MR. GOLDWIN SMITH ON THE IRISH IN AMERICA.
THE Irish problem in America, as Mr. Goldwin Smith points out in the Times of Tuesday, is quite as pressing as it is in this country ; and, we will add, may prove to be even more intractable. In both places a clan numbering very nearly 10 per cent. of the whole popula- tion is forming itself into an imporium in im,perio, and pursuing ends of its own which are different from those pursued by the other nine-tenths of the community. They are bound together for political purposes by hereditary tradition, by their profession of the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, and by their desire to obtain a great pecuniary reward,—which is, in Europe, the control of the revenue of Ireland, some £7,000,000 a year ; and in America, the control of the heavy taxation levied in the larger cities, a sum in the aggregate perhaps four times as great. Instinctively clannish, and dreading isolation like Frenchmen or natives of India, guided in times of difficulty by the great and able corporation of their priests, and accustomed to maintain among themselves a cruel social discipline, they act for certain ends like a dis- ciplined army ; and in the United States, as in England, they have seized on a portion of the national sovereignty. In the States, however, their hold upon their prize is much stronger than in this country. In the United Kingdom, the ultimate sovereignty has practically passed to the House of Commons, which, though elected by the people, is a limited body, with a different caste-feeling from that of Irishmen, and capable of combining, if too much irritated, for the expulsion of a minute minority. In the United States, the ultimate sovereignty rests exclu- sively with the people, and is never delegated in its full- ness to any Council or individual ; and as the people are almost equally divided between two great parties, the clan which can give to either party the momentary supremacy, can in practice prevent them from unit- ing. The " sovereign " in England can act, if so dis- posed, without conciliating the Irish, and frequently does so ; while the "sovereign" in America cannot, cannot, so to speak, without their consent get himself enthroned. There is no chance for either party in America if the Irish vote is thrown solidly against it ; and to succeed, it must grant any request not gross enough to produce a resolu- tion of both parties into their first elements. We were much struck, during the discussion on the Sackville in- cident, by the defence for the President advanced by the New York Evening Post, a journal which reflects, or tries to reflect, the opinion of the American cultivated classes. Its writers deplored the incident as discreditable, admitted the injustice with which Lord Sackville had been treated, but maintained that, under the American Constitution, the Government was able to plead an overriding necessity. It was simply impossible, and would be impossible under any circumstances, to throw away so large a mass of votes. That is true, as a fact, though it ought not to be true ; and because it is true, the Catholic Irish are ruling the Union on the questions they most care about,—namely, the government of the cities, the tone of foreign politics as far as England is concerned, and the distribution of the amazing sums paid annually for national education. The Americans, and the other foreigners residing in America, at intervals writhe and mutter and protest against their slavery, more especially when education, to use our English phrase, becomes too " denominational," or when some ruined city is obliged, in order to be rid of the Irish tyranny, to surrender her liberty of self-government; but the struggle, often momentarily suc- cessful, always ends, and has ended for forty years, in weari- ness and a new submission. There was, indeed, one interval of independence for America. During the great Civil War, the majority of the population, being at one and furiously excited, paid no attention to the Irish or to any other single class, shot them down when in New York they re- sisted enlistment, and governed according to its own ideas. From 1860 to 1868, America was ruled by the Americans. The old state of things which produced the voting re- bellion called the " Know-nothing movement " has, however, revived worse than ever ; and in the nation, the city, or the village, the American party which desires power is compelled either to conciliate or to buy the Irish vote.
Mr. Goldwin Smith, watching American politics from Canada, thinks that Americans are growing ashamed of this state of affairs, and that it will shortly end ; but we have been watching also for forty years, though from a somewhat greater distance, and we are not so sanguine. What is to end it ? The division between the two great American parties began with the foundation of the Republic, and is based on two irreconcilable views of the Constitution which coincide, like our own great divisions, with inherent differences of character in the voters. The English Con- servatives and Radicals are at bottom those who look back to the past, and those who look forward to the future ; and the American Republicans and Democrats, under a long succession of names, are at bottom those who believe and those who disbelieve in the necessity of coercive government for mankind. We speak under correction, but we doubt whether, unless the matter in hand was war or insurrec- tion, there ever has been a Presidential election in the last seventy years in which the shifting of 10 per cent. of the voters from one side to the other would not have determined the transfer of power, and the total Irish vote cannot be less than that. If the Americans will unite in their civil politics as they do in a war, they will be free ; but how are they to keep united ? Or what plan, except union, gives any hope of a lasting remedy ? The old solution proposed by hotheads and Puritans, the dis- franchisement of all Catholics, besides being unjust, is wholly opposed to the instincts, the convictions, and the traditions of the American people, and will most assuredly never be adopted. The Know-nothing solution, the re- fusal of the vote to all not born on American soil, just as the Presidency is refused, is one most difficult to insert in the Constitution, would unite Irishmen, Germans, Scandinavians, and Italians in resistance, and even if carried might fail, for an enormous number of the most difficult Irish voters were born on the soil, and are governed, not by the fact of being Irishmen, but by hereditary tradition. The solution recently suggested and regarded by Mr. Goldwin Smith with hopefulness, that of a union among all British immigrants into an anti-Irish party, will never work for any length of time. The Briton is not sufficiently clannish, will not postpone his in- dividuality to any object whatever, and when he emigrates to a foreign State, sinks his nationality in that of his adopted people. Eighty per cent. of all Americans are of British descent, but in politics they never remember their origin. The German vote might, we believe, be organised in that fashion, for the Germans are not only persistent, but capable of exact discipline ; but as yet the Germans have no particular quarrel with the Irish, who care nothing about Sunday observance, and are entirely tolerant of the sale of beer, or anything else with alcohol in its composi- tion. We cannot see, unless war breaks out, which is improbable, the world bearing anything from the Union, or unless the Irish quarrel with both parties, which they are far too adroit to do, whence the resisting force is to arise, and should, if the suggestions we have quoted afforded the only hope, look forward rather to a split among the Irish themselves, the religious party finnlly separating itself from the revolutionists. That is possible at any time, more especially when the inevitable religious revival sets in ; but it may be postponed for a time beyond which speculation is either prophecy or guesswork. Do we, then, believe that the United States and Great Britain are to be permanently governed, so far as they are governed, by a distinctively Irish influence ? Certainly not ; the situation is too unnatural, and depends too entirely on certain weaknesses in the democratic method of government to endure for ever, or, indeed, for any length of time, as time is measured in the lives of nations. We only intend to argue that none of the suggestions yet made will work, and that none of the speculating observers, even when they are as keen-eyed as Mr. Goldwin Smith, have found even a hopeful solution for the problem. That one will be discovered is certain, for otherwise two great nations must perish, Irish capacity, great as it is in many directions—and if it is not great, whence our perplexity ?—being, in the direction of citizenship, a minus quantity ; but it will be a solution unthought of yet, possibly one as much outside present expectation as the adoption by all Celtic Irishmen of a new creed. There is nothing as yet visible either for Americans or Englishmen to do except wait, and display, while waiting, all the patience and tolerance, and even sympathy, that their indignant human nature will allow.
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