MR. SEXTON'S SPEECH.
WE see little reason for the admiration which the Times and the London correspondents of the country papers have expressed for Mr. Sexton's speech at the close of the debate on Mr. McCruthy's amendment. It is a vigorous and well-worded speech, with many striking and a few brilliant sentences, an eloquent peroration, and a single passage of humorous description, which we note because the very capa- city of humour seems to have died out of Irish Members. But the object of oratory is not melodious speaking, but the persuasion of opponents, and this speech will convince nobody, except those who are already so prejudiced by the struggle that they will accept Mr. Sexton's facts as true. The majority of Englishmen, however friendly to Ire- land, will read it with pure pain, with a deepening of their inner doubt whether there is any use in a further struggle on Irishmen's behalf,—whether it is possible to do anything for a people whose chosen representatives make a merit of fighting only for the impossible, reject the very notion of poli- tical gratitude, and either cannot see, or deliberately misread, the plainest facts of history. What is the value of argument from a man who declares that the object of Mr. Parnell's land policy and the intent of the No-rent manifesto was to "sever the landlords from the soil by fair and equitable terms of pur- chase," and that they intended by "fair and equitable terms" twenty years' purchase? Twenty years' purchase of what ? Of the present rent, or of the judicial rent, or of the "prairie rent," which Mr. Parnell fixed himself at, 3s. 6d. an acre Either Mr. Sexton was deceiving the House, by using words which meant to him one thing, and to his audience another thing, their basis of valuation being the present rents, and his the rents he wishes for or he is asserting the exact contrary of all Mr. Parnell's teaching. The very essence and substance of all Mr. Parnell's oratory, the postulate which alone makes him powerful, as the Irish Attorney-General showed on Thursday, is that rent ought to be reduced from seven- teen millions a year to three millions, and should not be paid at all until the Government had submitted to certain terms, over which the landlords to be plunlered had no power. He knows, and Mr. Sexton knows, that this is the plan of the American-Irish, who find the League's funds ; that they ordered its adoption, and that all who adopted it understood it in this sense. They would have rejected pur- chase at twenty years' rent with scorn. What is the value of speech from a Member who asserts that the Land League is opposed to all outrages, and is strictly Constitutional, and then justifies boycotting, with its incidents, calls all who take lands from which tenants have been evicted for non-fulfilment of contract "public enemies," whom the community have a right to punish, and denounces Mr. Forster, who has not shed one drop of blood, as a "clumsy Cromwell,"—Cromwell, who, instead of releasing Mr. Sexton to denounce him, would have shipped him to Barbadoes, to be sold as a slave ? The policy of Cromwell was to obtain submission by slaughter; the policy of Mr. Forster is to obtain submission without slaughter ; and then Mr. Sexton describes him as Cromwell, without his ability. Where is the " effect " of a speech in which the speaker declares that the Land League has never changed its policy, that the " No-rent " manifesto meant only "purchase," and that it was not issued in consequence of the arrests, though the very condition, stated in all speeches in its defence, is that the arrests shall cease, and the prisoners be released ? It seems to us that there is and can be no more "force" or " effect " in such words, however excellently delivered, than in assertions that in Ireland no one has ever complained of rent, or that Mr. Parnell's only object was to strengthen the law, and draw closer the bonds between his country and Great Britain. It is mere declamation, raising in the minds of all friends of Ireland a bitter regret for the Irish habit of self-delusion, and in those of all adversaries of Ireland a new dislike for men who in a supreme crisis can pervert cardinal facts to gain an ignorant applause. Even when Mr. Sexton is undoubtedly strong, as in his description of the.sufferings of the tenantry, he so misuses his arguments that they leave on those who agree with his postulates an additional sense of the hopeleisness of a cause so defended. It is perfectly true that in Ireland "the land- lord class were originally planted upon the soil by con- fiscation, that they never interested themselves in the welfare of the community, an,d that they • stood to-day upon the soil as when they were first planted there, —a body apart from the people." It is perfectly true that the landlords were in many districts so embarrassed, that their debts for interest exceeded their rental, and that consequently their tenants were "in agony"; that the Encum- bered Estates Act brought in still more exacting landlords ; and that rack-renting had risen into a great oppression, as well as a great social evil. But then, that is the very reason for which Mr. Gladstone proposed, and Parliament accepted, the Land Act, which has no other object than to pre- vent that very oppression, and arrest that social evil. Is Mr. Sexton thankful for that Act, or does he even accept it ? Not a bit of it. He pours on it all the derision at his command, declares that it will only reduce rents by a million and a half per annum, -and asks con- temptuously if Irishmen are to be content with that. The very idea that they are to be content with a " fair " rent ; that the amount has nothing to do with the matter, but only the pro- portion ; that a fine is a fine, if it be only a penny, and that a remission, if the penny is unjust, is justice, never enters his head. He only threatens that the area of land covered by the "No-rent" party shall widen "gale by gale," and even con- descends to the absurdity of saying that up to Christmas the Land Court had- cost £90,000, and had only dealt with £1,800 of rent. He made a great point of this, and he was cheered, though he knew, and his audience knew, that a legal decision about a few shillings constantly affects vitally for good or evil an entire commerce. Half the test-decisions ever quoted in England to defend enormous rights of property have been given in suits for comparatively trumpery amounts. Hampden, of all Commoners in England, perhaps the man with the largest estate, resisted a claim for ship-money to the amount of only twenty shillings, and though he was defeated, the trial proved fatal to that exaction. Every case decided by the Land Court covers hundreds of cases, or would do so, if Mr. Sexton and his friends would allow the tenantry to enjoy the full benefit of the Act, instead of advocating no rent, promising prairie rent, denouncing the collection of arrears,—that is, of debts—as oppression, and then telling the House of Commons that all they want is permission to buy at twenty years' purchase! Mr. Sexton does not even say how much more reduction he wants, but throughout his speech pours out expressions which leave on English minds a conviction that less or more is of no consequence ; that the Parnellites want neither low rents nor high rents, but would treat any con- ceivable Act, even one giving them the soil, with con- tempt, or as a weapon to enable Ireland to secede. Mr. Sexton hoped, with Mr. Parnell, that "the spirit he had raised in Ireland would never die." He "shared the hope that agitation would not cease till the detestable alien rule of the buckshot Government which had kept the country impoverished had been got rid of." The "Land League was merely a stepping-stone to that union of all classes in Ireland which would bring about a restoration of Ireland's liberties," national self-government, and legislative independence. What is the use of considering Land Acts or any other reforms, when the very representatives who allege that they have carried those things declare openly that their object was not and is not reform, but Repeal, that is, in fact, Secession The simplest common-sense must tell Englishmen that if the permanent object of Ireland is legislative independence, it is use- less to weary themselves with difficult changes which Ireland will immediately upset, and can in any case do better for her- self. When an Irishman says that nothing is valuable to him but the independence of his country, he can at least be under- stood ; but that is not the position of the Land League, or of Mr. Sexton as its exponent. What he says is, We want the soil of Ireland, we are organised to get that ; and if you give it, then we shall be easily rid of you." Remember the audience and the circumstances, and the difficulty with which Liberals carry any reform in Ireland, and then decide whether a speech which contains such threats, which reveals so clearly an ultimate object which all Englishmen regard as impracticable, can be held by any canon of criticism to be either " forcible ' or "effective." It is a speech which tells Englishmen—is, we fear, intended to tell them—that all concessions are useless, and they had better sit quiet, and steadily enforce the law.
Of course, Mr. Sexton puts in the usual reserves, that Mr. Parnell is "within the Constitution ;" but he is only within it, and knows quite well he is only within it, because in this country, by a legal fiction, there can be no treason, unless it is openly directed against the Throne. None the less is it a first principle of our laws, written in every despatch and in every public document, that Great Britain and Ireland constitution- ally form one "United Kingdom."
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