MR. BALFOUR'S RECEPTION IN THE WEST OF IRELAND.
MR. BALFOUR'S friendly reception by the people of Mayo and Galway is not in the least a surprise to us. We do not suppose that it implies any sudden change of popular feeling,—which would, indeed, be an absurd supposition,—but we do suppose that it shows what we have always maintained, that the Irish people, like most other people, are very much more concerned with their own domestic anxieties and prospects, and much more disposed to reflect the immediate feeling which any improvement or alleviation in those anxieties and prospects causes, than they are to trouble themselves about politics, properly so called. It is perfectly obvious that the interest shown by the Chief Secretary in the scarcity with which the Western Coast of Ireland is threatened, and his sincere wish to do all that can be done to relieve the distress, is a, great relief to the Irish of the " con- gested " counties, and that they regard his visit as a sudden gleam of sunshine in dark weather. We do not attach too much importance to the triumphal arch erected for him at Mulreany, and the cheers with which he was received in Achill. These are not omens of any significant change of feeling. But they are evidences that the effer- vescence of disloyal feeling which Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien are always able to elicit in neighbouring regions, is at least equally shallow, perhaps even shallower, and only due to the hope that Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien will be able to effect a diversion in the people's favour, and not to anyparticular interest in the special political means by which alone, according to Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien, that change can be effected. The Nationalist papers are very anxious to show that the friendly reception which Mr. Balfour has met with in the scarcity districts, does not signify anything like genuine popularity. We quite agree with them. We believe it means only a rather superficial emotion of relief and hope, which may soon pass over. But then, we believe fully as strongly that the crowds who cheer for Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien mean very little too ; and we think that that is just what English politicians fail to perceive So long, indeed, as the boycotters had the upper hand, the people were afraid to show how shallow their interest in the whole agitation was ; but now that they feel some confidence in the protection of the State, they are not afraid to welcome Mr. Balfour with quite as genuine a cordiality as they displayed to the Nationalists. There is no country hardly where the prospect of a winter of suffering and scarcity is not far more sincerely felt than any merely political event, whatever it may be. And what is true of almost every country is even eminently true of Ireland, which changes with truly chameleon-like rapidity from one mood to another. If, for a time, the Nationalists seem Irishmen's only hope, they cheer for the Nationalists. But let a Chief Secretary come down with power to say where there shall be relief works and where there shall be none, and they at once begin to cheer for the Chief Secre- tary, who impresses them as even more likely to be able to carry through what he promises. We do not at all doubt that the welcome to Mr. Balfour is of comparatively little significance, so long as it is admitted that the welcome to the revilers of Mr. Balfour is also of comparatively little significance ; but then, that is just what the Nationalist papers do not want their readers to know. Nevertheless, it A so. The loyal feeling which a sudden gleam of hope causes, will no doubt be transient, unless the hope is justified and renewed. But it is quite as true that the disloyal feeling which is produced by a sudden access of faith in the power of the National League will be equally transient, unless that should be justified and renewed by future events. As we have constantly maintained, that which really affects the Irish people pro- foundly is the hope of greater security and comfort. Any power that excites that hope in their breasts is for the time predominant in their minds. And if once the Government succeeded in giving them a solid feeling of permanent security and freedom from dread, the Government might have it all their own way in Ire- land, in spite of histrionic martyrs and grandiloquent orations. The English people may easily attach too much importance to the cordiality of Mr. Balfour's recep- tion in Mayo and Galway ; but then, they have all along attached a great deal too much importance to the success of the popular agitators. The Irish over-express them- selves habitually, and they themselves would be the last to be deceived by a little over-acting. It is only those who look on from a distance and take their cue from the accounts so industriously circulated by the Nationalist journals, who are apt to be taken in. Mr. Gladstone has been so taken in. That " well-known simplicity " of his to which he alluded ironically in his final speech in Edinburgh, was more real than he himself knew. And we have no doubt that, if Mr. Balfour's cordial reception in Mayo and Galway has been brought to his notice, it will have made him in turns both sceptical and indignant. Yet if he could only deduce the true lesson from it, he would unlearn his very over-wrought convictions as to the deep determination of Ireland to have Home-rule, rather than learn to think too seriously of the recent manifestation of feeling for Mr. Balfour as a powerful patron and beneficent friend. All we infer from the visit of Mr. Balfour to the West of Ireland is that we have been right all through in believing that the political phase of the Irish Question is a superficial phase, and that the agrarian phase of it is at the root of the matter. Everything we hear tends to the same result. Mr. Parnell's inability to resist the attractive- ness of the Government's Purchase Bill, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's declaration in its favour, the sudden turn of the tide when Mr. Balfour comes out in the character of a philanthropic statesman determined to see with his own eyes what are the best kind of relief measures,—all testify to the fact that the hearts of Irishmen are in their homes and bits of farms, not • in any political ideal what- ever. If the Government can make them feel safe in their holdings, the National League will lose almost all its power. The very men who would die in resisting an evic- tion one day, would cheer for the imperious and resolute Irish Secretary the next. But that is just what English- men, with their " well-known simplicity,"—or, rather, their matter-of-faetness,—cannot easily take in.
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