this is just what he does not propose to do,—apart
from this to have five years to run before the people can be asked to fact these were not the points on which, a year and a half confirm or retract their judgment on the most important ago, Sir George Trevelyan was most eloquent. He won all political question which has been submitted to them for the our hearts by his manly and powerful protest against the last eighty-seven years. Well, we are not in the least die- gross injustice of putting those loyal Irishmen scattered posed to withdraw what we said. Far from thinking it a thinly throughout the three Southern provinces, and con- discredit to have made that remark, we are ready to assert centrated in great numbers in the Northern province, who that no good Liberal should wish to see that great question had been zealous subjects of the Queen, under the heel of their once more submitted to the constituencies until it has had worst enemies. And it certainly is to us a most perplexing all the reconsideration which six years of protracted discus- problem what has become of Sir George Trevelyan'e fears on sion and experience of the temper of Ireland shall have this head, and of the passionate indignation with which he given it. Has Sir George Trevelyan really been converted to repelled the proposal to commit this great injustice. He said, the view that every eddy of the public mind should be repro- indeed, on Saturday, that " the Irish Nationalist Members, on seated by the election of a new Parliament ? If he has, he the invitation of the Liberal Party, have thrown aside that sullen has deserted the general tradition of the great Liberal Party and hostile attitude " which they formerly assumed towards in which he so persistently declares his belief, and gone over to this country. But does he seriously believe this ? Within the old Chartist doctrine of annual Parliaments. We do not do not, their sworn Counsellors will have discharged alike the last two months, Mr. Dillon, as Sir George well knows, has their duty and their consciences. Ministers have obligations repeated his threats against the polite who obey the orders to the people, obligations to the landlords, ob-gations to of the Government of the Lord-Lieutenant ; while the lan- posterity—which will one day be amazed by their timidity—and guage of Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Healy, and all Mr. Parnell's chief they should fulfil them without waiting for that calmer con- lieutenants has been as furious and threatening towards this dition of the public mind which, until the tenure has been country as ever it was. Moreover, those of the Nationalist leaders revolutionised, will in Ireland never come. If the Ministry who are canvassing the United States for aid, cordially ac- doubt whether their road does lie through agrarian reform, cept the co-operation of the men who fled from this country then, of course, their delays are justified, and may be in- because they did not dare take their trial for complicity in the definitely protracted ; but if they are as certain as from their very worst of the Irish conspiracies to murder, and also of speeches we understand them to be, then all this rumoured the heads of the American Irish party of dynamite. Is that policy of procrastination is but a plan to postpone and make what Sir George Trevelyan calls exchanging the sullen attitude worse the inevitable crisis. which they formerly adopted towards this country for one of
conciliation, or does he only mean that since he joined the Home-rule Party, these gentlemen have ceased to inveigh against
SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN AS A PROBLEM. kim ? That is quite true, and doubtless that will continue to SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN is a problem, and a difficult be so, so long as Sir George Trevelyan remains in England or problem, to men of both parties, and very likely a difficult Scotland. But if he became a resident in Ireland under the problem to himself. We all know that he is not a man to protection of an Irish Parliament and Irish Executive, does he change his side under the influence of mere ambition, and we imagine that he would long be safe against the vengeance of should have bad no difficulty in understanding his course, if he the men from whose poisonous insults and insinuations he had from the first given in his adhesion to Mr. Gladstone and suffered so much and so bravely during the two years of the principle of Irish Home-rule. But whatever else was his Irish administration I We should be very sorry to see doubtful, it is certain that a year ago he thought it would be him trying the experiment. Whatever it may be that induced at once impolitic and base to hand over the administration of him to pronounce the remarkable sentence which we have justice and police in Ireland to the control of such a Legis- quoted, as to the changed attitude of the Irish Nationalists, we lature as Ireland would inevitably elect, and that he protested do not believe that he would seriously justify any substantial in the language of earnest and genuine emotion against a change of policy on the plea of the alteration of Nationalist policy which must have had that result. At the present time temper which he has imagined.
Sir George Trevelyan always passes over that paint in silence. Nor can we find it easy to believe that it is Sir George He is perfectly aware that Mr. Gladstone has made no concession Trevelyan's immense enthusiasm for the abolition of .plural that could possibly have the effect of protecting the minority votes, and the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church, that has in Ireland from the vindictive action with which Mr. Dillon made him so suddenly oblivious of the great practical danger and his colleagues have so often threatened them, directly of delivering up loyal Irishmen to a cruel and relentless per they win the control of the Irish magistracy and the Irish secution. We advocated the sweeping away of plural votes at • police. He is perfectly aware that Mr. Parnell would as soon the time when Mr. Gladstone's Government proposed to retain accept a Parliamentary system crippled by the retention of them, and we never heard that Sir George Trevelyan, who is the whole machinery of justice in the hands of the central now so proud of his resignation of office on a trivial point in Mr. power at Westminster, as accept office under a British Govern- Forster's Education Bill, tendered his resignation of his seat in ment. Indeed, Sir George is probably very well aware that the Cabinet rather than support a Household Franchise Bill dis- Mr. Gladstone himself would never ask Mr. Parnell to figured by the retention of the plural votes. Nor, indeed, should agree to such a stipulation, and would probably repudiate we have thought any the better of him had he done so. But as the suggestion with some warmth, as one insulting to the Irish he did not oppose that disfiguring element of the Reform Bill " nation." Well, but this being so, how are we to explain Sir of 1885 when he was in office, it is a little too absurd to dwell George Trevelyan's complete surrender on the one point on as he now does on that blot in the Act as his reason for which he insisted so eloquently a year and a half ago, at the withdrawing his objections to so tremendous and hazardous a time when he contemplated retiring into private life rather change as that of establishing a national Legislature in Ireland. than lend his sanction to so huge an injustice as enthroning in And as regards the Welsh Church, though we are by no means Ireland a power which would be at once able and inclined to prepared to defend the Establishment in Wales against any punish every one who had in the past proved himself a loyal final proof that it hurts the consciences of Welshmen and subject of the Queen's Government? Sir George Trevelyan injures the cause of Christianity in Wales, yet Mr. Gladstone insists again and again that Mr. Gladstone, by consenting to himself has told us that Irish Home-rule must take precedence of the retention of the Irish representatives at Westminster, and any Disestablishment ; and we should be dissemblers indeed if we giving up the proposal that Great Britain should guarantee the could affect to believe that half or a tenth-part of the injustice Purchase loan, has yielded the essential points of difference will be done by prolonging the existence of the Establishment between the Liberal Unionists and the Home-rulers, and has in Wales, which will certainly be done by transferring to the made it clear that those Liberal Unionists who are not satisfied, National League the government of Ireland. Hence, in spite are making their differences a mere pretext on the strength of of the rather artificial heat exhibited in those portions of which they can excuse themselves for joining the Conservatives. Sir George Trevelyan's speeches which dwell on the injustice Now, apart from the fact that a great many of the heartiest of plural votes and the Welsh Establishment, we find it im- Unionists never did object at all to the principle of guaranteeing possible to solve the problem of his astounding change of the Purchase loan, and wished to keep the Irish represents- front by dwelling on the burning enthusiasm of the man for tives in Parliament not for the sake of securing a legal right sweeping away these relatively small injustices. Sir George, to veto occasionally a Bill of the Irish Legislature, but for the indeed, affects to think no one a true Liberal who will not sake of retaining the practical command of the Irish legislative swallow Irish Home-rule whole in order to get to work at and executive policy in the hands of the central Government, these reforms, and he reads the Spectator a special lecture on and that Mr. Gladstone has quite recently explained that the enormity of our remark that the present Parliament ought say that septennial Parliaments may not be in general too long. But certainly they are not too long for the due consideration of a- question on which the destiny of the Empire hangs ; and such a question is now before us.
The more we consider the problem of Sir George Trevelyan's change of front,, the more it puzzles us. That it is due to honourable motives of some kind, we have no doubt ; but we do very much doubt whether he himself could explain even to himself what the real consideration which has swayed his judgment, is. Probably not a little influence is to be ascribed to the appointment of an Orangeman to whom he has a special hostility, to the very insignificant post of unpaid Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Ireland, for Sir George Trevelyan evidently has Mr. King-Harman on the brain. But this is hardly a rational explanation. It is an explanation only in the sense in which it is an explanation of a ship's striking on a rock, that she will not obey the helm because some unsuspected under- current has taken her out of the steersman's control. Never- theless, we suspect the truth to be that Sir George Trevelyan's detestation of the name of a Tory, and his detestation of one or two Orangemen, is so vehement, that his dread of the disintegration of the Empire, and of the persecution of Irish loyalists, has succumbed to his still greater horror of Lord Salisbury and Mr. King-Harman. That may account for his marvellous change of front. But it accounts for it at the expense of that statesmanship which a year and a half ago seemed to promise so much, and which elicited,—alas! pre- maturely,—our earnest admiration.
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