THE IRISH DEBATE.
THE amendment on the Address, which Mr. Gorst moved on Tuesday, in relation to Irish policy, was, as
every one admits the offspring of the Dublin revela- tions." It appeared to Mr. Gorst that in those revelations there was matter that could be made to cast a new discredit on the policy of the Government in releasing Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary colleagues last April without conditions, at a time when Mr. Forster was disposed to require more or less impracticable conditions ; and accordingly Mr. Gorst moved an amendment to the Address, half patronage, half sneer, requiring the Government to go on with the policy of repression, and to return no more to that policy of con- cession, which, according to Mr. Gent, marked the period when Mr. Forster separated himself from his colleagues. It is really on this point that the whole discussion, so far as there has been serious discussion at all has turned. Those speakers who, like Mr. O'Donnell, delivered something like half-an- hour's declamation on nothing in particular, to every minute they devoted to the question on which they ought to have been speaking, did not discuss the amendment at all ; they only endeavoured, not ineffectually, to discredit still further the waning significance of debate in the House of Commons. But a few speakers—especially the Conservatives—have seized the point, that, in Mr. Gorst's opinion, there is a special opportuneness at the present moment in exhorting the Govern- ment to have done with the policy of concession, and to stick to the policy of repression which the Crimes Prevention Act has enabled them to pursue ; and they hold that that special opportuneness arises from the fact that when the Government let Mr. Parnell out of prison, he was counting on the prospect of putting down outrage by the agency of a man—Mr. Sheridan—to whom the evidence of the informers attributes the organisation of outrage throughout Ireland. Now, have the recent revelations really thrown new light on the Kilmain- ham transaction, or tended in any degree to support Mr. Forster's judgment of that matter, and to discredit the judgment of the Government ? On the contrary—writing with Mr. Forster's speech of Thursday night before us—we should say that, so far as the revelations have thrown any light on the matter at all, they have tended to support the judgment of the Govern- ment, and to diminish the presumption that Mr. Forster's per- sonal judgment on the situation in April last was the accurate judgment.
In the first place, if the new revelations are to be trusted, —and, of course, that must be the supposition on which we are to proceed, if we are to take them into account at all,—it is certain that it was the policy of imprisoning on suspicion and without trial that led to the formation of that special Assassination Committee by whom the murders were performed. For that, of course, the Government was fully as responsible as Mr. Forster, though Mr. Forster is understood to have pressed the first Coercion Act on the Government. But, in considering the question whether the Government were right in wishing to relax that irritating policy at the first practicable opportunity, or whether Mr. Forster was right in desiring to maintain it for some months longer, as he certainly did desire, it is impossible to leave out of account that it was the first Coercion Act which, ac- cording to the new evidence, really led to the formation of the Assassination Committee, and gave the extreme party the notion that there was no hope without recourse to the most violent measures. No one maintains or even hints that, had Mr. Parnell and his colleagues been detained longer in prison, the Phcenix Park murders would not have taken place. On the contrary, every effort was made to assassinate Mr. Forster himself before the political prisoners had been released, and he only escaped by providential miscarriages of the conspiracy. The new light, therefore, which is shed on the matter by the Dublin evidence,—if it can be trusted at all,--certainly shows this, that Mr. Forster, in sticking so eagerly to the policy of keep- ing popular leaders in prison without trial,—even when it was known that they had become anxious to suppress outrage,—was intensifying the motive which was at the bottom of the assas- sinations, while the Government in abandoning that policy at the earliest moment when, from the information which they received, they thought that it might be safely abandoned, were diminishing the force of the motive which chiefly stimulated the assassins.
But then it is said that the new evidence certainly proves this,—that Mr. Parnell was counting on a reputed organiser of outrage to stay the hand of outrage. And though, of course, we must not assume what no one has the right to assume on such evidence as we have already had, that this reputed organiser of outrage had really organised outrage, yet, assuming this to be so, and admitting that Mr. Parnell was really counting on this, the question is not in the least how far Mr. Parnell knew what he was about, but how far Mr. Parnell was or was not in earnest in the desire to use his liberty for the purpose of dis- couraging outrage. If he was in earnest—and no one has even hinted that the new evidence proves that he was not,—the Government had absolutely no legal right to detain him a day in prison after they had come to the conviction that his release would rather aid the cause of order in Ireland, than hinder it. He had been proved guilty of no crime, was held in prison on suspicion solely, because the Act allowed the Govern- ment to detain on suspicion persons whose liberty was believed to be prej udicial to the cause of order in Ireland, and the moment that belief ceased, the power intended to be conferred by the Coercion Act ceased too. Even if Mr. Parnell did intend to stop outrages through the agency of a man who had organised them, there was absolutely no legal right under the Coercion Act to detain him in prison.
But, then, Mr. Forster asserts that he resigned because he could not approve of the release of Mr. Parnell and his col- leagues till after the passing of the Crimes Prevention Bill, by which the Irish Government were to gain an equivalent for the power of the Coercion Act which had failed. We reply that, in the first place, there is nothing at all to show that the detention of Mr. Parnell for two or three months longer in prison would have secured the Government against any kind of disorder which they had to encounter in consequence of Mr. Parnell's release ;—rather the contrary. Nor, again, was the passing of the Crimes Prevention Bill Mr. Forster's main condition for the release of the suspects. He expressed his willingness to release them on their own undertaking not to obstruct the cause of law and order in Ireland, an undertaking which the Govern- ment had absolutely no right to require so soon as they had convinced themselves on adequate moral evidence that the release of the suspects, without conditions, would promote the cause of law and order in Ireland. Further, Mr. Forster's wish that the Crimes Prevention Bill should have taken pre- cedence of the Procedure Resolutions, though it expresses, of course, his own personal view of the crisis, has not been shown to have been communicated by him to his colleagues, while the Prime Minister intimated in the most distinct manner last April that those colleagues had not received any such im- pression from Mr. Forster.
On the whole, we maintain that the recent revelations in Dublin go to show—so far as they bear on the question at all— that the Government were quite right in releasing the suspects, when they did, without conditions ; that so far as that act affected the order of Ireland at all, it affected it for good, and not for evil ; that it immensely increased the dismay and horror with which the assassinations were received, and led even to a general feeling of remorse in the minds of Irishmen which would never have been felt had Mr. Parnell remained in prison. We are persuaded, indeed, that, so far from throwing any sinister light on the release of Mr. Parnell, the recent revelations have shown only this,—that the policy of the first Coercion Act was a thoroughly mistaken and imitating policy, which, though it enabled the Government to enforce the Land Act, in every other way operated to stimulate crime and generate a vindictive public sentiment.
Of one feature in the Irish debate—Mr. O'Brien's remark- able speech on Wednesday—we must say a word in this connection. No more furious speech was ever uttered in the
House of Commons, and no such furious speech was ever listened to with such singular and complete sang-froid. The
new Member for Mallow expressed opinions of the use made of the Crimes Act which amounted to the fiercest possible denunciation of the Government, of the Irish Judges, of the Juries, and of the whole apparatus for killing innocent men, as he professed to declare his belief that the Crimes Act chiefly succeeds in doing. Further, he most pointedly re-
frained from expressing the smallest regret for having supported the candidature of James Carey for the Munici- pality of Dublin, and intimated that if, knowing only
what he then knew of Carey, he had to act again on the same circumstances, he should act precisely as he acted then. What is the bearing of such a speech as that,—delivered with all the ferocity and menace of something like physical intimida- tion,—on the amendment which Mr. Goist has presented to the House Why, this,—that if the Government be told that it has been right only in enforcing the Crimes Act, and must not again think of a policy of concession like that which released Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, the House will have done all in its power to play into the hands of the fierce party represented by Mr. O'Brien, who treat the Crimes Act as the only significant 'phase of Liberal policy in Ireland, and try to persuade the Irish people that the policy of justice and of reform has been abandoned by the Liberals for ever. That is a libel for which it is only too easy to gain belief in Ireland, and that is the libel for which the success of Mr. Gorst's amendment would in the most powerful manner assist Mr. O'Brien and his friends to gain credence in Ireland, especially after Mr. Forster's elaborate invective against Mr. Parnell.
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