MR. GERALD BALFOUR ON IRELAND. T HE new Secretary for Ireland,
Mr. Gerald Balfour, struck the right note on Wednesday in his short speech on Ireland to his constituents at Leeds. There are no mistakes which we commit in regard to Ireland more disastrous than hoping for too much and expecting too little. We shall not, whatever we do, make Ireland as Northumberland or even as Argyleshire. The Celt and the Catholic differ too radically from the Saxon and the Protestant to entertain the same ideals, and it is by a similarity in ideals that nations are bound together. The Irishman is never satisfied with comfort, and the English- man thinks he ought to be, and between those two con- ceptions of life there can be no cordial reconciliation. There will remain, when all concrete grievances have been swept away, a distaste on each side for a different type of character, and an impatience of the opposition natural to dissonant types, which are both alike incurable. It is probable even that, as Mr. Gerald Balfour foresees, the desire for Home-rule in Ireland will not fade utterly away, for it is deeply rooted alike in the poetic imagina- tion of the people, in their pessimist fear of the future, and in the capacity for self-deception which is their solace and the nutriment of their power of long-continued endurance. There is gold in Ireland, and the facts that it is not found, and by no law of geological probability is likely to be found, have nothing to do with the matter, so the Irishman continues to dig. All that can be hoped for is acquiescence in the situation, sometimes good-humoured, as it is even now with the prosperous, sometimes sullen, as we see it to-day in all who, for any reason, economic or other, are not content. That acquiescence, however, is not a little thing, but a great thing. It is all that the ruled, in most countries, give their rulers ; it is all that commercial men expect from customers ; it is all that the majority of man- kind have to give when asked to accede to the wishes of their acquaintaLce. That much, we believe with Mr. Gerald Balfour, it is possible to secure; and that much is a very great deal. The Government, as he intimates, will not be able to "kill Home-rule with kindness ; " but it may kill much of the savage bitterness which has prevailed, and so produce gradually that capability of working together, which is the essence of a sound and progressive social order. Suppose employer and workmen do not " love " one another, still, if the employer is liberal and kind, and the employed honest and industrious, the work gets itself well done, and that, if not the ideal result, is the result of the first necessity. If Ireland were only in the Kingdom what Brittany is in France, the object of statesmen, though not of course either of idealists or of philanthropists, would be attained. We do not believe for one moment in Mr. Redmondis bluster, that every favour granted shall be used against the granter. That will happen very often no doubt ; but human nature being what it is, it will happen in spite of, and not in consequence of, the will of the recipient. Irishman-like, he omits to notice half his data, and forgets altogether that no man can confer a benefit, especially a benefit involving self-sacrifice, without acquir- ing a new sympathy for the benefited,—the secret of the often perplexing love felt by the disinterested for the selfish.
Mr. Gerald Balfour has the means, if Government will permit—or say rather the Government have the means, if Parliament will permit—of developing acquiescence in Ireland by sweeping away three classes of grievances which are at once real and sentimental. The old ban on the popular creed should be totally and finally withdrawn. It has disappeared in theory for some time, but it survives in practice in the rules for State-education, in certain departments of patronage, and in a very marked way in the management of the jury system. We would give up packing juries altogether, and, if justice failed in consequence, resort to the Judicial Commissions, which, in countries torn with intestine dissension, are so much more worthy of reliance. We would let the Catholics have their religious instruction in their own way, confident that in dif- fusing intelligence we were applying the best cure to bigotry of the anti-social kind. The notion that the Jesuits or the Christian Brothers, or any other confraternity, can educate without enlightening, is founded on a fallacy disproved by the whole history of the century. What the State has to see is that the education is given, not to make converts, or prevent converts being made. As for the exclusion of any qualified man from any post whatever, simply because he is a Catholic, it is an oppression not in the least justi- fied because if Catholics had the power they would exclude Protestants. That is the first display of kindliness required of the Saxon majority, and the second is like unto it, a withdrawal of the idea that the State should only remove obstacles to progress, and not of itself give direct encouragement to enterprise. That is the Saxon idea—is, we believe, the accurate idea—but it is an idea born of a temperament rather than of a thought. It never will be the Celt's idea, and he will never think himself well-governed till the State pats him and pinches him continually as it does in France. The Saxon sees ten per cent. ahead, and rushes to build a light railway ; the Celt will be happy with four per cent., if only the State will guarantee two, and so give him the sense of support and sympathy from the strong, without which he is all abroad. The Saxon sees fish in the sea, and launches his boat and catches it ; but the Celt wants somebody outside him- self to guarantee him against losing his labour because the fish has swum away. "That is very weak," says the Saxon, and we agree ; but all the same, the French, who are not weak, would never have built a mile of railway, or caught one cod off Newfoundland, had they not felt below them the foothold secured by the State guarantees and bounties. Grant a defect of temperament in that hesitation, it is in allowing for that defect that true kind- liness is displayed.
The third department in which kindliness can be manifested is more concrete. The very root of all Irish politics is the fact that while the bulk of the population tills the soil, it dislikes the tenure on which it tills it. The Saxon is never content unless he has good wages ; the Celt is never content unless he has security. The reason. is not a difference in greed—there is not a pin to choose between them in that respect—but a difference of tempera- ment leading to a different way of regarding the future. The Saxon thinks nothing will happen to him if he pays hie rent, and makes a living out of his farm ; the Celt is certain that his rent will be raised, or that he will be evicted and left to die by the roadside. He is never happy without a freehold ; but on a freehold he will eat potatoes and think himself a gentleman. There is no immorality in that view of life, which is the view of most Frenchmen and Italians, and of all Asiatics, and it is most unwise for a State, so far as the claims of justice will allow, not to gratify it. We have already, in granting copy_ hold complicated with rights of action, turned the people from politics to labour ; let us finish the work by making them, without too heartbreaking a delay, freeholders. We shall be told, as we always are told, that the landlord is "the civilising element," and that he will only be re- placed by the usurer; and we reply by asking two questions. Is County Clare civilised ? and if the Irishman prefers the usurer to the landlord—as, by the way, all English country gentlemen also do—why should not he ? The plain truth of the matter is that on this point the Englishman is un- kindly; that he will not or cannot sympathise with a defect of temperament which is not his own; and that he rcquir( a leaders, like Mr. Arthur Balfour and his brother, to tell him that he is wrong. Ireland covered with peasant-pro- prietors will not be a paradise any more than rural Belgium is a paradise ; but there will be none of that agrarian war which for centuries has distracted Irish society, and none of that immoveable belief that the Saxon took the land away 'from the peasant, and that but for him it would fall back to the peasant again. The peasants will shoot the usurers instead of the landlords ? Not exactly. If they did, future advances would stop, and consequently the peasant jurymen, on considerations of convenience, wild regretfully, but most certainly, hang the assassin. These are the three subjects, religion' the tenure, and State assistance in enterprise, on which the Saxon, if he wants a peaceful Ireland, is required to be "kind," that is, in fact, to be intelligent. If he is not he will be hated. If he is, he will not be loved one bit, but he will be acquiesced in, and helped, instead of opposed in his efforts to make the future less gloomy, and the lot of the poorer Irishmen less hard. He will be able to maintain the unity of the Kingdom without killing or imprisoning anybody, and he will be shot at in litera- ture, very poetical and strongly worded literature, rather than from behind a hedge. That is a very prosaic millen- nium indeed, so prosaic that most Irishmen who read these words will smile with scorn at the prospect ; but this is what Mr. Gerald Balfour is. seeking, and what we, who are a prosaic people, though liable in moments of recoil to bursts of high poetic excitement, ought to be seeking with him.
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