2 JANUARY 1886, Page 12

MR. TREVELYAN ON IRELAND.

MR. TREVELYAN has spoken out in his speech in Warwickshire with good effect. He has told us how far he thinks it safe to go in granting self-government to Ireland, and where we must stop if we wish to save the Union at all. He points out, what we have so often insisted on, that complete separation would at least be infinitely less hopeless— we cannot speak of hopefulness in that connection at all—than any experiment in half-separation, which involves all the evils, without the two great advantages, of the stronger measure ; for it neither makes the Irish feel the full responsi- bility of their own acts, nor does it clear the Parliament of England of its obstructive elements. Mr. Trevelyan insists on this ; and he declares, what we believe to be quite true, that in the present state of Ireland, or any state at all approximating to it, to pass over the control of the con- stabulary to freely elected local bodies, would be ruinous to the Union, without bringing any of the advantages of separa- tion. He then lays down what we might do to help on the training of Ireland in self-government ; and this is a very valuable part of his speech. So long as the control of the constabulary is not handed over to freely elected bodies in Ireland,—which, if a nominal Union is retained, means handing over Ireland to a state of profound social disorder without making her people fully responsible for all the miseries of that disorder,—he would be prepared to go a long way in oonforming the Administration in Ireland to Irish ideas. He

would, for instance, hand over education, the administration of the Poor-law, the road-making, bridge-making, draining, and improving powers, entirely to a freely elected Irish body, with power to dispose as they pleased of the Irish quota of all central grants, and to impose additional rates, if they wished it, where the grant was not adequate to their needs. And he would give such a freely elected Council the right to determine the policy on which the expenditure should be made, as well as the amount of that expenditure. This, he thinks, would have the effect of training the Irish in self- government, and of convincing them that some of those Irish ideas to which, when they are embodied at English expense, they express so much attachment, are not quite so wise as they suppose. If the Irish once had experience in carrying out their own policy at their own expense—an experience which this proposal would give them—twelve years, Mr. Trevelyan thinks, would not elapse without their learning that self-government is not quite so easy a matter as they now think it. At all events, a few years of such self-government as this would greatly sober them ; and in the meantime, with a strong constabulary in central hands, such order as Lord Spencer had contrived to establish long before the late Government resigned in the summer, might be re-established, though not, of course, without the aid of a revived Crimes Act. Mr. Trevelyan does not refer to the necessity for this ; but we think we may assume that he sees it as clearly as any one. He knows that it was the powers which expired last August which enabled Lord Spencer to put down boycotting and terrorism, and that it is the loss of these powers which has paralysed Lord Carnarvon. They must be acquired afresh ; and they cannot, of course, be acquired afresh without running the gauntlet of the Parnellite Party, who will probably exhaust every device of obstruction before they allow such powers to be restored. But this is the prospect before us, if we are not to abandon the Union, or to do worse than abandon it,—to abandon it in reality and keep it only in form. Both parties must brace themselves up to a very serious effort,—the effort of con- vincing Ireland that, though we earnestly wish to accommo- date Irish legislation and administration to the type which patriotic Irishmen would desire if Ireland were a separate country, yet we are not prepared to make it a separate country, and are still less prepared to take any step which would bring upon us all the mischiefs of separation without any of the advantages.

It is not, we fear, very difficult to anticipate how the Irish Party will regard Mr. Trevelyan's scheme. They will strain every nerve, we suppose, to defeat a scheme which claims the administration of justice for the central authority at all events as long as the popular cause in Ireland identifies itself with the protection of crime ; and they will reject, we fear, with scorn the offer of local liberties which do not give them the thing they plead for so vehemently,—a separate nationality. But the question is not so much what the Irish Parliamentary Party will do, as what the Irish people will do. Will they support their Parliamentary party in refusing a concession which they would certainly prize, and this at a time when the moderate men of both parties are making up their minds for a very long and disagreeable struggle, or series of struggles, with the Irish Members, rather than give them what they ask ? If Mr. Parnell sees his way to a successful war to the knife with the British Parliament, no doubt he will refuse such terms with contumely, and then do all in his power to inflame the quarrel between his followers and the British Parliament. But if both Tories and Liberals exhibit a firm front, such a course on Mr. Parnell's part would be a very gravely responsible one. He cannot fight on for years without funds, which are likely to be exhausted by some sadden languor. The Irish in America have shown wonderful self-denial in their subscrip- tions to this war of races ; but this wonderful self-denial might easily begin to flag if they saw Mr. Parnell gaining no ground. Latterly, he has gained ground so rapidly that there has been a constant stimulus to the hopes of the Irish-Americans. But now, without disunion in Great Britain, he can hardly advance much beyond the point he has already reached. If he fails to render Parliament impossible with 86 followers, he would hardly succeed even with 103 followers. He is near the end of his tether. If Englishmen and Scotchmen can but show now that they appreciate adequately the danger of dis- union, that they are as anxious as ever they were to alleviate to the very utmost the mischief which the Union has brought to Ireland, but that they are prepared to see Governments wrecked and Parliaments dissolved rather than yield ; that nothing will induce them to let less than a seventh, not much more than an eighth, of the House of Commons bring the check imposed by the Constitution is to be a right of veto, to House of Commons into disrepute,—the prospects of any further success for Mr. Parnell would be rather dim ; and with the dimness of the prospect, the sinews of war would certainly fail. We may, then, count on this, that after a good deal of vehemence and bluster, the Parnellites will begin to realise that a struggle of years with a united Britain is not a very exhilarating prospect ; and it is not altogether off the cards that the demonstrations of scorn with which any proposal such as Mr. Trevelyan has sketched out will certainly be received, may be followed by a lucid interval, in which they will sulkily accept what is given, though only, as they will say, as a stepping-stone to further action. And no doubt a stepping-stone to further action it would be made. The freely elected Council would become the scene of many defiances to the British Government, which would count for very little,—for an Irish habit of discussing among themselves the policy they wished to establish in Ireland and to establish at their own expense, if once fully formed, would create an inde- pendence of feeling and a variety of parties in Ireland which would be more or less fatal to the perfectly simple Parnellite structure of the present Irish Parliamentary Party. We do believe that if once Irishmen could be got to undertake serious responsi- bility, even for local government, in Ireland, we should before long see our way to obtaining what we have long needed,—an Irish Secretary for Ireland on whom we could rely for real support in that country. At all events, this is the only way in which we can reasonably hope to find an exit out of these troubles, except, of course, by cutting the knot altogether ; and that is not even to be thought of at present.

Although we anticipate, therefore, a most scornful reception for any offer which resolutely refuses to the Irish the control of the police in the present condition of Ireland, we do not at all despair of the ultimate acceptance of some such scheme. The alternative, in Mr. Parnell's mind, would probably be to get all his followers suspended by the House of Commons, and to bring Constitutional Government, therefore, to a termination. That he might think a policy sensational enough to yield a good agitation fund ; but it would be a very dangerous policy in every sense, and might bring blame upon him for not accepting the concessions offered. At all events, he would hesitate long before deciding on such a manceuvre, if there were really evidence of a dour resistance to either separation or Home-rule. Everything depends on the manliness of the British attitude in the matter. If Tories and Liberals join hands to prove that they will not undermine the Union, but intend to strengthen it, Mr. Parnell will think three times before he declares for a struggle in which he may probably fail ; and if he fails, will fail without the smallest chance of ever retrieving his political position.