TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE STATE OF IRELAND.
THEgovernment of Ireland is so difficult a business, and so apt to be complicated and perplexed by party spirit, that we have been desirous to say nothing which might seem, even in the remotest degree, to prejudice the action of the Ministry or tend to embarrass Mr. Birrell in the discharge of his onerous public duties. Though we are Unionists, and Unionists who are determined to make no compromise whatever in regard to the maintenance of the absolute integrity of the United Kingdom, we have felt that the present Government should be given a fair chance to administer Ireland in accordance with what they deem to be Irish ideas,—provided, of course, that such a policy did not involve public disorder and outrage, or the violation of the elementary rights of the citizen in the matter of private property and individual liberty. In a word, we have been most anxious that the Government's Irish policy should be treated justly and reasonably, and that there should be no attempt to use the Irish question as a stalking-horse for attacking them on other grounds. We have, therefore, regarded with anything but sympathy attempts to magnify small administrative errors and to use them as weapons against the Administration, and we have ourselves studiously refrained from all carping criticism.
Unhappily this reticence can no longer be maintained. It has become impossible, not merely for Unionists like ourselves, but indeed for thoughtful or patriotic men generally, to keep silence in regard to the state of Ireland. We are compelled to say—and we say it with a full sense of responsibility—that the state of Ireland is rapidly drifting into a condition of social disorder of a kind which inflicts the cruelest wrongs upon individuals, and is a menace to the prosperity, moral and material, of the whole community. Let any impartial man consider the condition of Ireland as it was this time two years ago— that is, when the present Ministry came into office—and then let him compare it with the condition that exists to-day. It is impossible to make such a comparison without realising that in the period named Ireland has gradually passed from comparative peace into a state bordering on anarchy. The law is being defied throughout half the counties of Ireland, and outrages resembling those of the worst days of the Land League are reappearing. We take as an example one reported this week,—that committed on a Roman Catholic landowner and his mother. They were fired at as they left chapel last Sunday, and a second shot was fired even after the first had taken effect,—a proof that the intention of the perpetrators of the outrage was of the most malignant kind, and that it cannot be accounted for by a desire to alarm rather than injure. The outrage, moreover, was accompanied by one of the most evil symptoms of Irish agrarian crime. Not a single member of the congregation, who were quite close to the victims, would render them any help. Boycotting, again, has broken out with great virulence. Men who for various reasons become unpopular are placed under the ban, and their neighbours are warned by Nationalist Members of Parliament and other agitators to treat them as lepers. We have heard only this week of a case in which an unfortunate man who was refused bread by the local bakers failed even to obtain it from Dublin, and has been obliged to procure his loaves from England. The main feature of the new outbreak of law- lessness in Ireland has been, however, the crime of cattle-driving. To what lengths this has gone was shown in a very able speech by Mr. S. H. Butcher, M.P., in introducing the members of an Irish deputation who laid their case before the National Union of Conservative Associations at Birmingham last week. Mr. Butcher pointed out how the cattle-driving is spreading material disaster throughout Ireland, and how the injury is by no means confined to the individual graziers affected. The ruin of the graziers spells the ruin of the cattle trade throughout Ireland, and particularly of the small farmers in the South and South-West of Ireland, who have hitherto found a profitable industry in raising " store" cattle to be fattened on the grazing lands. The destruction of the grazing lands in the Midlands of Ireland must, declared Mr: Butcher, result in bankruptcy to the small farmers. " England was often reminded that she had destroyed Irish industries, but here they had the greatest industry of Ireland [we might add: an industry which is in no sense an exotic or worked by aliens, but one carried on by Irish- men] being smashed by an Irish conspiracy. The thing could hardly be believed out of Bedlam, and it surely shed a lurid light on Irish disloyalty to find that it was regarded as a service to Ireland to destroy the very industry by which Ireland exists. Was there ever such a disastrous record of destructive patriotism ? "
Bad as the condition of Ireland is, it does not of course necessarily follow that the fault is the fault of the Govern- ment. Whether the blame must be laid upon their shoulders depends upon circumstances which require careful consideration. Such consideration we will endeavour to give. Had there been serious material distress in Ireland owing to a failure of crops, a sudden fall of prices, or to some external cause which had greatly increased the misery of the people, it is, of course, con- ceivable that what we may call famine anarchy—an anarchy for which no one was to blame, and which the Government could only be expected to deal with by the patient applica- tion of the law—might have arisen. In the present case, however, no such excuses can be found. The cattle-driving movement is a purely artificial movement. It has sprung, not from the misery of the people, but from a deliberate agitation based ou.the calculation that the Government will not have the courage and independence to prevent it by taking action against the agitators. The movement, though its instruments are agrarian, is in reality a political move- ment intended to force the Irish question to the front once more, and to drive Liberals into declaring that it is impossible to govern Ireland without some scheme of Home-rule. To put it shortly, the Irish Nationalists have come to the conclusion, to use Lalor's metaphor, that agrarian agitation—i.e., agrarian outrage—must be employed as the locomotive to drag the political trucks and carriages of Home-rule or national independence. The peasants, first of the West, and now of nearly half the counties of Ireland, have been incited to attack the grazing farms in order to make what the Irish Members are wont in their franker moments to describe as this weak and miserable Government awaken to the demands of Ireland. In a word, men are being incited from political motives to commit outrages, to destroy property, to break contracts, and to render the lives of their fellow-countrymen as miserable as those of the lepers in the Middle Ages.
Perhaps it will be said : " What is the use of dwelling upon this fact ? " and we shall be asked whether we con- sider that any advantage is to be gained in the work of checking disorder by insisting on the political character of the present agitation. Our answer is that it is always important to discover the origin of moral as well as of physical disease, because it is only when we realise the origin that we can apply the proper remedy. If the Government had had the courage to face the facts, they might long ago have applied a remedy, and one which would have been effectual. Instead, they have merely attempted to deal with the symptoms, and have studiously avoided attacking the source of the malady. They have of late no doubt tried to bring the actual culprits and the individual cattle-drivers to justice, and have made what attempts they could by police action to guard the property of the graziers. Such efforts, however, have been quite futile in view of the fact that they have refrained from stopping the incitements to cattle-driving and similar outrages with which Ireland has been ringing for the last six months. What makes their action, or rather want of action, in this respect specially culpable is the fact that their law officer, the Irish Attorney-General, the man who is specially responsible for the prosecution of the perpetrators of crime, has in effect admitted that the inciters to the present series of agrarian outrages have been inspired by political motives. The Irish Attorney-General has suggested that the allegation of apolitical motive in the case of an incitement to crime must be considered to confer immunity from prosecution, and consequently from punish- ment. It seems incredible that any representative of a civilised Government should have made such a suggestion. Yet we can read in no other way the words of Mr. Cherry, the Irish Attorney-General, used in open Court. The incident is reported in the Northern Whig of October 30th, 1907, and quoted in the issue of Irish Notes of November 6th. It appears that when an application for a change of venue with respect to a Roscommon cattle-driving case was being tried, the Lord Chief Justice remarked that instead of a lot "of poor boys," "it would be more to the point to bring up those who incited them." Upon this the Attorney-General remarked : " That is rather a political issue."
" TEE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE : A. political issue ? Is it a political issue that you should indict those persons who incite others to commit offences ?
THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL : I think it is."
The discussion of the point continued between the Lord Chief Justice and the Attorney-General, but the latter re- fused to be moved from his position, which, as we have said before, was in effect that the allegation of a political issue or motive gives immunity in the case of those who commit what is recognised as a crime in every civilised country in the world,—that is, incitement to the commission of crime. The notion that the allegation of a political motive should secure immunity from criminal action if the poli- tician is on the right side is unhappily not a new one in Ireland. We remember a grim but amusing instance in the days of Elizabeth. An Irish marauder was prosecuted before the Queen's Judges in Dublin for arson, " in that he did burn down the Cathedral of Cashel." The prisoner pleaded in his defence " that the Archbishop was inside." The Court accepted the plea, and the prisoner was triumphantly acquitted. The explanation, of course, is that the Archbishop was the Roman Catholic Archbishop, and therefore an enemy of the State. Therefore the motive of the arson complained of was political, and conferred immunity on its perpetrator. The Government's policy as expounded by their law officers is apparently to revert to this state of things. Mr. Ginnell, Mr. Shee, Mr. Reddy, Mr. Kilbride, and their fellows are setting fire to half Ireland ; but they are to be excused because they have a political motive. Only their unfortunate dupes and instruments are to feel such punishment as can be obtained by a feeble administra- tion of the law,—an administration apparently anxious above all things not to come into direct conflict with people so powerful and so troublesome as .Nationalist M.P.'s.
There can only be one result of administering Irish affairs on such lines as these,—the utter demoralisation of the country, and the destruction of that comparative peacefulness which has been so painfully built up during the last ten years. The distinction between crime and political crime is one which Mr. Birrell will find it is fatal to make. Crime is crime under whatever alias it appears, and to place the epithet " political " before outrage on a person or his property, theft, and breach of contract cannot alter the nature of those offences. Again, it is impossible to attempt to punish the actual physical wrongdoers while letting off those more criminal men who incite to evil deeds. When we say this we have not the slightest desire to push this principle to any unjust extreme. We realise that a great deal of injustice may be done by a tyrannical Government in the matter of what may be called constructive incitement. It would, we fully admit, be monstrous to hold a politician who made fierce speeches on general political issues responsible for all the consequences, or alleged con- sequences, of the popular excitement caused by his words. For example, we should never dream of demanding that Mr. Redmond should be prosecuted for telling the people of Ireland that they were down-trodden and oppressed, and suffering the grossest injustices at the hands of the British Government. The palpable untruth of such a statement, and the recklessness of consequences shown by the speaker, would not, in our opinion, justify his prosecution unless he incited to treasonable and insur- rectionary acts. Between such a case, however, and that of an incitement to cattle-driving there is no true analogy. The Irish Members of Parliament whom Mr. Birrell has refrained from prosecuting have deliberately incited, not merely to the general committal of a specific form of crime, but in certain cases have suggested specific acts of crime against particular individuals. To refrain from prosecuting them is moral cowardice of the worst possible kind, and cannot but have results fatal to good government in Ireland.
We do not doubt that Mr. Birrell'; intentions are sound enough, and that in reality, and in spite of his somewhat unfortunate flippancy of manner, he regrets the cruelties and wrong perpetrated in Ireland at the instigation of the Nationalist agitators as much as any Unionist in the land. In spite, too, of his allowing his mind to be bemused by sophistical distinctions between crime and political crime, we feel sure that he is most anxious to restore order in Ireland. He must remember, however, that in a situation like that with which he is faced good intentions are quite valueless unless they are followed and supple- mented by firm action. Unless he is prepared to see Ireland drift into a condition of anarchy, be must have the courage to act swiftly and sternly, and to take action against those who are not content when on the plat- form with indulging in platitudes about the right of Ireland to govern herself, and about the cruelty and rapacity of England, but who add to them direct incitements to specific crimes. He must explain to the Nationalist Members in unmistakable terms that though they have every right to be Home-rulers, they must remember so to be Home-rulers as not to forget that they are citizens of a civilised. country who are required to obey the law of the land. If Mr. Birrell will do this, and will also make it absolutely clear to the police that there is no change in the attitude of the Govern- ment in the matter of crime, and that crime-doers will be punished whatever their political status, he may yet restore Ireland to a condition of good order, though no doubt the task is a far more difficult one now than it would have been had he put down his foot when he first entered office. It is little use, however, to think now of what might have been. The only thing is to repair the omissions of the past.
If Mr. Birrell is not willing to face the facts and retrace his steps, then not only will he do irreparable injury to Ireland, and inflict untold miseries upon her people, but he will also inflict a blow of the severest kind upon the Liberal Party, and upon the Government of which lie is one of the most prominent members. No Government ever has prospered, or, we believe, ever will prosper, in this country which allows Ireland to fall into a condition of anarchy. The whole experience of the past shows that whatever abstract political propositions may be for the moment accepted or rejected by. the British people, they will never willingly allow any Government to tolerate misrule on the other side of St. George's Channel. Dread of Irish disorder and its consequences is instinctive. If disorder is to increase in Ireland at the ratio in which it has been increasing in the last six months, and if a halt is not called by the punishment of the chief criminals, the ratio of increase will soon be geometrical rather than arithmetical, and the Administration before another six months are out will be faced with a condition of things which will shake the Ministry to its foundations.
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