TOPICS OF TILE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE'S " WHY ? "
IN a quarterly publication called Subjects of the Day, of which the third number has just appeared, Mr. Glad- stone contributes a paper which he calls "Home-rule for Ireland : an Appeal to the Tory Householder," and which puts very neatly and tersely, and with the orator's singular power of entirely,—and apparently quite unconsciously,— ignoring all the aspects of the question which impress themselves most powerfully on his opponents, the case, as he conceives it, of Home-rule for Ireland. "Why," he asks, and he repeats the question with almost im- portunate iteration, "why should the Tory householders continue to deny to Ireland the one and the only thing she seeks from them ? " And he suggests several imaginary answers which he has no difficulty in showing to be inadequate. Indeed, if there were no considerations to answer except those to which Mr. Gladstone addresses himself, we may admit that be would have made out a very strong case ; but the fact is that, so far from this being the case, there is but one con- sideration to which he addresses himself which has any force in it at all,—namely, the sturdy disapprobation expressed by almost all the educated opinion of the country of Mr. Gladstone's proposal. And even with that consideration he does not grapple in its true force and significance. He recalls to his readers' mind that the same might have been said of the opposition of the educated classes to the repeal of the Combination Laws and to the reform of the savage Criminal Code of the early part of this century. But in neither case were the educated classes in anything like the same impartial position as that which they occupy on the subject of the Union with Ireland. The Combination Laws were a somewhat technical subject, which occupied the employers of labour much more than it occupied the pro- fessional classes, and the employers of labour certainly cannot be said to have been disinterested as to the issue. Moreover, the great majority of thinkers who were not employers of labour, were very much guided by those of their friends who were. As to the reform of the Criminal Code, we do not believe that Mr. Gladstone can give any evidence to show that Sir Samuel Romilly received little sympathy from the educated classes. On the contrary, we should say that he and Sir James Mackintosh, who took up his crusade after Sir S. Romilly's death, received very hearty sympathy from those classes ; otherwise we cannot conceive how it should have been possible, in an unreformed Parliament, for Sir S. 110mill), to carry his Bills so fre- quently through the House of Commons, and for Sir James Mackintosh to succeed as early as 1820 in carry- ing three of them through Parliament. It is true that the Peers, acting with the support of the Judges, several times threw these Bills out ; but we decline to regard the Peers (even including the Judges) as the representatives on such a subject as this of the educated opinion of the country. What the unreformed House of Commons did represent, if it did. not represent the educated opinion of the country, we cannot conceive. In relation to the Irish issue, however, the educated opinion of the country is far more completely free from prejudice. We do not see how it could well have any class bias at alL It would have betrayed a class bias fifty or sixty years ago on any question between employers and em- ployed; it might well have betrayed one, though we do not think that it actually did, seventy or eighty years ace) against any relaxation of the penal law against theft ; at, as a class, it can have but one wish in regard to Ireland,—namely, to promote the peace and the power of the United Kingdom. And it is, we believe, only because educated men are deeply convinced that the peace of the United Kingdom would be still further endangered, and its power vastly lessened, by Irish Home-rule, that the educated class resists it so steadfastly. Selfishly speaking, it can have, and has, no prepossession against Mr. Gladstone's proposals. Then, Mr. Gladstone urges the overworked state of the House of Commons, and the absolute necessity of relieving it by the help of the principle of devolution. But he totally ignores the entirely reasonable belief of his oppo- nents that if Home-rule be limited to any measure which even he would sanction, there will beno relief at all, but rather a fatal increase in the number of Parliamentary wrangles over Irish subjects. "We should at once reduce by one-fourth the load that is pressing our Parliament to the ground, if we could get rid. of Irish affairs." No doubt we should ; but how are we to get rid of Irish affairs by granting Ireland a measure of independence which could not gratify Irish pride as Colonial independence gratifies Colonial pride, and would enormously stimulate Irish con- fidence in the power of Ireland to render the overruling of her Legislature by the Supreme Parliament simply im- possible ? Mr. Gladstone parades the success of Home- rule in our Colonies as a reason why it should. succeed in Ireland. But then, he has no intention at all of giving Ireland what we gave to the Colonies,—even if we could assume what it is impossible to assume, that Ireland is. not very much more exorbitant in her expectations, and very much more disposed to pick quarrels for the mere pleasure of picking quarrels and enjoying our disgust, than the Colonies. Even Mr. Gladstone thinks that we cannot give Ireland half what we have given the Colonies, with the smallest safety to the United Kingdom. Why, then, does he take for granted that the most disputatious and the most ingenious in disputation of our discontented dependencies would. accept meekly and with gratitude less than half the measure of independence which has appeased our far less contentious and far less quick-witted fellow- subjects in Australia, Canada, and the Cape ? The Colonial argument tells against him, not in his favour, unless he is either prepared to grant Ireland a full Colonial measure of independence,—which in 1886 he was not prepared to do, and apparently is still less prepared to do now,—or to show that the moderation and humility of the Irish is so much greater than that of our Colonists, that we may safely count on satisfyine•b them with less than half the concessions we have made to the Colonies. Moreover, if he really means to intimate (as we suspect he does) that the powers of the Supreme Parliament at Westminster will be as seldom exerted to override the Irish Parliament as they are to override Colonial Parliaments, he assumes what reduces the boast that the Irish Legislature is to be a purely subordinate Legislature, to a mere empty figment. What would_ the strength and solidity of the United Kingdom be, after Ireland had established the precedent that she was never to be overruled without the most urgent and extreme necessity,—in the same sense in which that presumption has been virtually accepted in relation to parts of the Empire which never have been regarded as included. in the United Kingdom ?
Again, Mr. Gladstone gravely argues that because Irish prosperity and wealth have not increased since the Union in the same proportion as English prosperity and wealth, we have failed to do our duty by Ireland, and ought to give her the chance of doing better for herself. Would Mr. Gladstone propose to apply the same principle to the tie between Denmark and Iceland ? Would. he not at once remark, if any one did venture to denounce Home-rule in Iceland on the ground that Iceland bad not increased in wealth as rapidly as Denmark, that Iceland is about as inferior in physical advantages to Denmark as the Sahara is to Egypt, and that it is not reasonable to expect any tie, however loose or however close, to work miracles on the soil and. climate of any country ? No Government, how- ever excellent, could make Ireland rush forward in physical prosperity as rapidly as England, any more than any Government, however excellent, could make Massachusetts advance in physical prosperity as rapidly as Pennsylvania or New York. Ireland has, on the whole, a poor soil, with very little timber, coal, or metal, and a not too industrious population. If Mr. Gladstone could show that Home-rule would do more for Ireland than the British Government, there would be something in his argument. As it is, he assumes that the physical progress of a country depends on its government alone, and not on its natural advantages, and on the frugality, laboriousness, and enterprise of its inhabitants. We might as reasonably assume that the success of an opera depends only on the capacity of its conductor, and not in any degree on the quality of the music selected and the special character of the singers and the instrumentalists employed.
Again, Mr. Gladstone argues that Ireland costs us a great deal more to govern than England. No doubt it does. But Unionists believe that Ireland under Home- rule would cost us twice or thrice as much again as she costs us now. She would have much more power of annoying us than she has now, and she would be untrue to all the precedents and traditions of the country if she did not use the power, and use it to very good purpose. The singular axiom which runs through Mr. Gladstone's whole paper and evidently pervades his thought, is, that with the con- cessions he proposes to make, Ireland would be, and would remain, perfectly satisfied ; and that from the moment when she obtained them, she would give us no more trouble. Now, as the Irish politicians have hitherto given us infinitely more trouble the nearer we have approximated to governing her on the principles on which they say they would govern them- selves, it is difficult to conceive anything more extravagantly' improbable than Mr. Gladstone's axiom. It is hardly plausible enough to be worth considering at all, and certainly not plausible enough to justify the running of a risk so serious that it would be impossible to restore the political status quo without civil war. At present we may hope to put the Irish in a position of perfect equality with Englishmen and. Scotchmen within the Union. Mr. Glad- stone does not even propose so much as to put Ireland in a position of perfect equality with our Colonies, much less in the position she clamours for, the position of national independence. Yet he calmly assumes that Ireland will give no trouble after she has acceded. to the proud position of a manacled Colony, pledged neither to try the policy of Protection for which she hungers, nor to embarrass and disown the English foreign policy which she detests. We are to give Ireland a vast deal less than we grant the Colonies, and to expect her to be vastly more grateful. Is there the faintest hope of any disposition in Ireland to justify such an expectation ? The Colonies know that they may sever the tie with Great Britain whenever they please, and the mere knowledge disposes them not to think of severing it until some urgent interest arises to make that course at least plausible. Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's proposal, would know that she could. not sever the tie, and the very knowledge would. render her all the more restless and irritable under its galling pressure. To Mr. Gladstone's question, "Why should the Tory house- holders continue to deny to Ireland the one and only thing she seeks from them ?" we reply, then, that Mr. Gladstone himself does not concede nationality, which is what Ireland asks ; that what Mr. Gladstone does concede would not only whet Ireland's appetite for more, but place in her hands a very powerful weapon with which to extract more ; that the step he advocates would. extinguish at once the only means of giving Irishmen real equality with Englishmen in the United Kingdom, and also would embark us in a hopeless attempt to gratify an insatiable passion, plunging us into a series of squabbles and hagglings, to which there could be no end except in reconquest or separation.
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