THE TIMIDITIES OF IRELAND.
MR. MORLEY is probably aware by this time that he has not gone at all the right way to work to elicit " the facts of the case " in relation to the evicted tenants. In the first place, he has not given either the landlords or the new tenants any confidence that their interests will be fully protected on the Commission ; and indeed it would not have been easy to constitute a Commission less likely by its personnel, even apart from the procedure which it was thought fit to adopt, to convey that conviction to the the mind of either class. There was but one man, Mr. Murphy, on the Commission who was believed to give any kind of sympathy to the landlords, and he was quite sure to be frightened out of it by any sort of procedure likely to bring upon him the condemnation of his friends among the classes whose interests were supposed to be threatened by the Commission. And before the first day's proceedings were over, Mr. Murphy was actually frightened away, as the correspondence pub- lished on Tuesday last sufficiently proved. Sir James Mathew's opening speech alarmed him, especially when he heard the sharp attack on Lord Clanricarde before any evidence had been heard or sifted. The determination to let the hostile evidence on one side go out to the world without any of the rebutting evidence on the other side, frightened him still more. And he at once protested to the President of the Commission against excluding immediate cross-examination by the counsel of the land- lords under such conditions as these. This was, as we remarked last week, by far the grossest blot on the pro- cedure. Sir James Mathew ought certainly either to have excluded all reporters until he could furnish in one and the same publication the statements on the side of the evicted tenants, and the reply to those statements made by the repre- sentatives of the landlords and the new tenants, or else to have permitted immediate cross-examination by the repre- sentatives of those who were thus arraigned. As he did neither, and showed, by prejudging Lord Clanricarde's case, that he himself was not at all inclined to shield the persons assailed, he vastly increased the sense of pre- judice and prepossession which the constitution of the Commission had inspired. We have seen the natural result, first, in Mr. Murphy's resignation; next, and quite as distinctly, in the alarm felt by Lord Clanricarde's agent and bailiffs, and by the new tenants who had replaced some of the evicted tenants, at the bare prospect of giving evidence at all before a Commission so constituted and so little disposed apparently to give them what they thought fair-play. Even Sir James Mathew has evidently felt the bad impression produced, for in investigating the case of the Ponsonby estate on Tuesday, he took a good deal of pains to show the tenants' witnesses that he could say a word for the landlord when he thought it right. But the tide had run too strongly the other way before Tuesday, to make Sir James Mathew's obiter dicta on that day on the landlords' side, of much account in affecting Irish public opinion. The impression that the Government are all on one side, that the Commission is all on one side, and that those who are on the other side will get nothing but popular odium by their evidence, had been spread abroad ; and Mr. Murphy's retirement had evi- dently given the cue to both landlords and new tenants to have as little to say to the Evicted Tenants' Commission as possible. This is almost always the way in Ireland. No class will stand up and fight its own cause against what it regards as overwhelming odds. Landlords, agents, bailiffs, emergency men, all tremble in their shoes, when they find themselves, or think they find themselves, set up as the target for all the arrows of the popular party. The men who had professed their intention of showing fight, think better of it. All their dependents think better of it. Sturdiness in isolation is hardly an Irish virtue. The instinct of all parties is to lie low whenever their opponents have clearly got the upper hand. Commissioners retire, landlords quail, agents await " further instructions ; " bailiffs express their un- willingness to be made the object of a dead set ; and we find witness after witness on the unpopular side finding some excellent excuse for not giving evidence against the protgg4s of the Government, and on behalf of those who appear to be in disgrace with Fortune and Irishmen's eyes. And this is precisely why, under a Democratic regime like the present, Ireland has much more real liberty when the central Government jealously protects the minority, than it has when that Government sedulously executes the will of the majority. The stronger party has courage enough in the knowledge of its own strength, and especially in the support and protection of the Catholic priesthood, which reflects and expresses the will of the majority. The weaker party is not sturdy enough to speak out boldly except when it can rely on the strong arm of the Govern- ment to redress the balance of popular opinion. When Mr. Balfour wielded that arm, and boldly wielded it, liberty was restored, and the popular tyranny of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien was held in check. Mr. Morley has now removed that check. It is believed at least,—and in this case, at all events, truly believed,—that he will not in- terfere to see justice done to the tongue-tied minority, and the consequence is that the minority are more disposed to be tongue-tied than ever, and they resign themselves to injustice in sullen despair. The effect is very bad on both parties. The minority shrink back; the agitators, evicted tenants, and all their backers, grow more and more despotic than ever, and, to use the phraseology of the Psalmist, " their eyes stand out with fatness," and " their tongue walketh through the earth." Ireland is not a country in which it is safe to place the Executive under the control of the popular party. There is no despotism like the despotism of a mob. Even with Mr. Morley in power, the despotism of the mob, though it is gradually be- coming conscious of its irresistible strength, is not un- relieved, is not at all what it would be if Ireland were ever given up to the rule of the agitators. The condition of things which is beginning to show itself now, is democratic tyranny in the bud. Home-rule would be democratic tyranny in full blossom. Even Mr. Morley, even Sir James Mathew, has an ideal which is not in the least the ideal of Mr. William O'Brien. They have the traditions of a policy of fair-play so deeply planted within them that, in spite of their sympathy with the evicted tenants, they cannot quite reconcile themselves to silencing the protests of those who were once accustomed to lay down the law without so much as the risk of being defied. The tables are turned now ; but even those who have turned them, and who rejoice that they are turned, feel a noble scruple about dealing out to the ruling caste of former times the retribution which the agitators are longing to deal out to them. So long as power is wielded by men like Mr. Morley and Sir James Mathew, we shall see nothing but hints and omens of the revolution which is foreshadowed. The liberty of speech which is now threatened will then be extinguished. At present, the landlords hesitate ; they do not meekly submit to be trampled on ; they feel that they have an appeal to popular opinion in England. Their agents temporise, their counsel even overact their part ; but once let the Irish democracy find that its power is absolute and sub- ject to no curb, and we shall see in Ireland something much more like what the last century saw in France than any one now expects. It is true that that, if it ever happens, will be the Nemesis of the caste rule which pre- vailed in Ireland till Mr. Gladstone interfered to reverse the balance. But reasonable Englishmen do not want to see one kind of unjust rule superseded by another equally unjust. We want to see the balance held even. We want to see something like the free speech and free action in Ireland which there is in England, and which Mr. Balfour nearly succeeded in giving to Ireland. We do not want to see mob rule succeeding to caste rule. It is, indeed, even the worse tyranny of the two. But it is that with which Ireland is now menaced, and which will soon be established there, if the ruling policy of the hour ever succeeds in obtaining a complete victory.
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