TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE'S SPEECH. -1,ITHATEVER may be said of the wisdom of Mr. Glad- stone's policy, it would be the mark of a simpleton to deny that his speech contains a policy, a sincere policy, and a great policy, and, we would even add, a policy which might, had Ireland been in a totally different stage of political development, have given peace and prosperity to that country. How any one who reads his speech carefully can doubt for a moment either the depth of conviction, or the wide scope of the intellect, which gives that speech its grandeur, we find it difficult to conceive. Of course, this will be denied in all sorts of notes, from the simply querulous to the furiously dogmatic. Mr. Gladstone will be accused of trifling with the destiny of a great Empire ; and he may even be accused of deliberate treachery to his country. But these accusations will be made by people who are abso- lutely incapable of applying to the tremendous issues before the country an impartial judgment. Those who judge men soberly will see that Mr. Gladstone has adopted a course which is in perfect consistency with the general drift of his political convictions for the last thirty years, and that he has defended it with all the resources of a great intellect. And yet we are not only not convinced,—we are absolutely unshaken in our belief that Mr. Gladstone's move is founded on considerations quite inapplicable to the case before him, and big with calamity for the country chiefly concerned. Mr. Gladstone relies on the analogies presented by the concession of Home-rule in the case of other dual populations,—the case of Sweden and Norway, and the case of Austria and Hungary. In both these cases there was a very fair level between the political develop- ment of the States between whom the link was to be made. And, we may say that, in both cases alike, had the more powerful country endeavoured to do justice to the less powerful, as Great Britain has endeavoured, for the last seventeen years at least, to do justice to Ireland, there would have been, we will not say no need for the great break in continuity, but at least no excuse for supposing, as we have every reason to suppose in the case of Ireland, that it would lead to a reign of pure law- lessness in the weaker State. It was not by a series of crimes and tyrannies, directed even more against their own people than against the ruling caste, such as we have seen in Ireland, that the Hungarians, for instance, established their independence of Austria. What Mr. Glad- stone fails to consider is that, as Mr. Trevelyan, in his manly and able speech, most powerfully showed, the Irish peasantry have shown no spirit of equity, no respect for personal liberty, no law-abidingness, even in cases where the agrarian question was not at the root of the trouble. Even the priesthood have taken sides with the law-despisers, and the Bishops with the priesthood. All this only shows, Mr. Gladstone will say, how mischievous it has been to let law wear an alien aspect. We quite admit it. But it is not to a people who are in this phase of civilisation, a people who insult the widows of a murdered man by triumphant sneers at his supposed damnation, and whose only idea of liberty is the liberty, of the majority to make the minority cower, that we could properly surrender the right to rule themselves. We quite admit that if a strong administration of Ireland by Irishmen could have been established for a couple of generations at least, with the result of making Irishmen of all classes feel that their law was even-handed, and of Irish, not of English origin, some measure such as that which Mr. Glad- stone now proposes, might have promised great results for Ireland. But as it is, we do not doubt for a moment that he is proposing to hand over Ireland to an anarchy more complete than any from which that unfortunate country has suffered during the present century. And not only to anarchy,—though that is the worst part of the matter,—but also to a panic amongst all prosperous, or even well-to-do Irishmen. As Mr. Trevelyan says, everybody who has offended the National League will either fly from the country or feel that his fate in it is sealed, so soon as the National League becomes the main- spring of the Executive. As Mr. Plunket, too, remarked, every man who feels that property is no longer secure, and who has the means of migrating to where property is secure, will make arrangements to disappear from Ireland so soon as he sees those who have brought about the insecurity of property estab- lished in the seat of authority. What single symptom have we had from any section of Mr. Parnell's followers that an Ireland under their rule would be an Ireland in which either civil liberty or property would be hedged in by the authority of the law? To our mind, the history of the last seven years is one long protest against trusting Ireland to the hands to which Mr. Gladstone's scheme will necessarily entrust it.
What we find fault with in his speech is his tendency to ignore the actual moral condition of the Irish majority, and its complete indifference to the elementary laws of social prosperity. He is, we believe, quite right in attributing this unhappy state of things to the prejudice felt by Ireland against English rule. But it does not at all follow that if we are to give up in Ireland the security due to the social ideas popular in England, we can afford to substitute at once for it the security due to the only social ideas which are as yet popular in Ireland. It is the very essence of a democratic Constitution that the sense and knowledge of the larger part of a Kingdom should protect benighted corners of that Kingdom from the consequences of its own ignorance and folly. But if we abandon this security for the least educated and least reasonable corner of a great State, it seems to us- almost madness to say that we are also bound to abandon that benighted corner to the rule of its own local ignorance. Surely the only excuse for fully enfranchising Ireland last year was, as Mr. Plunket reminds Mr. Gladstone that he himself then argued, the shield cast by the English and Scotch representatives over the Irish minority. If that shield is to be withdrawn, some other intermediate re'gime should be interposed between the re'gime of 1885, and the complete surrender to Irish demo- cracy. Generations hence it may be true that the Irish demo- cracy would be as competent to rule itself as the English democracy now is. But it is idle to pretend that for the present that is so. To pass at one bound from democracy in the United Kingdom to a separate democracy in the least enlightened and most wretchedly governed part of the United Kingdom, is to give up the only security for justice which that unfortunate fraction of the Kingdom still retains. There may be a very strong case made out for giving Ireland a firm Irish Government and a truly Irish Statute-book,—as the only pos- sible preparation for a future Irish democracy. But to hand over all power to the present Irish democracy,—and this is, as we show elsewhere, in spite of the supposed guarantee of the upper "Order," what will really be done,—is like deliberately casting the reins on the neck of horses already tearing away at the top of their speed towards the precipice down which they must in- evitably plunge. Again and again Mr. Gladstone has been wrecked in his Irish legislation by too sanguine a view of the Irish character and of the maturity of its political sagacity. That mistake is the one terrible blot on the otherwise most powerful and statesmanlike speech of Thursday night,—a blot which is destined, we fear, to turn all its good to evil.
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