MR. MORLEY'S SPEECH.
THE failure of the Gladstonian leaders in their public 1 utterances to make out a case for Home-rule, is one of the most striking features of the present political situation. They are excellent as rhetoricians, as senti- mentalists, as agitators, as fervent and somewhat solemn enunciators of political platitudes; but as exponents of their cause by argument and by appeals to the reasoning faculty of their hearers, they entirely fail. We do not wish here to infer from this that they have no arguments, or that this, failure shows any fundamental weakness in the Home-rule case. Such desire is foreign to our immediate purpose, which is simply to point out a fact so striking. If Mr. Gladstone -wishes to address a public audience on Home-rule, he never attempts to argue the question on its merits, but contents himself with pointing out, with a greater or lesser degree of irrelevancy and inaccuracy, how much better Poland is governed than Ireland, and how .much kinder King Bomba was to his prisoners than Mr. Balfour. Sir William Harcourt follows his great leader .elose in fighting shy of the use of arguments to show that the electors of the United Kingdom ought to grant Home- rule to Ireland. As we have pointed out not unfrequently before, Sir William Harcourt always appears to be.speaking from a brief in which is written in capital letters,—"No case; please abuse plaintiff's attorney." Appearances may be deceptive, and the inference drawn from them incorrect; but, at any rate, Sir William Harcourt's unswerving practice of abusing the exponents of Unionism rather than of attempting to found Home-rule on the sure rock of argument, does a good deal to encourage the notion. If, however, the absence of reason and argument is con- spicuous in Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt, it is ten times more extraordinary and more remarkable in Mr. Morley. Mr. Gladstone and, his late Chancellor of the Exchequer are party politicians of the old school, and it may perhaps be urged in regard to them, that though they have plenty of good arguments in reserve, they consider that appeals to party feeling and to sentiment, ridicule of .opponents, imputation of motives, the calling of names, . and the copious use of rhetoric, are the most potent instru- ments in, political controversy. Mr. Morley, however, is nothing if not a philosophic politician,—we use the word in • no unfavourable sense, but merely in recognition of the fact that he considers that politics are to be dealt with on the broad considerations of truth and reason. Surely then, he, of all men, ought not to turn from the argumentative side of the question, and fill his hearers' ears with nothing but platitude, sentiment, and invective. Surely he can find no . -difficulty in arguing the Home-rule Question out on its own merits,. and in giving the great body of his countrymen, always prepared to be won over by the party which shows • most right on its side, reasons for granting Home-rule which are solid and trustworthy.
Yet, if we turn to Mr. Morley's latest speech, that made at Ipswich on Saturday last, which inaugurates the Gladstonian autumn campaign, we find a total absence of any attempt to make out a case for Home-rule. There is plenty of talk in Mr. Morley's speech about the degrada- tion of public life produced by the Liberal Unionists' allying themselves with the Tories, about the enormity of Mr. Chamberlain's reference to the pay of the Parnellites, about the good qualities of the Irish race, about the wickedness of coercion, and "the injustice, the neglect, the harshness, the tyranny, and the oppression " that have made Ireland -what it is. But this, is not what is wanted by the electors who have open minds on. the Irish Question,—and, we take it, it is to them that Mr. Morley is really addressing him- self. We admit there is excellent rhetoric and excellent .sentiment in the speech, and that rhetoric and sentiment .are very good ornaments to political discussion. Still, they -cannot, however well managed, do instead of. argument ; and when they are found without it, they are about as useful as a heap of glittering harness without a horse. What the ordinary elector wants to get from Mr. Morley, but what he does not succeed in getting, are answers to two or three plain questions, such as,—" Why ought we to grant Home-rule to Ireland ?" " Why need we not make Irishmen obey the law ?" If we go through Mr. Morley's speech, keeping such questions as these in mind, we shall find very little in the way of answer. The men who want to know why we ought to grant Home-rule, generally want to know, as a preliminary from the Home-rule advocate, why we are only to pay attention to the demands of three millions of the Irish population for dissolving the Legislative Union, and why we are to totally disregard the petition of the other two millions who want to maintain the present system. But even o£ the existence of the difficulty of the two Irelands, Mr.. Morley's speech gives no hint. Then the ordinary man wants to know why under the present system the wrongs of Ireland, cannot be remedied ; and why, because Ireland suffers d from bad legislation in the past, we of the present genera.. tion are to bear the blame. Of answers to these questions, again, there is no trace, unless it is to be found in the remark that English people now see " the injustice, the neglect, the harshness, the tyranny, the oppression that have made that desolate island what it is," To the man hungering for a reason, such rhetoric is mere mockery. He is willing enough to admit that Ireland has been badly. treated in the past; but what he wants to know is, how tbe effects of that ill-treatment can be remedied by the grant of Home-rule. Even if he is willing to believe that a part of the injustice, neglect, harshness, tyranny, or oppression is due to the English connection as it exists at this moment, he desires to be told why the Imperial Parliament is incapable of its removal. But here, again, Mr. Morley has, in fact, nothing with which to satisfy him. If we next try to find. some answer to the question, " Why need not the Irish be made to obey the law hie other folk ?' we shall once more be at fault. The only attempt at an answer afforded by Mr. Morley is the raking-up of some remarks made by one of the Judges of the Exchequer Division, to the effect that certain Resident Magistrates had blundered from ignorance of the technicalities of the law. If Mr. Morley does not know that English Justices, in trying offences under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, often commit just as. great blunders, and that yet it never occurs to any one to declare that therefore Englishmen in general are subject to oppres- sion and injustice such as would justify resistance, his hearers certainly do, and estimate the weight of his illustra- tion accordingly. We fear that the man bent on getting from Mr. Morley some tangible reason against coercion would fail as entirely in his quest as in the case of Home- rule.
In truth, Mr. Morley's speech seems to show that the leading Home.rulers, for some reason or other, are deter- mined not to rely on argument. The only portion of his utterance not devoted to " scoring off " Mr. Chamberlain, expressing general sympathy with the better and more amiable qualities of the Irish race, or denouncing the notion that shop-debts could be put on, an equality with rent in the lightening of a bankrupt's burdens, was that in which he declared that the policy of the Gladstonians was " that laws for the government of Ireland shall be constructed by such men as Mr. Dillon, who believe in their country and love their countrymen, and not by men like Mr. Chamberlain, who despises them." Surely no such statement of policy as this was ever put before the English electors by a responsible statesman. Never before in English politics has the advocacy of a great cause thus died away in a shriek of sentiment. Unless we are much mistaken, these feminine appeals to the feelings will not very greatly sway the electors. We must always remember that one man in every ten of the electors is a quiet, sensible, hard-headed, unimaginative fellow. It is this man who in the end influences his neighbours. From him, arguments founded not on reason but on. mere sentimentality, fall like water from a duck's back. They do not anger or worry him—indeed, he rather likes to listen to them—but they make no impression -whatever. As yet, most of these men among, the working classes have still their minds to make up on the Irish Question. They ask, for more reasons and more argu- ments from both sides. One of the two parties will ultimately satisfy them as to which way the higher interests of the nation, as to which way justice and good government incline, and that party will retain the confidence of the electors of the United Kingdom. It looks, however, at this moment as if, the Home-rule leaders ignored this fact, and were going to let judgment be given against them without argument.
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