THE DUBLIN RIOT.
THE Government were wrong, we fear, in prohibiting the meeting of Sunday in the Phoenix Park. We dare say, in the immense repertory of statutes with which the Execu- tive is armed, both in England and Ireland, some clause may be found which will legalize their action, but nevertheless we cannot but think them wrong. People do not remember statutes, while they do remember general policy, and the general policy of the British Government is to allow public meetings to be held by any class on any subject anywhere except within a distance of one mile from the Palace of Westminster. This policy has of late years been acted on with great consist- ency, and in spite of extreme pressure,—meetings, for instance, which are extremely offensive to the better classes of society, and indeed to all human beings with brains and black coats, being allowed in Hyde Park. For years past no meeting in any English or Scotch town has been interfered with, even when called avowedly to endorse Republican doctrines, and no person has been prosecuted for anything said therein. The general policy is unmistakable, and in departing from it with regard to a single meeting, the Government, as it were, took the Dublin crowd by surprise, and necessarily left an injurious impression both of violence and unfairness. There was nothing particularly illegal about the meeting. The release of political prisoners is a fair subject for public discussion or petition ; Irish orators are, on the whole, a great deal less offensive in their language than English orators—being, if more seditious, much more clever—and the Phoenix Park either does or does not belong to the people, just as much or as little as Hyde Park. It was very discourteous of the Fenians, no doubt, to worry the Prince of Wales while staying among them as their guest ; but the fact that the Prince was in London would not prevent a public meeting from denouncing Royalty, in Hyde Park, or induce Government to break the orators heads for uttering such denunciations. The Prince of Wales is at home in Dublin as rduch as in London. As to the whispered danger to the Prince, we do not believe a word of it, and if any suspicion of the kind existed, it would have been easy to protect the Viceregal demesne which, though in the Park, Is very distinctly separated from it. The crowd collected by the Monument could do no harm, except to the grass, and it would have been far wiser and more in accord with the usual and, as we think, sensible policy of the Government to let them perorate at will, and then disperse, than to prohibit the meeting. That, as it seems to us, was the error, while the subsequent violence, about which a great deal more will be said in Parliament and in Dublin, was merely a misfortune due to the fact that the Dublin Police, alone in Ire- land, is unarmed. The order of prohibition once issued, it was, of course, indispensable to carry it out—we would rather see a hundred lives sacrificed than Government degraded by impotent brag—and in Cork it would have been carried out by men who would have met resistance with a volley, and who consequently would not have been resisted. An attack on a mob by a small body of men with bludgeons is in Ireland an invitation to a fight, and of course in a fight there are plenty of broken heads. That, however, is not our charge against the Government, which, after the order was issued, was as merciful as its inadequate force allowed it to be, but want of judgment and fairness in issuing the order.
But Lord Hartington will argue, You denounced Mr. Bruce last week for not doing the very thing that you now condemn me for having done.' Nothing of the kind. The principle we desire to support is one which for years past has received the adhesion of statesmen of both parties, namely, that open-air meetings, however annoying, or useless, or offensive they may be, are to be tolerated, unless they menace Parliament or the national Executive. Any meet- ing whatsoever within a mile of Westminster Palace breaks that last rule, which, as the example of Paris, of the United States, and of Canada shows us, is vital to the very .existence of authority ; and Mr. Bruce, having prohibited the Trafalgar Square meeting, should have carried out his order, even af he had had to call out artillery and seek a bill of indemnity from Parliament. Government is right in its non-interference in Hyde Park. It would have been right in non-interference in the Phconix Park. It was utterly wrong in non-interference in Trafalgar Square. We should have thought the difference between the two cases patent to anyone with the least tinc- ture of political knowledge, that the reason for it lay upon the very surface, but it appears we were wrong. No public meeting out of London, or indeed out of Westminster, however disorderly, or riotous, or treasonable, can do any irremediable harm, If a Nottingham mob sacked the Jail or a Dublin mob battered Lord Spencer's windows, there would be a jail to repair or some window-panes to be mended. But if a London mob got possession of Westminster Palace, there might be revolution, the country might be overridden, and, not merely the local authority,—the damage might be irreparable, instead of re- mediable. We may risk the remediable damage for the sake of other advantages, but we are crazy to risk for any reason whatever the irreparable one. We do not moan to advise that there should be no law of out-door meetings outside London. There may be many cir- cumstances under which such meetings are injurious, or even dangerous to good order or civilization, and we are perfectly willing to trust the Magistrates or the Home Secretary with the power of preventing them, just as we already trust them with the power of summoning them to disperse. But the power should be exercised fairly, on some easily recognized principle, and with as little attention as possible to differences of political senti- ment. There should not be one law for the Phoenix and another for Hyde Park ; the law itself should be modified. It is a principle of our government not to risk bloodshed. without urgent reason, and it would therefore be most expedient to devise a law which would prevent prohibited meetings in the provinces without recourse either to the bayonet or the baton. It would not be difficult, we imagine, to devise such a law, if only Parliament could be induced to agree to the policy of definition,—of clearly deciding that a meeting is legal unless prohibited, but if prohibited is illegal. Sup- pose that any person who, after public notice of prohibition, summoned, or helped to summon, or addressed any such meet- ing, were liable to six months' imprisonment, would it be held ? We do not believe it, every mob needing ringleaders ; while there would be no collision between police and people, no violence, none of the sympathy which always attends men whose heads rirebroken for breaking the law. The meeting could be watched by detectives in plain clothes, and its leaders would be prosecuted next morning before the magistrates as ordinary misdemeanants, and next time everybody would be very reluctant to attend a prohibited meeting. A law of that kind would be useless to prevent meetings near the Westminster Palace, be- cause there a sudden rush might overwhelm the law itself, but in the country it would be quite efficacious enough. The, grand objection to our present system of dealing with such assemblages is its melodramatic character, the waste of force and the departure from ordinary procedure it involves, and a law such as we suggest would at once remove this defect. It is not by rushes of the police and unmerciful bludgeoning of decent people, that we can prevent the misuse of the right of public meeting; but by the quiet operation of the law punishing such misuse, like any other offence against the good order of society. An orator who deliberately broke such a law would. not be able to pose in a grand attitude, as of a martyr defy- ing the British Empire ; but would be a very small criminal, liable to be brought up after the night charges, and to be sen- tenced in five minutes. Our system with regard to public meetings is a great deal too heroic in conception, and some- times very imbecile indeed in execution.
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