3 APRIL 1886, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

LORD HARTINGTON AND HOME-RULE.

ON Thursday, when Mr. Gladstone will open his Irish policy to the House of Commons and the nation, the

great historical crisis of our day will be upon us. We may expect a speech memorable even among the many great speeches of the present Prime Minister, a speech which no other man now living amongst us could deliver, and which is likely to be marked by all the depth of conviction and all the wide popular sympathy which have made Mr. Gladstone's name so great amongst us. He has no rival, either on the Conservative or the Liberal side of the House ; and if his pro- posals for Ireland are to be resisted successfully at all, it is certain that it behoves those Liberals who cannot accept them to take the lead, so far as it is consistent with political etiquette to do so, in explaining to the country why Home-rule for Ireland does not appear to them to be con- sistent with the general Liberal creed. It cannot but be uphill work for Liberals to fight against Mr. Gladstone,—even when they have so much to say for themselves from a point of view which is strictly Liberal, as they have in resisting Irish Home- rule ; but if it should once go forth to the country that the criticism on Mr. Gladstone's proposals comes chiefly from the Tory side, we know what the result must be. It has hardly ever been known that a new article of faith has been adopted by the Liberal Party without its being incorporated sooner or later in the Constitutional principles of the State. Let it but once be understood that the Liberals have taken up the cause of Home-rule, and Home-role, though it may fail to-day, will return upon us to-morrow. It is the first duty of every true Liberal to urge upon the country that our great leader has in this instance, in the earnestness of his faith in representative institutions, misinterpreted the spirit and tendencies of the Liberal creed,—misinterpreted them as seriously as the United States would have misinterpreted them, if the men of the North had argued in 1861 that because the South was virtually unanimous for Home-rule, the South ought to be quietly permitted to build up for itself its separate and hostile institutions. Mr. Gladstone has led us to so many great victories, that so far from wondering at the magic of his influence, we are almost amazed at the rapidity with which a great section of the Liberal Party has perceived that in this case he is leading us into the most imminent peril. But when the battle once begins, it will be a- matter of no small importance that the objections to Home- rule should be expressed strongly and frankly from the Liberal point of view at the earliest possible moment. Lord Harting- ton and those of his colleagues who take his view should not allow it to be said that it is the Conservatism of the country chiefly, which is showing its distrust of the new policy. Mr. Gladstone has told us that he intends to invite debate, that the speech of Thursday is not to be a mere exposition, followed by a long pause of consideration, but that on the first night on which he broaches his proposals to Parliament, he recognises the reasonableness of a frank and fearless criticism. It seems to us of the highest importance that the Liberal leaders who are opposed to the new policy,—Lord Hartington, Sir Henry James, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Trevelyan, and Mr. Chamberlain,— should be fully prepared to let the country know why they are opposed to it, and why they consider it inconsistent with those great principles on which they fought at the General Election, and by which they then believed that Mr. Gladstone himself was likely to be guided. If the Liberal objections are not put in the front of the battle next Thursday, we may be sure that the auguries for a separate Irish Parliament will be far more favourable than they ought to be, and easily might be. If Sir Michael-Hicks Beach and Lord Randolph Churchill are the true leaders in the first great debate, a very great and most favourable opportunity for presenting the case adequately to the nation will have been lost.

Let us only consider what Lord Hartington, Mr. Gladstone's lieutenant through so many long years, and himself the actual leader of our party through a long and dispiriting campaign, would have to urge, why Liberals, as Liberals, should not abandon Ireland to the mercy of an Irish Parliament, even though a veto, certain to be more nominal than real, should be given to the Imperial Parliament on its proceedings. Lord Hartington would be able to show that such a course would be the political consequence and reward of a long course of defiance of the law by the very men who would constitute the vast majority of such a Parliament, and, consequently, that it would be a recognition by Liberals that even the simplest principles of morality are no ultimate conditions of the Liberal creed. Because we have been ontgeneralled and outwitted all over Ireland by men who have practised the most sickening and anti-social tyrannies to undermine the personal influence of the party of order, we are asked to give up the battle, and to surrender all power into their hands. Is that a policy which deserves to be characterised as Liberal ? We know quite well what Mr. Gladstone would say in reply, and what, of course, he most earnestly believes. He would say that national feeling is almost always so predominant in any race which believes itself unjustly oppressed by aliens, that it is certain to show itself in an excess of disposition to transgress even good laws only because they are imposed by aliens,—and that if you take off the alien yoke, the natural submissiveness of human nature to wise law will return. But in this case Lord Hartington would be able to reply that precisely in proportion as the alien yoke has been lightened, and lightened under the urgent repre- sentation of Irish patriots, in that proportion has the disposi- tion to put all law at defiance increased instead of diminished. The series of great Acts which began with the Disestablishment of the Irish Church and ended with the last Land-purchase Act, were strictly Irish measures urged upon us by Irishmen and accepted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom because they were believed to be just to Irishmen, and therefore only passed, in spite of many misgivings, by the great majority not only of Irish, but of English and Scotch Liberals. If those Acts, instead of reconciling the two peoples, have still further estranged them, if the very men who passed them have been denounced as desiring to hand over Irishmen " to chains, imprisonment, and death," what reasonable hope is there that a complete surrender to the Irish Party will bring about a. conversion of that party to a loyal and law-loving spirit ?

Again, Lord Hartington will have to point out the many ominous signs of the times which show that the restoration of an Irish Parliament will threaten not only the predominance of moral law in Ireland, but the respect for religious liberty. An Irish Cardinal recently recommended the priests to use their influence to push on the interests of Roman Catholic lawyers and doctors simply because they are Roman Catholic,. and not because they are more skilful as lawyers and doctors than their Protestant neighbours. A Protestant pauper has been mobbed that she might be compelled to profess her mother's faith rather than her father's. A Roman Catholic Bishop has put forth a prohibition on mixed marriages far severer than any which Rome has recently enforced in this country. Everywhere there are signs that serious religious bitterness between the two creeds may revive the moment the authority of the British Parliament in Ireland is virtually cancelled. Is it the true policy of the Liberal Party to foster such a revival of religious persecution as this ?

Further, if the Irish Parliament is really to have its own way, we all know to what economical and financial policy it will incline. We shall speedily have a system which would beggar Ireland, as well as exacerbate all her quarrels with England. Can it be a Liberal policy deliberately to throw Ireland into the power of a clique which would sweep away land- lords with the merest show of compensation, which would so dismay capitalists that capital would avoid Ireland as it avoids the least durable of the South-American Republics, and which would attempt to foster by Protection local industries which even under Protection would live the most sickly and artificial life, and that only so long as the degree of Protection advanced pari passu with the sickly growth ? Can it be a Liberal policy to throw any quarter of the United Kingdom which happens to be hopelessly behind the rest in education and knowledge, into the hands of the ignorant local opinion from which it ought to be saved by the diffused enlightenment of the whole country ? We hold that Liberals, as Liberals, should protest in the name of common morality, in the name of religious liberty, and in the name of economic sense, against the pro- posal to deliver over Ireland into the power of the Parnellite Cabal.