TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEMESIS OF PARA.DOX.
rilHE great Lord Halifax, the Lord Halifax of the revolution of 1688, warned his countrymen how dangerous it was to build upon a foundation of paradox. The 'Liberal Party and the Liberal leaders are past now finding this out to their cost. For the last fifteen or twenty years—that is, ever since their acceptance of Home-rule and their alliance with the Irish Nationalists- theyhave been endeavouring to draw a series of absurd and paradoxical distinctions between what they call coercion, which they profess to detest, and the ordinary law, which they declare themselves not only willing but most anxious to uphold. When the enforcement of public order is described as the application of the ordinary law it is a blessed thing. When it is labelled " coercion " it is something accursed, something which no Liberal can do anything but denounce. We do not, of course, deny that there might be methods of enforcing law and order which would justify the latter description. For instance, it would apply rightly to laws empowering Judges and Magistrates to have recourse to cruel punishments, to use torture to extort evidence, to pass sentence and inflict punishment without proper investigation. Again, if the accused were not allowed to know what crime he was charged with, or if he were forbidden the help of counsel, or if the trying of offences were placed in the hands of men clearly, incompetent to , discharge their duties, no words would be too strong to describe such negations of justice. Resort to drumhead. Courts-Martial in times of peace would be a form of coercion which would justify the language which has been used by the Liberal Party in their dealings with Irish affairs. In reality, however, the objections made to the Crimes Act of 1887 and to so-called coercion in Ireland are purely factitious. There is nothing more objectionable in the operation of the Crimes Act than in that of the so-called ordinary law in Ireland. When a district is proclaimed under the Crimes Act, the accused has just as many guarantees that justice will be done him as he has under the ordinary law,—unless, of course, it is unjust to secure the adequate punishment of crime at the hands of the State. Under the Crimes Act no man is deprived of any of those fundamental rights necessary to a fair trial which he possesses in England and Scotland. All that he loses is the opportunity of being tried by a tribunal which, on grounds either of fear or favour, is likely to acquit, no matter how strong the evidence against him. The distinction between the ordinary law and "the hateful instrument of coercion will not stand examination. If a man is really in favour of putting down disorder in Ireland, and punishing the guilty, whether the crime is done by the criminal's own hands or by inciting others to criminal acts, he cannot, unless he is willing to let his eyes be blinded by sophistries, object to use being made of the machinery of the Crimes Act. That is an Act which no honest administrator need be afraid of, or ashamed of, using, for under it wrong- - doors may be efficiently checked without any danger of the innocent suffering unjust punishments.
Here comes in what we have termed the Nemesis of paradox. Because the Liberal leaders and the exponents of Liberal opinion in the Press have indulged in the past in the luxury of denouncing what they called coercion, and making a false discrimination between coercion and the ordinary law, they now consider themselves precluded from taking the only steps which can be depended upon for restoring peace to Ireland,—the application of the simple and efficient machinery of the Crimes Act. The difficulties which beset certain of the Liberal Home-rulers in this matter are indeed pathetic. For example, we find papers, like the Westminster Gazette, which are sincerely anxious to see law and order maintained in Ireland seeking wildly for some method of enforcing the law which shall not be open to the accusation of, coercion and "the hateful expedients of the Crimes Act." Apparently the Westminster views with horror the notion of sending the inciters to crime for trial before two Resident Magistrates under the Crimes Act, but would be quite willing to adopt a procedure which might, we should have thonght, be regarded as much more arbitrary and oppressive,—i.e., the binding over to keep the peace of- Nationalist Members who incite to crime, and their committal to gaol if they refuse to give the required guarantees. We quote the Westminster's actual words : "The right course, it seems to us, is to take steps to bind Mr. Ginnell over to keep the peace, and if he refuses the necessary security, he must then take the consequences." One form of procedure can be labelled "coercion," and therefore is anathema. The other—which is in reality far more open to the accusation of arbitrariness—will come under the blessed formula of the ordinary law, and there- fore is one to which no objection can be taken.
If the Nemesis of paradox did nothing worse than put the Liberal Party into a position intellectually so ridiculous we should have little objection. Unfortunately, that Nemesis is having the most evil consequences in Ireland. The unwillingness of the Liberals to enforce the' law because of their squeamishness abOut coercion is inflicting untold misery upon innocent people, and doing the greatest possible damage to the most prosperous of Irish industries. Further, the Nemesis. of paradox is likely to do a great deal of harm to the Liberals and Home-rulers in the party sense, though here we must confess to being indifferent to the consee queuces. No Government ever has flourished, or we' believe ever will flourish, which allows Ireland to sink into a condition • of disorder; yet sink into that con- dition she most certainly will if the Liberal Govern-. meet are unwilling to make use of the Crimes Act. No one, of course, wants Mr. Birrell, or the Prime Minister, or anybody else to stand in a white eheet and say that he acted foolishly and wrongly when he denounced the Crimes Act and coercion in 1887. The country is always perfectly willing to make allowance for the party politician when he takes up an attitude in Opposition which he is unable to maintain when in office.' To do that is to do far less injury to the public welfare than perversely to maintain a paradox in the year 1907 because it was maintained ten years before. The sooner, then, that Mr. Birrell and the other members of the Cabinet give up • declaring that they will never consent to coercion the better it will be for them, for it is growing every day more apparent that they will be compelled in the end. to have recourse to the Crimes Act. We cannot but regard as illusory -the hope that the Irish Nationalists may be induced seriously to discountenance and forbid cattle- driving. We print elsewhere an account of a Nationalist meeting, sent to us "with Mr..Ginnell's compliments." It was apparently arranged at the meeting that there should be no incitement to cattle-driving in the speeches, but a banner was displayed bearing the inscription:' "Blessed are the Cattle.Drivers, for they shall possess the Land." This, we expect, is what will turn out to be the Nationalist notion of damping down the ,novement in favour of cattle- driving.
• It may further be shown that the direct apologies or quasi-apologies for cattle-driving such as one occasion- ally sees made in the Liberal Press rest as much on. a foundation of paradox as the. attempt to discriminate between the ordinary law and coercion, and will have a Nemesis as disagreeable to those who employ them. If the men who .drive cattle had been evicted, from the pastures, or if they were dying of hunger and killed the cattle to feed their starving families, or if, again, the cattle-raising industry were specially and unjustly favoured by the State and were given privileges which were not accorded to those not engaged in it, it might be possible to find some excuses for those who attack the graziers and destroy their trade. As a matter of fact, however, the attack on the pasture farms cannot be defended on any of these grounds. Mr. Healy himself admits in a striking but extremely paradoxical interview re- ported in the Morning Post of Monday that Ireland produces the best grass in the world, and that a large section of the Midlands is better adapted for grass- growing than for anything else. As Mr. Healy clearly knows very well, the grazing industry flourishes in Ireland, not because of the wickedness of the hated Saxon, but for the reasons for which special industries flourish in other countries,—namely, that the conditions are favour- able. No doubt in Ireland, as in England and Scotland, some of the grazing farms were tilled in former genera- tions; but except in rare instances', it is a gross exaggeration to speak as if the people had been driven from their: homes to make way for the cattle. In Ireland, as elsewhere, economic conditions have led to emigration and to the passing of the soil from tillage to grass, for the very good reason that it is economically less wasteful, and on the line of least resistance, to grow cereals in America and to raise beef in Ireland.
The influences behind. cattle-driving are, in truth, predatory and. political. They are predatory in the case of the .peasants, who think that they are going to get possession of grazing-land on very easy terms. When it is remembered what is happening in certain parts of Ireland just now, it is hardly to be wondered at that the peasantry are tempted to long for the grass-lands. We believe we are right in saying that in many cases where grazing farms have been legitimately and lawfully broken up in order to provide economic holdings for men in congested districts, the result. has not unfrequently been something of this kind. Patrick Murphy has possessed an uneconomic bolding of a couple of acres or so,—no doubt too little to live upon, just as an English cottager's house and garden are too little to live upon. A grass farm has been broken up by the Congested Districts Board or under the Purchase Acts, and he has been given a holding of say, fifty acres of grass-land at a rent, or rather instalment purchase-charge, of, say, 15s. an acre, which be is expected, nay, enjoined, under his agreement to cultivate, and not to sublet in any way. In a consider- able number of cases the uneconomic bolder has, it is stated, entered upon the fifty acres of grass-land and acted as follows. Instead of cultivating his farm, he has let the grass grow and sold the hay, getting probably 30s. to 35s. an acre by such action. But, as we have said, his rent, or rather the instalments under the Land Purchase Act, only amount to 15s. an acre. Therefore he can get the equivalent of some 15s. a week for doing nothing. Of course you cannot go on in- definitely selling hay off a farm which is manured neither by artificial manure nor by cattle. But Patrick Murphy, thinks little of that, or rather, as he has been known to put it, he means to go on selling the hay as long as there is any to sell. When it gives out, and his life of ease and leisure comes to an end, he can always abandon the farm and go to America. We do not say that every man who shares in the breaking up of a grass farm acts in this way, nor do we wish to condemn altogether the attempts to create economic holdings such as are made by the Con- gested Districts Board, though we hold that the very greatest caution is necessary in their. creation. All we wish to point out now is the predatory instinct behind the cattle-driving movement,—the desire to get a good bargain in land.
The political object is equally clear. The Irish Nationalists are in danger of losing their hold upon the people owing to the rivalry of the Sinn Fein Party and other causes. They also believe that there is a danger of the Liberal Party forgetting them unless they make themselves unpleasant. In order, then, to keep things moving, they have deliberately fanned and encouraged the desire of the peasants to get possession of the grazing-lands. That is the last piece of agrarian agitation which is left to them as a motive-force for drawing the Home-rule car. In view of these circum- stances, it is surely nothing short of madness for the Liberals to tolerate the present disorders in Ireland. The Nemesis of their paradoxes confronts them, and the only way to escape is frankly to admit that they were wrong when they made their previous distinctions between coercion and the ordinary law. All enforcement of the law involves coercion, and to pretend that there is any way of ensuring obedience to the law save by. coercion—i.e., the punishment of crime—is nonsense, and mischievous nonsense.
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