MR. PARNELL ON THE PROPOSED IRISH GRAND COMMITTEE.
MR. PARNELL'S Resolution respecting an Irish Grand Committee, moved on Tuesday by Mr. Molloy, and after- wards supported by Mr. Parnell in a singularly moderate speech, was probably proposed as an excuse for making that speech, and not because there was any serious intention of urging the Grand Committee in so impossible a form. As Mr. Gladstone afterwards said, to propose to isolate Mr. Trevelyan as the sole British enclave in a Committee consisting of 103 Irishmen would be, to say the least, inhuman. Nor could there be the smallest pretence for applying to local affairs of any kind a principle entirely different from that which the House has determined to apply to subjects involving questions of trade and of legal procedure. That principle has been never to consti- tute any Committee of experts alone, but to join with the experts men of the world whose interests are certain to be more or less immediately affected by the changes in the law to be discussed. Now, this principle is quite as applicable to local legislation as to technical legislation. Nothing is more likely than that a Com- mittee constituted solely of local Members deeply interested as residents in the change to be proposed, might forget entirely that the interests of the external world are often involved in such measures, and might in their palsionate localism propose changes which, if carried without any modifica- tion of a kind to secure the interests of the external world, would give rise to general complaint on the part of other citizens of the Empire. Mr. Gladstone will be sup- ported by the whole country in his remark that if Local Committees are to be appointed at all, they must contain a fair sprinkling of representative men who are not identified with the locality under consideration,—that there must be some Irishmen and Englishmen on a Scotch local committee, some Englishmen and Scotchmen on an Irish, and some Members who do not belong to the Principality on a Welsh Committee. We will go further, and say that if ever non-contentious Irish business shall be, as we hope, referred to a Grand Committee, that Grand Committee, far from including the whole number of Irish Members, should certainly not be so large as the Com- mittees on Trade and Law have hitherto been. By the Resolution of 1882, the Grand Committees on Trade and Law were to consist of not less than sixty, and not more than eighty Members. Now, if the principle of delegation is to be deve- loped, it is quite certain that a number of Grand Com- mittees including so many Members as eighty, can by no possible means sit and deliberate simultaneously. It would be necessary, we think, if this principle is to be developed, to reduce the minimum from sixty to forty at least; and on Local Committees, of these forty, ten at least would have to be chosen outside the locality whose business was to be discussed.
Trevelyan, with nine other non-Irish Members, would exert a perceptible influence on a Committee containing thirty representative Irishmen.
But the really important feature of Tuesday's debate was not Mr. Parnell's resolution, which was not drawn to be carried, and perhaps was drawn in order to prevent a waste of time in jealous Irish protests against delegating any Irish concern to a body consisting of only a limited number of Irish Members. The important feature of that debate was the extreme moderation with which Mr. Parnell him- self discussed it. He insisted that in spite of the enormous proportion of time devoted in recent Sessions to Irish subjects, the Government had been compelled repeatedly to confess that there was no time to give to Irish remedial measures for which it was admitted that a strong case could be made. Mr. Parnell assigned as the causes of the break-down in Parliament, first, the attempt of Parliament to deal with matters essentially local, matters which, in the United States, would be successfully dealt with by the Legislatures of the separate States ; next, "the presence of a foreign body in Parliament," a foreign body of which he candidly owned that he himself was a part; thirdly, the irritation caused by coercive legislation ; and fourthly, the intervention of the House of Lords, which had repeatedly rejected changes essential to the remedies proposed for Irish evils, and had so excited anger and wasted time. He did not deny at all, on the contrary he asserted, that the Irish Members were a very considerable element in the obstructive proceedings of recent Sessions. But why were they so obstructive ? To some extent, at least, because they were constantly on their guard against measures of which they expected to feel the sting. Take the Prisons Act. Irish Members naturally expected to be personally affected by the Prisons Act, and it was well for them that they did, for they succeeded in securing provisions for the better treatment of untried prisoners which were of the utmost importance to nearly a thousand Irishmen during the operation of Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. Mr. Parnell was willing to admit, however, that Irish energy, in its present disaffected phase, overflows the bounds of questions properly Irish, and asserted that if the Government will allow Irishmen to devote that energy in Committee to questions properly Irish, redundant Celtic vitality would to a considerable extent be diverted from the aggressive enterprises in which it now so often embarks in relation to general affairs. In one word, Mr. Parnell practically admitted that a fair provision for the separate Irish discussion of non- contentious Irish business, would have a tendency to abate the nuisance of Irish Obstruction, and so, perhaps, to take out of the hands of the Home-rulers one of their most effective weapons against England ; and yet, in spite of this admission, he was disposed to plead for the step suggested, even though it should deprive him of some of the most effective lashes in the Irish scourge.
We do not think it possible to deny that this suggestion is of the nature of an Eirenicon, which no historic indignation against the members of the Parnellite party ought to induce us to reject. As statesmen and men of business, we must recognise that in the abundance of local reforms which the Imperial Parliament is compelled to neglect, there exists a very real grievance, not only for Ireland, but for Scotland, Wales, and England, too. If we can contrive so to extend the principle of delegation as to find some kind of remedy for this grievance, we have no right to deprive Ireland of the advantage of it only because a good many Irish Members have behaved very ill. And undoubtedly, as regards Scotland, there has been already some indirect use of this remedy, not, of course, by the agency of any Grand Committee, but by the tacit agreement of the House of Commons to let Scotch local measures pass almost undiscussed by the House in general, when it is found that they have the support of the principal Scotch Members who would be affected by them. Of course, that has been a very inadequate remedy even as regards Scotland, or we should not hear the outcry we have lately heard with relation to the neglect of Scotch business ; but the facts do seem to show that there is much non-contentious business which might very fairly be discussed and threshed out in Committees principally local, though, of course, reinforced by a fair proportion of outsiders ; and that the resulting measure, if not presented for the sanction of the House till it had received the approval of such a body, would then pass the House with comparative rapidity. We sincerely hope that, as Mr. Gladstone's speech seemed to forecast, this hint of Mr. Parnell's will be maturely considered before the opening of another Session. It is a suggestion which could not, of course, settle in any way the chief matter in debate. But if it were accepted in some reasonable form, it might enable the extreme Irish party to retreat from their present sterile attitude of resolute defiance of the English people,—an atti- tude as hopeless for them as it is vexatious for us,—and once more to assume a position which will enable their fellow-country- men in Great Britain to treat them as comrades, and not as foes. That Mr. Parnell in his own heart wishes this at the present moment, appears to follow from his speech. Whether his party will allow him to act upon that wish is a very different question, which only the experience of the Session can solve.
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