TOPICS OF • THE DAY.
LORD SALISBURY IN EDINBURGH.
ORD SALISBURY'S powerful speech on the signifi cance of that separate Irish Administration which is now insisted upon by Irish Home-rulers for the first time, ought to produce some effect in Scotland, for Scotland is as shrewd in seeing the true meaning of practical changes of this revolutionary kind, as she is bold in pressing strong demands if once she has made up her mind that they are safe. Now, though a good many Scotchmen seem to favour a measure of Scotch Home-rule which would. at least approach in character the legislative Home-rule demanded for Ireland, we are not aware that Scotland has ever asked or thought of asking for administrative independence, for a Scotch Ministry which should have the right to govern Scotland so long as it possessed the confidence of the Scotch Legislature, as it is proposed that the Irish Ministry shall have the power to govern Ireland so long as it retains the confidence of the Irish Legislature. Yet, as Lord Salisbury showed, this is the very essence of the new Irish demand. We do not blame the Home-rulers for making it, for it seems to us abundantly clear that a separate Irish Legislature would be nothing but a new irritant, if all the most characteristic proposals which it made were liable to be met with the Royal veto,—if the gift of an Irish Parliament were in that way rendered nugatory. They are quite right in supposing that a fruitless gift of that kind would serve only to make the Irish people more con- scious of their weakness, and more disposed to rail against the country which had granted nothing but the power to ask what was denied. But none the less it is most impor- tant, as Lord Salisbury says, to understand what the present urgency for an independent Irish Administration really means. It means the power to appoint judges, magis- trates, constabulary, police, who shall be of one mind with the majority of the electors, and of one mind against the minority. And it means power for the Irish Administration to avail itself of any and every opportunity that the chapter of accidents may throw up for embarrassing the British Administration, whether in peace or war. Now, as Lord Salisbury points out, the only reply of the Gladstonians to this perfectly plain truth is, that if once you give the Irish Administration such a power as this, they will never want to use it. They will be so gratified by the confidence you place in them, that it will beget a reciprocal confidence. Well may Lord Salisbury argue that so sanguine and optimistic a dream has hardly ever yet been indulged in by a great statesman. We are to give an Irish Administra- tion vast powers to hurt the United Kingdom, in the wild hope that the mere possession of that power will remove every wish to use it. Was such a consequence of allowing full vent to explosive forces ever yet known ? Mr. Glad- stone says that it was.proved to be a natural consequence by the concession of perfect independence to our Colonies. But then, even he is not going to grant perfect Colonial inde- pendence to Ireland, for he thinks it far too dangerous. Even he proposed to refuse Ireland various very important powers which our free Colonies possess, such as the power of settling her own tariff and the power of revising her own contribution towards the expenses of the Empire. Yet are not these limitations on the Colonial independence of Ireland the clearest evidence in the world that Ireland cannot pos- sibly be put in the position of a Colony without the greatest danger to this country ? And if these limitations are to be insisted on,—and probably, indeed, supplemented by others still more likely to gall the Irish majority,—is it not the emptiest optimism to suppose that the sort of irrita- tion will not spring up under Home-rule,—and spring up in a much more active form,—which has fed Irish anti- pathy to England during the last eighty-eight years. Is there any kind of common-sense in assuming that such antipathies, with such constant exciting causes of dispute as the terms of any conceivable settlement will supply, will diminish and not rather greatly increase, so soon as the new and independent Administration feels its power, and is sensible of the popularity which the policy of thwarting England. would attract to it ? Lord Salisbury illustrates his position by the case of Roumania, which was given Home- rule, but instead of being drawn to Turkey by Home-rule, was drawn to the enemy of Turkey, and joined Russia in her attack upon Turkey. Is it not common-sense to suppose that the independent Irish Administration once formed, and once conscious, as it must be conscious, of the un- popularity of the restrictions on complete Irish inde- pendence, would feel as eager to widen the breach with England as Roumania was to widen the breach with Turkey ? Of course, we shall be told that England is not like Turkey, that there would be English statesmen to whom the Irish statesmen would feel that they were drawn by ties of gratitude, and that there would be powerful attractions to counteract the irritants involved in the restrictions on Irish independence. But is it true that antipathy varies in pro- portion to the reasons by which it can be justified? Is the antipathy between Alsace and Germany half as strong as the antipathy between Ireland and. Great Britain ? And yet it is strong enough, and. certainly would not be cured if Germany gave Alsace an independent Legislature and an in- dependent Administration. That independent Legislature and Administration would be used, we may be sure, to throw difficulties in the way of Germany, and to bring about a reunion with France. And if our judgment is to be formed by calm observation of what has gone on in Ireland for the last twenty years,—and what has gone on with more and more emphatic and conspicuous demonstrativeness, the more we have attempted to do justice to Ireland,—we have every reason to believe that a separate Irish Administration would have both more wish and more power to throw diffi- culties in the way of the British Government, than an in- dependent Alsatian Administration would have to throw difficulties in the way of the German Government. It is true, as Lord. Salisbury insists, that where a separation, though it be only partial, takes place in consequence of antipathies of old growth, those antipathies grow with the new freedom instead of disappearing with it,—at all events, where the tie is still so close,—and in this case it must be close,—as to be always suggesting the possibility of more freedom, and the extreme burdensomeness of the restrictions which re- main. Lord Salisbury was very happy in his illustration of the danger of Iri411 administrative independence in the case of a war between Great Britain and any neighbouring Naval Power, from the lessons of the Autumn Manceuvres. What was there, he asked, to prevent a hostile Irish Adminis- tration from availing itself of such a war to give our foe harbourage in the great creeks and bays of Ireland, whence he could issue forth and prey upon Scotch and English commerce with more than Admiral Tryon's success ?
And besides all this, the mere existence of a large Irish Protestant minority which would resist Home-rule by civil war, would be alone sufficient to render it simply impossible that an independent Irish Administration should have even a chance of entering on its new relations with England without circumstances of the utmost irritation. As Lord Salisbury remarks, it does not in the least follow that because Parliament had granted Home-rule,—even if it ever did grant Home-rule,—it would sanction the forcing of Home-rule on loyal Irish subjects who detested the very name of it. Consequently, at the very first throw-off, we should have an Irish Administration demanding that we should put down an Ulster revolt against Home-rule, and an English Parliament refusing to take so unnatural and revolting a course. And there would be a pretty augury for the "Union of hearts" on which Mr. Gladstone so fondly counts,—Irish statesmen, in their first flush of a new-found pride, bearded by the Protestant minority, and a large Catholic contingent as well ; England required to interfere and refusing to interfere ; and the deep displeasure and disgust which such a refusal would bring down upon us. Is it common-sense to suppose that in such a case the tardy concession of a partial independence would exorcise all the old hatred of England, and dispose the new Administration to submit to all the many annoyances and humiliations which the new relation would necessarily involve? It is the wildest of dreams. Lord Salisbury's contention that there is far more hope in the policy of firmly and emphatically vetoing the Irish dream, and in getting the broken bone to mend by joining it and binding it with the splints of a mild but inexorable coercion, is, we believe, the plainest common-sense. No one can say that it promises either an easy or a speedy cure ; but it promises a cure which is ease and speed itself compared to the promise of that new policy of Mr. Glad- stone's which appears to be the only imaginable alternative. Moreover, Scotland has to consider that if the hope of in- dependence is utterly baseless, it ought to be snuffed out. And. by far the best and. easiest way of snuffing it out, is for Scotland to return a few more Unionists and a few less Home-rulers.
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