MR. GLADSTONE AT GUILDHALL.
THERE is a very natural tendency to make the annual speeches at Guildhall as cheerful as it is possible to make them ; but we do not think that Mr. Gladstone's speeches there can be reproached with optimism. The speech of 1880 was, in reality, a forecast of calamity in Ireland. The speech of 1881 was more hopeful, not because violence had then begun to abate, but because the farmers had begun to pay their rents, and Mr. Gladstone foresaw what has actually happened,—that the great amendment just effected in the land laws of Ireland would bring the reasonable part of the population to their senses. In that confidence, and in that alone, he anticipated the improvement which,—though the cessation of violence was delayed for four or five months,-- has now more than fulfilled his anticipation ; so that he was able to announce on Thursday that the number of agrarian crimes (including threatening letters), which had been in October, 1881, as many as 511, had in October, 1882, sunk to 111. This shows conclusively, we think, that Mr. Gladstone's forecast of last year was not sanguine, or, if sanguine, was san- guine only as the husbandman is sanguine who anticipates that the seed he has sown will bear its natural fruit. And with this justification for the hopes of 1881 to produce, we do not think that the hopes for Ireland expressed by the Prime Minister this year can be regarded as too sanguine. "There may be in Ireland," he said, "or there may be in England, or in Scot- land,—in Ireland, probably more, as the result of the calamities of its previous history,—there may be extravagant opinions and desires that can never be fulfilled. But if our Irish fellow- subjects are but content to walk in the ways of legality,"— and Mr. Gladstone had just expressed his strong belief that they were becoming more and more content every day to walk in these ways,—" this country is free enough, and strong enough, and generous enough to entertain in a friendly and kindly spirit every demand that they can make." No doubt, this will be taken by the critics who are never able to hear a single impressive sentence from Mr. Gladstone without distorting its meaning, and making of it either a threat or a bribe, as a renewal of that. bid for Home-rule which his speech on Wednesday in the House of Commons was declared to embody. The truth, however, obviously is that Home-rule, in the sense attached to it by the Repealers of the Union, is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as among those "extra- vagant opinions and desires that can never be fulfilled ;" but that what he thinks might be easily fulfilled is that legitimate aspiration of Irishmen for as complete a control of their own affairs, and as adequate a system of local administration, as the Scotch have already,—an aspiration of which he is not now for the first time, or even for the second or third time, admitting the iierfect reasonableness, since he admitted and supported it very strongly, as we have formerly pointed out in these columns, as long ago as 1871, in a speech on the subject made at Aberdeen. Nothing is more curious than the shortness of memory which seems to characterise the fierce foes of Mr. Gladstone. They
are always attributing to him, not simply the most audacious designs, but also the most wonderful changes of front, which turn out to be exactly the reverse,—reiterations of an old position. It is very funny to observe that Mr. Gladstone's recom- mendation to the Irish to submit their grievances fairly to Parlia- ment, and his strong expression of belief that Parliament will fairly consider and remedy those grievances, without offer- ing any excuse for the strong measure of Disunion, so far from having been put forward by Mr. Gladstone for the first time this week in his speeches of Wednesday and Friday, was virtually contained in the address at Aberdeen in 1871, on the occasion of Mr. Isaac Butt's return for Limerick. In- deed, the reason why Mr. Gladstone's speeches are so often hopeful, without being too sanguine, is that be developes his policy so steadily on the old lines, and never executes those curious volteface movements by which Mr. Disraeli's only successful Reform Bill was transformed from a Conserva- tive into a Radical measure. We believe in Mr. Gladstone's auguries for Ireland, because Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy has steadily grown from the root-idea which he announced in 1869, and has never threatened the unity of the British Empire.
That the view which Mr. Gladstone takes of our foreign affairs will not be considered by our more gloomy prophets optimistic, we should be sorry to deny. But by the nation at large,—who see only the success with which wo have exacted from Turkey the fulfilment of two of her en- gagements, and the rapid growth of our influence with the Porte since the suppression of Arabi's rebellion,—it will certainly not be thought at all too sanguine. It is perfectly true, of course, that the supreme difficulty in the re- settlement of Egypt, so far from having been solved, has, so far as we know, not yet been even attacked ; and that on Lord Dufferin's clearness of sight and strength of purpose, our success or failure must probably depend. But the fact remains, that we have succeeded in effecting settle- ments between Turkey and Greece, and between Turkey and Montenegro, which two years ago threatened Europe with war ; and that if we do not now find for Egypt a political refoinze as promising as the Treaty of Berlin has secured for Eastern Roumelia, it will not be for want of power to dictate any organisation on which we decide, but solely from the greater complexity of the case. Still, whatever can be done in Egypt by the most disinterested desire to promote the good government of the country, without sharing ourselves in the result, except so far as the safety of the Isthmus route may reward us for our pains, we may be quite certain that Mr. Gladstone's Government will do. And if that be not all we hope, it will, at any rate, be a great deal more than we should have ventured to hope a year ago, because it will not be embarrassed by the inconvenient interference of FrenchBondholdere, and of a French Government which holds Bondholders in awe. Hopeful as the Prime Minister's speech at Guildhall on Thursday was, it was the hopefulness of sober calculation and not the hopefulness of a fool's paradise, which it so skilfully expressed.
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