which we find it extremely difficult to suggest an excuse.
If Lord Hartington were to retaliate,—which he certainly will not,—that the conduct of Sir George Trevelyan proves that he aims not at the settlement of the Irish Question on the principles which he himself laid down last year, but at obtaining forgiveness from the Liberal Party at the least possible sacrifice of self-respect, he would make a very unjust charge, but a charge for which it would be much easier to give plausible reasons than any which Sir George Trevelyan can for his attack upon Lord Hartington. What was Sir George Trevelyan's great contention in relation to the Irish Ques- tion last year? It was that "there is no half-way house between entire Separation and absolute Imperial control." He has discovered now that there is not only such a half-way house, but one which may be founded on the con- cession of " a legislative body in Ireland, with an Irish Execu- tive connected with it, for the management of Irish affairs." The only guarantees which he thinks necessary in order to make this concession safe, are that precious guarantee involved in keeping the Irish representatives at Westminster,—in order, we suppose, to move the adjournment of the House whenever the law is enforced in Ireland against a defaulting member of the National League,—and what he terms "careful pre- cautions for the due administration of justice and the enforce- ment of its decrees,"—what precautions he does not even hint. And he also insists on giving to Ireland "something that Irish- men ask for." Now, does he seriously believe that Mr. Parnell would accept a measure withholding from the Irish Executive the control of the police,—a measure that would really pro- tect, as Sir George Trevelyan has so often insisted that we must protect, those loyal Irishmen in all parts of Ireland who have been fiercely warned that they will suffer for their past conduct, the moment that Mr. Parnell gets that control of Irish affairs for which he is fighting ? Is he really so credulous as to con- ceive that the National League will be complaisant enough to consent to be put down by Imperial control in all their boy- cotting operations, at the very moment when they are declared the victors in the struggle, and get the command of an Irish Legislature and an Irish Executive I We say deliberately that we find it a sheer impossibility to reconcile that indignant wrath which Sir George Trevelyan displayed last year at the proposal to allow, not so much the Ulster minority, as the very much weaker minority in the other provinces of Ireland, to be handed over to the tender mercies of Parnellite police, with his complacency to-day in avowing the convic- tion that there will be no difficulty at all in giving Ireland control of its own affairs, both as regards a Legislature and an Executive, and at the same time in so controlling the administration of justice from Westminster as to prevent the possibility of an Irish reign of terror. And for this the only guarantee is that there shall be as many Irish Members as before at Westminster to talk down the feeble remonstrances which might be made here against the proceedings in Dublin ! We do not profess to understand for a moment how a view which was so intrinsically strong and so well stated last year, has disappeared without leaving a trace behind, from Sir George Trevelyan's mind. We are perfectly sure that it is in strict good faith that he now speaks. But that a man who appears to nine people out of ten so very inconsistent with himself, should venture to accuse Lord Hartington of caring for nothing but the suppression of the Liberal Party, on no evidence at all comparable with that which could be brought to show that he himself cares for nothing at all but reconciliation at any price to the Liberal Party, is indeed a strange and impressive lesson on the occasional lapse of just men into the gravest injustice.
We at least cannot be accused of ever having assented to even as much as Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain have assented to, in regard to Home-rule for Ireland. We do not believe that either in Ireland or Great Britain local govern- ment should go beyond the proper sphere of local government, or inside the legitimate province of Parliament at alL We have always held that if the agrarian problem could be properly settled in Ireland,—and if in order to settle it we were called upon to make a very considerable pecuniary sacri- fice, we should have no right to complain,—Ireland might be ruled. by Irishmen at Westminster as effectually as Scotchmen are ruled by Scotchmen at Westminster, and Englishmen by Englishmen. We have, therefore, never conceded that the most important of Mr. Gladstone's two Bills could be amended successfully at all, though we should have been very glad to see the second of them,— the Land Bill,—elaborately amended and passed by Parlia-
ment. But when it is imputed to those who hold these views, or views in any way akin to them, that their real object is nothing but the suppression of the Liberal Party, we do not feel it easy to repress our indignation. We do, indeed, hold that such objects as Sir George Trevelyan insists on,—e new Registration measure, a Local Option measure, and the like,—are trivial in the highest degree as compared with the strength and unity of the United Kingdom ; and if the Liberal Party existed for nothing batter than such measures as these, we could resign Liberalism with hardly a sigh. But to our mind, the real object of the Liberal Party is the protection of tine liberty all over the United King- dom, and we believe that Sir George Trevelyan is sur- rendering,—though, of course, he does not think so,— that highest of all its objects, in order to save its external organisation and its poorer and more trivial aims. We hold by his view of last year, and repudiate his newer mind. We believe that it is he, and not we, who are unfaithful to Liberalism, though we gladly concede that he is quite uncon- scious of his infidelity, and that he really believes that by some hocus-pocus which is to us perfectly unimaginable, the reign of terror which exists in Ireland now, will be put an end to by the homoeopathic remedy of delivering Ireland into the terrorists' hands.
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