TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MITCHELSTOWN INCIDENT.
THEIR present close intercommunion with Parnellites seems to deprave the very judgment of some English Radicals. We question if in the worst periods of our modern history they have ever displayed the fierce sympathy with lawlessness which has been manifested over the regrettable incident at Mitchelstown. The facts of that incident, though furiously contested, lie in the main upon the surface. A meeting was arranged for Friday at Mitchelstown, which even Parnellites would hardly deny was intended to encourage resistance to the law, and to support its popular opponent, Mr. O'Brien. The authorities, in pursuance of their duty of obtaining accurate information, sent two reporters of their own to record what might be said, and so, in the event of legal proceedings, avoid the contest which always arises as to the exact words employed. They had exactly the same right to send them as any other citizens—as the proprietors of the Times, for instance, or the managers of United Ireland—and their reporters were as much within their legal privilege as Mr. Labouchere or Mr. Dillon. They were citizens attending an open meeting. The crowd, how- ever, refused them their right, and when the police endeavoured to protect it—surely their most ordinary duty—attacked them with heavy stones and formidable bludgeons. Among the crowd were many countrymen, some of them mounted, sent up by the branches of the National League, whose orders are published in the Times of Monday, and these men, as bold as the police, as strong, a hundred times more numerous, and as well armed—for the blackthorn is a match for the baton, and the police do not use stones—beat them, with many wounds, back to barracks. There the police had rifles, they being in Ireland a civil soldiery ; and smarting with their defeat, expecting an attack on their barracks, and bound by their duty to disperse the crowd, they used them, killing three persons, one on the spot, whereupon the mob dispersed, and the town sank into its accustomed order. The responsible Minister, on official information before him, declares that the firing was in strict self-defence, that the barracks were attacked, and that isolated policemen left outside were in danger of their lives ; but those statements are blankly denied by his opponents, among whom Mr. Labonchere, the English Rochefort, is the most conspicuous. The truth can only be ascertained by evidence taken on oath before the coroner ; but in any case, the fact remains that three men were killed by the executive agents of the people—for that is what policemen are in a country governed like the United Kingdom—after they themselves had been stoned off the place where they were doing their duty. The occurrence in both its aspects—the defeat of the police as well as the loss of three lives—is to be deeply regretted and carefully investigated ; but it affords no justification what- ever for the burst of almost insane vituperation and malignity by which it has been followed.
That Irish journalists and Members belonging to the stronger side—for in Ireland it is the Parnellites, not the Constitu- tionalists, who are strong—should be angry, and should scream aloud in their anger, is perfectly natural. We do not impute to them that they plan collisions, for that crime, besides being in excess of any criminality they are likely to be guilty of, is not required in order to explain their conduct. Their whole theory is that the police and soldiers, and all who support order in Ireland, are not the agents of the people at all, but of a foreign and oppressive Government ; that they have no moral rights whatever, not even the right to resist when they are stoned ; and that, consequently, in using their arms they are guilty of violent oppression, which the speakers are disposed, in their exaggerative way, to describe as minder. It is of the national genius for Irishmen to express themselves Ossianically, and though it is needful to discount their utterances, it is use- less to object to what is, in part, only an instinctive method of making themselves heard. The naturally feeble always scream. Irish Extremists, though themselves singularly tolerant of wounds and death inflicted by their followers, can hardly be expected to approve action on the part of the police which endangers their own lives and defeats their own men and their own plans for resisting the " foreign " law. Those excuses cannot, however, be made for English Radicals, whether journalists or Members. Not content with demanding investigation on oath, in which, if they disbelieve the responsible Minister, they are entirely right, they, before the investigation has commenced, declare that the "provoca- tion "—the despatch of reporters—was intended to lead to' blood, that the police are murderers, and that the Govern- ment is a Government of assassination. The killing of three persons is called a "massacre ;" the crowd of bludgeon-men and mounted countrymen, so far outnumbering the police, is called " defenceless ;" and the Government is accused of triumphing because "it is two corpses to the good." It is insinuated, nay, it is said, that they wished to give the people a bloody lesson, and are determined to govern Ireland after the Continental fashion. These utterances do not come from street orators, or even from those evening journalists who are introducing American exaggeration into. discussion without the American sense of humour ; but they come from Members of Parliament, and from one or the gravest, and formerly one of the most coldly judicious, organs of Liberal opinion. It is simply impossible to believe that the writers in the Daily News are, in using language till lately punishable bylaw, only playing a party game, simulating an indignation they do not feel, and pumping up passion in order that the people, grown passionate, may forget, in a storm of angry pity, the commonest rules of justice. They must believe their own case, in the main at least ; and what a deprava- tion of judgment does such an admission suggest! Those who- use such language must have allowed their minds to be reduced to a state in which they can believe that a Government elected by the people is so wicked and savage, that, in the teeth of its own direct interests, it has prompted its agents to murder innocent. men ; and that this is so palpable, that investigation is not. needful before publicly expressing that monstrous conclusion. When Tories are accused of conniving at murder, there is no* necessity for evidence or for suspending judgment. This is-
the very madness of party feeling, and the fact that such a conclusion can be honestly arrived at is proof of the deep. injury which the Irish controversy has inflicted on the political sense of Englishmen. The very faculty of judicial considera- tion seems to have disappeared from among Radicals, and to have been replaced by a fanatic conviction that until the Parnellites govern Ireland, the Government of the United Kingdom must by the necessity of the case be composed of criminals.
We write in pure sorrow, and not in anger; for this new spirit does not threaten any party or any Administration so much as the very existence of a governing power. Whether government rests on force or not, it is certain that any Government must be aided by force, that the freest of democracies will be forcibly resisted occasionally by the bad, the discontented, or the ignorant, and that on such occasions it must, in the last resort,. slay in defence of order. If not, the anarchists, who are fettered by no such scruples, will in the end, and very quickly, destroy not only all possibility of government, but all possibility of the existence of civilised society. Only the criminal who will kill will then wield effective power. If, therefore, the people will not delegate such power to the agents they select, civilisa- tion ends ; and to whom are they to delegate it, if not to the Ministers whom they appoint, whom they supply with means, and whom they can dismiss in an evening without appeal?. So strongly has this been felt, that up to the present time the leaders of parties have always united to protect the agents of the State, and to protect tliem from the sudden outbursts of unreasoning pity for suffering individuals to which. the English, alone among the nations of the world, are often liable. That healthy custom appears to have disappeared, for even Mr. Gladstone, in his speech of Monday, treated a design to provoke disorder as a possible alternative; and in the momentary degeneration of Liberalism, we are not surprised ; bat in spite of much recent experience, we are amazed to find Radicals rejecting the principle that trial should precede execution. A group of Irish police have either taken life in the execution of their duty, or have taken it, under extreme provocation, by a blunder,—therefore, let the Government die in a whirlwind of execration. Is this the teaching which Liberals have brought themselves to regard as statesmanship ?
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