TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOME-RULERS AGAINST HOME-RULE. THE Unionists need not be too anxious to serve their own cause. Their foes are serving it a great deal better than they could do. No Jnionist could plead his cause so well as the Home-rulers plead it for him. The other day Sir E. S. Reed seemed to take a pride in showing that the Home-rule Constitution which was definitely rejected in 1886 even by the most eager Home-rulers, is the one solution which is the least intolerable of any. Now that he has said his say, he is followed by others, who all contribute something to the vast accumulation of arguments against Home- rule. On Saturday and Monday, for instance, Mr. Healy was speaking at the Irish Institute, Newcastle ; and what was the main theme of his disquisition ?—why, the immediate and considerable cost of Home-rule to England. Whatever else was to be done, whatever else was to be paid by Great Britain in weakness, in incon- venience, in sacrifices of all kinds, for the Parliament and Administration to be set up in Dublin,—this, at least, he said, was quite essential, that we must pay handsomely for it in hard cash. 'Ireland now pays about one-twelfth of the common expenses of the United Kingdom. In 1886, Mr. Gladstone contended that that was too much, and pro- posed to reduce it to one-fifteenth. Now, said Mr. Healy, the Irish Members, disposed as they are to trust Mr. Gladstone's good intentions and generosity in the most absolute way, are fully determined on one thing, that the reduction to one-fifteenth is abso- lutely insufficient, and that we must pay a great deal more than that for this great privilege of all but severing the tie that binds Ireland to Great Britain. In other matters possibly, Mr. Gladstone may be generous enough according to Mr. Healy ; but in this matter the old Parliamentary hand will probably need a great deal of spurring on. He must be forced to be more generous. He may be liberal enough constitutionally, but he is pretty sure not to be liberal enough in unloosing the purse-strings. And we are positively assured that Ireland will not accept Home-rule as a gift, unless she is bribed to do so by a large sum down. When the organ- grinder was offered half-a-crown to go away from the neighbourhood of a house in which he was making a miserable invalid still more miserable by his organ- grinding, he looked disdainfully at the coin and said : " Don't you suppose I knows the wally of peace and quiet- ness ? " It is just the same with Mr. Healy and the Anti- Parnellites. They not only will not take Home-rule with the gratitude that they were expected to show for it, they will not take it at all, unless they have, in addition, a good round sum given them to go. So says Mr. Healy. We are not only to give them in constitutional rights all they ask for, we must accompany the concession by a good, large douceur, or they will stay and plague us as much as ever. That is Mr. Healy's promise. Ireland is asking more and more each day for the price of her departure ; and yet she is also doing her best to make it clear that when she goes, she will go not only with a good settlement upon her, but with plenty of power to ask for more afterwards, and to compel us to give more. On that side of the question Mr. Healy holds his peace. He trusts Mr. Gladstone, he says. And we agree that he can hardly trust him too much. But as regards the cash down, he must speak out. If others are disposed to feel a delicacy about it, he will not. He knows the value of peace and quietness. He will not be content with a modest gift. He insists on a good substantial bribe for taking himself and his country- men off. Well, is not that a threat that should help the Unionists, who do not intend that Ireland should take herself off at all, much more than anything Unionists can say would help them ?
But though Mr. Healy is silent as to the other details of the Home-rule scheme, there are other Home-rulers who are not silent. Mr. Wallace, the Member for East Edinburgh, and Mr. John Redmond, the leader of the Parnellites, take up the theme which Mr. Healy drops. They say nothing of the cash down, but between them they teach us a great deal of what the Irish Home-rulers are exorbitant enough to ask as the means of screwing further concessions out of us after they have gone away, if ever they do go away, with a large bribe in their pockets. Mr. Wallace is, as we have said, a Scotch Member, and he is chiefly occupied in giving his grounds for fearing that if Irishmen leave us to transact their own- Irish affairs in the privacy of Dublin, and yet retain their seats at Westminster as well, by way of showing that the United Kingdom still exists in form, though it is to be dis- united in reality,—(and this is the modern form of the pro- posal),—Scotland will suffer grievously. Mr.Wallace is very pathetic about the difficulty Scotch Members have always- had in getting Parliament to consider their grievances. Yet he evidently has no good opinion of the cry for Scotch Home-rule, or for Home-rule All Round. Scotchmen are canny. They do not want to give up a bird in the hand for two in the bush, especially when the bird in the hand is a goose that lays golden eggs, and the two in the bush are wild geese which will probably fly away without laying eggs at all. Scotchmen know what the Union is worth to them, and they do not know what they may not have to sacrifice for Home-rule All Round. Therefore the cry of Scotch Home- rule has a very dubious and faint popularity in Scotland, and Scotch Members are not at all disposed to give up their grasp on the solid structure of English power and wealth in order to secure it. In the meantime, they are as Mr. Wallace frankly confesses, horribly afraid of the results likely to follow from letting the Irishmen settle Irish affairs for themselves in Ireland, and also letting them come here to settle Scotch and English affairs for us in England. Mr. Wallace,—knowing as he does the genius of Irish Members for worry, when worry serves their country's interests,—is in great fear that the Irish repre- sentatives returned to the Parliament at Westminister will use their power against Scotch interests with little sympathy for Scotland, and little scruple for the mischief they may do in Scotland, whenever they think it likely that by doing so they can promote any local Irish interest. To the remark that they can do that as it is, he replies that now they are checked by considering the consequences which may result from Scotch Members being prejudiced against Irish measures, but that the moment that con- sideration is swept away, Scotland may really have very much to fear from the interference of Irish Members with Scotch measures. This is the reply that we ourselves have often made to the fallacious statement that Ireland can do no more harm by the votes of her Members after Irish Home- rule has been carried, than she does now. She may do a. great deal more harm. Now she is obliged to admit the force of the consideration "do ut des." But directly this motive for reasonableness on her part is removed, the danger to British interests will begin. And Mr. Redmond frankly admits that this is the reason why Irish Members must and do cling to their right of interfering in the Imperial Parliament. The Parliament of Westminster is to retain, he says, its right of reviewing Irish legislation and ad- ministration, and of overruling it. It is, therefore, of the very first importance that the Irish Members should be present to defend their country's legislation and adminis- tration, and to obtain for it all the English and Scotch support which they can. They will not be able to secure that support unless they can make themselves formidable. And they can only make themselves formidable by showing their English and Scotch allies that if Ireland is deserted at a pinch by the English and Scotch Gladstonians, the English and Scotch Gladstonia,ns will be deserted at a pinch by the Irish Home-rulers, In other words, the only thing that Mr. Wallace complains of,—the liability to be check- mated by the Irish Members, not because the Scotchmen's cause is bad, but because local Irish interests being relegated to Dublin, the only consideration which will determine the Irish Members' votes will be entirely alien to the merits or demerits of the particular issue underdiscussion,—is just the political ground for clinging to the anomalous representa- tion of Ireland in a Parliament which will neither tax Irish- men nor (in general) even govern their political and social life. Mr. Wallace is, he declares, utterly devoted to the cause of Irish Home-rule, if only it can be carried without its vari- ous inconveniences. He would not so much mind about dis- memberment or disintegration, or the various larger issues. He would run many risks to get rid of the Irish Members and of the Irish business. But then, his Gladstonian colleagues will not run those risks ; and Mr. Wallace does not choose to run those smaller local risks which the intervention of Irish Members in local Scotch reforms would involve. Hence, he quite agrees with Sir E. J. Reed that the price to be paid for Irish Home-rule,- the price of seating Irish Members in the Parliament of Westminster without having any local Irish business to discuss,—is too great. On the whole, then the English Home-rulers are beginning to cry out that if they cannot both eat the cake and have it, they would rather not have it at all. We are very much obliged to them for putting the Unionist case so strongly. They are our most impartial and most irresistible advocates. They would like Irish Home- rule exceedingly, but they insist that it must be granted under conditions which we all know to be practically impos- sible. They see it too. But now they must choose between the Home-rule they would like, and the conditions which they do not like. We think we see that before long the English and Scotch Home-rulers of Sir Edward Reed's and Mr. Wallace's type will be obliged to confess that they had much better give up Home-rule altogether,—that that is the only way out of the difficulty.
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