LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. PARNELL'S NEW DEPARTURE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the excitement caused by the recent trial of O'Donnell against the Times, the public is likely to overlook the new departure announced by Mr. Parnell in his correspondence with Mr. Rhodes just published. Yet even Mr. Gladstone's volte-face was hardly more startling. The Irish leader of the " Nationalists " has suddenly come out in the entirely novel character of an Imperialist ! He took off his historic coat several years ago to " sever the last link," &c., and he seems • now to have agreed to discard his waistcoat to forge a vast number of fresh " links." We are indebted to Mr. Davitt for the knowledge that by far the greater portion of the Irish- American contributions to the Land and National Leagues came through Mr. Patrick Ford and his journal, the Irish World, which strenuously advocates the " last link " policy, and even the use of dynamite to achieve it. Mr. Ford, Mr. Tmerty of Chicago, and the rest of Mr. Parnell's Irish- American allies desire Separation for Ireland, or something as near it as can be wrung from Great Britain. 'Mr. Rhodes, on the contrary, desires what he thinks would be a closer and more durable tie, not only between Ireland and Great Britain; but between Ireland and the whole Empire. Accordingly, Mr. Parnell appears to be accepting large funds from Mr. Rhodes to support one policy, and still larger funds from Mr. Ford to further a distinctly opposite policy. It will be very interesting to learn what view the Irish-American journals will take of this new departure of the Home-rule leader. Probably, if the truth were known, it is the first- fruits of Archbishop Walsh's long visit to the Vatican. Pope Leo is too able and far-seeing a statesman not to regard without alarm the loss of eighty and odd Catholic votes in the Parliament which is the virtual ruler of nearly three hundred millions of the human race. As the Queen is the head of a great temporal Empire scattered over the world, so the Pope is the head of a great spiritual Empire of the same character; and it is extremely likely that his Holiness has put his foot down upon the petty provincialism of his Irish Bishops. Besides, Mr. Parnell is credited by his enemies with an icy, tenacious hatred of England. He cannot, I think, fairly complain of this. No Englishman, no Scotch- man, no other Irishman of his social rank, would have played the part in degrading and weakening the House of Commons which he has done. I have read somewhere that his maternal grandfather, Admiral Stewart, of the United States, was once defeated in a naval battle with a British ship when he expected an easy victory, that he felt the defeat as a bitter humiliation, and that his grandson drank in hatred of England with his mother's milk. If Mr. Parnell really cherishes any bitter feeling of this kind, the Federation of the Empire is just the thing to gratify it. England would thereby have to surrender her position as the leader and guide of the Empire and sink into the position of one in a great congeries of States dis- tributed over the world and held together by a very precarious tie. In fifty years time she would be swallowed up by her children, and in a century the seat of Empire would probably be at Melbourne or Calcutta. As regards the new Home-rule departure of an Irish Parliament together with Irish repre- sentation at Westminster, Mr. Gladstone has already stated that it "passes the wit of man" to devise a working scheme on that basis, and Lord Rosebery has been taking the public recently into his confidence to the same effect. To give Ireland autonomy in addition to her present representation in Parliament would be to put not only Great Britain but the Empire under the feet of by far the most ignorant and un- trained electorate within its world-wide limits.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN IRISH LIBERAL.
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