MR. SEXTON'S WRATH.
THE speech of Mr. Sexton on the last night of the great Debate on the Closure was a very striking one, not so much for its eloquence,—Mr. Sexton is always more or less eloquent,—as for the violent hatred of England which it contrived to express. There were reasons, said Mr. Sexton, for the silence of Irish Members during the debate. The debate had not greatly interested them, they had not been able to feel interest in the prophecies with regard to the future of British Parties, for the future of British Parties was a matter of indifference to them; "nor had they been able to feel any interest in the history and traditions of that House. What they knew in Ireland of that House was that, for the last eighty years, it had been responsible for all the misgovernment, for most of the misfortune, and for nearly all the crime in that country." Thus they felt neither pride in the traditions of the House, nor any anxiety that the noblest of those traditions should be respected. Ire- land had never received the shadow of justice from England, and every reform conceded to her had been conceded to the fear of violence. The Emancipation Act was squeezed out of England by the dread of civil war, and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church and the Land Act by the alarms of the Fenian plots. "It was not any sense of justice that had led to their introduction." Mr. Sexton, therefore, could not regret the prospect of deterioration in British institutions. On the contrary, he congratulated himself and his friends on the introduction of the Closure because it would introduce jealousy and rivalry between the leaders of the two great English parties. Its operation would be "to generate hereafter between English politicians who, in spite of their party differences, had hitherto been personal friends, hatreds and rancours which would eat their corroding way even into private life. There- fore it was that he had great hopes for the future of his country, believing that out of the chronic feuds and bitter contentions of hostile English parties, the hope of Irish re- generation would arise." Finally, he exulted that " after eight years of a free Irish vote, and three years of an inde- pendent Irish party, by the slow but silent working of Irish discontent, they had undermined, and brought to a crushing downfall, the Parliamentary liberties of England."
It would be hard to find language expressing more clearly that the Irish Members of Mr. Sexton's type, far from desir- ing the efficiency of British institutions, take a malevolent pleasure in anticipating their failure,—partly, no doubt, in the belief that this may be made the means of promoting the wel- fare of Ireland,—but partly, if we interpret rightly the tone of exultation pervading the last sentence of Mr. Sexton's speech, from the intrinsic delight which the collapse of anything British affords them. Mr. Sexton suggests that when knaves fall out, honest men come by their own ; and for this purpose,
by one of the greatest of stretches of imagination ever compassed even by an Irish orator, he regards all British politicians as knaves, and all Irish politicians as honest men. But beyond this, he so fiercely enjoys the retribution, as he thinks it, descending on the knaves, that he exults in it for its own sake, whether it ends in Irishmen coming by what he thinks their own, or not. It might be a question, we think, whether the House of Commons should admit the co-operation of any Member who openly professes his satisfaction in the deteriora-
-Lion and degradation of British institutions; not that we
should approve any decision grounded on a feeling of irrita- tion against the Irish Members for professing themselves enemies of the British people, but because the avowed exulta- tion in undermining Parliamentary liberties is really quite in- consistent with the only legitimate motives of a Member of Par- hament, and must more or less bias his action in a mischievous direction. At the same time, as it is quite impossible to pre- vent. these sentiments from being entertained by Members of Parliament, though it might be possible to prevent them from
being expressed, it would hardly be wise to punish the frank avowal of them by penalties which it would be impossible to apply to the secret entertainment of them. Doubtless, we ought to be thankful that if such feelings as Mr. Sexton's really exist, they should be avowed ; or that if they do not really exist, but are more or less put- on for the pur- pose of producing an impressive rhetorical effect in Ireland, we should all of us be made aware that these are the kind of sentiments which do go to the heart of Irish readers. Expelling Mr. Sexton from the House, while twenty Mr. Sextons remained in it to resent his expulsion all the more deeply because they could not afford to tell the tale of hatred to the Saxon as openly as he, would be of very little use. So that, questionable as it seems to admit into our Legislature a Member who secretly cherishes the hope that that Legislature may ruin itself, still, if such Members there be in any number, it would be doing nothing but mischief to expel the most outspoken of them, and keep the most reticent where they are. Nevertheless, it is a very serious thing that there should be a party in Parliament one of whom avows, and probably many of whom feel, cordial satisfaction in the pass- ing of measures which they believe to be injurious to Great Britain ; for it is very hard to imagine that any party could honestly resist a consummation which they desire, or exert themselves to bring about an issue which they dread. Mr. Sexton, it is true, voted against the Rule the passage of which he anticipated with so much triumph • but it is not conceivable that this could always happen. If the Irish party could once persuade themselves that by voting for a measure which they regard as disastrous to England they would signally advance their own cause, they have not shown themselves so scrupulous that we need doubt for a moment what decision they would arrive at. They would vote cheerfully for the ruin of Great Britain, if on that ruin they hoped, with any confidence, to build up the prosperity of Ireland. One can, indeed, hardly help asking whether Mr. Sexton, in voting against the Closure, was not voting against what, in spite of his self-con- gratulations, he half feared might prove to the advantage of Great Britain. For it is not very easy to believe that if Mr. Sexton thought the Closure really likely to pro- duce the downfall of the House of Commons, he would have been able to restrain the fierce desire to vote for it, and so accelerate the crash he had so much pleasure in anticipating. We suppose we must give him credit for a con- scientious vote against it, but we can only do so on the theory that he really thought Ireland more likely to profit by un- limited obstruction, than even by that downfall of Great Britain's Parliamentary liberties which he pleased himself with regarding as a set-off against the evil of diminished oppor- tunities of obstruction.
However, the most striking impression produced by Mr. Sexton's speech on the present writer, is the con- viction that a great deal of its wrath is artificially manu- factured. Nothing is more curious than the steady increase of this wrath in the tone of Irish orators exactly in propor- tion as the justification for it diminishes. When Mr. Sexton said that the House of Commons was responsible for all the mis- government of Ireland during the last eighty years, for most of
Ireland's misfortunes, and for almost all Irishmen's crimes,—
when he said that it was not any sense of justice which had led to the introduction of the Irish Church and Land Reform, —when he ventured so far as to appeal even to Mr. Glad- stone's own confession that these reforms were extorted by Irish violence, and not by the English sense of justice,—it seems to us perfectly clear that Mr. Sexton was romancing, and knew pretty clearly that he was romancing. Of course, the House of Commons is more or less responsible for all misgovernment,— —so far as there has been misgovernment—in all the three divisions of the kingdom ; but to make the House of Commons responsible for most of the famines and diseases and for nearly all the crime of Ireland, is like holding Congress responsible for nearly all the railway accidents, prairie fires, and epidemic fevers of the United States, or for nearly all the rowdy murders in the wild West. Whatever Mr. Sexton believes, he does not believe this. He may, perhaps, believe that the House of Commons is responsible for a very small portion of the mis-
fortunes and agrarian crimes of Ireland, just in the same sense in which it is responsible for avoidable epidemics, pre- ventible crime, and removable ignorance in England.. But
whether responsible, or not, the remarkable thing is that the more the House of Commons does to kill the root of the mischief in Ireland, the less responsible for the mischief it must be ; while Mr. Sexton, so far from admitting this, rages
against it with ever increasing anger, the less deserved that anger is. What can be more flagrant special-pleading than to contend that because Mr. Gladstone referred to the Clerkenwell and other crimes as making it imperative on English consciences to consider the condition of a realm in which it was possible for the people to lend a certain sympathy to the authors of such atrocities, instead of execrating them as, in ordinary states of society, average men would, he declared that the Irish reforms were forced upon him by Irish violence, and not by any sense of justice ? Mr. Sexton knows as well as any man in th3 United Kingdom that Mr. Glad- stone's appeal for laying the axe to the upas tree of Irish grievances was wholly founded on his sense of the justice of the cause, and that to that sense of justice he never failed for a moment to appeal. Doubtless, he held up to Englishmen very powerfully the frightful inversion of ordinary conditions which made it possible for the Irish people to look with sym- pathy on great criminals, and in that sense he used the crimes referred to, in order to force upon Englishmen the question why Irishmen, who are freer than most people from ordinary criminal impulse, should sympathise with every crime directed against English rule. But so far from that being an appeal to terror, it was essentially an appeal to the sense of justice of the English people ; and it was that sense of justice, and that alone, which carried the reforms now attri- buted by Mr. Sexton and some portion of the Irish people to pure fear of Irish violence. We venture to say that that is not, and cannot be, a sincere representation of Mr. Sexton's own belief, lie does not think that the Irish measures of redress proceeded from fear rather than from any sense of justice. He knows they could never have been carried but for the potent appeal to the English sense of justice. Still, it is so disagreeable to him to attribute anything like a sense of justice to the British people, that, like the ostrich, he deliberately hides his eyes from seeing the danger of dissolution which threatens his own carefully-nursed wrath and that wrath of the Irish people which he seeks to foment. The violent caricature of the truth in Mr. Sexton's picture is, to our mind, the sign, not of an everlasting Irish wrath towards Great Britain, but of the imminent danger of dwindling in which that passion, hugging itself as it does, now finds itself. I find your condition of mind altogether evil towards Ireland,' says Mr. Sexton, in effect, so evil, that there is not a white spot in it ; and I could see even the destruction of everything great in your island with satisfaction, believing that it would contribute to Ireland's emancipation.' But in order to make such a position even look plausible, he has to suppress so much history, and so much recent history, to wipe out so carefully from his memory all that has excited enthusiasm in Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Bright's appeals to the British nation, and to fix his eyes so strenuously on such very tiny vestiges of evil motive, that he is obviously whip- Ping up a wholly artificial wrath. Doubtless, amongst his ignorant countrymen, there are many as yet whose wrath is much less artificial ; but even that will cool down soon, under the influence of sound remedial measures, and then Mr. Sexton will be left to repent at leisure that he tried so long to hide from himself the sincerity of English sympathy with Ireland, and the scornful amusement with which his professions of belief in our malignity are received. He is throwing away great artistic powers on a hopeless cause.
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