MR. GLADSTONE ON BOYCOTTING.
MR. GLADSTONE'S letter to Mr. Gray, read at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange on Tuesday, gives us great pain. He persists in thinking it his duty, as the leader of a great political party, to do all in his power to attenuate and excuse the guilt of those who incite Irish- men to direct breaches of contract and to the repudia- tion of debt which the debtors are fully able to pay, and who, over and above this, divide Irishmen between the classes of moral lepers and non-lepers, nay, to whose influence it is due that the Irish peasantry deny to the dead their coffins and to the living their right to worship in the place of their fathers, till the social ex- communicate become pitiable beings deprived of all pity, and the excommunicators become cruel inquisitors who egg each other on to inflict cruelties by which their own cruelty is overshadowed. Mr. Gladstone asserts in that letter that Mr. O'Brien and his colleagues are being im- prisoned for what Primrose Dames in England do without the slightest liability to penalty. Do Primrose Dames exhort English tradesmen not to pay their just debts, and denounce them as traitors to their country if they pay what they owe ? Do Primrose Dames incite three-quarters of the rural church-goers to leave the church whenever the man they want to punish takes his seat in church? Do Primrose Dames threaten under- takers with ruin if they should provide a widow, who has been made a widow by assassins, with the coffin necessary to bury her husband decently, and jeer at the mourners as they follow the murdered husband and father to the grave ? Mr. Gladstone grieves us more than we can say by lending his great name to the palliation of these anti- social offences which go to the very root of all morality, and honeycomb the communities in which they are tolerated with disguised hatreds and mean suspicions. We see with almost equal pain that his letter had no repelling effect on the Scotch audience which cheered Lord Rosebery. It seems not improbable that if Mr. Gladstone found for each of the sins denounced by the Decalogue some such mild euphemism as "exclusive dealing" for a true social excommunication, Scottish audiences would cheer these moral subtleties to the echo, and even perhaps get the Pres- byteries to sanction some relaxation of the Ten Command- ments conceived in Mr. Gladstone's spirit. There is not one of those Commandments that might not be glossed over as the evil spirit of social excommunication has been glossed over by Mr. Gladstone. Why not suggest that, instead of denouncing stealing, you should mildly deprecate the course of separating a man more or less effectually from his property ; and that, instead of condemning murder, you should hint objections to shortening unduly the thread of a man's life ? These palliation are whitewashings in disguise. Every time Mr. Gladstone persists in using that phrase about " exclusive dealing," he lends his great influence to the excuse and palliation of a system of injustice and cruelty which, so far as it extends, makes a hell of earth. It may be true that this playing with fire rather attracts than alienates Mr. Gladstone's numerous Scotch admirers, and shows them how closely their hero skirts an abyss from the edge of which they would themselves, if not emboldened by his example, shrink back in horror. But the more they are attracted, the more they will be injured, and the worse will be the ultimate result. If the constituencies declare for Mr. Gladstone at the General Election, it may or may not follow that he will carry Home-rule ; but it will be quite certain that he will already have carried into the heart of the Irish peasantry a disposition to spy upon each other, to supplant each other, to ruin each other wherever there is a spice of public jealousy to give an appearance of decency to a private grudge, which will have done infinitely more evil than any sort of Home- rule could, even on the view of its most sanguine supporters, effect good. It is a great responsibility which such a leader as Mr. Gladstone assumes when he softens down sins of a very deep dye into practices that are to be regarded as at most open to objection, and thus provides moral shelter for greedy and crafty passions which are undermining the very basis of social life.
We doubt extremely whether, even for the present, and as a party leader, Mr. Gladstone is acting judiciously in this persistent determination of his to stimulate the practice of mutual excommunication in Ireland. He pleases the Par- nellites, and he does not alienate either the Scotch or the Welsh ; but in England, unless we are much mistaken, the sort of letter read in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange on Tuesday will do him much harm. The English electors will think that its obvious tendency must be to stimulate the petty intimidations practised at English elections, as well as to justify the monstrous system of ex- communication which Mr. Parnell had the credit of devising for the people of Ireland. If jeering at mourners in their agonies of grief, and rendering almost impossible the last offices to the dead, are to be sheltered under the mild term of " exclusive dealing," then hints to butchers that their meat will no longer be wanted at the squire's table, and to grocers that the neighbouring stores will, after all, be both more convenient and cheaper, will become by comparison quite innocent suggestions. Why should the Primrose Dames blush for doing what is so much less tyrannical and cruel than acts which Mr. Gladstone has told us that he regards as probably the less of two great evils,—the greater being the loss of leverage for extorting concessions from the Irish landlord? How can it be expected that the political ideal of one unscrupulous class can be raised by extenuating the wickedness of another class still more unscrupulous in its dealings and pitiless in its principles ? Tory Dames might perhaps be shamed by showing how ignoble it is to try and get a vote by the mean device of threatening trades- men with the loss of cash. But it is certain that they will never be made ashamed by hearing that the leader of their foes thinks far worse practices in Ireland—objectionable, indeed, but not so objectionable as leaving the Irish tenantry to make their own bargain with their landlords wherever the State has not stepped in to make it for them. The Primrose Dames will set to work with greater zeal than ever when they are able to say that Mr. Gladstone, though he condemns what they do, finds so many excuses for very much worse things which the Parnellites approve, that they can be quite easy in their consciences for the future. How is it possible, they will say, to be scrupulous, when the leader of the foe, with all his high moral enthusiasm, owns himself equally unscrupulous in a field of far more serious battle ? If it is lawful to learn from an enemy how to carry on the campaign, how can they do better than learn from Mr. Gladstone how to find soft words for odious tyranny, and decent disguises for the plainest evasions of good faith ?
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