TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GOVERNMENT'S OFFER TO MR. PARNELL.
WHATE V ER else may be said on the subject of the offer made by the Government to Mr. Parnell, this at least must be said,—that it is the greatest departure from precedent, in double compliment, we suppose, to the House of Commons and to Ireland, which any Ministry of this country ever sanctioned. We can see no other ground at all for offering Mr. Parnell a privilege which is offered to no other libelled citizen of the United Kingdom, —the privilege, we mean, of rejecting trial by an English jury as a sort of trial from which he could not hope for a fair verdict. Such an offer can only be excused on the ground that a considerable section of Members of the House of Commons feel their influence gravely diminished by the Times' charges, and that the Mem- bers of this section assert at least their distrust of a British jury, mainly, we suppose, because a still larger number of the House of Commons express their distrust of Irish juries in criminal cases. But the departure from precedent is almost astounding, and it will make a very inconvenient precedent for the future, if at any time any con- siderable group of politicians should be charged with coun- tenancing the lawless proceedings of other conspirators. We confess to very great doubts of the expediency of the offer made by the Government ; but we have no doubt at all that if the concession so generously made to a particular group in the House of Commons and to a widely prevalent sentiment in Ireland, be not cordially accepted, Mr. Parnell will put himself so utterly in the wrong, that he will deserve no sort of commiseration for the future.
But whatever course Mr. Parnell may take, we are not sure that public opinion is not in great danger of attaching more importance than it ought, to the pro- posed investigation of the relation of Mr. Parnell to the Irish outrage-mongers. We say more than it ought, not because we regard it as in the least degree an insig- nificant matter, but because we think that if every letter alleged by Mr. Parnell to have been forged, proves to have been forged, the moral objections to Home-rule, the moral objections to throwing Ireland into the hands of a party which has accepted help from dynamiters in America, has uttered such threats towards the police and the loyal inhabitants of Ireland as Mr. Dillon, for instance, has uttered, and, finally, has organised the atrocious system of boycotting of which Mr. Parnell is the acknow- ledged, and was once at least the proud, author, would not be diminished sensibly at all. Of course, it would greatly affect the popular judgment of Mr. Parnell, if he were released from the imputations which the letters in question have fastened on him. And he has a full right, if he will challenge and can satisfactorily run the gauntlet of ade- quate judicial investigation, to be relieved from these imputations. But we must say that never was any pro- posal more cool than the proposal which he urged, that a Select Committee of the House of Commons should be granted to investigate the origin of the letters which he alleges to have been forged, apart from the general evidence which led. the Times to believe that they were genuine. The Government have, we think quite rightly, rejected peremptorily such a proposal as that. They have insisted that the judicial investigation, if it is to take place at all, shall cover the whole case of the Times against Mr. Parnell; and they have done well. We cannot imagine any charges more unreasonable than the charges of the Times would have been, had there not been a mass of admitted evidence, which Mr. Parnell himself would never attempt to deny, that he has toyed with the violent American party, accepted their pecuniary aid with respectful gratitude, himself urged upon the Iris peasantry methods of agitation which went up to the very edge of crime, and has been in. close relations with numbers of persons who are now admitted to have been concerned in plots of the most criminal description. Of course, it may turn out that his conduct has stopped short here,—that he has never gone beyond this willingness to reap the fruits of criminal passion,—but the Times' suspicions would have been wholly unjustifiable, would have been un- worthy of that great journal, if its directors had not found enough in Mr. Parnell's openly acknowledged actions to make them think that he would, if sufficiently tempted, go further than he himself admits that he has gone. The whole case of the Times must be investigated, and not that minute part of it alone,—the repudiated letters,—which Mr. Parnell asked for a Select Committee of the House of Commons to investigate. We heartily rejoice that the Government, in offering its Judicial Commission, have offered it only "to inquire into the allegations and charges made against Members of Parliament by the defendants in the recent action of O'Donnell D. Walter,' " and have not offered it "to inquire and report as to the authenticity of letters affecting Members of this House read by the Attorney-General at the trial of O'Donnell v. Walter.' But while we maintain that this enlargement of the scope of the inquiry was absolutely necessary to cover the moral justice of the case, we must insist on the great danger that the public may attach far too much importance to the issue of such an investigation if it be accepted by Mr. Parnell. Should the Times' charges on the whole be supported, the case against Home-rule will be strengthened far more than it ought to be strengthened by the evidence that two or three powerful agitators have passed the ordinary limits of criminal law as well as the limits a moral and political right, —which last, indeed, they passed long ago. If we were Home-rulers, we should not be prepared to admit that the difference between the Times' charges being substantially justified, and their being substantially disproved, seriously affects the question of Home-rule for Ireland. And being, as we are, Unionists, we cannot in the least admit that if these special Times' charges are virtually disproved, they will affect the question of Home-rule for Ireland. Whichever way the investigation goes, should the tribunal offered be accepted, we shall expect to see it influence the general fate of the political issue far more than it ought to do. We do not think that if the Times succeeded in establishing its case, the moral position of a convinced Home-ruler would be much worse than it now is ; and we do not think that if it failed, the moral position of a convinced Unionist would be much worse than it is now. But profoundly as we hold this conviction, we fear that the popular verdict on the great issue will be far more deeply affected by the result of the investigation,—if investigation there be,—than it ought to be. The fallacies of popular association will always exercise a far greater influence than they ought, on popular judgments.
But for that very reason it is of the very first import-. ance that the investigation, if there be one, should be guarded by all the forms of law, and hedged in by all the dignity of the highest judicial character. The proposal to entrust an investigation of this kind to such a tribunal as a Committee of the House of Commons, appears to us to be tainted with something like levity. No tribunal of that kind has ever adequately conducted any investigation so serious as this, nor has it the means of so conducting it The tribunal is bad. Party men, on whatever side of the House they may sit, cannot help feeling a bias which, whether it exerts its disqualifying effect by making them dis- trust themselves too much, or by making them trust them- selves too much, in either case injures the whole tribunal. Moreover, the habits of mind of Members of Parliament are not the habits of mind wanted for a procedure of this sort. They have been moulded under influences which are not at all the influences needed for judicial investigation. The resent writer at least would rather be judged by a true judicial tribunal of which every member, so far as he was prejudiced at all, was prejudiced against him on the opening of the investigation, than by a tribunal composed half of foes and half of friends which was not trained to judicial habits. However, the judicial tribunal, if it is to be con- stituted at all, should be constituted of Judges who are eminent as Judges, some of them certainly eminent as criminal Judges, and who are known to be neutral, or at least to take an exceedingly mild share in the great con- troversy of the day. And if such a tribunal can be constituted, and if the full scope conditioned for by the Government is accepted by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, then we say that the judgment of such a tribunal ought to be accepted implicitly by all fair-minded men ; though, whatever that judgment may be, the case for and against Home-rule ought not to be very gravely affected, either one way or the other, by the verdict given. If Mr. Parnell declines to concede to this new tribunal,—invented only to meet his fastidious dislike to a British jury,—the score which the Government rightly insists upon, the public will know what to think of his previous reserve.
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