SIR GEORGE TRI.V.LLYAN'S UNIONISM.
IT is not easy to follow Sir George Trevelyan. On the first reading of Mr. Gladstone's Bill for the better government of Ireland, he held that "the confession that the Liberal Party WM a Home-rule Party—I speak with all respect for those who feel otherwise,—is one which, till every faculty I have is strained to the uttermost, and every constitutional method inside and outside the House has been exhausted, I for one will never consent to." Whatever the Liberal Party was before Mr. Gladstone accepted office in 1886, there is no question as to what the Liberal Party is under the same leader now. It is a Home-rule Party, and little else. It is embarked in an effort to give Home-rule to Ireland which must swallow up all its minor efforts, as Aaron's serpent swallowed up the serpents of his rivals. Nay, it is committed by the mouth of its great chief to give an extension to the Home-rule movement in relation to Wales and Scotland each as would never have been thought of had not so sturdy a resistance been offered to the carrying of Hame-rule for Ireland. Thturthe Liberal Party now bra Home-rule Party par excellence; it would disappear from practical politics for the moment if its followers could suddenly be converted from their adherence to Home-rule. And yet, if Sir George Trevelyan has been engaged during the last few months in "straining to the uttermost" every faculty he has, and in exhausting "every constitutional method inside and outside the House" to avert Home-rule, he has kept it a profound secret from the public in general, and, indeed, taken no way of indicating it, except the uncommonly strange way of proclaiming to all the world that there is no excuse for not following Mr. Gladstone, now that he has conceded that the Irish representatives are to be retained at Westminster in the next Home-rule measure which Mr. Gladstone supports. Now, no one ever supposed that the retention of the Irish representatives at Westminster could affect in the least degree the objections to Home-rule which Sir George Trevelyan once put so very powerfully. What were those objections ? He urged that there had sprung up in Ireland "a class of men," to use his own words, "who gain their livelihood by criminal agitation ;" that unless the control of the police could be reserved to "the central authority in all its departments, we had better go in at once for the repeal of the Union ;" that "to keep the name and outward semblance of a Union, and at the same time to put into the hands of the enemies of that Union full license to keep Ireland in disorder, is a policy which could not recom- mend itself to those who know the country." Indeed, "that any responsible body of Ministers, whatever else they did, should put the keeping of the police, the enforcement of civil oblige, Sens, and the safety and property of our fellow-citizens throughout Ireland in the hands of an elective Irish Par- liament," was incredible to Sir George Trevelyan fifteen months ago. Well, how can Mr. Gladstone's concession that Irish representatives are to remain at Westminster alter in the smallest particular the general drift of these objections? It cannot alter them at all. Yet Sir George Trevelyan is now indignant, astounded, hardly able to express his surprise and his resentment, that his former objections to Mr. Gladstone's policy should be quoted against him as any reason why he should object to Mr. Gladstone's policy now. Will Mr. Parnell's, or Mr. Dillon's, or Mr. Healy's, or Dr. Tanner's presence at Westminster in the least prevent Mr. Gladstone from putting "the police, the enforcement of civil obligations, and the safety and property of our fellow-citizens throughout Ireland in the hands of an elective Irish Parliament," as, indeed, he is pledged to do I Sir George Trevelyan will say, perhaps, that Mr. Gladstone is not pledged to do this ; that, on the contrary, he made the magnificent offer of discussing with Lord Hartington what could be done to keep the control of Irish justice more or less under the central power. And, of course, to gain his point Mr. Gladstone will discuss anything with anybody in the most frank and courteous way ; no one doubts that. But how can he retreat from his engage- ment not to offer Ireland what will not content the Irish representatives I And is Sir George Trevelyan, with his experience of those representatives, prepared for a moment to contend that they will ever accept a Legislature or Executive which is not to be master of the ordinary administration of justice in Ireland ? Sir George, indeed, is well aware that, now that he has become a Home-ruler, he must drop the language of a year ago. He says nothing now about the police. He limits himself now to asking the control of the Constabulary and the appointment of the Judges for the central power. Well; even if that were conoeclecl,—which it might be,—he
knows with the most intimate knowledge that neither the Judges nor the Constabulary,—which is a semi-military force, —can by any possibility prevent that organised and minute system of persecution from being carried out in Ireland of which a year ago he expressed so eloquent and hearty a horror. With the grant of an elective Legislature, and an Administration dependent on that Legislature, to Ireland, we virtually abandon Ireland, as he saw very well in the spring of last year, to the violent party, from whom he has himself experienced treat- ment of the vilest kind, and from whose government of Ireland he has himself taught us to expect the worst possible fruits. But all this he is willing to ignore on the very strange and unintelligible ground that Mr. Gladstone has consented to the retention of Mr. Parnell and Dr. Tanner and the rest of the Irish representatives at Westminster, and was willing to confer with Lord Hartington on the subject of controlling the Irish administration of justice from Westminster. He might just as well have consented to ignore all his objections to the system of Army Purchase on the ground that there were a sufficient number of military officers in the House of Commons to stand up for it, and that the Government of the day had consented to discern how the objections to Purchase might be removed.
No true Unionist can read Sir George Trevelyan'e speeches at Glasgow without a lively feeling of regret. They mean one thing, and one thing only, that whereas Sir George Trevelyan once thought the grant of Home-rule to Ireland a much greater evil than the break-up of the Liberal Party, he now thinks the break-up of the Liberal Party a much greater evil than the grant of Home-rule to Ireland. If he would only say so frankly, there would at least be erase consolation for those of us who on that point totally disagree with him. But he does not do anything of the kind. He only tells us that we are not true Liberals at all if we do not follow his example. Well, that is a sort of dogmatism which we do not at all admire, and which is not likely, we think, to reconcile anybody to Sir George Tre- velyan's extraordinary and rapid change of front. We may fairly turn his own words against him, and say that "that sense of fairplay which was once a national characteristic is not very visible there." If he chooses to decide for himself that it is right to cast away every security for the just government of Ireland for which he was so deeply concerned fifteen months ago, rather than injure the prospects of the Liberal Party, we can only regret the perversion of his judgment. But when he tells us all that we have no choice as fair men with Liberal principles at heart except to follow his example, we cannot help retorting that, in our view, we have no choice as fair men with Liberal principles at heart except to repudiate his example. We venture to assert, on the other aide of the question, that in the first place, the Conservative Party has been liberalised,— perhaps too suddenly liberalised,—by the Household Suffrage Act, and so much liberalised that it can never again unite for the cause of exclusiveness and privilege as it habitually united for that cause before ; next, that even if it were not so, even if the Conservative Party were the old Tory Party, and not the party thoroughly penetrated by popular sympathies which it now is, even so, the cause of unity in the Kingdom, and the cause of justice in Ireland, would be of much more account, of much more solemn obligation, than the petty party cause on which Sir George Trevelyan appears willing to stake all his reputation as a statesman ; and lastly, that the cause of liberty itself is suffering in his hands. Liberalism, as he now understands it, threatens to become a very different cause indeed from that which moved him not many months ago to stand up so boldly for those "victims and martyrs" of the National League in Ireland whom he now abandons to the tender mercy of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon. We have been amongst the most hearty of Sir George Trevelyan's admirers. But though we cannot say that we expect his defeat by Mr. Evelyn Ashley at Glasgow, we should welcome it, though not without great regrets, as the defeat of a man who has, in our opinion, turned his back upon his better political self.
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