TOPICS OF THE DAY.
HOME-RULE AND THE LIBERAL CREED. THE Liberal party is again in trouble about its creed, and again the air is full of inquiries as to who is the party's leader and what are its tenets, especially in regard to Home-rule. As to the attitude of the party on general questions, we must confess to being able to find very little new light. The Daily Chronicle—admittedly the representative of the most active section of Liberalism—tried on Saturday last to draw up a list of twelve articles of faith, but we confess to finding these points hardly satisfactory in the matter of differentiating the Liberal from the Unionist point of view. Most of the articles would be agreed to by the great majority of Unionists, while the one or two items which would be unacceptable to Unionists because of their somewhat Socialist complexion, would, we believe, be equally unacceptable to a great number of Sir William Harcourt's supporters. Certainly they would not find any favour with that very considerable and very influential body of capitalists who supply the sinews of war to the Liberal party, and who, though they never flaunt their influence before the public, know so well how to make their views respected. Taken as a whole, the Daily Chronicle's programme leaves us very much where we were in regard to the real views of the Liberal party,—that is, in the dark. All that one can gather certainly is that the Liberal party does not mean to abolish the House of Lords, to disestablish the Church, to give universal suffrage with equal electoral districts, or to adopt a prohibition policy, though one gathers from the Daily Chronicle that they are prepared to indulge in a certain amount of talk about not those questions themselves, but the fringes and superfices of them. Only on one point is it clear that the Liberal party has made up its mind. The attitude of the Daily Chronicle, and still more the very remarkable speech of Sir Henry Fowler, show that Home-rule has, for the time at any rate, disappeared from the party programme. It may revive, but for the present Home-rule has ceased to be one of the official objects of the Liberal party. This fact will not, of course, justify any want of vigilance on the part of the Unionists, who must remember to test every candidate by the kind of question suggested by Mr. Chamberlain, but unless and until the Liberal party is recaptured by the Irish, Home-rule has evidently passed out of the region of practical politics.
Lest we should appear to be exaggerating, we will quote first the words in which the Daily Chronicle deals with Home-rule, and then the very important passage in Sir Henry Fowler's speech. Here is the first item of the Daily Chronicle's articles of faith :—" We declare our inde- pendence of the Irish alliance, while pledging ourselves to pursue, by all practical means within our power, the object of securing self-government to the Irish people." No doubt at first sight this seems like a reiteration of the Home-rule pledge. In reality it is its abandonment. There was no need in 1895 to repudiate the alliance, and there would be no need now if the Liberal party meant to keep the Home-rule flag flying,—to have "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." When people say : 'We had better stop acting together, but of course we promise to continue to co-operate whenever practical,' one knows very well what will happen. But this indication of the fact that the Liberal party is no longer a Home-rule party is more than confirmed by the passage in Sir Henry Fowler's speech. He virtually tells the Irish that they must accept the Local Government Bill as a substitute for Home-rule, and that there must be no more talk about Home-rule till this excellent substitute for a national Parliament has been given a full and fair trial. Mr. Gladstone could not, said Sir Henry Fowler, carry the Home-rule Bill, but "he convinced the people of Great Britain that the continuance of the caricature of local govern- ment by which Ireland was oppressed was not only an in- 3ustice and a danger, but an impossibility." The recent Act, la.e went on, would profoundly affect the political and public life of Ireland. "Henceforth Ireland would have the same local autonomy as England and Scotland. He would be a bold man who would predict the immediate or remote result of this great change." Sir Henry Fowler ended by a declaration "that the constituencies of Great Britaia would require that this great experiment should be fully, fairly, and completely tried before they would reconsider the question of any further change in the government of Ireland." Clearly, if this means anything, and Sir Henry Fowler is not a man who speaks without warrant, it means that local government must be accepted by Ireland as a substitute for Home-rule. It may be said, of course, that Sir Henry Fowler is not the leader of his party, but only one of its chiefs, and that his words cannot bind the rest. True. but on so exceedingly important a matter, if Sir Henry Fowler had not spoken the mind of his colleagues, they must, and would, at once have dissociated them. selves from him. T hey know how ill his speech has been received by the Nationalists, and how sure it is te be regarded by them as a betrayal ; and therefore they would feel obliged to assure the Irish that the mass of the party were still as anxious for Home-rule as ever, if that were the fact, and if they, the rest of the leaders, really intended to stand by Home-rule. That they have not spoken is a sign that they, too, have decided that the Liberal party can no longer bear about the burden of an active Home-rule policy. The previous utterances of Lord Rosebery, Sir William Harcourt, and of most of their col- leagues make it, too, by no means strange that they should thus acquiesce in Sir Henry Fo wler's declaration. They have most of them during the past year studiously avoided any waving of the Home-rule banner. The exception is Mr. Morley. He, it is true, has always as far as possible kept alive the policy of Home-rule. But Mr. Morley has, foe the present at any rate, virtually retired from practical politics in order to write the Life of Mr. Gladstone. Had he not been in retreat, his manly and consistent attitude in regard to Home-rule would have been a very real obstacle to the adoption of the policy of substituting local government for Home-rule. As it is, the great practical difficulty of meeting his views has been got rid of. Whether Mr. Morley's action was due to any prescience of what was coming, we cannot, of course, say ; but the fact remains that what at one time looked like a most serious diffi. culty in the way of the shelving of Home-rule has been got rid of. As to what will be the immediate effect of the new departure it is difficult to say, but it is by no means likely. that the Nationalists will endure in silence what they con- sider their betrayal. Mr. Davitt, for example, has already begun to talk, and not without cause, of broken pledges. Mr. Davitt may not be a very serious politician, but we confess to feeling a, certain sympathy with him in the indignation which he expresses in his letter to Wednesday's Daily Chronicle. Looked at from his point of view, the treatment received by the Nationalists may well be called in question. "The pledges made on Home-rule by all Liberals in 1892-1895 were," says Mr. Davitt, "not made to Irish Members, but to Ireland, as a response to the pleas of justice, and as an Imperial obligation to the vast majority of the Irish people. These pledges were not conditional upon the reunion of Nationalist sections. These sections existed in 1892 and in 1895 in a more marked degree than they do to-day. Neither were these pledges qualified by the prospect of a fulfilment by the Unionist party of their pledges to give Ireland a measure of county government. You cannot therefore be per- mitted without protest to contend that the Liberal party can and should find a virtual release from pledges on Home-rule on the ground that the Unionist party have carried out their promise in the passing of the sham Local Government Bill, which enables them to subsidise their Irish landlord supporters out of the public purse." Mr. Davitt's letter repeats again and again this charge of pledge-breaking, and we do not doubt that it will find a widespread response in Ireland. Undoubtedly, Irish Nationalists will have a right to say to the Liberal party : —` At your bidding, and in order to make it certain that you would never abandon the cause of Home-rule, we threw over the greatest and most successful leader the Irish people ever had. We were content to retain him as leader, and to overlook his moral delinquencies, but we thought that even his loss and the splitting of our party into two furious factions was better than losing the support of the Liberal party to Home-rule. Yet now you turn round on us and seize a paltry excuse for suspending, or rather abandoning, your support to Home-rule. Local govern- ment is not, in any conceivable sense, a substitute for Home-rule,—rather it is a negation of Home-rule. We rant the full recognition of Irish nationality. We want to be acknowledged to be a separate national entity. To give us county government instead is to mock our whole demand. We ask for a separate house as a right, and you reply that we may each light a fire in our bedrooms. An Irish Parliamentand representative county government have nothing whatever in common, and do not move in the same plane.' If a Nationalist addressed such words to a member of the Liberal party, how could they be adequately answered ? The condition of Irish parties fills the better Nationalists with indignation and disgust. But Ireland has Redmondites, Anti-Parnellites, and hlealyites because she agreed to sacrifice Mr. Parnell. To have paid such a price, and to find it was paid in vain, must indeed be bitter.
A politician in the face of any new departure must always ask what will be the effect of the change on parties. In this case, we can hardly doubt that in Ireland the Red- mondites will gain considerably. The recently published Life of Parnell is reminding men of the lost leader's powers just as Ireland is learning that she threw him over in rain. Will not the reaction in favour of the men who were faithful to Parnell be sure to improve Mr. Redmond's chances ? In England and Scotland, no doubt, the effect of the suspension, and therefore the apparent disappearance, of Home-rule will be to improve the electoral prospects of the Liberals. Home-rule was never popular even with those who adopted it, while there were always plenty of men who, though they remained members of the Liberal party, acutely disliked the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone, and only tolerated it because they always believed that what has happened would happen. These men have for the last ten years been sulking. They will now recover their 'pints. That any number of serious and bond-fide Liberal Un'onists will revert because Home-rule has gone, or has app.ared to have gone, we do not believe. The Liberal Unionists are for the most part men who have studied the Irish question, and they will realise that though Home-rule may not be mentioned at the next Election, and though the alliance may have disappeared, the danger to the Union is not less, but greater, than before. It is easy to show this. Owing to the belief that Home-rule has gone, the Liberal party may, and probably will, gain greatly in vigour, and may thus carry as many seats at the next General Election as will the Unionists. In that case the Irish will hold the balance, and nothing will then prevent the Liberals reverting to Home-rule. There will at once be a great deal of talk about the necessity of redeeming old pledges, and in a common interest the old squabbles will be forgotten. But though a Liberal Ministry supported by Irish votes, and under sentence of death if it does not introduce a Home- rule Bill, is a danger, it is not the same thing as a dissolution of the Union, for a Home-rule Bill produced under such auspices would certainly be referred back to the country by the House of Lords. Still, it cannot be denied that the suspension of their adhesion to Home-rule by the Liberal party is not a gain to the Union, but the reverse. Home-rule is not a popular cry, and therefore its dropping will increase the strength of the Liberal party,—i.e., of a party which can and will, if politically convenient, again take up the policy of Home-rule.
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