TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. MORLEY ON IRELAND. THE very first thing which an English politician who plunges into the Irish controversy usually loses, is his sense of proper proportion. The measure proposed will in Home-rule opinion create, or at all events emanci- pate, " a nation," and in everybody's opinion will for ever affect for good or evil the destinies of a Kingdom which rules nearly a fourth of the human race. The debate about that momentous change is, however, carried on as if it were a squabble about the management of a parish. The smallest personalities are used as arguments, the most trumpery incidents are exaggerated into great events. Because Mr. Balfour, being Scotch by blood, plays golf instead of cards, and is therefore visible in his par- ticularly innocent recreation, he is compared to Nero who fiddled while Rome burned, and pronounced an unworthy successor of the great Secretaries who have gone before him, and who, while they ruled, were abused even worse than he is. Because, during a scrimmage outside a Court- house in Tipperary, some Irish policemen did or did not use their batons a little too freely, therefore a seventh of the Queen's taxable dominion is to be placed under separate and hostile administration. There is absolutely nothing in all that " hideous scene " in Tipperary, except an ordinary charge against the police of being too violent, such as is brought against them every month in London ; yet Mr. Morley, who is not only a passed Cabinet Minister, but who expects to be the Minister responsible for Ireland, devotes to the incident a great portion of a serious speech, and enters into every detail as if the affair of itself were sufficient to justify a revolution. He is utterly shocked in particular because an innocent reporter got severely hurt. Did he ever know of a small riot in London in which an innocent reporter did not get severely hurt, either by the police, or the Duke of Cambridge, or somebody in the crowd ? What has all that to do with politics ? It would have, if the Irish police were protected, like a Continental police, against the consequences of their acts ; but they are not. A policeman in Ireland is just a civilian in uniform. Mr. Harrison or Mr. Keating has exactly the same remedy in Tipperary that he would have in London, with this immense additional advantage, that in Ireland. those who see the police too violent are delighted. to give evidence against them, and that the proceedings, instead of being huddled into a paragraph of police news, are sure to occupy columns of the party journals. Be it observed, we are not questioning the assertion that the police in Tipperary were blamably violent. As usual, everybody contradicts everybody else as to the facts of the " outrage ; " and as regards Mr. Harrison, the Parnellite reporters seem to admit a provocation which we understand Mr. Morley to deny ; but, subject to further evidence, we think it quite likely the police were in the wrong. We are rather in- clined to believe that these sorely tried men, who are treated as lepers for doing their duty to the com- munity, do occasionally lose their tempers and hit out, and that, in especial, they are moved by con- temptuous language such as Mr. Morley says Mr. Keating flung at them, to a degree inconsistent with their position as guardians of the peace. But all that is matter for the Courts, not for political speeches, and has no more to do with Home-rule than the conduct of the strikers at Southampton has to do with the Navigation Act. The police cannot be made more liable to punish- ment than they are, even if Mr. Parnell is Premier of Ireland, and will occasionally misbehave themselves long after Mr. Healy has ceased to be Home Secretary in Dublin. If, indeed, Mr, Morley thinks the existence of a police in Ireland is a consequence of the Union, and ought, when the Union ceases, to cease also, then we can understand his wrath ; but in that case he is preparing for Ireland a social condition which we shudder to con- template. In some ways the Irish are decidedly less given to grime than the English, but they are certainly not less given to those acts of violence against which policemen are supposed specially to protect society. But, says Mr. Morley, with that extraordinary readiness to make every quarrel personal which Englishmen betray ifi Irish affairs, it is all Mr. Balfour's %nit, and there- fore the matter is political. The Secretary for Ireland demoralises the Irish police. " What is responsible is the system pursued by the Chief Secretary for three and a half years. That is the source of responsibility. I say that the uniform persistency with which the Chief Secre- tary has defended every act of the executive authority in Ireland through thick and thin, right or wrong—I say the fact exists of what I cannot hesitate to call the evidence of demoralisation in excessive authority which I witnessed on Thursday at Tipperary. From the odious and wicked slaughter at Mitchelstown downwards and onwards, the Chief Secretary has refused all effective public inquiry. He has denied the truth of all charges brought against the police. He has refused to believe the word. of any Irish Member, and the Irish people have been left wholly to the mercy of the authorities, without any supervision, without help, and without hope. We will see whether the Irish Minister will listen to English Members across the table of the House." We might say in return that Mr. Morley and his friends are responsible for all mob violence in Ireland, because roughs are always audacious when they fancy they are sure of great people's support ; but we see nothing gained by those verbal counter-thrusts, and wish to ask Mr. Morley a much graver question. Does he mean to say that because Mr. Balfour, like every other Minister of State, including Mr. Morley himself when he is in office, defends the servants of the State until their guilt is proved, therefore batoned persons in Ireland cannot get redress in the Courts ? If they can, what has Mr. Balfour's reluctance to believe charges against the police, a reluctance shared by every official who ever held authority in this world, to do with the matter ? He has absolutely no power to pro- tect the police if they baton Members of Parliament, any more than he would have power to protect them if they stole those Members' silver spoons. We do not under- stand Mr. Morley to allege that the Secretary for Ireland ordered. the police to be violent, or even desired that they should. be violent, any violence of theirs being to any Minister for Ireland. the most annoying of nuisances, a mere cause and pretext for obstructive debates ; and if he did not wish for violence, and cannot shield the violent, where does Mr. Balfour's atrociousness. come in ? The truth is, it does not come in at all ; but the Home-rule Party, English as well as Irish, are tired of waiting, and think that if the unlearned electors can be persuaded that Ireland is tyrannically governed, their favourite panacea will be more speedily accepted. It is impossible to prove anything of the kind as a general truth, for Ireland is as free as England, and uses its freedom alike of speech, of writing, and of the vote, till its orators are the hottest in the world, its journalists, almost scream with passion, and its voters send up men who are proud. to call themselves rebels in heart and aspiration ; so the most is made of every incident which may, if properly coloured, be made to show that its police sometimes acts as if the riot it expects as a certainty had already occurred. That police is distinctly blameworthy-, when it so acts, for so acting; but that is a reason for prosecuting the police, not for declaring that Ireland will never be free until it enjoys Home-rule.
There seems to us something contemptuous towards electors in this argument by exaggeration, as if any non- sense, if it were only bitter, were good enough for their bemused understandings. They are expected to believe that because Irish Members are prosecuted on legal charges, therefore Ireland is not free, and that because Irish policemen are now and then violent, therefore Ireland is governed. like Russia. The speakers rely on their hearers' not knowing or not thinking that Irish Members are the freest representatives in the world, that they may say anything in Parliament they please, and may out of it abuse the Government, traduce the Government, and encourage resistance to the Government, to their heart.' content. They may hold any number of public meetings under cover, may start any number of political organisa- tions, and may raise funds for their own use even in foreign countries. They may not, it is true, incite to crime ; but then, the right of inciting to crime is not one of the rights which is either defended or possessed in any free- country in the world. Within that limit, however, they may do or say anything which seems good in their own eyes, and use their privilege to an extent which in France, or $wifterland, or America, would cause them to be regarded as public enemies. There is absolutely no truth in the assertion that their just freedom is ever interfered with, or that, except as regards incitement to crime, they could, if they were invested with full powers, draw an Act which would. increase their liberties. Yet, so mighty is the power of systematic exaggeration, that one- half of all Englishmen believe Irish Members to be per- secuted men who defend their great cause in fear of the Executive, and who are only free to speak when they are safe within the walls of the Parliament which they wish to deprive of all respect. As to the police, it so performs its duties that the only classes which live in terror in Ireland are those who collect legal rents, and those who, relying on the law, think they are at liberty to perform their contracts, or to make and keep contracts even with unpopular persons. Yet such is the hailstorm of stories, fictions, abusive speeches, and exaggerations, that one-half the electors believe that the decent men, all Irishmen, and most of them Catholics, who wear the police uniform, are the ferocious agents of tyranny, living only to " shadow " Liberals, to outrage priests, and to evict old ladies who cannot pay their rents because they are already without food. We can understand the doctrinaire Nationalists who denounce England because, as they say, Ireland is a nation, and a nation belongs only to itself. We can understand, and in part sympathise with, those orators who pour out hopes and beliefs as to what a free Ireland might ultimately become in the general list of the nations of the world. And we can listen respectfully to those who argue and believe that the Irish, if entrusted with their own legislation, would be a happier if a poorer, a nobler if a less orderly, people. But all this argument from squabbles, and riots, and incidents of eviction, seems to us ignoble, the kind of stuff which, were the electors capable of generalisation, would. never be produced by Englishmen, or produced only to show how bitter the discontent must be when such accidents are brought forward as evidence of oppression.
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