Lord Spencer made a speech at Chester on Wednesday which,
to us at least, it is somewhat painful to read,—not, of course, because we doubt the absolute sincerity of that high-minded and heroic Viceroy, but because we see in it signs of weakness which it is difficult to understand in one who has wielded so justly and so stoically powers the very existence of which he now appears to regard as "sinful." He speaks of the National League in Ireland as a body too strong for any Government to grapple with, though he does not attempt to extenuate its unlawful and immoral acts of intimidation. He not only admits, but main. tains that this League is closely intertwined with the life and spirit of the Irish people ; and then he goes on to maintain, almost in the same breath, that we have every reason to trust that the Irish people, left to themselves, will at once put it down. He calls a policy of coercion " sinful." And then, before the words are well out of his month, he says that those would be "lunatics and fools " who thought that " Great Britain could for a moment tolerate an independent Government within a few miles of its shores." It comes to this then,—that it is " sinful" to put down crime by the use of force, but that it is legitimate and right to put down by the same means a political assertion of independence which would be far less dangerous to us than Rome-rule, and far the more likely of the two to lead the Irish to the sense of full responsibility for Irish actions. Who can reconcile paradoxes like these with Lord Spencer's great reputation for political sagacity ? Moreover, he praises the moderate language of the Parnellites in the late debates as "noble." He might just as well call it noble moderation in the spoiled child to become reasonable and quiet, the moment that he sees the toy he has been screaming for ready to be presented to him in his father's hands.
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