TOPICS OF TIIE DAY.
WHAT MR. GLADSTONE HAS ACHIEVED.
AS we write, the debate in the House of Commons has not yet terminated. We are compelled to go to press without reading the epitaphs which the leaders on both sides will write over the measure which has occupied the House of Commons for more than the half of a Session of more than patriarchal age. But still, we can fairly sum up the achievement of these truly Herculean labours. In the first place, the Bill has tantalised the Irish Members. Their appetite for Home- rule has been whetted. but would not be in the least appeased even if the Lords, by some strange aberration of intellect, should pass the Bill as it leaves the House of Commons. Mr. John Redmond has told us frankly that it no more makes the Irish masters of their own affairs, which is what he practically demands, than it makes them easy in their pockets. He denounces the Bill for its half-heartedness, and he denounces it for its stinginess. He demands much more power and much more money, and repudiates Mr. Gladstone's off,r as anything better than a first bid. He will take it, as be would take anything which even commenced the repayment of the almost infinite debt which, in his opinion, we owe to Ireland. But he gives us fair notice that be takes it only because it gives Irishmen the means of exacting more. We are perfectly aware that we shall be told not to mind what Mr. Redmond says. He is only the leader of nine, and is bound to make the worst of the Government gift. Without doing so, his party would be nowhere in Ireland. And all that is true enough ; but it is very far from true that, on that account, his words should not weigh with us in appreciating the upshot of this gigantic effort. In the first place, those Irish Members who are termed Anti-Parnellites dare not deny that they agree with him heartily about the money. That is admitted on all sides. Even Mr. Dillon could not deny it. In the next place, the Irish-Americans have exactly echoed Mr. Redmond's estimate of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, and will be prepared, we suppose, to find more funds for con- tinuing the agitation, even if Mr. Gladstone can persuade the constituencies of the United Kingdom to endorse his offer. In the third place, the Irish people have always shown that they are far more open to words of depreciation than to words of gratitude ; and we do not doubt for a moment that even the Anti-Parnellites will find them- selves obliged, by the weight of popular opinion, to bid against Mr. Redmond in their depreciation of what Mr. Gladstone has offered them. There can be no question but that this Bill, even if it passed into an Act, would be received with the utmost coolness in Ireland, and that the very first necessity of the Irish agitators would be to cast scorn upon it and use it only to extort more. Such is the main result of these huge labours. The Irish people will grasp at what Mr. Gladstone gives, but will immediately begin to overwhelrnIim with reproaches for not giving them more. Especially they must have a much larger allowance both of money and power. They must at once be given unlimited power to attack the land- ]ords, and unlimited power to collect their own taxes, and they must be placed in a position in which there shall be much less burdensome taxes to collect. And the next clear result of these gigantie, labours is that the supremacy of the British Parliament, for which Mr. Gladstone has formally conditioned, and which he professes to have made perfectly safe, is not meant to be a practical and working supremacy at all. He has shown this in a great many ways. He has provided no effective means for giving the British Parliament even the detailed knowledge of what the Irish Parliament and Administration are doing. He has said in so many words that there shall be no special Minister in the British Parliament, for informing himself, and informing that Parliament, as to what is really going on in Ireland, and answering questions put to him by British Members of Parliament on that subject. So far as we can see, Mr. Gladstone wishes the doings of the Irish Par- liament and Administration to leak out in an unofficial way, or through the mouths of the eighty Irish Members of the Supreme Parliament. He would not even allow Vie Irish Parliament to be called subordinate, though he allowed the British Parliament to be called s ipreme. And not only is this so, but he has suggested no proper means of enforcing the will of the Supreme Parliament in Ireland in the face of a reluctant Irish Parliament and Administra- tion, There are to be no officers in the place of the United. States Marshals. There is no provision made for giving the Judges of the Court of Exchequer power to enforce their judgment that an Act of the Irish Parliament is ultra. vires. From beginning to end it has been clear that though. the whole controversy turns on the attitude of the majority in Ireland towards the minority, it is not meant that the minority shall have any redress against the majority, unless the grievance is so monstrous and, so conspicuous to all the world, that it cannot be hidden any longer from the English people. Even in cases where the supreme power in Canada can veto a local measure, even in cases where the supreme power in the United States can interfere to veto a. State measure, there will frequently be no such veto possible in regard to an Irish measure. This unsatisfac- tory and half-hearted Bill, which Mr. Redmond repudiates, with so much scorn, in various instances gives Ireland more independence than either the Provinces of Canada possess or the States of the Union. The supremacy for which Mr. Gladstone professed to he so deeply concerned, is to be more of a nominal than a real supremacy. Only at the last moment, when a grievance has become very in- veterate indeed, does Mr. Gladstone intend that England shall step in to remedy it.
Add to this, that Mr. Gladstone proposes to give the casting vote, even in British affairs, to a perfectly uncon- stitutional body of Irish Members who represent no British interest at all, and that neither Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Morley,—at least, in his Newcastle speech, we write before we have read his reply in the House of Commons,—has a. word to say in favour of that most absurd and in- tolerable arrangement, and we have a measure which is as full of future trouble for both Ireland and England, as it is possible to conceive. If it ever passes, Ireland. will be taught both to scoff at it and. to use it in extorting more. England will be lectured by its authors on the. duty of not using even the painfully inadequate powers. reserved to her, and will be kept in official ignorance of what is going on in Ireland as long as possible. Our own Parliament will be irritated and overridden by a solid body of strangers determined to use their unconstitutional power for the purpose of securing to Ireland financial help, which she will both need more than ever and find it much harder than ever to attain. Whether such a result as this. is worth the almost superhuman toil and the certainly monstrous Parliamentary coercion which has been expended in passing the Home-rule Bill through the House of Com- mons, the country may soon, we hope, have an opportunity of judging. But this at least is certain, that Mr. Glad- stone's eloquent warnings of the terrible consequences of rejecting this futile attempt to conciliate Ireland. wil) be lost upon the English people. They will say, and say most truly, that what Mr. Gladstone has effected has been this,—to prove that Ireland is not only not contented with his offer, but is more than ever determined to have it enlarged. She is bent upon wresting the power to deal with the land as she likes. She is bent upon wresting the power to put down Ulster's resistance as she likes. She is bent upon wresting the power to tax herself, or to refuse to. tax herself, as she likes. And she peremptorily demands. a great deal more money before she will even think of a. truce. If we are not willing to concede those demands, then the agitation will go on, and go on in a much more serious form, because the official power to protect the agitators will then be lodged in the hands of the Irish Administration. If we are willing to concede them, we had better say so at once, and make an end of the farce of pretending to shield those whom we give up to Irish wrath, and pretending to govern those who are going to take their turn at governing us, and wringing from us subsidies for their evicted tenants and their bankrupt " Campaigners." Even the Gladstonians will heave a sigh of relief when the Upper House severs the short thread of life which is:all that is permitted to this abortive and portentous birth.„; ,
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