MR. COURTNEY'S ATTITUDE.
T"great merit of the two striking speeches delivered by Mr. Courtney on Wednesday at Liskeard was their tone. The arguments he pressed were, with one exception to be here- after noted, those most familiar to Unionists. He avoided the agrarian division of the Irish Question a little too scrupulously, and we do not know that throughout he offered any suggestion from which much help could be obtained. And yet more helpful speeches to the Unionist cause could hardly be. They will operate on Unionists with relaxed minds like cold water on men with relaxed fibres, bracing them up to new energy and filling them with a new sense of their own possible strength. Mr. Courtney, besides being a man whose opinions are definite, and whose mind refuses to confuse phrases with things, is utterly free of the evil superstition embraced by so many politicians of the hour, the notion that to resist the stream of political tendency is to do something which has in it of the nature of sin. He sees the stream, he recognises its force ; but it has to he crossed, and he wades in, indifferent whether he emerges or is swept away. He has, consequently, none of their inner doubt, and none of their outer hesitation. He does not need the stimulus of hops; but once clear as to a duty, can not only do it—that is nothing—but go on doing it for any period required until it is visibly done. There is not a trace of sanguineness about his Liskeard speeches. He foresaw, he says, the difficulties which would follow Mr. Gladstone's conversion ; and he sees the difficulties which exist now ; but being convinced of duty, he summons all Members in his own position to do it, irrespective of consequences, even if one of them be "the crown of political martyrdom." As to the duty, he is absolutely clear, and he puts it in a different way from most speakers. He does not dwell on the misdeeds of the Parnellites, though, as Chairman of Committees, he must feel them more painfully than even the Government ; he does not descant on the anarchy reigning in Ireland ; he does not even plead the cause of the English whom we are asked to abandon there. He argues with simple directness that we have a work to do which we have begun, which we have prosecuted with some measure of success, and which we have no right whatever, for the sake of our own selfish ease, to abandon. The substance of his teaching— for it is teaching, and not mere oratory—is contained in this noble passage :—" So, as I say, I did as your Member, in a degree, in my humble fashion, take up the great task which Peel, Canning, and Mr. Gladstone himself upheld—that great task of fusing into one the three component parts of this great Kingdom, so that in a United Kingdom we should hear no more, except for purposes of geographical designation, of Irishmen, Elsotehmen, Englishmen, or Welshmen, when we should all be one—one free, one united, one growing Kingdom ; and I ask you whether that is not an ideal worthy of your pursuit, whether for any slight or trivial cause you would shrink from making it the object of your lives. I ask you whether we should lightly depart from this great task—thus undertaken, thus pursued with more or less success—growing success—though I admit in a chequered degree, but with a continual growing success—put forward by all our states- men. It was my privilege some years before I entered Parliament to have a large acquaintance with one of the greatest thinkers that Ireland has given to this generation.
From his lips, from his writings, I learnt much about Ire- land. He was an Irishman above all things else, a patriot if ever there was one, a statesman if ever there was one, though he was not called to the exercise of any functions. He told me—and it was a lesson which sank into my heart and remained in my memory—how the influence of the United Kingdom, the organisation of the united Imperial Parliament, the Executive and the officers appointed thereby, spread through the whole of Ireland, operating as a great educational machinery, lifting up the Irish people, infusing them with new and correct ideas, reforming the whole course of their lives, and re-creating the nation ; and I will call to your memory how I have always held this out to be the thing which we should pursue in connection with Ireland, and even in talking of Land Bills and those other great measures which have been advocated by no one more strongly than myself. I have said of the Land Bill that this Bill or any other will fail unless we make Ireland a new nation. It is a new creation we have beet attempting to make by association and connection with our- selves."
That has the true ring in it, the ring of the thought which was once the thought of English politicians as well as English engineers, the immutable resolve, if the work is but good, to go on with it, amidst all difficulties, in spite of all obstacles, in the face of all resistance, until it is accomplished. Chat Moss shall be filled, if the world is emptied into it. To such a frame of mind, hope is needless, as it is to men who are obeying what they know to be law ; and to those who can reach it, the petty calculations about votes and parties, and the influence of this waverer or that fanatic, are but the interesting speculations of an idle hour. Nothing can happen worse than the extinction of the Unionists ; and when they have made up their minds, as Mr. Courtney has, that they are bound to risk that, there is no more room for fear. Not that Mr. Courtney in the least degree gives up his confidence. On the contrary, he believes that the country will come round to the Liberal Unionists :— " If we can but put the truth plainly before popular audiences throughout the country, show them what has been our object in the past, what is the policy to be pursued in the future, I will not give up the faith and belief that the popular audiences will be stronger than the politicians, that the popular voice will insist that the Unionist idea must be upheld, must be pursued. Therefore, I do not hesitate to believe that those who, under the influence of a great name and under the specious influence of a gifted leader, were seduced into fol- lowing a great programme, will turn back from that mistake and rejoin what was the faith of their fathers, what was their own faith until suddenly, without time for reflection, they were induced to take a sudden departure. I have faith that they will be recalled. What, then, becomes the duty for us to pursue? To reorganise ourselves into a body to which we can welcome them when they are ready to return to the paths from which they have strayed. I do not desire that we should be simply a protesting body, but that we should take care to point out to the popular intelligence what is the faith we possess. I believe such is the force of attraction that we shall quietly, firmly, and faithfully, by holding up the lantern of our faith, draw back to us those who have been led astray. But if the combat ends in defeat, if the English people, as yet firm, decide in the wrong way, we Liberal Unionists look forward to the future not without anxiety, but without fear. Whatever the future may bring forth, it shall find us steady. Perchance the waves may wash us down, but we will be free to act accord- ing to what we believe to be the interests of our constituents and our Constitution, fulfilling an obligation we have inherited." It is a pleasure in this flabby generation to read such. words. We have sometimes thought, and occasionally said, that Mr. Court- ney was too confident in his own judgment ; but there are times when that capacity of being certain is the necessary condition of resolution to do one's duty ; and this is one of them. Unionists have arrived at just that stage in their contest when there is nothing to do, but to go on doing, regardless of consequences of omens, of everything except the visible duty to be per- formed. Mr. Courtney shows them the way, and they may derive consolation, if they need it, from his example. He at least speaks out ; yet in one of the most naturally Radical dis- tricts of England, among a population who should be like the Welsh in politics, who are for the most part Liberals and Nonconformists by conviction, he has so diffused his own con- victions that his seat is secure. Englishmen have not lost their inner respect for manliness, and it is manliness of the da kind, manliness that is not without its touch of stubborn defiance, that Unionists now require.
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