LORD CARNARVON AND MR. BRIGHT.
LORD CARNARVON is one of those Conservative Peers to whom we always listen with respect. He sur- rendered office rather than give support to the mischievous foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield, and alike in relation to the extension of the franchise and the Irish Church, he has shown that he could think for himself, and liberate himself from the trammels of party ties. Such a man has n right to a more than usually respectful consideration from opponents, the rather that when in the Colonial Office he always lent Ids official influence to the cause of the oppressed populations,—to the negroes of Barbadoes, and the native tribes of Zululand and the Transvaal. Accordingly we read his letter to Mr. Bright with a sincere conviction that we should find in it at least some ground-tone with which we could heartily sympathise, and if we have failed, it is, so far as we can see, only because be has found in Mr. Bright's speech of November 16th state- ments and assumptions which, on the most critical reperusal, we are unable to discover there. For example, Lord Car- narvon says :—" Your gentle reproofs fall like balm on the lawless breaker of contracts, on the secret society's man, on the hired murderer, on the coveter of his neighbour's property, on the treasonable agitator, on the rebel in intention, if not in act. ; whilst you reserve your scathing denunciations for the unhappy owner of land, who finds his life in peril if he attempts to enforce the business contracts into which lie has entered with his fellow-subjects, under the solemn sanction of the law." *When we first read this sentence, we began to reproach ourselves for having hastily passed over this lenity of reproof on the one hand, and this barbarous cruelty of reproach on the other, in Mr. Bright's speech, and carefully re- read the whole, to discover what it was that we had six weeks ago so completely missed. To our astonishment, however, we could not recognise anywhere the truth of Lord Carnarvon's descrip- tion. It is true that Mr. Bright said nothing of those who are deliberately breaking the law in Ireland, except to de- scribe their agency, in very plain language, as one of" terror," "outrage," and " murder, —terms surely which are not terms of excuse ; but he did say something, and something of tolerable strength, about those who are preparing to reward these transgressors for their present conduct by the expropriation of the landlord class, and other "violent and impossible " schemes. What he said of the authors of those schemes was this,— " These propositions, which no Government can listen to, which no people can submit to, these propositions, depend upon it., are made by men who in their hearts hate much more than they love the farmers of their own country." If that is "descending like balm" on the heads of the agita- tors, it can only bedike that peculiar kind of balm which, in the words of the Psalmist, "breaks the heads" on which it
alights. Is there any denunciation which Irish agitators would feel more deeply than to be told that their proposals proceed from hatred rather than from love of the great class they pretend to assist ? If there is any unfairness in this bitter suggestion, to whom but the agitators can it be called unfair ? Again, we are at a loss to know to what Lord Car- narvon alludes when he speaks of the "scathing denunciations" heaped on the heads of the "unhappy owners of land." We search in vain in Mr. Bright's speech for anything at all correspond- ing to such a description. We find Mr. Bright saying that he does not believe the present rent of Irish land to be, on the whole, an excessive rent, if only the tenants had full security that they would get the whole advantage of any capital they might sink in the land. We find him by implication condemn- ing those landlords who seize every occasion of the transfer of land from father to son, or from husband to widow, to get a higher rent out of the land, and every one who raises the rent only because the apparent prosperity of the tenant suggests that he could probably pay a higher rent. But no one would condemn this mode of dealing with tenants more than Lord Carnarvon. And Mr. Bright acknow- ledges in the strongest way that there are, no doubt, in Ireland those who do not ft.,1low this system of extracting the last shilling out of the tenant—" land-agents who are just, landlords who are just and merciful and generous." And though he believes that the plan of extracting the last shilling of rent out of the tenant has been so far followed, that it has given rise to the deep sense of popular grievance which he describes, yet so far from going out of his way to " denounce" the proprietors who have availed themselves of the present law, he does not even censure them, though he strongly- censures the law which has permitted so i)opular a grievance. to grow up, Lord Carnarvon's charge against Mr, Bright, that lie has passed leniently over the crimes of the law-breakers, and reserved all his " scathing denunciations" for the victims of the agitation, suggests that he has imported into some of Mr. Bright's sentences meanings which, to an ordinary reader, the words do not and will not bear. The truth is, no doubt, that Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Bright differ profoundly as to the proper mode of meeting these evils. Lord Carnarvon thinks that all the guarantees of Irish liberty should be temporarily abandoned, rather than that the law of personal and proprietary rights should be defied. Mr. Bright thinks that these temporary makeshifts for a permanent remedy have been tried often enough, and have failed often enough ; and would go to the root of the evil, before attempting to get rid of the superficial symptoms. Either of them, of course, may be right, though we believe the truth to be with Mr. Bright ; but the issue between them is an issue as to the true method of abating the evil, not as to the guilt of those who are using the evil as an excuse for the proposal of mischievous and impossible remedies, nor as to the claim of the innocent victims of the agitation on our sympathy and respect.
But Lord Carnarvon's indictment against Bright goes beyond the line which Mr. Bright has taken on the anarchy in Ireland. He is extremely indignant with Mr. Bright for laying it down in his speech at Birmingham that " almost all the greatest crimes in history have been committed, and almost all the greatest calamities in .history have been brought upon mankind, by the direct instrumentality of monarchs and statesmen," and that the deliberate judgment of an intelligent and moral people is to be preferred, on the whole, to the judgment of statesmen. Lord Carnarvon thinks it most unbecoming in a Minister of the Crown to use such language, and speaks of it as if Mr. Bright had denounced the institution of Monarchy as "the cause of the greatest human crimes and calamities." But Mr. Bright did nothing of the kind. He was speaking at the opening of a new political club, and was arguing in favour of the political education of the people. And in doing so, he not unnaturally took occasion to ridicule Lord Beaconsfield's remark that "tire affairs of Europe and the affairs of the world are conducted and de- termined by monarchs and statesmen," in the sense, of course, that monarchs and statesmen can determine such affairs wisely, without the help of tire people. It was necessary to Mr. Bright's purpose to point out that monarchs and statesmen, when not controlled by popular feeling, have committed many of the greatest crimes and caused many of the greatest calamities in history ; and that monarchs and statesmen, when con- trolled by popular feeling, have been far less liable to the commission of such crimes, and to the kind of con- duct which has caused such calamities, That was as clearly as possible Mr. Bright's exact drift and meaning, and what is there in it in the least degree derogatory to his position as a Minister
of the Crown in a popularly governed State It is simply. true that the greatest crimes in history have been committed by kings and statesmen with untrammelled powers. To whom. do we owe the Inquisition, the persecution of the Jews and, the Mahommedans in Spain, the massacre of St, Bartholomew, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the persecution of the Waldenses, the persecution of the English Lollards and Puri- tans, and of the English Catholics,—or, to come to matters more. in question just now, the penal laws against the Irish Catho- lics, except to either kings or statesmen untrammelled by any truly popular constitution ? To whom do we owe the Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War, the over- running of Flanders and the Low Countries, the overrunning of Europe by the First Napoleon, and the Franco-German war, in our own time, except to kings and statesmen ? To whom do we owe the various bloody invasions of Ireland,which
led to wholesale massacre and confiscation, except to kings and statestn.en ? And we believe, with Mr. Bright, that in almost all these cases the crimes and calamities referred to, have been due to kings and statesmen untrammelled by the mitigating influence of a fairly-represented people. To whom but to kings and statesmen was the policy of transplanting slavery to the continent of America, to be ascribed ? Mr. Bright admits in his speech, .a.nd justly admits, that the coun- tenance given to that policy of slavery by the popular feeling of the Northern States, prevented slavery from being stamped out by milder and easier means than the bloody civil Wal which took place twenty years ago—and that, so far, popular feeling showed itself inadequate to its proper work. But who will deny that it was the hostility so widely felt to elavery in the North which brought on the .erisis that finally extin- guished it, and by no means the initiative even of American :statesmen 3 Mr. Br;glit's argument does not either suggest or imply that, kings and statesmen—even when virtually de- spotic, and still less when in sympathy with a generous people—have not been the authors of many great reforms. Nor does it deny that they are the necessary guides and agents of an enlightened popular will ; but it is simply true, and most germane to the question of the importance or uselessness of political clubs in to promote political dis- cussion among the people, that so far from hinge and states- men having usually had the initiative in all the great reforms of the world, almost every great advance of modern times has sprung from popular ngitetiom and usually made converts only too tardy among the class of official statesmen. Would the abolition or slavery in oar colonies ever have been carried, if we had waited for .officiel statesmen to volunteer it I Lori Carnarvon's attack on Mr. Bright for referring to an old opinion uttered by Mr. Bright some twenty years ago, that an hereditary House of the Legislature can hardly be " a permanent institution in a free country," reads to us almost unfair. Mr. Bright did not repeat that opinion in his Birmingham speech,—on the contrary, he uttered a sort of half-apology for if.. " I should have made no menaces," he said,—" a foolish thing for rue to do against the House of Lords ; but if I were particularly anxious that the House of Lords should endirre as long as the sun and moon, f should say that it would be much better to have some regard to the interests and sufferings of the population of Ireland, than to rush up in a crowd and reject a measure which those entrusted with the administration of the country declared, upon their authority and conscience, to he necessary for the peace of the nation." That is not an attack by a Minister on the constitutional authority of the House of Lords. It is an attack by a Minister on a particular act of imprudence, end, as he thought, a cynical ace of imprudence, com- mitted by the House of Lords ; and nothing can be more legitimate for a Minister than to make such a comment. Nor do we in the least admit that, were it necessary to propose a reform of the House of Lords, there is anything at all in the Conetiention to prevent a Minister intimating his belief that such a reform is necessary. This, however, is not what Mr.
Bright did ; and it would, under the circumstances of the ease, of course have been a great blunder if he had done ,so. He suggested no reform of the House
of Lords. He only expressed hie belief that if the House of Iiords wished to remain as permanent as any other
part of the Constitution, it ought not to act in the spirit in which it acted last Session. Would Lord Carnarvon himself have hesitated to say as much, if the House of Lords had Reamed to him anxious to throw out a measure on which the peace of the United Kingdom depended ? We regret Lord Carnarvon's letter, because it seems to us to rest upon a mistaken and a prejudiced reading of Mr. Bright's speech, and to attack it on points on which that, speech is invulnerable. But we mast also say that we regret that Mr. Bright did not seize the occasion, to write a reply in which his view of the present situation of Ireland might have been more fully and adequately expressed. Parlia- ment will soon meet, it is true ; but every day now is precious for the formation of public opinion, and the Ministers too muele avoid the duty of guiding petit c opinion. So chivalric
and honourable a .critie ati Lord Garna.rvon might well litive been answered in a letter of setlle length, expressive of the
hearty respect to which he is entitled, and seizing the occaeion for disseminating more exactly than the Birmingham speech. could well disseminate, the true condition of Mr. Bright's mind in relation to the present agitation in Ireland, its various victims, and he proper cure.
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