THE NEW UNIONIST DANGER. T HE Duke of Devonshire's speech at
Yeovil was most timely. There is no party which is in more need of a warning of the danger of being thrown off its guard by the sudden substitution of a Rosebery for a, Gladstone Government than the Liberal Unionists. The Conserva- tives are not, we imagine, in any equal peril, and as for the Gladstonians, they have both the Irish Party and the Welsh Party to impress upon them that if they give up either Home-rule or Welsh Disestablishment, they will lose their majority in Parliament, and probably in the country also. But the Liberal Unionists have more to make them forgetful of their first duty and of the arts by which they may be persuaded to fancy that they may safely relax their vigilance. Mr. Gladstone was the great author of the Home-rule Bill, and it was he who gave the principle of its life to the late Government. It is very natural that some of the Unionists should suppose that with Mr. Gladstone's resignation the great strain of the situation is relaxed, and that what he could not effect, Lord Rosebery will hardly have either the power or the wish to effect. It is quite possible that he may not have the wish to effect it ; it is certain that he will not have the same eager wish to give the Irish people a Government of their own which Mr. Gladstone had. But it is no paradox at all to say that that very indifference of his as to the end may give him a far greater control of the means, and may make it all the more inevitable that he should, whether voluntarily or reluctantly, use the means. Nobody doubted Mr. Gladstone's serious purpose to establish an Irish Parliament on College Green and an Irish Administration in the Castle. All the Irish Parity distrust Lord Rosebery's purpose, and will watch his policy with the most lively suspicion. If he shows the least symptoms of giving them the go-by, or giving them a sham self-government, he will be warned by some very narrow majority of his danger, and if he ap- pears to surrender to the Unionists, he will be gone in a moment. Nor will the danger end even there. When the appeal to the country on such a, crisis as that comes, there will be far more danger than ever that the issue will not be fairly put. Numbers of Unionists may then- vote for Lord Rosebery, on the assumption that he really repre- -seats their policy without having any dear evidence that he does represent it. He may have alienated the Irish extremists without having secured the final defeat of any .compromise with the Irish Party. The only security now for the Union, in the only true and safe sense of the word, is a still stricter alliance 'between the Liberal Unionists and the Conservative Party. What we must aim at now is, as the Duke of Devonshire says, a final and fatal blow to this -most insidious policy. We want the whole country to know that the constituencies of Great Britain will have none of it ; that we intend to keep the Union as it is ; that we will give the Irish people local self-government in pre- cisely the same sense in which we give the people of Eng- dand and Scotland local self-government, and in no other -sense. If we leave the Irish people in any doubt as to our firm determination to that effect, we shall only have scotched the policy that we ought to have killed outright, for there will never be such another -opportunity of killing it. What we dread most is not Lord Rosebery's success in carrying anything like Mr. Gladstone's policy now. That is, we believe, quite -out of the question. What we dread is this,—that he will lose the confidence of the Irish party ; and that just ibecause he loses the confidence of the Irish party, le will gain the confidence of a great many Liberal .Unionists, and perhaps even some Conservatives, who 4:night secure him a majority at the next General Elec- tion, and that he may then propose and carry a com- promise which would betray England without satisfying Zreland, and sacrifice the Union without giving Ireland what she expects.
We must remember that Lord Rosebery is bitten by the idea of uniting the Colonies in an Imperial Federation, in which some weak-kneed Unionists think that it would be safe to find a place for Ireland. That seems to us the most dangerous of all the dreams with which it is now sought to bewilder true Unionists. We want as much of a cordial alliance with the Colonies for mutually beneficial purposes as we can get ; but we are perfectly well aware that we cannot get any alliance that will be very close or effective -with our most powerful and. distant Colonies, whose intermits and dangers are very different indeed from our -own. And with Ireland we want something very different indeed from even the closest alliance. We want Union, -union closer, not laxer, than that of the last ninety-four years ; Union that will secure I not merely the interests of the Empire, but also the interests of the Irish -Protestants; Union that will secure not only the interests -of the Irish Protestants, but the interests of the loyal Irish Catholics, whose true interests are not always to be • identified with those of the Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite -Catholics. In one word, we want to make Ireland an ...organic part of the United Kingdom, and to draw closer, sot to relax, that bond which Mr. Balfour tightened for us in his great administration of the Irish Secretaryship, -and which, we are thankful to say, Mr. John Morley has not as yet materially loosened, though he has made one very unfortunate, not to say deplorable, selection of an Irish county Lord-Lieutenant that has alienated many loyal subjects in that county. Liberal Unionists will be -false to all their principles if they are not fully on their guard against the great peril of treating Ireland as they • treat distant Colonies. We need an Ireland that shall be to us as much closer than the Channel Islands, as Ireland is more important than any of them, not more independent. Cord Rosebery is, we fear, the very Prime Minister who -may do, partly without intending it, an even greater mis- -chief than that svhi3h it was Mr. Gladstone's devout wish to bring about. We say a greater mischief, because if Mr. Gladstone could have carried Home-rule for Ireland -the would at least have carried it against the will of all true Unionists, and would have set all true Unionists on -.the qui vise as to the perils of the situation. What we fear -from Lord Rosebery is that, by his well-known languor in the cause, and his ardour for Imperial Federation, he -may allay the fears of the Unionists, and so prepare the way for a policy which would alienate Ulster, disappoint the Anti-Parnellites, and betray Great Britain—all at one fell stroke.
The only safe policy in a situation so critical is to draw even closer the alliance between the Liberal Unionists and the Conservatives. We want it to be known every- where that the Union as it is, without any sort of conces- sion to Ireland except the concession of an honest Local Government Bill, is what the Liberal Unionists want, and that so long as that is not absolutely secure, they will co- operate with the Conservatives, and co-operate with the utmost loyalty and zeal, to make it secure. Let us have no tampering at all with that policy. Our differences with the Conservatives shrink into perfect insignificance compared with our differences with any party by which a complete and thorough Union is not regarded as the true ideal of our relations with Ireland.
Previous page
