LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLADSTONE'S IRISH POLICY.
[To THZ EDITOR OF THE " SPECT•TOR.".1 SIN,—Whatever may be the result of the General Election, Mr. Gladstone's exposition of his Irish policy, given at Edin- burgh on June 30th, will continue to be a document of the highest interest and importance. Have you room in your -columns for the following observations upon it P (1.) It seems to me to be worthy of notice that Mr. Glad- stone still holds by bis Bill of 1886. The exclusion of repre- sentatives of Ireland from the British Parliament was felt to be a vital element of the policy of that Bill. What this .exclusion meant has been clearly seen by the English people. It was cutting Ireland adrift. Mr. Parnell was in favour of it. The English Gladstonians have been declaring emphati- cally against it. They will not have Home-rule of that sort. Representatives of Ireland are to be retained at Westminster in order that Ireland may still be under the control of the British Parliament. Mr. Gladstone "defers to the voice of public opinion," hitt he retains his own view. "That was not our opinion, but it was an opinion with respect to which we felt that the country was entitled to impose it upon us if it thought fit." Mr. Gladstone is ready to try the task imposed upon him, and to surrender his own deliberate judgment. The statesman whom his followers are commis- sioning to frame for them a scheme of Home-rule for Ireland, is one who still believes in a Home-rule policy which in their view would be disastrous.
(2.) However disastrous that policy would have been, it had
the advantage of being summary and workable. It might have been very bad for Ireland to be left to itself; there might have been a risk of war between Great Britain and Ireland; but it was a simple policy. Ireland fara da se. In the plan of giving Ireland a Parliament and an Executive Ministry, and at the same time retaining the control of the British Parliament and Ministry over Irish affairs, Mr. Glad- stone admits there are serious difficulties, of which he offers us as yet no solution. Are there to be as many representatives of Ireland as now ? Why not P The English electors have not the fewer representatives in Parliament because they have County Councils ; and the Pall Mall Gazette has lately said that the Unionists, in accepting the London County Council and objecting to such a Parliament as the Gladstonian candi- dates intend to give to Ireland, are straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Mr. Gladstone hopes that the control to be exercised by the British Parliament over Ireland will be no more real than that exercised by it over the great Colonies. But apart from other distinctions, there would be this essential difference, that the Colonies have no representatives at West- minster. With representatives of the " implacable " Irish Unionists in the House of Commons, with taxes paid to the English Government, with the Customs and the military force of Ireland under the administration of Great Britain, with the assumption that the British Parliament is to protect every Irishman from wrong, bow are Irish affairs to be kept for a single week out of the House of Commons P (3.) I think that it is in this speech for the first. time that Mr. Gladstone has admitted that the Customs belong properly to Irish affairs. At the same time, the object of Home-rule now, as in 1886, is "to give Ireland full and effective control of her own properly local affairs." Now, the English electors have been incessantly assured that the Irish are to be forbidden to manage their Customs. How are the two conditions to be reconciled P Mr. Gladstone's answer is, that the Irish Nationalists are such patterns of sweet reasonableness, of Christian delight in conceding, that they themselves ask to have their rights denied them. 0 sancta simplicitas ! Another right which I suppose they will prefer to have denied to them, is the command of a force necessary for the preserving of order. From the character Mr. Gladstone gives of the im- placable Irish Unionists, he must expect that they will want a good deal of coercing, and though he is pleased to call them "a handful of persons," they are supposed to amount to a third part of the population. Is there a more elementary duty of a national Government than to keep order P Is there a more obvious right, a more indispensable power, of such a Government, than the command of a sufficient force for this purpose P In laying down that the Irish Parliament and Ministry are to have the full and effective control of Irish affairs, the Gladstonians are announcing that the control of the Customs and of a military force is only to be withheld from them until they choose to demand it.
(4). In the Local Government Bill for Ireland recently sub- mitted to the House of Commons by Lord Salisbury's Govern- ment, some provisions were inserted which were intended to protect minorities, and to reconcile the holders of property to the concession of considerable powers to the people. These provisions made the Bill, in Mr. Gladstone's judgment, "the most wanton and the grossest insult ever offered by a Legis- lature to a people." But what were these provisions to the restrictions which Mr. Gladstone is ready to introduce into a Bill professing to give the rights of self-government to a free people P Here is a truer case of the gnat and the camel. Mr. Gladstone's excuse is, that not the smallest objection has been made to these restrictions by the Nationalists. If these lambs are so much in love with denials said restrictions, why were they as wolves to the innocent safeguards of the Local Government Bill? The explanation is obvious : they refused the Local Government Bill because they hoped to get Mr. Gladstone's Home-rule Bill. They are ready to accept that, however full of insults to a free nation, because they can reasonably count on obtaining very quickly from a Gladstonian Government all the powers to which Mr. Gladstone admits them to be en. titled.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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