GROWING ELECTRIC.
THE scene of Thursday was a scene of very complex and not very easily reconciled elements of political emotion. That Mr. Forster, in his attack on the leaders of the Land League, displayed the same indomitable courage which marked the whole of his Irish administration, every one will admit. Nor do we for a moment doubt that, up to the time when Mr. Parnell and his colleagues in the Land League were lodged in Kilmainham, they had laid themselves open to the most serious suspicions of complicity in a policy of terrorism which involved, and which they must have known to involve, acts of agrarian outrage in Ireland. That was Mr. Forster's justifica- tion for lodging them in Kilmainham, and, for our own part, we have always believed that he had established that justifica- tion over and over again, to the satisfaction of all moderate men on both sides of the Housa of Commons. But whether there was any sound political justification for raking up all these charges again, more than a year after date, when there is no pretence, so far as we can hear, for saying that these Land- League leaders have continued, or repeated, their attempts to stimulate violence in Ireland, and when no purpose, so far as we can see, can be answered by the repetition of these accusa- tions, except to render it more difficult for Mr. Parnell and his colleagues to use their influence decisively on the side of order, we are wholly unable to see. We cannot help agreeing with not a little that Mr. T. P. O'Connor urged, in his very effective speech,—and it is not often that we can agree with Mr. T. P. O'Connor,—as to the unfairness of hold- ing Mr. Parnell responsible for everything which was done by his chief subordinates after his incarceration, when every effort was made to hold back from Mr. Parnell the knowledge of what these subordinates were then doing and saying. It seems to us that Mr. Forster on Thursday made the grave error of rekindling very bitter animosities in the House, with- out any of that absolute justification which he had a year ago for his statements of this kind. Then he was showing why it was absolutely necessary to put down and keep down the Land League, and why it would have been then most unsafe to open the prison doors to men who had acted as Mr. Parnell and his associates had up to April last notoriously acted. Now, it is not even so much as alleged that the liberation of Mr. Parnell has led, or is still leading, to fresh outrage, while it is alleged that his liberation has led and is leading to the adoption of a more moderate course, amongst all those whom Mr. Parnell can influence. That being so, to rake up the old charges,—true as many of them probably are, unjust as some of them, applying to the period of Mr. Parnell's imprisonment, appear to us to be,—is hardly statesmanlike ; nor can we see what result it can possibly produce, except to throw Mr. Parnell more and more into the hands of the violent Irish party, a result which no one who desires to see quiet restored to Ireland can for a moment contemplate without regret. The atmosphere of the House of Commons was electric enough, before the speeches of Thursday night. Mr. Forster's speech and Mr. T. P. O'Connor's reply to it, did not make the atmosphere less electric ; and we, for our own parts, do not know what but mischief can come of the electrical state so induced. One thing is perfectly clear, that even for Mr. Forster's own strong and sober judgment the electrical condition is not favourable. It is evident that he has committed an error not quite without moment, in throwing doubt on the fact that. the. Cabinet had
considered and agreed to press a Crimes Prevention Bill before he himself left it. At least Lord Hartington, with the access, of which he assured the House that he had carefully availed himself, to official facts, could not easily have been mistaken on this subject, so that it seems nearly certain that Mr. Forster's memory must have become confused, as Lord Har- tington suggested, by his frequent and perilous journeys to Ireland. Still, in a less electric condition of things than that of Thursday night, Mr. Forster would never have been misled into laying so much stress upon a supposed error of his col- leagues which turns out to have been no error at all.
The real danger of the situation, however, is this :—Here are Irish Members foaming with wrath against the Crimes Prevention Act, and either persuaded, or determined to act as if they were persuaded, that that Act does cause a great number of judicial murders, and is put in force by passion, chicanery, and fraud. Here, on the other hand, are a powerful Con- servative Party, quite as passionately convinced that the Crimes Prevention Act is the one sole hope of Ire- land ; that the only thing for Ireland is to stamp out murder by the most stringent use of that Act, and that every indication of policy which looks in the direc- tion of further reform in Ireland is to be discouraged, as dangerous and pusillanimous weakness. Between these parties there is no little danger of an explosion, which might well convulse the House of Commons. Members of the extreme Irish party are incited to fury by such speeches as Mr. Forster's on Thursday. Members of the extreme Conservative party are incited to no less fury by such speeches as Mr. O'Brien's on Wednesday. It will take sangfroid and temper such as only the British House of Commons can display, to prevent these counter-currents of passion from leading to some violent explosion, in which Constitutional liberty might suffer a serious shock. We believe that the Liberal leaders are equal to the occasion—Lord Hartington certainly appeared quite equal to it on Thursday night—but we cannot look back on such an encounter as that between Mr. Forster and Mr. T. P. O'Connor without a good deal of anxious foreboding for the future.
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