22 DECEMBER 1888, Page 7

LORD DERBY'S VERDICT.

WHAT makes Lord Derby's verdict on this question of Home-rule so weighty, is not either its lucidity of expression or its perfect moderation of tone, but the fact that it expresses the view of a detached mind on a political subject on which the view of a detached mind is the most final test of political truth to which it is possible for us to attain. There are many subjects on which we should. not be disposed to take Lord Derby's verdict as by any means final,—subjects, for instance, in which the sympathies would have a right to count for more than cool judgment, subjects into which political sentiment enters, and enters rightly, much more largely than political judgment. But as regards this question of Home-rule, we hold that judgment is supreme. It is true, of course, that we would all of us do everything in our power that we could do safely to gratify Irish national sentiment. And that Irish national sentiment is the one effective element in the cry for Home-rule which is inseparable from that cry, we heartily admit. There are, of course, many other component elements in that cry which are quite separable from it, though closely asso- ciated with it,—such as the eager desire for the land which the Irish farmers think they will obtain sooner and on easier terms under Home-rule than without it, but which they might very well obtain sooner, and possibly even on easier terms, without it ; and the wish for a protective tariff, which, for our parts, we are quite sure that they will never be able to retain, even if they once imposed such a tariff, either with or without Home-rule, though, no doubt, they imagine that with Home-rule they would be able to impose such a tariff, and that it would enrich them. But all such motives as these for establishing Home-rule are not matters of sentiment, but matters of ill-calculated self-interest. It is the national sentiment of the case. and the national sentiment alone, which cannot be fully satisfied without Home-rule, and which might, under certain conceivable circumstances, be satisfied with it. But even after freely admitting this, and after admitting that Lord Derby's judgment would be by no means final as to what sort of sacrifice it would be worth while to make in order to satisfy this Irish national sentiment, so far as it is possible to satisfy it, we hold that the issue really hangs upon considerations entirely independent of this question, considerations on which Lord Derby's judgment is probably the best that we could imagine ourselves obtaining,—namely, whether the concessions necessary to gratify even temporarily the Irish national sentiment, could possibly be made without endangering in the gravest possible way the future of the United Kingdom. We are quite willing to assume that Lord Derby would greatly under-estimate the importance of gratifying Irish national feeling, if we could safely gratify it. But what we are very sure of, is that even if he under-estimates the importance of doing so, he does not exaggerate, or in any way over-colour, even if he does not attenuate by the sobriety of his judgment, the character of the political dangers to the Kingdom which the conces- sion of Home-rule would involve. He places them before us in the most impartial and colourless way, without the smallest attempt to paint up the effect. He takes all the conceivable methods in which the experiment might be tried. He points out the taunts to which we should expose the sensitive Irish pride under one alterna- tive, and the impossible sacrifices we should require from the not too modest character of our own richer and more powerful people under the other alternative, and the absolute absurdity of attempting to squeeze four different Cabinets and four different Legislatures, with a fifth Cabinet and a fifth Legislature to unite and co- ordinate them all in the name of the Empire, into these little islands, in case all the separate elements of national life are to be duly respected and organised. And then he asks if a more dangerous experiment can be even conceived than the attempt to solve the Irish problem by the intro- duction of all these new and difficult problems, involving a considerable number of much greater dangers than any danger which it even professes to remove. We believe that no one can read this brief, sober, and most lucid speech without feeling that Lord Derby utters the simple scientific truth on the matter, that of every hundred men of good judgment who had had no previous political bias for either solution, ninety-nine at least would regard Lord Derby's speech as simply final, almost as final as they would regard the demonstration of a proposition in Euclid, or of one of the rules of arithmetic. Of course, Lord Derby will not even shake the convinced Home- rulers. You might as well expect Sir Wilfrid Lawson to convince the licensed victuallers of the soundness of the Maine Liquor Law, or the licensed victuallers to con- vince the teetotalers of its wickedness, as expect that any conceivable argument would shake the convinced Home- rulers. But we do not hesitate to say that of all quiet, sensible men who had never attended to the subject before, ninety-nine out of every hundred would be convinced by Lord Derby's speech of the extreme danger of conceding Home-rule to Ireland.

If we are right on this point, we believe that with every additional year during which the matter is discussed, a larger and larger proportion of the electorate will pass over from Mr. Gladstone's side to Lord Derby's, fur, after all, the people of Great Britain, though they often form a rash and hasty judgment under strong party feeling and in deference to a trusted leader, are eminently a people who gravitate steadily towards the verdict given by plain common-sense on matters which are really within the grasp of plain common-sense. Look at the way in which common-sense has triumphed over our vehement national prejudice against the French, over our distrust of the Yankees, over our vulgar national prejudice against the Irish, and made us as anxious to keep on good terms with both Frenchmen and Americans, often at great sacrifice to our national pride, and to make reparation for our former injustice to Ireland, often at very great cost both to national pride and to our constitutional national im- patience. We maintain that the very same insensible filtering down of common-sense into our national judgments in such matters as these, will take place in relation to the Home-rule Question, and restrain or even extinguish that generous impulse to follow Mr. Gladstone into an act of hasty and imprudent magna- nimity, which, if it were once yielded to, would com- plicate a hundredfold all the mutual national jealousies that, by this wonderful leap in the dark, he had per- suaded himself that he was about to extinguish. The English democracy, in sheer gratitude to its great leader, has been very near committing a frightful blunder before it had had time to take counsel with its own better judgment. Nor is it wonderful that it should have been almost ready even to hazard a great blunder for such a leader as Mr. Gladstone. But it stopped short in time, and now time is working steadily for the prudence which arrested that leap in the dark. Every month the people understand better what the Parnellite policy has actually been. Every month they understand better what sort of friction any elaborate interaction of English and Irish political cog-wheels, as well in legislation as in administration, must imply. Every mouth they under- stand better what effect the loosening of the Irish tie would have on all the other ties within the United Kingdom, and how inevitably this policy would end in substituting a totally helpless Disunited Kingdom, a mere dissected map of a Kingdom, for the certainly imperfectly United, but still effectively United, Kingdom of the present time. We do not for a moment expect that such a political judgment as Lord Derby's will make any sudden revolution in opinion. But we do expect that it will strike the waverers, that it will influence the younger politicians who are trying to make up their own minds on the great political issue of the day for the first time, that it will confirm the hesitating Unionists, that it will undermine the convictions of the hesitating Home-rulers,—in a word, that it will leaven public opinion with a distrust of Mr. Gladstone's rash optimism, and a growing conviction that if we go further in the direction of a clumsy federation with such a state as Ireland, we shall be quite certain to fare worse, instead of better than we do now,—nay, in all probability, to fare very miserably indeed. When the people begin to tell themselves that what Lord Derby thinks Mr. Leonard Courtney, certainly no unfriend to the Parnellites, and a cool thinker if ever there were one, thinks also, while such earnest and chivalric democrats as the late Mr. Fawcett and the late Mr. Forster held the same view with at least as deep conviction, they will ponder long before "shooting Niagara" with Mr. Gladstone, in the wild hope of satisfying the unsatisfiable once and for ever. Cool judgment like Lord Derby's takes years to produce its full effect ; but if it can get years in which to work, its effectiveness with such a people as ours is ultimately a certainty.