TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LIBERAL UNIONISTS AND IRISH JACOBINISM.
" CARRIED to a suspense account," was the witty com- mercial phrase in which Sir Henry James described the present position of the Liberal Unionists in reference to the great Parliamentary parties of the day. It was not yet certain, he held, whether the Liberal Unionists would ulti- mately be added to the party now led by Mr. Gladstone, or to that led by Lord Salisbury. What, however, neither Sir Henry James, nor any one else who spoke at Tuesday's meeting doubted, was that the Liberal Unionists would remain Liberals in the practical drift of their statesmanship, would urge on every party which they supported to the passing of those measures and the promoting of those various policies which up to 1886 were called Liberal, excluding, of course, that new article in the creed which, at the instance of Mr. Parnell, has been accepted as Liberalism by Mr. Glad- stone. The question raised by Sir Henry James as to which party the Liberal Unionists will eventually join, is a question still ; but it is not a question but that, wherever they go, they will vote for Liberal policy in the old sense, and resist the Jacobin policy which, whether pursued in Ireland or England, is equally inconsistent with Liberal ideas. For this was the real outcome of the meeting of Tuesday, of Lord Hartington's masterly speech, of Mr. Goschen's eloquence, of Sir George Trevelyan's courageous invective, and of Mr. Bright's self-distrustful indignation,—that the National League in Ire- land, in showing itself in its true colours, and breaking away altogether from Mr. Gladstone's control, has but illustrated the truth of that position for which the Liberal Unionists had always contended, that it was no wildness of political despair that had made the National League so dangerous, but rather the knowledge that the League could not gain influence at all without the stimulus of a policy of plunder and confiscation. How could there be a better test of this than the campaign which Mr. Dillon has begun within a few weeks of Mr. Gladstone's speech at Hawarden in which he congratulated the Nationalist Party on their wise moderation and their Con- stitutional methods ? How could there be a better test of the inability of the Irish people to disobey their more violent chiefs, than the submission of the Archbishop of Dublin himself to the dictation of anarchists like Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien ? What the Liberal Unionists have always said is, that if we give up Ireland to the control of the party which is led by Mr. Parnell, Mr. Parnell must fulfil his promises to the farmers before he can even attempt any other policy. And now it is clear that not even for a few weeks of long vacation, though it would have been wholly politic in him to take his cue from Mr. Gladstone, can he afford to do so if he is to keep his political machinery in order at all. It will not do for him to let the Government moderate the demands of the landlords, and exact the reasonable fulfil- ment of their engagements from the tenants. If he did so, he would find Ireland relapsing into a tranquillity from which it would be perhaps impossible again to awaken it. Hence it is that while Mr. Parnell disappears from the scene, his lieu- tenants have preached a crusade which betrays at once the utter dependence of the Parnellite Party on the agrarian policy which Mr. Parnell has proclaimed. Were the first and most serious wish of the Irish people a wish for Home-rule, no policy could be madder than that which Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien are pursuing, for no policy could possibly produce a more dis- heartening effect on their Liberal supporters in Great Britain. This was the point on which the Liberal Unionists fixed with one accord as the final test of the real character of the Irish movement. Is that movement what Mr. Gladstone asserts it to be,—the cry of a nation for self-government ? Or is it the strategy of a political conspiracy bent on so stimulating the cravings of a poor and ignorant class, as to make that class a tool in the hands of a faction ? If it had been the former, we should have found the National League conforming anxiously to Mr. Gladstone's view of the right policy, and eager to secure his utmost aid. As it is the latter, it has been necessary to ignore Mr. Gladstone's counsel, and to push on the only policy that can keep alive the enthusiasm of belief in Mr. Parnell as the agrarian dictator. It is indeed fortunate that the essential designs of the National League had been revealed in all their audacity before the meeting of Lord Hartington and his sup- porters was held. Till within the last few weeks, it was uncertain how soon Lord Hartington's prediction as to the real drift of
the Parnellites in Ireland, would be verified. He and his friends had taken their stand on the strongest evidence ; but the evidence was believed by many of Mr. Gladstone's supporters to be thoroughly untrustworthy. We were assured on all hands that if only the Irish people had hope, they would shake off at once the agitators whom they do not trust, and elect the old and trusted guides of former times as their true statesmen. What is the light cast on this hope, asked Mr. Russell at Tuesday's meeting, by recent events ? The Archbishop of Dublin is now, indeed, one of their leaders ; but it is because he has given in his surrender to the policy of the League, and not because the people have shaken off the League in his favour. The present popularity of Dr. Walsh is a sure gauge of the extent to which Jacobinism in Ireland now reaches. It is he who approves of debtors determining for themselves how much they shall strike off from their own debts. It is he who smiles benevolently on the diversion of the sums computed even on that novel principle to be actually owing, to the business of agitation, in the case of any creditor who declines the forced composition. When Irish Jacobinism can conquer the Roman Catholic Church, and reduce the Decalogue by two or three commandments, it is no wonder that it should make light of the pious wishes of its rather sanguine and credulous British allies.
Lord Hartington's position will undoubtedly be greatly strengthened by the speeches which were delivered at the con- ference and the banquet. What those speeches came to was this, —that so far from there being anything illiberal in resistance to a policy of surrender to the National League, that resistance is in the highest degree characteristic of true Liberalism, since it promises protection to consciences and liberties which the National League is at the present moment actively and earnestly menacing ; that, little sympathy as the Liberal Unionists have with Toryism as such, there is hardly any vestige of Toryism in the declared policy of the present Government ; and that, at all events, it is quite essential to tolerate the present Govern- ment, even if it were less Liberal than it promises to be, rather than hand over Ireland to the rule of the new Jacobins. One of the best features of the conference was the speech of Mr. George Dixon, who, avowing himself not only a Liberal but a Radical, declared that he would rather show the utmost for- bearance towards the Government than betray Ireland to the Parnellites. Indeed, he spoke in the very spirit of Mr. Bright's letter. Mr. Bright did not dare attend the meeting, not lest he should say too little, but lest he should say too much, and speak in a tone which would really be ungrateful to the great leader who has so long taught Liberals what their policy ought to be, but who has now overleaped the boundaries of true Liberalism, and is entangled in the meshes of Jacobins who menace and punish all who claim for themselves individual liberty. Mr. Bright did well to avoid the great mistake of a personal attack on Mr. Gladstone,—for Liberals should recollect the reign of Lord Palmerston, who was not, in any sense we can attach to the word, a true Liberal, and they should remember that it was the leadership of Mr. Gladstone which delivered us from that Laodicean era. None the less we rejoice to see Lord Hartington taking his stand, in the face of the Jacobinism which dares everything from dynamite to detraction, on the principle that while Great Britain is responsible for Ireland at all, she must and will protect the property and liberty of Irishmen from the conspiracies by which they are menaced, and will stand even between a Church whose prelates court the Land League and ignore the Divine law, and the unhappy country which it threatens. It is no doubt true, as Lord Hartington said in his closing speech, that the conference and banquet of Tuesday were not as representa- tive of the popular majority as all true Liberals might have wished. Still, with Lord Hartington, Lord Selborne, Mr. Goschen, Sir Henry James, Sir George Trevelyan, Mr. Bright, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. George Dixon standing like a phalanx between the country and this new Jacobin club which is bent on destroying Irish liberty in the name of the people, we cannot doubt that the enthusiasm of the party which, while it really obeys Mr. Gladstone, is represented by such political harlequins as Mr. Labouchere, will rapidly cool, and that they will soon discern the grave mistake,—a generous mistake in spirit we believe it to have been,—into which their trusted leader has fallen. There is something grand in the cool and undismayed attitude of Lord Hartington, as he stands unmoved between the popular party and the victims whom their Irish allies are asking to have delivered over into their hands.
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