THE PARNELL COMMISSIONERS' REPORT.
TEE Report of the Special Commission on "Parnellism and Crime" will be quoted as conclusive in favour of its own view by each of the parties in the great contest. Nevertheless, we do not suppose that it will be without eff'ect. It will have a great effect in supplying a solid basis of fact upon which those who are not already com- mitted to either party will form their convictions as to the real tendency and drift of popular forces in Ireland, and as to the real dangers which we shall incur if we give up Ireland to the rule of Mr. Parnell and his friends. The great question which Sir James Hannen's impartial judgments will enable English electors to answer a little more confidently than they could have answered it before, is the question suggested by Sir Henry James in his speech at Bury last Saturday,—namely : Is there, or is there not, any good reason to suppose that if Ireland obtains Home- rule, the new Irish Legislature and Administration will be controlled by moderate and sober-minded men, determined to support the Union with England, and to enforce the laws that protect property and personal freedom in Ireland ? And we believe that, in spite of the various verdicts of "Not guilty" or "Not proven" at which the three Judges have arrived,—and which we implicitly accept,—in relation to the charges against the Parnellites, the Commissioners will leave little doubt in the minds of open-minded-readers that the popular party in Ireland has been controlled, is controlled, and will be controlled by moral forces radically opposed both to a true Union with England, and to any sincere respect for the personal rights of Irishmen who are not disposed to accept the dictation of the Nationalist Party.
Let us see what the Commissioners tell us which bears directly on. the answer to these important questions. The first conclusion of the Commissioners is : "We find that the respondent Members of Parliament col- lectively were not members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute independence of Ireland ; butt we find that some of them, together with Mr. Davitt, established and joined in the Land League organisation with the intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland as a separate nation." Amongst the Members of Parliament of whom this statement is made, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien are enumerated. Now, it was not the duty of the Commis- sioners to form any judgment as to the real amount of influence in Ireland wielded by the various leaders ; but if any politician who has been watching the course of Irish politics steadily, can doubt for a moment that Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Brien count, for a vastly greater political momentum in Ireland, than Mr. Parnell, who is virtually acquitted by the Commissioners of intending to establish the independence of Ireland, we should feel very little respect for his judgment. It is they who have devised and-worked the "Plan of Campaign," against Mr. Parnell's professed disapproval ; and it is they, indeed, who have for some years back conducted the whole strategy of the Irish revolution. Mr. Parnell has hardly ventured-to show his face in Ireland for a considerable time, so- well aware is he that he would be expected to use language which he could not justify to his Gladstonian allies. Moreover, we think -that the careful readers of the Report of the Com- missioners will not attach the highest order of value to Mr. Parnell's disavowal of sympathy with the violent party. The Commissioners openly declare that they cannot accept Mr.' Parnell's interpretation of his own words on several distinct subjects. They state their belief that his attempt to explain away his language to Mr. Ives on his voyage out to America is unsuccessful ; and that he did mean, in what he said to Mr. Ives, to intimate that the secret and violent organisation might be usefully combined with his own organi- sation; and that, if the Fenians could but see it, they ought to have used the open organisation to assist their own secret organisation. Again, the Commissioners express the same profound distrust of Mr. Parnell's attempt to explain away his speech at the Dublin Rotunda meeting of April 30th, 1880, when he announced, amidst loud and long cheering, that he had received from an American five dollars-for bread and twenty dollars "for lead." "Mr. Parnell said in his cross-examination," remark the Commissioners, "that the mention of this offer of twenty dollars for-lead was stupid and-more than stupid, as there was no object in it, because by lead he understood the person who gave the dollars to mean the Land League. It appears to us; however, that-there was an object in it,—namely, to give to his hearers- evidence that he had the support of those -who advocated the use of lead, that his heaters were not intended to think, and would not be likely to understand, that by 'lead ' the Irish Land League was signified." Iii other words, the Judges were satisfied that Mr: Parnell used language for the pur- pose of gaining popularity- with the violent party, which he now unscrupulously endeavours to explain away. We hold, therefore;- that- not only have the Commissioners declared that the three most popular of the Irish leaders,—the real leaders in'Ireland,—" established and joined in the Land League organisation with the intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland as a separate nation," but that though this cannot be said of Mr. Parnell, he used, for the purpose of attracting the violent party, language which he now disingenuously seeks to explain away.
Still more decisive is the judgment of the Commissioners on the question as to the attitude of the whole Parnellite party towards those Irishmen who disavow the authority of the Nationalists, and choose to act on their own eon- ceptions of right and wrong. "We find," say the Com- missioners, "that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy by a system of coercion and. intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from the country the Irish landlords who are called the English garrison." And again :—" We find that the respondents did not directly incite persons to the com- mission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to intimidation, and that the consequence of that incitement was that crime and outrage were committed by the persons incited. We find that it has not been proved that the respondents made payments for the pur- pose of inciting persons to commit crime. We find that as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to prevent crime, and expressed no bond-fide disapproval, that some of the respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did express bond-fide disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the respondents did not denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage but persisted in it with knowledge of its effect." And the Commissioners add that the respondents certainly invited co-operation and accepted assistance from Patrick Ford, the known advocate of crime and dynamite. 3/forever, Mr. Davitt himself told the Commissioners that "he had yet to find a better man morally both as a Christian and as a philanthropist than Patrick Ford." Hence, the only man amongst the Land- League leaders who is spoken of as emphatically denouncing crime and outrage in Ireland, is shown on his own evidence to have placed the chief advocate of crime and outrage in America on a sort of pedestal of exceptional virtue. We believe that no impartial reader can fail to infer from the Commissioners' Report that the party who would never permit-the Irish minority to exercise a real liberty and to do what is lawful with their own property, is so completely in the ascendant in Ireland, that those who wished to claim and exercise such liberty would be trodden down without a chance of effectual resistance. The Report of the Commis- sion should answer both the questions suggested by Sir Henry James's speech in the most decisive manner.
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