CASTEFEELING AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY.
WE do not know whether Mr. Schnadhorst and his colleagues have fully considered the probable effect on the English electorate of the agitation which they are getting up against the legal punishment of Members of Parliament when convicted of criminal attempts to induce other persons to break contracts and to refuse to pay just debts, on the ground that they are Members of Parliament, and not mere ignorant men. Mr. Schnadhorst will hardly insist, perhaps, on the frightful ignominy which a Member -of Parliament has to undergo in being asked to travel second-class as a prisoner when he has always been accus- tomed to travel first-class as a free man. Considering how • common it is for men of the highest rank to travel not only second-class, but third-class, that feature in the Irish Member's complaint is almost farcical. But little as Mr. Schnadhorst's Liberal friends will care to insist on this feature of the case, it is really perfectly expressive of the attitude taken up, and will hardly be forgotten by the audiences to whom the various denunciations of the cruelty with which Mr. O'Brien has been treated, may be addressed. As it seems to us, the Irish agitators are as completely destitute of that genuine democratic principle on which alone their claim that the verdict of the Irish popular vote shall be considered as final can be rested, as any Venetian oligarchy ever were. Mr. O'Brien's horror of wearing prison clothes, and his disgust at second-class travelling, are about as democratic as Shakespeare represents the feeling of Coriolanus to have been towards the Roman mob. Mr. O'Brien has, so far as we know, never exhorted the Irish farmers imprisoned under the Crimes Act to refuse to wear the prison clothes provided for them, or to decline to travel third-class in cases where previously they had been in the habit of travelling second. He reserves these traits of social fastidiousness for himself and those brother- Members who, like the late Mr. Mandeville, held by the same clothes-philosophy. The Irish Members evidently think that it is their caste rather than their privilege as Irishmen, which is specially injured by the indignity of wearing prison clothes and travelling second-class. We do not complain of this feeling. Doubtless the sensitive- ness about dress and prestige lingers in one race long after it has disappeared in another, and Mr. O'Brien is just as much entitled to his own social crotchet as any other human being who is prepared to pay the penalty of indulging it. It is no sign of a bad heart that a man cannot endure the ignominy of prison clothes, and feels out of his element when he is in any public carriage where persons of lower rank are likely to sit near him. That is to some extent doubtless a caprice, .a symptom of what we may call a superfine state of feeling. But it is quite compatible with very high qualities. Still it is not consistent with democratic principles. And we must say that we doubt the enthusiasm which will be excited amongst the British householders by proclaiming to them that Mr. O'Brien thinks himself entitled to very different treatment from most of them, if they should happen to commit the same offences against the law which he has committed. Will the mass of men who pay half- a-crown a week for their houses, appreciate these superfine feelings of Mr. O'Brien ? Will they think that such feel- ings are quite of a piece with the demand that the vote of the great majority of Irish householders is entitled to absolute deference from a British Government on any Irish question ? Would it not be open to any one to remark that if Mr. O'Brien's habits and tastes ought to exempt him from the fate of ordinary law-breakers, when he becomes a law-breaker, there is no special reason why the habits and tastes of the majority of highly cultivated Irishmen should not be entitled to a great deal more deference as regards the political future of Ireland, than the vote of ordinary Irish peasants ?
One thing seems to be so absolutely obvious, that even the most miscellaneous audiences cannot miss it when they are asked to sympathise with Mr. O'Brien's sufferings in wearing prison clothes and travelling second-class. Either Mr. O'Brien is not suffering any injustice except the injustice which may be charged on the present state of the law, or else every Irish farmer or labourer who is committed to prison for boycotting or intimidating others, is suffering just the same injustice when he is asked to put on prison clothes and to travel in any fashion that he regards as beneath his dignity. The claim made for Members of Parliament as such, is in the most flagrant contradiction with democratic principles, and displays a vein of feel- ing that suggests. a doubt whether the Irish leaders, if ever they get Home-rule, might not prefer to set up an aristocratic form of government rather than a democratic form of government. And that will be a matter which the English householder will be sure to take into consideration. Is it not a very odd thing,' he will say to himself, that the Liberal Party, who call Liberal Unionists mere Tories, are making a special grievance of the fact that Irish Members are treated, for inciting to crime, just as the Irish peasantry are treated for committing crime ? Is it really Radicals who ask us to pass all these resolutions of indignation that a man of a higher caste is to be punished for the same —or a more serious—offence, just as a man of lower caste would be punished for it ? Do, then, the Gladstonians maintain that the principle of caste is at bottom a just one ? Or do they urge it in this instance, only because the fastidious Irish Member avows his own adherence to the principle of caste ? If that be so, what shall we see when Home-rule is granted ? Shall we not see Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Brien proposing a Constitution under which the Irish commonalty shall be taught humility ? Shall we not some day find these Irish aristocrats addressing the Irish masses in the old scornful language ?- "Most sweet voices !
Better it is to die, better to starve, Than crave the hire which first we do deserve. Why in this wolvish to should I stand here To beg of Hob and Dick, that do appear, Their needless vouches P" '
That at all events, is the clothes-philosophy of Coriolanus, and that appears to us to be also the clothes-philosophy of Mr. William O'Brien.
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