TOPICS OF THE DAY.
IN THE POLITICAL WILDERNESS.
IT has been observed that democratic forms of govern- ment are very apt to sterilise politics,—democracies not being roused by any political issues which are not large and simple and kept continuously before the mind. The con- sequence is, that in democracies only the biggest questions really affect the balance of political affairs, and that there is no escape from these big questions till they are fairly settled. You must strum away on the same monotonous chord till the effect which you wish to produce is produced, and any variation or deviation from that note is apt to be mischievous to the cause in hand. If this is more or less the case at all times in democratic States,—the mass of the people not being easily interested in those legislative compromises, administrative expedients, and methods of applying principles to practice, the command of which really discriminates the statesman of resource from the statesman who has no invention,—it is especially the case where the issue before the people is really one that does not admit of anything like skilful manipulation, but must be determined " Aye " or " No " by sheer mani- festation of will. And that is the reason, we believe, why this Irish Question has produced the most barren political period within the memory of living men,— a period of the utmost monotony, in which there has been neither variety of thought, nor room for variety of thought, the same set of reasons being urged over and over again with the same set of illustrations, till the mind positively sickens at the recollection. Of course, the issue is very simple : it is just this,—whether the right to self- government really applies to all natural subdivisions of a great political whole, or only to great political wholes themselves ; whether each of the separate cells of which the ship is the aggregate, may claim to be separately steered, and have its own voyage separately determined, or only the ship which is made up of this aggregate of cells. If the former be true, the democratic right of self-govern- ment involves first of all the right of the parts to be insubordinate till they have broken up the whole and got free of it ; if the latter be true, then the democratic right of self-government involves the right of the whole to impose its rule on the parts, so long as the discontented parts are permitted to cast their votes fairly with the contented parts. But no way of putting the issue which has so long been before the nation can be imagined which does not involve the simple question we have stated, though there have been, of course, scores of different ways of illustrating the argument. The friends of the Parnellite Party will, of course, insist chiefly on the great length of time during which the Irish have suffered from the injustice of their more powerful neighbour ; on the great difference of genius and circumstance between the two peoples ; on the hardship of giving such a people as the Irish a right of complaint, only that the complaint may be rejected; on the utter failure even of well-meant attempts to do justice ; and on the pleasing prospect of conciliating them by concession, so that they may contribute to the harmony, instead of punishing us with nothing but fresh shocks. On the other hand, the Unionists, of course, insist on the important fact that there is anything but unanimity even amongst the people who demand a separate national organisation ; that you cannot gratify the majority without driving the minority to desperation ; that, so far from conciliation having furnished us with any good omen for the consequences of further con- ciliation, it has given rise to by far the most formidable phase of the long struggle ; that no arrangement can be imagined which would not place the two islands in con- stant feud except total separation ; and that total separa- tion is admitted to be totally inconsistent with the welfare as well of the parts as of the whole. There you have in a nutshell the whole controversy, and no effective argument can be imagined which does not either reproduce some one or more of these contentions, or illustrate them by examples. It is just like the question which divided the North and South in the American Union, a question where there was really no room for compromise, where compromise meant nothing but surrender either by one of the antagonists or the other. If the Irish give up their separate Irish Parliament and Administration, they give up everything that they are contending for ; they give up their idea. If the Unionists concede a separate Irish Par- liament and Administration, they concede everything the Irish are asking for; they concede their idea ; they concede what at least two-fifths of the Irish people detest even more cordially than the majority of the English people ; they concede the break-up of the United Kingdom, and something that will in- volve intestine strife in Ireland. There is no more any mode of avoiding the disagreeable necessity of perpetually hammering away at the same wearisome points, than there is of avoiding the hammering necessary when you either want to build or to break up. If you want to build, you must hammer-in the bolts and beams. If you want to break up, you must hammer-out the bolts and beams. And either way alike, you must hammer till you have finished the job. So it was in the American Civil War. The majority of the people had to hammer away at the wickedness of extending slavery ; at the right of the people to veto such wickedness ; at the duty of the Federal Government to defend itself from imminent dissolution ; at the absurdity of the contention that a State which had sworn allegiance to a larger whole should pretend that by giving notice to quit, it could absolve itself from its allegiance ; and at the evil motive which had prompted the whole proceeding. On the contrary, the South could do nothing but hammer away at driving into every- body's mind the original concession of slavery as a principle which the separate States in the Union were at liberty to adopt ; the equally undoubted difficulties which had been interposed by the North to the safety of that in- stitution; the sacredness which had always been attached to the free development of the separate States ; and the plain fact that such freedom was now practically denied to all those States which had retained the institution of slavery. These statements were made and reiterated till the world was sick of them ; and it was felt that if talk could but cease, and action exclude talk till the issue had been decided, it would have been much better for the world. There was no room for compromise. The struggle had to be fought out; and though it was impossible to prevent the interchange of mutual accusations while it was being fought out, very little depended on that interchange of mutual accusations, while a great deal depended on the earnestness of the fighting.
Well, it seems to us very much the same in the United Kingdom now. We have not, indeed, got to blows. But we have got to decide at the polls what shall not be or what shall be attempted. In the meantime, it is hardly argument which will tell most in these elections. It is rather the display of determination and tenacity on each side. If the English see clearly that there is no real hope in anything like Mr. Gladstone's half-way house, they will just set their teeth and say "No!" to every attempt to make it appear that that happy expedient for bringing ten times as many troubles upon us as we have ever suffered yet, ought to be tried. If the Parnellites see clearly that if they are beaten now, they will be beaten for good, they will set their teeth and say "No !" to every attempt to make them happy without a separate Legislature and Administration ; and the result must depend on the resolution and earnestness of the two peoples. In the meantime, we must make up our minds for a prolonged period in which arguments will be used only because human beings cannot act without talking, even when they know very well what they mean to do. It is rather a pity, for the action is none the better for the talking ; indeed, it is sometimes all the worse for it. And besides this, sterile discussion lowers the whole tone of discussion even on other subjects, and brings it nearer to the mere "you shall" and "you shan't" of petulant schoolboys. We are marching through a political wilder- ness in which intelligence, as distinct from character, is of very little use ; and no one can expect the march to be a cheerful one, or fraught with benignant consequences to our statesmen. But the barren interlude has to be endured. We can only hope that it may not be unduly prolonged, and that by the time that the will of the nation is clearly manifested, we shall not have lost altogether the art of devising new means to meet unexpected political exigencies. Still it is a bad education, politically, however good it may be morally, to live in a time when moral resource is not even in demand, when you have to choose between con- tinually saying " Yes " and continually saying "No."
Previous page
