THE POLITICAL LEVITY IN IRELAND. T HE Aston Manor election appears
to show that the strange spectacle which Irish politics have exhi- bited during the last four months, has at last worked itself well into the minds of the English working class, and pro- duced the natural effect upon them which such a spectacle ought to produce. Indeed, we cannot help thinking that a great deal of the disposition to accept Mr. Gladstone's policy without cavil, which the English Liberals have shown, was due to the apparently strong and reticent character which Mr. Gladstone himself and all his most important followers attributed to Mr. Parnell before the Irish levity in him oozed out. We ourselves should have said up to that time, that though Mr. Parnell's political character was sinister and full of ominous indications, it might at least be called stern, consistent, and sedate. And till last November, the Irish Home-rule cause meant very little except the cause pleaded by Mr. Parnell. His figure so completely eclipsed the figures even of his subordinates in the agitation, that though men were hardly able to keep their countenances when they talked of Mr. O'Brien's breeches, or Mr. Healy's excuses for obstructing business in Parliament, they yet regarded the Irish Home-rule cause with seriousness, inasmuch as it was the cause of the man who spoke so little, who spoke on ordinary occa- sions so moderately, and who gave so strong an impression that he knew his own mind, and that his own mind was immovably made up to wrench from the grasp of England what England, they imagined, would never regret to have given, but might some day regret not to have given sooner and more willingly. All that went on in Ireland, however noisy, appeared insignificant when the attention was fixed on that cold and dominant personality which occupied the chief place in the political ranks of the Irish Home-rulers. The notion of Irish levity was almost excluded by the vision of that cold and calm embodi- ment of unscrupulous purpose. Whether Mr. Parnell's influence in Ireland would be maintained or not, English- men must occasionally have felt uncomfortable doubts. But while it was maintained, it did not seem easy to treat the party he represented as wanting in seriousness,— as without any title to command the grave attention of English politicians.
But suddenly that illusion has passed away. From the moment when the Divorce Court associated Mr. Parnell's name with the fire-escape, and with matters even more indicative of loss of dignity and of instability of purpose than the fire-escape, the whole political scene has changed, and Irish politics have become a tissue of grotesque personalities and unreal boasts. They have not only surpassed in levity the impression of Irish politics which Lever gave us, but they have shown an utter incoherence of purpose which it is not easy to connect with the conception of a distinct force in politics at all. It is not merely that one day we have the leader on one side struck down with a shower of lime in his eye, and another day that we have a leader on the other side struck down with broken glass in the same sensitive part, nor that we have blackthorns freely flourished both in reality and in metaphor. All that might happen, and has happened, in English politics too. But a sudden subservience of political to personal ends has shown itself everywhere. Mr. Parnell intimates that Mr. Healy only cared to have the Irish Lord Chancellorship open to his ambition. Mr. Healy intimates that " the Brighton Banshee" is the secret mover of all Mr. Parnell's tactics. Mr. Parnell challenges Mr. Maurice Healy to a political duel. Mr. Maurice Healy accepts the challenge with a volley of insulting language. Mr. Parnell hesitates and delays, and finally declares that he will keep to his engagement on condition that Mr. Healy shall not place him at any disadvantage by fighting both the Cork seats i at the same time instead of the two in succession. There- upon Mr. Healy gets nervous, and imagines that Mr. Parnell is plotting to place instead at a disadvantage by in- sisting on a double election of a single ; and the public is left with the impression that each of the gentle- men is so much afraid of the other, that neither will risk anything for fear of being outwitted by the other.
Then look at the action of the party as a whole. First it re-elects Mr. Parnell with enthusiasm, and assures him that the disgraceful disclosures of the Divorce Court have no bearing at all on the political situation. Then, when it hears of Mr. Gladstone's conviction that he cannot carry his own followers with him if Mr. Parnell remains, it indulges in a long series of violent debates from which you would guess that half the party at least had been hungering for years for an opportunity of deposing Mr. Parnell, in site of their recent declaration of inviolable loyalty to him. The whole controversy becomes furiously personal, and then the two sections separate with handshakings and assurances of mutual respect, and there is a lull for a time, followed by a long and most theatrical series of secret negotiations which end in an almost tearful declara- tion by one of the mediators that Mr. Parnell has been very ill used, but that he must go all the same. And then the violent and even ruffianly language breaks forth afresh, and each party accuses the other of being the most unscrupulous of Ireland's foes. Nay, the politician who had identified himself with the confiscation of the land for the benefit of the tenant-farmers, talks of nationalisation of the land,—a notion as wide as the poles asunder from that by virtue of which he had gained his popularity. Further, we are suddenly assured that the Irish Party will espouse the side of the English Labour Associations which ask for State interference to assure the labourers of high wages ; and, in fact, every- thing like political definiteness of purpose fades away, and the most reticent and sinister of political figures jumps up and down like a political Jack-in-the-box, while all his rivals and assailants jump up and down with him. In a word, the crowd of political agitators in Ireland go thoroughly mad, and if we want anything like coherence or sanity, we have to turn to such a. speech as Mr. T. P. O'Connor delivered to his Liverpool constituents on Wednesday, which was as shrewd and sober as a Home- rule speech could well be. But that was because it was made to an English constituency. If it had been delivered in Ireland, it would probably have been as delirious as all the other recent utterances and incoherences of purpose, and we should have felt as much at our wits' end as if we had been attending the witches' festival on the Brocken.
Is it not reasonable, then, that English working men should argue that if so serious a figure as Mr. Parnell's can suddenly undergo such a marvellous transformation on Irish soil, while all his opponents and rivals, so soon at least as they too cross the Channel, seem possessed by the same incoherence and diablerie of pur- pose, it would be much better to put the Irish constitu- tional question by, and insist that Irishmen shall go on co-operating with a nation which has at least the power of making them talk and act seriously, like men who know what political steadfastness means, and who do not wish merely to while away their lives in boasts that they are willing to undo one day that which they did the day before ? It is not the violence of Irish politics, but the utter incoherence in them, so soon as they reach Irish soil, which makes the English people feel utter dismay at the notion of leaving Irishmen to their own devices, to turn things upside-down as they will.
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