19 JUNE 1886, Page 6

LORD ROSEBERY'S DEFENCE.

TAORD ROSEBERY is an entertaining speaker, who is sure to command cheers from a popular audience which belongs to his party. He has his Dickens at his fingers'-ends. He can quote Nicholas Nickleby and Mrs. Squeers with effect when he wants to make out a case for ceasing to combine remedial legislation for Ireland with repressive measures. He calls it the " brimstone-and-treacle " system, and reminds his audience at Glasgow of Mrs. Squeeres acknowledgment of the principles on which she administered brimstone and treacle to the young gentlemen of Dotheboys Hall. Mr. Squeers had weakly repre- sented that it purified their blood. Mrs. Squeers would not condescend to any such subterfuge. "Purify fiddlesticks," she said ; "they have the brimstone and treacle partly because, if they had not something or other in the way of medicine they would always be ailing, and giving a world of trouble, and because its spoils their appetites, and comes cheaper than breakfast and dinner." " Gentlemen," added Lord Rosebery, " Lord Hartington's plan, I am sorry to say, resolves itself into the old system of brimstone and treacle." Well, the only answer to that is that Lord Rosebery proposes to give a great deal more brimstone than Lord Hartington in case the exigencies of the case require it, and that the exigencies of the case under the system which the Government advocate, are as nearly certain to require it as anything can be that is still in the future, and subject to all the contingencies of the future. For the Government propose a plan under which it is hardly conceivable that England and Ireland should not, within the next five years at least, have far more furious quarrels than they have at present ; and if that should happen, and the Irish should then avail themselves of their position to take themselves off altogether, Lord Rosebery proposes to use all the material resources of the Empire to chastise them and bring them back again. He avows this intention in the plainest words. "Though I hardly like to allude to it," he says, "there is always behind us the enormous Imperial power of the Empire to maintain the supre- macy of the Imperial Parliament, and which, when it is neces- sary, no Minister would ever shrink from exercising. I draw a very broad distinction between exercising the material power of the British Parliament to repress the just discontent of the Irish people, and, on the other hand, exercising the Imperial power to maintain the just supremacy of the authority of the British Crown." Now, what we would put to Lord Rosebery very gravely is this, whether, if the authority of the British Crown is really " just," the authority of the British Parliament, with the Irish fully and fairly represented in it, is not equally just ; and whether it is reasonable or fair to the Irish people to offer them a relation under which quarrels of the most bitter kind are all but inevitable, and to threaten them that if they do take offence, which they certainly will take, they shall then be conquered out- right? For Lord Rosebery is candid enough to admit that it is possible the Government might be compelled to use force again in Ireland ;—" I say frankly there might be elements of disorder in Ireland which might compel us again to make use of repressive measures in Ireland. But the difference between us and our opponents is this,—that whereas we only look forward to it as a distant and horrible contingency, they look forward to it as a solution for twenty years." Now, what we deny with the depth of profound conviction is that the Government have any right at all to regard the smooth, diplomatic words of the Irish Party as the smallest guarantee for the distance or improbability of this " horrible contin- gency," especially when they are providing carefully about three times as many causes of reasonable quarrel between England and Ireland as they are removing. If it is but bare justice to grant Home-rule, what " justice " can there be in insisting on the right to conquer Ireland, if the granting of a measure that tends in any view of it towards Separation, only whets the Irish appetite for more and fuller separation ? The Government appear to us to be conceding as a matter of "jus- tice" what, if it be justice, means that Separation might, under easily conceivable circumstances, be justice also, but nevertheless to be threatening Ireland with the direst vengeance if she finds the partial separation granted so sweet that she is drawn by the mere instinct of nature to ask for total separation. They act like the parent who leaves a child alone with the sugar-basin that he may learn to resist temptation, but beats him severely of he falls into the temptation which he has himself provided.

And then, again, what does Lord Rosebery mean by saying that no Minister would " shrink from exercising " the Imperial

power to retain Ireland, if he found such an exercise of it needful for that end I On the contrary, it is because a very great Minister does shrink from that exercise of the Imperial power, it is becausa it is so much easier to talk to the constituencies with condemnation, as Lord Rosebery does, of " the chained skeleton of coercion clanking dismally on a rusty gibbet," than it is to talk to them of resisting Disruption firmly in its beginning, that we are now convulsed by a sudden revolu- tion in the Liberal policy of Mr. Gladstone. Men who teach all England to shudder at the " sinfulness," to use Lord Spencer's wonderful expression, of enforcing the moral law where it is unpopular, cannot expect to have the nerve to make war against the very people whom they have not the heart to punish for evil deeds, only because they are demanding openly political independence. Lord Rose- bery may think,—probably does think,—that he has the nerve to advocate the reconquest of Ireland, though he has not the nerve to advocate the enforcement of the moral law in Ireland. We do not believe him. Moreover, we have very serious doubts whether, if we now go so far as to grant Ireland a half-separation that must and will lead to the desire for more, we should have a clear conscience in using the power of the Empire against her only because the Irish appetite had grown on what it fed on. As a matter of fact, the faint-heartedness which now leads so many Liberals to hold up the policy of enforcing the law in Ireland to execration, is sure to break out again in much greater force when it comes to be a question of Separation or Reconquest. And though we hold ourselves wholly in the right now in refusing the fatal concession that must lead to larger and larger Irish demands, we do not feel so sure that if that is not to be firmly resisted now, we should hold it right to drench Ireland in blood then, for demanding the gratification of desires which we had ourselves fostered. At all events, it seems to us certain that the manly and only candid course is to take our stand firmly at once, while the danger is less, and while no one can plead our own admis- sions against us, and not put off the evil day of resistance till the resistance to be overcome would be far more formidable, and the justice of our cause in overcoming it would be far more ambiguous. Lord Rosebery can be very valiant while he is contemplating only a distant, and, as he hopes, an improbable contingency. We, who see that it is both near and much more than probable, should like to exercise a little less of that same valour now, and not wait to test it till we should be both in need of vastly greater valour, and also far less confident of our right to exercise it, if we had it, over the people whom we had misled.

Lord Rosebery makes himself very merry over the Ulster opponents of the Bill, and describes them as holding the shorter catechism in one hand and a revolver in the other, and saying, "By heavens, if you leave us alone with these mis- creants, we will fire off the revolver in the name of the shorter catechism." But Lord Rosebery, who maintains that we have the right,----if Ireland does not become suddenly and incon- sistently placable after the proposed surrender, though every attempt to do justice to her has hitherto made her more im- placable,—to fire off the revolver in the name of no catechism at all, but only in the interest of the stronger party, cannot possibly find fault with the men of Ulster, if in an emergency which they regard as involving very serious dangers to their faith, they claim a similar right. Ulster might, indeed, make her strength felt, if Separation were granted instead of Home- rule. But with the British power bound to put down the use of force, Ulster may very easily find herself in anything but the position in which Scotch Presbyterians now find themselves in Scotland. The strong point of Lord Rosebery's speech is its humour. The weak point is its equity.