THE TWO IRELANDS.
R. CHAMBERLAIN'S visit to Dublin has once isVI more brought into very clear light the profound, though not, in our belief, irremediable, cleavage by which Irish life is divided. We knew already that large numbers of Irishmen looked upon the Boers now in arms against this country with the same cheerily undiscrimi- nating sympathy with which they have regarded, or professed to regard, every rival or enemy, of whatever race, faith, or colour, which has been encountered, actually or potentially, by Great Britain during the lifetime of the present generation. It was certain beforehand that they would do so. Those who had not stuck at giving their moral support to a Mad Moollah on the North-West Frontier of India, or an ineffably sanguinary tyrant like the late Khalifs in the Soudan, on the one condition that, within the range of his influence, he could make things hot for the British, were not likely to find any difficulty in bestowing their benediction on the corrupt and oppres- sive oligarchy which was found ready to pit itself against British supremacy in South Africa. And so it was with no surprise, though doubtless with a certain amount of fresh anger, that the great majority of Englishmen and Scotsmen received the manifestations from across St. George's Ohannel, first of benevolent interest in the refusal of the common rights of free men to British sub- jects (Irishmen included) in the Transvaal, and subse- quently of exultant satisfaction at the losses sustained by Imperial forces, in which Irish regiments are largely, and with great distinction, represented. What is a little sur- prising, but none the less very gratifying, is the fact that, among English Home-rulers, these demonstrations of coate-gue-coate anti - British ferocity appear to have opened many eyes to the absolute impossibility, from a British point of view, of any revival of Mr. Glad- stone's Irish policy. A priori, we must admit that we should have thought that if a Briton had otherwise been inclined to favour the installation of a certain set of Irish politicians in control of the Executive at Dublin, he would have been induced to draw the line against further support of that project when the gentlemen in question applauded the Mandi, even more promptly and decisively than in view of the sympathy openly accorded by them to President Kruger. But we should be the last to com- plain of any road by which the minds of any of our countrymen travel to what we believe to be sound con- clusions. And it is, perhaps, conceivable that the very horror of the idea of approval towards the impersonations of fanatical savagery and lust who were successively in power at Khartoum seemed to impart to Irish expres- sions of such a sentiment an unreality which cannot be supposed to attach to the friendship avowed in the same quarters for our enemies in the present South African conflict. However that may be, there can be little doubt that the utterances of a number of prominent Irish Nationalists during the past summer and autumn, and notably during the black week of British reverses, have gone far towards administering the coup de grace to any lingering vitality of sympathy with Home-rule among patriotic Englishmen.
But the circumstances connected with Mr. Chamber- lain's visit have done much more than bring out, in a possibly accentuated form, the intense and uncalculating hatred of the British Empire among a number of by no means uninfluential or unrepresentative Irishmen. They have also illustrated, in a very striking fashion, the strength and quality of the Imperial element in the Irish popula- tion. Mr. Chamberlain, as he himself fully indicated, would not have chosen last Monday as a day on which to receive academic or any other distinctions. The date for the reception of the honorary degree conferred upon him by the University of Dublin had been fixed long before. If it could conveniently have been altered, we may be well assured that on purely personal grounds Mr. Chamberlain would have preferred to alter it. For at the moment not Only was the policy with which he has the most direct responsible connection involved in the shadow—though by no means discredit—cast by our military troubles, but he himself had very recently incurred a good deal of criti- cism, even from his strongest political friends, for certain oratorical indiscretions. There is, moreover, no part of the United Kingdom in which such slips are apt to be more hardly judged than among Irishmen, who, as a rule, possess by nature an instinct for felicitous phrase, and for avoidance of the contrary, and the corresponding tendency to reflect severely on those less fortunately endowed. In view of all these things, there can be no doubt that Mr. Chamberlain went to Ireland a week ago under a certain disadvantage, and if he had been guided by the purely self-regarding considerations which are freely attributed to him by his enemies, he would have found in the con- dition of public affairs an adequate reason for deferring his visit. But what was the result ? Unquestionably, so far as Irish Loyalism is concerned, a veritable triumph. Nowhere in Great Britain could any statesman have been made the object of more unmistakable manifestations of enthusiastic welcome than those which greeted Mr. Chamberlain on his appearance before the brilliant audience assembled, for the Winter Commencement ceremony, in the Examination Hall of Tnnity College; those which followed, with close appreciation, Dr. Tyrrell's happily phrased Latin introductory oration; or those which hailed the new doctor from the throng of undergraduates outside the building in which the degrees were conferred. These different gatherings—that in the Examination Hall, and that, equally enthusiastic, at the Commencement Banquet in the evening, and the " serried mass of cheering under- graduates, whose ranks extended right across the quad- rangle" of Trinity, in the afternoon—may in combination be regarded as emphatically representative of the culture of the Protestant upper and upper middle classes of Ireland. And their enthusiastic demonstrations in honour of Mr. Chamberlain prove — what indeed needed no proving, but is, none the less, pleasant to see demon- strated afresh in so decisive a fashion—that a great part of the most highly educated and intelligent Irish, and the larger part of the natural leaders of the Irish people, are as essentially and deeply Imperial as the dwellers iu London, or Yorkshire, or Edinburgh. Not merely the owners of land, not merely the official classes so commonly described as " hangers-on of the Castle," but a great body—indeed, we may say, as we believe with accuracy, the great body—of the professional classes, and a very large section of those occupied in the higher walks of commerce, are essentially not English, but Imperial, in their instincts and policy. To them Mr. Chamberlain not only represents a long record of singularly effective personal work for the maintenance of the union between Ireland and Great Britain, which, in their belief, is of vital moment to the peace and progress of their own island, but specially, at this moment, embodies the firm resolve of her Majesty's Government to vindicate British claims, and establish British supremacy beyond challenge in South Africa. To them the fact that in pursuit of that resolve serious reverses have been en- countered only serves to quicken the glow of their confidence in the statesmen who have exhibited their determination at all costs to " see this thing through."
Wide, indeed, is the gulf which separates those who are animated by such sentiments, and who feel themselves partners, as they have a right to feel, in the glories and responsibilities of Britain's Imperial heritage, and the men whose meeting had to be forbidden lest it should lead to a breach of the peace, and who vented their intense delight at British misfortunes in a privacy quali- fied by the presence of reporters. It is too much to hope that this gulf will be filled up as between men now living. Nor can anything be more certain than that the experi- ment of leaving an Ireland thus rent asunder in any sense detached from the control of the Imperial Parliament would be a simple invitation to civil war. But it does not seem by any means too sanguine to hope that, if only the permanence of the British connection can be placed visibly beyond hope of challenge, a just and sympathetic central administration, together with the educating influences of local sel f-government in the counties, may gradually serve to bring about a social consolidation in Ireland. There are no people more sensitive than the Irish to appeals to the imagina- tion, and if once the hope that English nervousness or senti- ment might be worked on to concede an Irish Parliament were killed, the patriotic aspirations which now waste themselves in futile efforts might flow in the larger and nobler channels of participation in the charge of a. world- wide Empire. Both sides, no doubt, have much to learn, and if we should like and hope to see the Nationalist loyal to the Empire, we should also be glad and earnestly hope to see an increasingly large proportion of Irish Unionists more heartily identifying themselves with the interests and the life of Ireland. For both these ends, as we believe, the great desiderata are time and a sense of British fixity of purpose, and it may well be that the latter condition has in truth been promoted by those manifestations of present Nationalist sympathy with the enemies of the Empire which have stirred the anger of the most robust Radicals in this country.
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