MR. HEALY'S REVOLT.
TN spite of Mr. Healy's subsequent protestations on the subject, his speech at Crossmaglen, in County Armagh, yesterday week, may well prove to be of far greater importance as an augury of what is likely to happen in Ireland, than anything of which we have heard for a long time. Evidently Mr. Gladstone thinks so ; for on Monday, for the first time since he left Office, he took occasion to give his Irish followers a warning not to let their party be broken in pieces, and declared that they would indefinitely postpone the success of his Irish policy if the subdivision of their party went any further. For Mr. Gladstone in person to intervene to rally his Irish followers is an omen that something has happened to which many of the Irish Gladstonians attach the gravest importance ; and Mr. William O'Brien's heat, in replying to Mr. Healy at Lou ghrea on Monday, sufficiently shows the significance which the Irish party attach to this out- break of the acutest, if not the weightiest, of the Anti- Parnellites. The real drift of Mr. Healy's speech was to magnify the question of Religious Education as com- pared with that of Home-rule,—indeed, to make Home- rule quite a secondary matter as compared with Religious Education on the one side, and the new Land Bill on the other. Now if there is one amongst the Anti- Parnellite party who really knows the mind of the Irish Catholic episcopacy, especially of Archbishop Walsh, it is certainly Mr. Healy. And we do not in the least believe that Mr. Healy would have spoken as he did if he had not believed firmly that the Catholic hierarchy would approve the drift of his speech, and would be likely to support it by the influence which they can always exert over the Irish priesthood. The first interest with the Irish Catholic hierarchy has always been the question of Religious Education after the question of the Land. Without settling the first in the denominational sense, they would lose their hold over the minds of their people, and without settling the second in a genuinely democratic sense, they would never be able to settle the first in a denominational sense. The two great questions for them are therefore the Land and Religious Education, and that is precisely what Mr. Healy in his speech at Crossmaglen made them. As for Home-rule, he put it distinctly in the background as a matter that would be sure to settle itself if the other two questions were settled in the right fashion, and we quite agree with him ; but then we also think that the sense in which it would be settled would very likely be one very different from the sense in which such politicians as Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Dillon wish it to be settled. The Irish hierarchy are very much alarmed at the spread of the Fenian spirit among the Irish people. They knew very well that when Mr. Parnell re- volted against the Roman Catholic party and allied him- self with the violent party in America, they were in greater danger of losing the control of their people in Ireland than they had ever been in their lives before, and they exerted their whole strength to depose Mr. Parnell from his leadership, and for the time they succeeded ; but their success was not as great as they desired, and the Irish hierarchy are well aware how much influence Mr. Redmond's party still have in Ireland, and how easily it may grow in importance if the purely political side of the Home-rule question should gain ground as distin- guished from the Land policy of Mr. Gladstone and the Religious Education policy of the denominationalists. Now, the whole significance of Mr. Healy's speech was this,—he loaded the Administration of Mr. Morley with reproaches for not having given effect to the concession which the Government of Lord Salisbury had prepared in favour of the schools of the Christian Brothers in Ireland. Before Mr. Jackson left office, he had paved the way for a grant to the schools of the Christian Brothers, and yet Mr. Morley, instead of concluding that transaction on acceding to office, broke off what was in process of com- pletion, and vetoed it for the time. It is true that Mr. Morley always spoke the Christian Brothers fair, but he would not endorse Mr. Jackson's intended concession, and that concession still hangs fire. This was Mr. Healy's accusation against the Gladstonian Administration, and it was an accusation which he pressed with a good deal of bitterness. We may feel pretty certain that that was a line of action inspired by the Irish Catholic hierarchy, and that his ostentatious indifference to the Home-rule question as a matter that might be left to itself, so long as the Land policy and the Education policy were dealt with in the right spirit, was also very congenial to the mind of the Catholic hierarchy. And Mr. O'Brien's reply to Mr. Healy was also significant. He loaded him with reproaches for his attempt to divide the Anti-Parnellite party, but he carefully avoided closing with him on the question of denominational educa- tion. If adequately reported by the Times, Mr. O'Brien ignored the Christian Brothers altogether, and indeed his speech gives us the impression that the political party represented by Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Dillon are not very anxious to increase the power of the priests in Ireland, and would be quite willing to see them more or less thwarted so long as the question of an Irish Parlia- ment were kept well in the front. There are evidently two very distinct and discordant elements among the Anti-Parnellites,—those who with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon care much more for a Parliamentary Home-rule than they care for strict Catholic education, and those who with Mr. Healy and the episcopacy would be very well content to carry the Land policy and the Education policy of the Anti-Parnellites, even if Home-rule were settled by a compromise which did not at all satisfy the aspira- tions of the patriots who desire to see a separate Irish flag and a separate Irish Administration, much more than they care to see a contented peasantry and a prosperous priesthood. No wonder that Mr. Gladstone, when he was in London on Monday, gave the password of union amongst the Irish party as the true order of the day, holding that the union of the Irish party is an essential condition for the task of breaking up the effective Union with England. But if once the whole influence of the priesthood can be gained for Mr. Healy's attitude, the prospects of a separate Irish Parliament will soon vanish. It is perfectly evident that the Irish peasantry care infinitely more for the land than they care for any Irish Parliament, and that the shrewder among them foresee very well that the Land question might only too easily be settled in a sense which would leave the Irish peasantry under the heel of such semi- Socialist politicians as Mr. Davitt and those who preach in favour of the nationalisation of the land. Once let the Land policy of Ireland be settled in agree- ment with the wishes of the tenants, and there will be very little disposition to cry out for a separate Irish Parliament, which might, under the influence of the violent American agitators, unsettle everything again. We do not doubt that the Westminster Gazette is quite wrong in describing the Anti-Paznellite party as "quarrel- some but unanimous." They are really divided into two very different sections,—the political section and the ecclesiastical section,—and it is quite on the cards that the ecclesiastical section may get the upper hand. Hitherto in Ireland the political section has carried the day simply because those who are the boldest askers have had the most satisfactory answers. But it need not be always so ; and the Land question once fairly settled, the Irish peasantry may well turn Conservative, and resist with all their might any turn of the wheel which would place the Irish Jacobins in power, depose the Irish priesthood, and with them the friends of property and social order.
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