TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. PARNELL'S POSITION. THE result of the divorce suit in which Mr. Parnell has been the co-respondent, will very justly diminish the kind of popularity which he has gained in certain quarters as a political representative of the principles of purity and justice. For private indifference to these principles is not really consistent with public devotion to them, and it would be childish to suppose that the man who has acted as he has acted, who has deceived the man who regarded him as a Mend, and has dragged down the woman whom he loved, would be at all more scrupulous in public life than he himself gave himself out to be when he declared on a celebrated occasion that it was very possible that his purpose had been to mislead the House of Commons. Those who supposed that in that cynical boast Mr. Parnell was doing himself injustice, as some men love to do themselves injustice, will hardly doubt any longer that he is what we all now know that he really assumes to be, —a worldly man who acts upon worldly principles, though he may none the less entertain as genuine an attachment to a public cause as he entertains for a private person, notwithstanding that he does not hesitate to sully either the one or the other by his unscrupulousness as to the methods which he chooses for gratifying his own feelings. Still, though it would be difficult not to believe that the public estimate of Mr. Parnell as a man, and therefore also as a politician, must be greatly changed wherever he was for- merly regarded with anything like reverence or hero- worship,—and to many Irish electors he has no doubt seemed a hero,—it does not in the least follow that Irish- men will not continue to treat him as the head of the Home-rule Party, and as the one politician whom they can best trust, just as it would not follow that if Englishmen nearly a century ago had known Nelson's private character, they would have trusted him at all less as a commander whose patriotism and whose genius alike fitted him to fight the naval battles of England. It is true that there is a closer connection between political and personal trust- worthiness, than there is between military or naval and personal trustworthiness ; but in what degree that close- ness of connection shall or shall not be felt, must be left to the people themselves to decide ; and we are disposed to doubt whether the Irish people will be very greatly affected by what they hear of Mr. Parnell's private life, unless it be perhaps by the one cir- cumstance which placed him in a ludicrous, not to say con- temptible, position. They have so accustomed themselves to distinguish broadly between the politics and the religious faith of their leaders, that it is not at all improbable that they will draw the same wide distinction between their politics and their morality. What, they will ask, does it matter to us whether Mr. Parnell is a good man in private life, so long as he does the best he can for Ireland, and judges better than any other man what he can screw out of the British Government? Has he not identified himself with our cause and our sufferings as no other leader has identified himself since the time of O'Connell ? Such are the ques- tions which we expect most Irishmen to ask themselves, and for the most part we expect them to answer them, consciously or unconsciously, by the resolve not to let the unpleasant light which the recent divorce suit has shed upon his character diminish their loyalty to him as a political leader. Nor can we say with any sincere con- viction that we should think them wrong, so long as they see no other leader more competent to represent their views, and more worthy of that general trust which depends partly on the character of intellectual qualities, partly on social position, and partly on the evidence of complete indifference to anything like corrupt influence. We hold that Mr. Parnell, by introducing the practice of boycotting into Ireland, has done his country the greatest wrong that has been inflicted during the present century ; but then, where is the leader who, while taking up the same cause, has set his face against those anti-social practices which have lowered the whole character of Irish life ? The Home-rule Party have, to tell the truth, no great choice of leaders. Mr. Dillon is even more violent than Mr. Parnell, and has nothing like the same coolness of judgment. Unless the Home-rule cause is to be allowed to collapse altogether in Ireland at the very moment when Mr. Gladstone hopes to carry it to victory, there must be some leader of the Irish Party, and where is there one who can inspire more trust than Mr. Parnell ? No doubt he is proved to be a man who can betray a friend and gravely injure the person to whom he is most devoted ; but that only shows that the Irish Home-rulers have not got a leader who is worthy of much trust ; it does not show, human nature being the complex thing it is, that Mr. Parnell is not the leader who is, on the whole, as sincerely devoted to the cause he has adopted as any other Irish- man in the same ranks, and much more capable of carrying- it forward to triumph. Mr. Parnell's conduct may be, pro- bably will be, a reason with many Irishmen for withdrawing from him anything like personal regard ; but we cannot see that it is any sufficient reason for deposing him from a place which there is no other person at all well qualified to fill. Political leadership is a rather special gift. You may have a thoroughly good man who is no more com- petent for it than he is for commanding an army ; and you may have a man who is by no means good with all the other qualities of a leader, and with at least as disinterested a feeling for the cause he represents as it is possible to secure among men who are in the main worldly, and whose worldliness qualifies them to discern the selfish elements in other men.
We do not then, on the whole, anticipate that the result of the divorce suit will shake Irish loyalty to Mr. Parnell. We do not even think that the Irish Bishops will throw him over, though they will no doubt be discomposed by having to support a leader of this character. To have been compelled to minimise the sins of intimidation and breach of contract, was bad enough ; but to be saddled besides. with a political leader who has shown his indifference to the one virtue which has always been held sacred, in Ireland, will be harder still. Doubtless they will take it as one of the evil consequences of Mr. Parnell's Protestantism or scepticism, or whatever they choose to impute to him in respect of his religious belief or his want of religious belief. It is most unfair to do so, considering that in matters of this kind, morality fares quite as badly in Catholic countries (Ireland excepted) as in countries which are not Catholic, and on an average worse than in England. But we do not doubt that this view will be actually taken by many of the Roman Catholic- Bishops, however uncomfortable they may feel in taking it. If they were to throw over Mr. Parnell, they could, hardly accept Mr. Dillon,—who has identified himself still more emphatically than Mr. Parnell with the breaches of the moral law which the Pope's Rescript has condemned,— in Mr. Parnell's place. But though it will hardly induce them to depose Mr. Parnell, it cannot but greatly cool their zeal for him, and diffuse a general sense of depression amongst the Home-rulers.
But the most important consequence of Mr. Parnell's misconduct will be felt among the English Gladstonians. There undoubtedly the damping effect of the exposure of the Irish leader's character will be very serious. The enthusiasm of the Gladstonians has always been more or less dependent on the personal earnestness and high moral calibre of Mr. Gladstone's own character. To have their great leader weighted by his close alliance with one of whom it is simply impossible to assert that he cares seriously about morality at all, will be pain and grief to those most effective of all the Gladstonian standard-bearers who dilate most upon the moral greatness of their chief. The Dissenters especially will be struck dumb by the necessity of praising a party of which Mr. Parnell is the leader, and though they will not abandon the policy, they will probably find their zeal for that policy very much damped. If there were any one else who could fill Mr. Parnell's place with even tolerable force and dignity, undoubtedly the Glad- stonians would move heaven and earth to replace him. But as, so far as we can see, to replace him successfully will be impossible, we believe that, in England at least, the Home-rule cause will be found to have received a very considerable blow, the mischievous effects of which it will take all Mr. Gladstone's zeal and all his loftiness of character to undo.
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