TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN AT WARRINGTON.
MUCH may be, and will be, pardoned to Mr. Chamberlain for the sake of one division of the powerful speech which he delivered on Tuesday at Warrington. No object of immediate politics is so important as to convince those Irish- men who still possess the power of recognising facts that the British people have not altered their determination, main- tained now for six hundred years, that Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the United Kingdom ; that she cannot be permitted to break up the Monarchy ; and that however large may be the powers conceded to her of local government —and we, for example, wish them to be very large—ultimate authority must remain in an undivided Parliament. Her conviction upon that subject had been gradually growing faint. The Tories, so long the consistent advocates of repression, bad, with a contempt for political principle scarcely exceeded in our age, condescended for the sake of a single election to seem to regard the dismemberment of the King- dom as an open question. They had turned their back on themselves so completely that no one knew how far they would go ; they had sought the Irish vote by unworthy concessions, like their desertion of Lord Spencer ; and their real leader, Lord Randolph Churchill, had met Mr. Parnell's open declaration that his object was independence, with a most significant silence. He at least would not reject on behalf of his party that demand. Moreover, the Irish had some reason to believe that the Opposition also were making the same bid for their vote. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir. Charles Dilke—and, in less formal fashion, Mr. Trevelyan—had uttered sentences which, to excited men, bore the appearance of a readi- ness to compromise. In the circumstances of Ireland, a National Council would be a Parliament in all but name, and would soon become a Parliament in form, and they seemed ready to concede National Councils. The Irish began to think that all power was within their grasp, that both the great parties would sell the future of their country for immediate votes, and that the hour of independence was immediately at hand. It was time to speak out, lest the Seces- sionists should accuse all Liberals of treachery ; and Mr. Cham- berlain was the man to speak. Nobody doubts that he would go as far towards a Democratic organisation of Ireland as it is possible to go with safety. He represents Birmingham, where the Irish are strong. And he notoriously, indeed avowedly, exaggerates the representative side of his duties, and makes of the will of the people a kind of higher law. With all those tempta- tions to silence or to compromise, he has spoken out as clearly as Lord Hartington, and has refused to grant any terms which might suggest that he looked to the secession of Ireland as an endurable result. He declares that Mr. Parnell's demand is fatal " for ever to the hope of maintaining an United King- dom," and that "if these and these alone are the terms upon which Mr. Parnell's support is to be obtained, I will not enter into the competition." If " his claim is conceded, wo should establish within thirty miles of our own shores a new foreign country animated from the outset by unfriendly intentions towards ourselves. Such a policy would, I firmly believe, be disastrous and ruinous to Ireland herself, and would be dangerous to the security of this country ; and, under these circumstances, we are bound to take every step in our power to avoid so great a calamity." That is clear enough ; but Mr. Chamberlain did not stop there. He met Mr. Parnell's threats', as well as his demands ; asked him if the former were not intended for Irish consumption only ? and rising for a moment wholly out of the electioneering atmosphere, looked down on the Three Kingdoms, and told him he forgot the change in the Constitution. " He is face to face with the whole population of England and Scotland, reinforced as it will be by at least one-fifth of the population of Ireland itself ; and to threaten thirty-two millions of people with the vengeance of four millions is a rhetorical artifice which is altogether unworthy of Mr. Parnell's power and influence. I cannot admit that five millions of Irishmen have any greater inherent right to govern themselves without regard to the rest of the community than would the five millions of persons who inhabit the Metropolis. God has made us neighbours, and I would to heaven that our rulers had made us friends. - But as neighbours, neither one nor the other has any right so to rule his own household as to be a source of annoyance or danger to the other." Those sentences, which were rapturously applauded by the great and highly Democratic meeting, reunite the whole Liberal Party, and indeed the whole British people, in an absolute refusal upon any terms whatever to break up the United Kingdom. There never was any doubt about the decision of the Whigs or of the Moderates, and now there is no doubt about that of the Radicals. They will grant every liberty to Ireland which they grant to Britain, even if the liberty looks to the timid a dangerous one ; but till Britain has been conquered they will not grant Home-rule. We be- lieve that the whole people will ratify that decision, that the English and Scotch friends of Secession are not two per cent. of the voting population, that the Tory Party will compel: Lord Randolph Churchill to pronounce definitely for Union,. and that if he refuses he will have to seek a seat in Ireland as an avowed convert to the doctrines of his ally and protector,. Mr. Parnell. The mist has been cleared away, and the Irish people are enabled to recognise that they are face to face with the whole British people, which will grant them every liberty itself possesses, and no more.
This is the really important and satisfactory portion of Mr. Chamberlain's speech, in the rest of which true Liberals can- take but little pleasure. They will be almost disgusted by the avowal which the orator makes, with a certain cynicism, that as there is an election on hand, popular enthusiasm must be excited, that it cannot be excited by a mere demand. for local self-government and the cheap transfer of land, and that he consequently goes farther in his proposals. That is an almost open justification of the policy of bidding for votes which, if it were continued for a few years, would end in an auction by competing parties, in which property, legality, and civilisation itself might be put up for sale. If the creation of enthusiasm is such an object, why not offer a pound a week to every man over sixty at once That, Mr. Chamberlain may be sure, would generate true enthusiasm. Such a policy is a repudiation of leadership altogether, and could not be pursued for any length of time by a man with either a con- science or a conviction. Mr. Chamberlain sees this when his opponents profess the same doctrine, and is savagely, if justly, satirical on the way in which men of the most opposite opinions—Ulster Orangemen and English Roman• Catholics, for example—are suppressing their hostile convic- tions in order that the Tory Party may enjoy power ; but he- does not see that they only carry out the very idea he himself professes. Their bid is their distinctive opinions. A states- man has no more right to- offer to the masses the property of the few, than he has to offer to the few a revival of slavery— which is the robbery of the masses for the benefit of a minority—as the price of their support. Mr. Chamberlain likes to go a little beyond his own meaning, and to seem cynical, and may not intend all he says in these sentences ; but what he says is that enthusiasm must be got up at almost any price. True Liberals will reject that doc- trine, and will look askance at the two special applications which Mr. Chamberlain made of it. He adheres to his pro- ject of graduating taxation—that is, of fining the well-to-do for being well-to-do—though he has apparently learned that it will do little to relieve the burdens of the poor. At least, he says that he proposes it not.for the money it will bring, but because it will rid us of certain objectionable arrangements, connected apparently with the accumulation of land. And he, the representative Democrat, the head of the Party of Advance, actually ventures to plead that 'a graduated Income-tax must be right, because such a tax has pre- cedents and was levied in the Middle Ages. Had he not better renew the Jew-tax, for the same reason ? That really would relieve the burden on the poor, and hurt nobody except a few over-wealthy strangers, and the instinctive conscience of mankind. We are not much afraid, however, of a graduated Income-tax in a country like this, which has become the entrepot of the world because accumu- lation was free; and do not expect to see the Bank of England robbed of half its dividend because, forsooth, the total is so very much. But Mr. Chamberlain throws out a more attractive bait. He renews and formulises his proposal that the Local Councils shall have power to buy land at a low price against the will of its owner, in order that it may be let to the poor, who may thus be tempted to quit the cities and go back to the country. These purchases are to be effected out of rates, which are, be it remem- bered, to be hereafter borne by property ; and the pro- ject, therefore, comes to this. The poor voters are to vote a tax on the landlords and the rich, in order that the land- lords, but not the rich, may be forced to give part of their
property to the poor. We will not say that this is Socialism, because Mr. Chamberlain says he does not care whether it is Socialism or not ; but we will say that it is hopeless injustice, as great injustice as if Mr. Chamberlain were ordered by Par- liament to sell his watch in order that the proceeds might be lent at low interest to such of the poor as have black hair. The whole community, except that wealthy half of it which dwells in towns, is to be loaded with debt and taxes in order that the small section of it which likes digging may be a little more comfortable ! Mr. Chamberlain says good landlords like Lord Tollemache let land in patches even now, and so produce great content, and that is perfectly true ; but what is that to the matter ? Can Mr. Chamberlain not see a difference between his dividing the contents of his purse among the poor, and Parliament snatching his purse, and nobody else's purse, for the same purpose? Indeed, it is to be snatched, not for the poor, but for such of the poor as like a particular variety of severe and not very remunerative work.
The project is impracticable, and we find it difficult to believe that so able an administrator has really thought it out. He must have been beguiled by some information as to Swiss Communal property and the way it is applied to the relief of the poor. It is so applied ; but then it is ancient property used for the benefit of all, and not property purchased out of rates and used for the benefit of a sub-section of a class. He might as well propose to re-establish hereditary pensions, as he will find when the ratepayers have begun to consider his pro-. posals serious ; yet he actually threatens, if Liberals reject this crude scheme, to secede with all his followers from the party. We trust that this threat, like Mr. Parnell's, is but " a rhe- torical artifice," and that he does not intend to reduce the most active and therefore valuable section of the Liberals to tem- porary powerlessness ; but if he does, there is nothing for it but to endure for a time the consequent Tory victory. The Liberals are not going, for the sake of power in one particular Parliament, either to give the labourers, or rent to the labourers, three acres of land a-piece at other people's expense. They will make it easy for the labourers to purchase three acres, and they may insist that a house without a half-acre is not in the country a legally healthy house ; but they certainly will go no further, even if the consequence is exclusion from power until the people once more recover their moral sense.
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