TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EXIT HOME-RULE.
NOTHING can be more ominous for Irish Home- rule than the present signs of the times. We will not say it is dead, for crotchets hardly ever die. Anti- vaccination will probably survive the Gloucester epidemic of small-pox, and Local Option will survive Sir William Harcourt's Bill of last year. But still in any sense of the word that has a practical meaning Irish Home-rule appears to be dead. It is a, curious sort of irony that what has given it the coup-de-grd ce appears to be an Education Bill, —not, of course, because it has promoted education, for the Bill is not yet passed, and if it were, its operation, of course, would be a work of years, and the antagonists of the Govern- ment who now declare that they will no longer give their sup- port in any practical sense to Gladstonian Home-rule, are antagonists of the Education Bill, and not its friends. But the Education Bill has roused into lively activity those deep- rooted antipathies between Irish Roman Catholics and English Nonconformists, which Mr. Gladstone's mesmeric passes had for a time laid to sleep. We do not know that there is more reason for rejoicing than for anxiety in the result. While Irish Home-rule was an immediate and for- midable danger, the Unionist party were secure in their position, and unfortunately there are other great dangers besides Irish Home-rule which might spring into life if ever the cohesion of the Unionist party were to be dissolved or even very materially weakened. Supposing that the Conser- vatives felt so strong that they no longer feared defeat even if they lost the alliance of the Liberal Unionists, we might see the prejudices of the party against the Duke of Devon- shire and Mr. Chamberlain break out afresh, and no one can tell what would happen if all the various sections of all the various parties were to fall asunder, and Parlia- ment were to resolve itself into incoherent groups of mutually dissatisfied and mutually reproachful ex-allies. We are, therefore, by no means disposed to exult in the repulsion which is developing itself between the English Nonconformists and the Irish Home-rulers. It may threaten greater evils than the fear of Irish Home-rule itself. But, for the present at least, the cause of Home-rule is gone to the dogs. The Irish sympathisers in the United States are weary of their long and barren efforts, and no longer pour out their thousands and tens of thousands to stimulate the Irish agitation. The Irish party itself is split into three parts with no real hope of reunion. And now the English Nonconformists have shaken the dust off their feet and declared that they will no longer light with any earnestness for a party which is actually disinclined to impose undenominational education as a test-creed on all the elementary schools of the English people. It seems, we must say, one of the most arbitrary and unreasonable tests ever yet devised by a political party for the acceptance of Irish Catholics Unless you Irish Catholics, who are naturally the devotees of a creed in Ireland, will be bigots for Undenominationalism in England, we will have nothing to say to you.' But really the outbreak is a perfectly natural result of the long simmering of scores of resentful feelings fed by a reluctant and even repulsive alliance. The Irish Catholics and English Nonconformists are altogether too antagonistic in political no less than religious genius for any lasting co-operation. Mr. Gladstone achieved a sort of political miracle in getting them to act together at all, but when the great enchanter went, it was certain enough that sooner or later the strain would be too great to endure. And now the time has come. The Nonconformist con- science has revolted, and can no longer tolerate association with Denominationalists pure and simple, who are not even willing to ignore the claims of Irish and English Catholics, even though living in England, on their sym- pathy. The evidence of their monstrous indifference to Nonconformist sympathies is quite too much for the Non- conformists. They can endure it no longer. If the Irish party will go to the right, the Nonconformists will go to the left, but for Protestants and Papists to act still together is more than a Protestant conscience can bear. Nor is it very surprising. It is difficult to Imagine an alliance more distinctly against the grain than that of Archbishop Walsh with Mr. Hugh Price Hughes. To churn together water and oil could hardly be more hopeless. The explosion occurs at an unhappy moment for the. Anti-Parnellites. Ireland is for the time too prosperous to be refractory. The spirit of faction is for the moment dead, and consequently the Irish leaders find the Irish people indifferent to the demands on their exertions. They themselves are split into sections which have no sympathy with each other. The English impatience with the Irish party has been growing for years, and showed itself last July in an absolutely unmistakable fashion. So the times are altogether out of joint, and Mr. Dillon certainly has no sort of assurance that he was born to set. them right. It is probable enough that, in spite of his dismay at the situation, he feels almost as much relief at being rid of the alliance with Mr. Hugh Price Hughes as Mr. Hugh Price Hughes feels at being rid of the alliance with Mr. Dillon. The alliance cannot be patched up again. and neither party is sorry.
The moderate Gladstonians are all saying that "devolu- tion " must come, that Ireland cannot be governed from Westminster, and that if Ireland does not come first to. her birthright, she will succeed to it when Scotland and Wales claim theirs. But will Scotland and Wales ever claim theirs, if they have not the excuse of Ireland's restlessness and the example of Ireland's isolation for doing so ? Scotland and Wales are in no hurry to give up all the advantages of their close association with England,—which Ireland we verily believe would really give up for the delight of a separate Legislature and a separate Administration and the satisfaction of thinking that she was merged in England no longer. The cry of "Home-rule all round" would never have been heard if it had not been necessary to find some logical justification for separating Ireland from Great Britain. "home-rule all round" is a cry which can never have much interest for the English people. It may come to a useful scheme for private Bill legislation, but hardly anything more. A Scotch Parliament in any true sense will never be re- vived. The Scotch are far too shrewd for that. And as for Wales going in for a tiny Parliament of her own, that is pure dreaming ; she could only get it in the wake of Ireland, if she could even get it so. Now that Irish Home-rule has merged itself in a dubious proposal for "Home-rule all round," its teeth are drawn and it is no longer dangerous.
It seems to us very satisfactory that the idle superstition which has so long been the boast of the Gladstonian party that so-called Liberals always carry their point in the end, should have met with so heavy a blow as this collapse of Irish Home-rule. It is certainly no true boast. The present writer can remember the time when all the most weighty Liberals of the day rejected with scorn the notion that our Colonies could continue in any permanent connec- tion with England, and yet no considerable party now exists which advocates what is called the "Little England" view. That article of belief in the Liberalism of 1850 is for the present as dead as Queen Anne. And we have a very hearty conviction that the belief in Irish Home-rule will perish in the same fashion from pure inanition. If we can only make the Irish content, and give them their fair share of influence,—and not more than their fair share of influence,—in the Parliament of Westminster, even the ambitious men who look to Irish Home-rule as the best field in which they can gain political distinction for themselves will soon find that their occupation is gone. The truth is, that modern Liberalism is not, and never can be, again really distinct from modern Conservatism. Both parties rest on popular suffrages, and neither party can gain a popular vote without expressing the real wishes of a great mass of the people. And that is the great difference between the Toryism of the present and the Toryism of the past. The Toryism of the present must be popular, or it would have no chance with the con- stituencies at all. The Toryism of the past was not popular, and therefore it fell before the popular vote directly the people obtained the suffrage. Now, however, there is absolutely no more reason for the superstition that in the end the creed which calls itself Liberal must eventually win, than that the creed which calls itself Con- servatism must eventually win. That creed will win which commends itself to the rising generation ; and that is just as likely to be a popular creed of the Conservative type, as a popular creed of the innovating type; and, for the present at least, a good deal more likely.
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