TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE USE OF THE NEW FENLIN OUTRAGE.
IT is said to be an ill wind which blows nobody good, and we are not sure that even in this dastardly attempt at Westminster we may not find some room for satisfaction. We believe that it will demonstrate beyond question to the wretched "Invincibles," or whoever they may be who fancy that the Land Act VMS the result, not of the English sense of justice, but of the English terror of Irish outrages, that out- rage, even when it reaches Westminster itself, and threatens every Londoner with the possibility of a violent death, instead of producing more disposition to yield to Irish demands, renders Englishmen less and less disposed to open their minds even to what may be just in those demands, and more in- clined to sustain the Government in its present atti- tude of finality. We have said our say on the Irish debate of Wednesday, and we shall not unsay a word .of it, though we wrote as we did before the outrage of Thursday was known to us. We still hold in the strongest manner that whatever reforms the Government thinks needed in Ireland, they ought to urge on so soon as may be, absolutely without reference either to the monstrous threats of the violent Land-leaguers, or to the passionate criticisms of the violent landowners. They should ignore Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Chaplin with perfect impartiality, and do justice, without relation to the false motives to which on either side that justice may be attributed. Still, we all know that whatever we may regard as "the counsel of perfection," there will be a great effect produced on the temper of the Scotch and English people by such attempts to blow up portions of London as that made on Thursday night; and what we wish to point out is that that effect will not be favourable to the policy of absolute and indifferent justice for which we contend, and will be only too favourable to the policy of convincing the Irish agitators that they gain nothing and lose much by such wicked attempts as that of Thursday. We have been assured over and over again by the Irish party that England never con- cedes the policy of justice except to threats of violence. Well, let them try their own creed by the results of Thursday night's outrage. We venture to predict that it will cure them of that curious and ignorant superstition. We venture to say that, so far as that outrage operates at all, it will operate to harden the hearts of English- men against doing anything which may look like con- cession to terror. We venture to say that Englishmen never have done justice to Ireland in concession to terror ; that the chief difficulty in persuading them to do justice has been all along that they feared lest that justice should look like a con- cession to terror ; and that it took all Mr. Gladstone's eloquence to convince them that they ought to remedy the great national grievances of Ireland with no less earnestness, that cowardly attempts had been made to wring the remedy of those grievances out of them by terror. And now, when they think, —as they justly think,—that a very great and heroic effort has been made to do Ireland justice, the completion of which is only a matter of minor rectifications, so far from being pre- disposed in favour of these minor rectifications by attempts of this kind, they will be strongly predisposed against them, and will say to themselves,—' Let the Irish see what they are likely to gain by this ignoble attempt to wring further concessions from our fears. We followed Mr. Gladstone in a heroic effort to do justice, but if this is the reward, so far from going out of our way to complete what we have done, we will let the cowardly agitators who organise these outrages see that the English people are not the people to be easily intimidated.'
And really, difficult as it is to anticipate anything but evil from these reckless injuries and the serious resentment they excite, we are not sure that some good may not come out of the outrage, if it only convinces these light-headed plotters that they are adopting the very course least likely to lead to the ends they desire. Politicians who know anything have long town that the Irish creed that the fear bred of outrage carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the two Land Acts, was founded in a blunder as disastrous as the human understanding could make. Now, perhaps, the Irish agitators-.if they are capable of learning anything,— will learn this too. They will see that what has resulted from the attempt of Thursday is not dismay and dread, but 'wrath and scorn. They will And the understanding, even d the 112Qtfb friendly English, much less accessible to
reasonable argument than it has been for years past, and they will recognise as the cause of this the malignant attempt to frighten us into concessions. The Fenians may destroy millions' worth of property, and even scores of valuable lives, and yet produce nothing but a more iron determination not to concede anything to such arguments as these. If the Irish agitators had had any true imagination, they would have seen long ago that terror has not even constituted a single element in the complex motives which have converted so many English politicians to the justice of the Irish tenants' case,—that the outrages affected us only as symptoms of a very deep-seated and dangerous disease ; and that it was the wish to cure this disease, not the wish to be able to sleep in peace, which led to the policy of generous and healing legislation. The new outrages, attempted after the most critical remedy in the- policy of justice has been boldly applied, will not produce the same effect on our minds. On the contrary, they will convince many of us that it is even more dangerous to seem to yield to Irish menaces than to seem to neglect them, and that, at all events after applying so great a remedy as the Land Act, it will be best for a time to show the Irish agitators that they can extort nothing more by their crimes. And if the Irish- agitators can be convinced of this, something will really have been done. To convince black-mailers that they will not suc- ceed in wringing black-mail out of their intended victims, is always of some use. There is no particular enjoyment in incur-- ring danger for the purpose of trying to extort what cannot be- extorted ; and that justice to Ireland cannot be extorted from the British people, though it may easily be obtained from them: by appeals to reason and justice, we at least are finally and. absolutely convinced.
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