is dwindling to small proportions. It is quite evident had
been consulted, and the more generously they had from Mr. Matthews's speeches in the House, that he is been treated by him,—and of still greater astonishment willing to be as liberal as he can in the pension matter, that Liberals should ignore the dangerous force of the and the substance of the police demand reduces itself to weapons which they were placing in the hands of the that, and an allowance for overtime which, if nine hours is Nationalists, in case the " Union of Hearts " were found adopted as the limit instead of eight, will not strike the to be as far off as ever, or further of than ever, public as unreasonable. soon after the statutory Irish Parliament had been set We do not see why Mr. Monro should not be restored ; up. Far from feeling our position on that head one of but at the same time the attacks on Mr. Matthews are great moral superiority, we have rather been tempted to unreasonable in their bitterness. They always are. We admire genuinely the fervour of Mr. Gladstone's belief that never remember to have seen the present Home Secretary he will in the end be justified by his faith in Nationalist attacked for any reason whatever without some one using moderation, if only it be pushed far enough,—far language which seemed to be dictated by an unexplained enough to remove mountains and to fill up seas. On this personal detestation. If he declines to allow the streets to point we should agree heartily with what Mr. G. W. E. be obstructed, he is called a tyrant ; while if he refuses a Russell says in his reply of this week to his cousin's letter; respite to a parricide, he is denounced as a murderer. The but, unfortunately, he ignores the very crux of the difficulty, words do no harm, of course, and are probably forgotten for which there is the less excuse that he himself at one as soon as uttered ; but they indicate hate. We suppose time represented what we may call the fanatical party, the plain truth is, that Mr. Matthews, who retains in who, so far from advocating large concessions to Par- debate a good deal of the advocate's impulse to prove his nellism, went far beyond Mr. Gladstone in pleading for adversary in the wrong, instead of proving himself to be repressive measures. In 1882, Mr. Russell forced upon a in the right, wants in some degree the faculty of making reluctant Ministry a stringent clause in the Crimes Act of himself liked ; but that is no reason for this perpetual that year which Lord Spencer did not deem necessary, injustice towards a competent and successful Minister. and which the Prime Minister so much disliked that Wherein has Mr. Matthews failed ?—for it is easy to see he felt the greatest hesitation in even accepting it. wherein he has succeeded. At a moment when the This being so, we cannot help feeling some surprise that democracy just set free is inclined to use its freedom Mr. Russell should so completely ignore the true secret of recklessly, to set up opinion above the law, to pardon the moral gulf which has opened between the two sections every crime except incivility to " the people," and especially of the Liberal Party,—the amazement and dismay with to elevate a sort of jury of Radical editors into a Court of which the Liberal Unionists have watched Mr. Gladstone's Cassation, with power to call Judges before it to be conversion to the policy of boycotting and his eager excuses scourged, Mr. Matthews has steadily upheld the authority for the " Plan of Campaign," and the complete entente of Law. He has kept our streets clear of dangerous cordiale between his followers and those who are avowedly mobs ; he has strengthened the Police force of London engaged in trying to make the life of men who take farms by 10 per cent. ; he has fought for pensions to the country from which other tenants have been evicted intolerable to police till many of the rural County Councils are, we are them, alike by malicious whispers, open avoidance, intimida- told, exasperated at his interference ; and he has steadily, tion, and breach of contract. Mr. Russell, who was at one except possibly in the Maybrick case, refused to allow time even more eager than the Government of Mr. Glad- the sentimentalists, and men incapable of comprehending stone in its most indignant moment, to put down the policy evidence, to save criminals from the legal punishment of Mr. Parnell's followers in Ireland, now calmly ignores of their crimes. We do not suppose Mr. Matthews is a the one chief source of the moral alienation between the very " sympathetic " man or a " magnetic " man, or a man two sections of the Liberal Party, the section which white- to whom "the great heart of the people goes fully out ; " and washes boycotting by dubbing it " exclusive dealing," Mr. Gladstone into admiration of Mr. Parnell, and some- AND GLADSTONIANS. that they are acting in a larger and more generous political than we had formerly conceived, and we now honestly think that that political misgovernment is so profound that it must be remedied before there is any hope of getting to a sounder moral regime. We hold that, as in France a century ago political revolution had to precede moral regeneration, so it is in Ireland now. It is all very well to talk of the Decalogue ; but before you can educate a people to obey the Decalogue, you must have a condition of things in which what the law calls stealing is not what the conscience calls justice, and what the law calls order is not what the conscience calls tyranny.' That is, we take it, a genuine representa- tion of what Mr. Gladstone and perhaps five-sixths of his followers really think. We are convinced that they are wrong; that for the last nine years at least there has never been such a state of things in Ireland as this view presents to us ; that, except in comparatively few cases, the evictions have been evictions for which the tyranny of the League and the cowardice of the tenantry, much more than the unjust acts of the landlords, have been respon- sible ; that the police and constabulary, though they have often been injudicious and sometimes irritating, have on the whole let quiet and sober Home-rulers speak and do exactly as they like ; and that the view taken of the condition of Ireland by Mr. Gladstone and his followers is not the true view, but one due to the astonishing credulity with which they have recently accepted the representations of the extreme Parnellite Party, indeed, of men whose policy Mr. Parnell himself has been compelled more than once to repudiate. But while we are fully convinced that this is so, we are also fully convinced that the greater number of the converts to Parnellism think otherwise, and honestly think otherwise. It has always been a matter of marvel to us that the Irish revolutionists are able to inspire such profound conviction in their own view of the facts in the minds of politicians whom they have so often previously misled. Our own belief is, that hardly one in ten of the alleged grievances of the Parnellites is more than an absurd and monstrous caricature of the real facts of the case. And we are forming our judgment not by the representations of the Government, but by the repre- sentations of men who are as hearty friends of the tenants as they are of liberty and self-government. Still, holding this firmly as we do, we honestly believe that Mr. Gladstone and the greater number of his followers,— no doubt there are exceptions who have to close their eyes firmly to the light before they can accept his Parnellite version of Irish facts,—genuinely hold that Irish self- government must precede the restoration of mutual trust in Ireland, and are also filled with the still more amazing expectation that a complete system of self-government in Ireland will be followed by the restoration of mutual con- fidence and the extinction of class jealousies and suspicious. And that being their belief and expectation, we do not think that Liberal Unionists are justified in looking down upon them from a height of moral superiority. At bottom, our difference is one as to the facts of the case. No doubt politicians like Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien have a most profound belief in their own sincerity, and accept every story the subordinate officers of the League impose on them with as easy a credulity as any Gladstonian accepts it when they rehearse it to him with fervent conviction. We regret such easy credulity. To some extent we even condemn it, because we hold that all discriminating politicians have had the means of convincing themselves that Parnellite facts are largely mingled with prejudice and imagination of the most vivid colouring. But we do think that it would be extremely Pharisaic to assume that all the virtue is on our side, and all the self-deception on theirs. The Irish poet says, " On our side is virtue and Erin, on theirs is the Saxon and guilt;" but we ought not to imitate the comfortable illusion of the Irish poet. No doubt there has formerly been ample excuse, if there is not at the present time any solid foundation, for the Parnellite view. No doubt the genuine wrongs of the past are only too apt to inspire wrong-headed impressions even of the right actions of the present. But there is very little room in this world for virtuous conceit, and if we foster it in ourselves, we shall probably soon be shutting our eyes as firmly to the strong side of the tenant-farmers' case, as some of the Gladstonians now are shutting theirs to the strong side of the Unionist case. The controversy is necessarily a sharp one, but we have no wish at all to make broad our phylacteries, and thank God that we are not as other men are, nor even as these Home-rulers. The best way to retain confidence in ourselves is to respect our antagonists, and, exceptis excipieralis, we do respect them sincerely, whether they think us Pharisees or not.
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