MR. PARNELL AND MR. DAVITT.
MR. DAVITT'S speech at Liverpool on the nationalisation of the Irish land seems to have meant more, at least aa regards the agitation amongst the American Irish, than we at first supposed. It is obvious that the feud between the Irish Nation, published in New York, and the Irish World, published in the same place, is a very bitter one, and that it turns wholly on the difference of view between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt. The Irish World claims to have sent home a good half of the subscriptions of which the Land League have recently disposed, awl though its claim is partly denied by its rival, and partly explained away as meaning nothing, since the Irish subscribers were quite as willing to send by one agency as by another while they thought the end in view the same, it is, nevertheless, certain enough that the Irish World has been one of the most potent of the centres for collecting American contributions to Irish agitation, and that any dissatisfaction felt and expressed by its manager in relation to the existing policy of the Irish party, tells most powerfully on the amount of these contributions. That, in point of fact, the American resources of the Irish Land League have greatly dwindled of late, there is no manner of doubt. In great measure this may be due to the horror and disgust created by the wicked assassinations in the Phcenix Park, but in some degree it is due also to the split between Mr. Davitt and Mr. Parnell on the question of the nationalisa- tion of the land, and to the fierce partisanship of the New York Irish World on behalf of Mr. Davitt, whom it supports quite as much as the apostle of the new Socialism, as it does in his character of Irish patriot. The Times, on Wednesday, gave us some insight into the real drift of the Irish World, —Mr. Davitt's chief advocate in New York,—when it ex- tracted this pzean over the recent strikes, published in that paper on May 13th :- "I love to see the strikes go on. I would not say a word that might discourage or dishearten the brave strikers. Striking leads men to see the necessity of organisation, and to profit by it. It stimulates thought and educates. It gives the working masses more respect and importance in the eyes of the powers that be. It does furnish temporary advantage in the matter of well-being, and that is better than no change at all. The whole tendency of striking is good, so far as it goes. But how far does it go ? There is where the vital issue lies. Are men beginning to see that the bottom lever of slavery and oppression lies in the undisputed right of these mammoth profit-hounds to monopolise land, natural wealth, transportation, and the means of exchange, as against the people ? Is the challenge widening, deepening, and becoming more inexorable on these bottom issues ? If not, then the strikes are silly antics of deluded fools, and beneath contempt. Bat, thanks to the light-spreaders and the stoned prophets whose own receive them not, the germs of these great living bottom truths have taken root, and are rapidly covering the earth. All strikes of landlords, profitmongers, and their abettors against them are now too late. Every labour agitation can but strengthen them, and all strikes are converging to one grand strike of the masses for the land and other prime natural opportunities. On with the strikes, then ! and never forget to season them with saving thought."
No wonder that a paper which is full of lucubrations of this kind, and which bears as its second title the name of The American Industrial Liberator, should care even more for Mr. Davitt's proposal to nationalise the Irish land, than it cares for the mere political aspects of the Irish Question. The Irish World regards Ireland chiefly as a fit scene for the eu-st great experiment in Socialistic ideas, and will not give itself heart and soul to either Fenian or Home-rule principles apart from Socialism, if it fails to secure the adhesion of the Irish party to its Socialistic dream. We may venture to hope, then, that for the future, Irish agitators will not be able to look to the Irish in America for anything like the same amount of artifi- cial aid that they have hitherto received. While a section of the American Irish continue to support Mr. Parnell, another section, and that the most enthusiastic, regard Mr. Davitt's programme as the only one which deserves well of them, since they are Socialists first, and Irish revolutionists only afterwards.
It is, however, a very remarkable fact, and one which should never be forgotten in appreciating the political situation in Ireland, that the most earnest and enthusiastic of all the Irish agitators, the one who had made the greatest sacrifices for Ireland, and who had, as we must to his great credit remember, offered the strongest opposition to the policy of cruelty and outrage whether on human beings or on the brutes, should at the very moment when there seems a good prospect that the peasant-proprietary movement will win the day, suddenly break away from the scheme which he himself broached, and fascinated by the dreamy political economy of an Ameri- can theorist, Mr. Henry George, throw himself with fervour into the arms of men who care infinitely more for the prospect of doing away with private property altogether, than they do for any change in the political system of Ireland. And Michael Davitt is in this respect the representative of a hundred wild and vague ideas which are floating about in Ireland, and with
which Ireland, if she ever succeeded in breaking away from her union with England, would have to reckon. Not indeed that, so far as we can judge, there is the least danger of the Irish peasant lending himself to any dream of Socialism, or looking with the least favour on a proposal for vesting in the Government of Ireland that ultimate property in his own holding which it is his devout desire to obtain for him- self. We do not in the least mean to imply that we think Mr. Davitt's scheme comparable to Mr. Parnell's, for its hold on the affections of the Irish farmers. But nothing can illustrate better the extraordinary flightiness of many of the Revolutionary party in Ireland than this sudden plunge of one of the most trusted of the peasants' leaders into the deep sea of Socialism, just when his own previous scheme seemed to be well within measurable limits of achieving success. Nor could it have been possible, had not the situa- tion in Ireland been to a very great extent indeed prepared by a party in America who know almost nothing of Ireland—the editor of the Irish World had to be laboriously convinced a short time ago that there are Irish municipalities which really elect their own governing bodies—and who care very little for Ireland, except as a good field for making wild political experiments on the possibility of getting rid of that strait-laced individualism, especially in matters of property, which marks all the chief States of Europe and America. It has been in a very great degree owing to the energy of men who merely use the name of Ireland as a pass-word for ulterior purposes—men like Mr. Henry George, the author of "Progress and Poverty," for in- stance—that the enemies of the British Government have found so weighty a purse at their disposal for the promotion of intrigue and the furtherance of anarchy. But it is still more important to observe that not only have the troubles of Ireland been artificially fostered by men who do not know Ireland, but that so vague and unreasoning is much of the discontent, that these foreign proselytisers have made proselytes even amongst those who do know Ireland, and proselytes who have been induced to abandon a position more or less tenable, for an unsubstantial and, as we believe, to the farmers at all events, a most unwelcome dream. If an Irish peasant of Michael Davitt's force of character can abandon the hope of a peasant-proprietary for a Socialistic scheme in which the land passes into the keeping of the nation, and no tenant of it is more than a steward or trustee,—and that, too, even though the proprietary nation be represented for an indefinite future, as Michael Davitt expressly admitted that it must be, by the hated English Government,—it is very difficult to say what transformations American dreamers may not effect in the views of the honest but flighty enthusiasts who carry so many Irishmen with them. And yet Mr. Davitt is an agitator whom Mr. Parnell cannot afford to treat even with intellectual disdain. It is noticeable how careful Mr. Parnell is to speak of this scheme with respect, but to urge against it that it will press more heavily on the Irish farmer than his own ; and to make the Irish farmer see that Socialism, as applied to Irish land, really means making the land pay first all the cost of government, and only leaving the residue of the produce to the tiller of the soil. Mr. Parnell is evidently well aware that Michael Davitt will never carry the Irish tenants with him ; but none the less, he knows so thoroughly how many vague- minded Irishmen, both in Ireland and America, Mr. Davitt will succeed in carrying with him, that it becomes expedient for him to speak of Mr. Davitt's project with the utmost deference, even while he expresses the hope that Mr. Davitt will eventually abandon it, and return to his own more feasible proposal of former days. Nothing could display better how dreamy and wild would be the new ideas broached in Ireland, if Ireland ever broke from her connection with us ; how, besides the peasants and the mercantile classes and the Home-rulers, there will also be a large number of agitators backed up by American gold, to dazzle the Irish labourer with all sorts of fanciful ideas, the disastrous results of which, when they had failed, would fall not on the labourer who had adopted them, but on the farmers and traders who had found it hardly possible to ignore them. The Socialists in America, no doubt, look tcr.the Irish labourers as their most sympathising audience, so soon as the land question is settled. And an alliance between American Socialists and the Irish Labourers might well bewilder and paralyse the most triumphant Home-rule party, if ever the weight of English opinion should cease to be felt in Irish affairs. It is the utterly unstatesmanlike character of the Revolutionary party in Ireland which makes it so impossible for sober Irishmen to conceive with any composure even the
possibility of the dissolution of the Union. And never have I we had a better illustration of this unstatesmanlike character of the revolutionary ideas, than in that new proposal of Michael Davitt's, which the American Socialists are taking up with so much ardour, and which the American Parnellites are, not un- naturally, contemplating with so much dismay.
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