28
The English Elections.

THE voting for the British house of commons
\ has proceeded so far that there are only about
a dozen scattered constituencies which have not
chosen their members The assured result is that
Size liberal party will have not far from $40 mem
bers, the unionists and conservatives l6O and the
labor and Irish nationalist groups about l4O IN
ration of one to two This assures the ministry of
Campbell Bannerman clear majority OF seventy,
should all the other parties vote against him in
division. Of course the labor members will vote
with him. they being elected as much as advanced
liberals as anything else. This tremendous majority
will tend to make the house of, commons a dull body,
as dull as it was after Salisbury wiped out Glad
stones majority and the grand old man ceased for
time to attend the sessions Of the house, seeing
no hope of securing dignifed following on a di-
vision H.. ~ .,>r -: r. I'll
The triumph Of the liberal party, while calmly
predicted by its leader, is so overwhelming as to
astonish the successful candidates much as it
does the opposition. Every possible has been
assigned for the revolution in public sentiment and
each of them falls far short Of accounting for the
result All of them taken together account for it
and all of them together are expressed in an Eng
lsh political phrase, "The mandate Of the Tory
majority had expired.' It no longer had the
fdence of the country and when it lost that it lost
the only political asset which amounts to anything
in England. t.t&* : 49," "5H%
No who has followed the course OF the Bal
four ministry in recent years surprised that the
nation repudiated it. It punished for bringing
the Boer war, for passing education act which
compes dssenters to pay taxes toward schools which
teach religious views which are repudated by the
parents, for importing Chinese coolies into South
Africa, for introducing into English politics the dis
cusson of protection when Great Britain has for
decades claimed that free trade was the fixed policy
of the empire and not any longer party question.
Lastly, and not leastly, the Balfour ministry
rebuked for holding onto office for months after
it was apparent under the custom Of English politics
it ought to take the sense of the country. This
done by Bafour evidently in the hope that some
thing would turn up which he could hang a
winning campaign. At last, instead of dissoving
parliament he went to the king and resigned leav-
ing the liberals to form government without a
house Of commons back of them There was poiti-
cal fnesse in this, since 1t expected that the
liberal ministers would have to announce program
which could be attacked. The attempt to reverse
the position and put the liberals on the defensive
while they were in reality the party Of opposition
seems to have hurt the tacticans who adopted the
dodge more than it did the men who accepted the
situation and formed government
Lastly there is the slump toward democracy to
be taken into account. It is evident everywhere.
It is dumping hereditary Legislators from office in
England and will soon make itself felt in the case
of some life members Of the senate in this country.