THE UPSHOT OF THE IRISH RECRIMINATIONS. A FTER reading the Parnellites'
attacks on the Anti- Parnellites, and the Anti-Parnellites' replies, and the Parnellites' rejoinder, and observing all the charac- teristically violent incidents of the contest, we are tempted to recall that exhortation of Demosthenes to which Pro- fessor Butcher refers in his fascinating book on " Some Aspects of the Greek Genius," and say to our Gladstonian antagonists : " In God's name, I beg of you to think." " The spoken word," as Professor Butcher justly remarks, "does . not always set men thinking. The object of some speeches, —of many political speeches,—was to prevent men from thinking, to administer a narcotic to the reason,"—or, what is the same thing, a stimulant to the passions. A vast proportion. of the speaking in Ireland for the last twelve months, has been of a kind to befog the reason and to induce an appeal from the reason to the shillelagh. But whatever effect the political war of the last twelve months has had in Ireland, surely it ought at least to have in England the effect of inducing the partisans of the Irish revolution to think what all this fury means. For it does mean some- thing, and something very important. It means that Irish- men who can hardly find words adequate to express the tenuity of the political differences which divide them from each other, cannot even pretend to find words adequate to express the depth of their reciprocal hatred and contempt ; that neither party trusts the honesty of the other party; that neither party trusts the English ally with whom they would necessarily have to act ; and that both have been intriguing to find some basis of agreement by which Mr. Gladstone might be temporarily hoodwinked in order that his demand for Mr. Parnell's retirement might be virtually, though not obviously, evaded. No one who has read the correspondence between Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Redmond will question any one of these inferences except the last. And we think that even those who question the last, if they will only " think," will not question it long. It is true that Mr. O'Brien passionately denies, what Mr. Redmond as passionately asserts, that there was any mention of the temporary character of Mr. Parnell's retirement from the chairman- ship of the Parliamentary party during the negotiations at Boulogne. But he does not deny, what we think is of much more importance than the question as to the tem- porary or permanent character of the retirement, that Mr. Parnell was to retain the headship of the National League, and to be supported at a formal meeting of that League by both sections of the Irish Party. He does deny, however, that Mr. Parnell was to be allowed a veto on any Home-rule Bill which Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet might ulti- mately produce, and on all other Irish legislation. There seems to be, nevertheless, strong evidence that this veto was freely offered to Mr. Parnell by the Anti-Parnellites as a set-off against his deposition from the chairmanship of the Parliamentary party ; and if so, it makes the dispute as to the " temporary " character of Mr. Parnell's retirement perfectly frivolous. A man of Mr. Parnell's character, retaining the headship of the National League with the formal consent of the Anti-Parnellites, and pos- sessing by the spontaneous offer of his opponents, a veto on all Bills proposed for the purpose of carrying out the Irish revolution, would clearly have been deposed only in name, even from the chairmanship of the Parliamentary party. He would have been the pivot on which the whole Irish struggle would have turned ; he would have been the leader of the Irish nation ; he would have been the arbiter to whom all Mr. Gladstone's proposals must have been ultimately referred. Of course, therefore, his nominal retirement from the chairmanship of the Parliamentary party could only have been temporary. It would have been as absurd to attempt to carry a measure which Mr. Parnell had been conceded the right to veto, without Mr. Parnell's consent, as it would be for the Council of India to carry a Bill which the Viceroy could veto, without his consent. That being so, the instalment of a lay figure in his place as the Chairman of the Parliamentary party would have been a matter of no consequence at all ; and Mr. Glad- stone, if he had been wise, would have been one of the first to desire to see Mr. Parnell back in his place as leader of the Irish Party in Parliament no less than as leader of the Irish nation (which he would never have ceased to be). What possible benefit could there have been in interposing a dummy between the man whose veto on any legislation was final, and the English Minister ? If the veto were once conceded to Mr. Parnell, the utter unreality of the pre- tended retirement follows at once. What was being con- trived was not a mode of meeting Mr. Gladstone's terms, but a mode of evading them without seeming to him to evade them, though it must have been very soon discovered that evasion was the real object in view. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon were both in that case proposing to replace Mr. Parnell in power, but at the same time to humour Mr. Gladstone by appearing to concede his demand without con- ceding it. In other words, as we have said, neither Irish party trusts the other ; each of them denies the honesty of their opponents ; while men belonging to both of them conspire to hoodwink Mr. Gladstone as to the nominal and unreal character of their apparent willingness to comply with his demand. A more conspicuous case of " diamond cut diamond" was never illustrated in a political negotiation. What, then, is the total upshot of these revelations even for a Gladstonian who will comply with the exhortation to think seriously of the Irish political phenomena of the last year ? Why, this, that two parties whose substantial differences of principle and judgment are not appreciable, are ready to break each other's heads, and do break each other's heads in scores, for differing slightly as to the extent to which it is desirable to go in order to save the self- respect of the English leader. They will fight, like the Montagues and Capulets, for a less trivial cause of difference than because one of them bites his thumb at another ; but they will combine on occasion to cheat the common friend or common enemy,—the latter seems the better phrase,—the English leader who is pledged to obtain a victory for them both, if he possibly can. Now can any serious politician honestly maintain that this is a state of things which justifies a sober-minded party in handing over Ireland, with all its intestine quarrels, to an Irish Legislature and Administration ? Neither of the parties which are now at each others' throats was in the least degree concerned with Mr. Parnell's short- comings, whether in relation to private morality or public policy. Not one of the Irish faction, apparently, wished to depose him on any ground but that of private resent- ment. All of one party, and several of the other, would willingly have kept him virtually at the helm, so long as they could have persuaded Mr. Gladstone that he was in effect superseded. Yet in spite of this complete indifference to the grounds on which Mr. Gladstone asked for his retirement, and in spite of this large measure of agreement as to the desirability of retaining him virtually at the helm, they were willing and even eager to quarrel furiously, and induce their followers to inflict scores on scores of bodily injuries, only to express the anger with which they regard each others' charges and recriminations about personal questions of no conceivable moment except so far as this, that they imply the deepest possible dis- trust of each other. Is a country honeycombed by such distrusts, and yet always willing to combine to cheat even their nominal friends in England, fit to be trusted with a separate political Constitution, and the conduct of most delicate relations with English parties and English states- men ? Even the most enthusiastic Gladstonians who will obey the injunction to think what all this acrimonious controversy really implies, must, we believe, eventually answer, as the Liberal Unionists have always answered, with a decisive and peremptory " No !"
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