MR. GLADSTONE'S MEDITATIONS.
MR. GLADSTONE shows no sign of the hopelessness which the situation seems to justify. The Duke of Devonshire thinks his courage in circumstances so desperate deserving of the utmost admiration, and Lord Randolph Churchill treats the game as virtually up. But there is no trace in Mr. Gladstone's demeanour of either exhaustion or despondency. He is as sympathetic and urbane to Mr. Plunket when that gentleman pleads eloquently for Trinity College, Dublin, as he was some weeks ago to Mr. Chamberlain when his son made so good a dAut in the House of Commons. We may be sure that he at least has not yet lost his hope of a great victory, in spite of the urgency, and we might even say the critical character, of the situation. What is the nature of the hope which keeps up that sanguine and in- domitable spirit? He sees, certainly, more clearly than any one that at this rate even the Home-rule Bill can never pass the House of Commons this Session, still less any of the more popular English measures for which his sup- porters in the constituencies are hungering and thirsting. An old Parliamentary hand is not easily deceived in matters of this kind. And no one knows better than Mr. Gladstone how fatal a long and unsuccessful Fabian warfare is to the prestige of a great popular Minister. Moreover, he is quite aware that the tone of contemptuous exaction which the Irish Party are beginning to take, is the most ominous of all the Parliamentary aspects of the case. When Mr. Sexton begins to talk of the unaccountable " fatuity " of the Government in treating its opponents so seriously, the crisis cannot be far off. Either Mr. Gladstone must strike a blow which will spread confusion amongst his foes and reanimate at once the enthusiasm of his party, or his Government will soon perish amidst universal signs of weariness and con- tempt. The English people are not likely to be conciliated to Irish Home-rule by the airs and graces with which the Irish Party treat England as a sort of inferior Ireland whose day is now past. We may feel perfectly sure of this, that Mr. Gladstone sees some opportunity of ending the conflict, and ending it in a fashion which will admit of some very different condition of things from the present toilsome uphill battle. What is the conclusion to which he is looking ?
We feel little doubt that it is a new Dissolution, and a Dissolution on the express ground that obstruction to a measure on which the United Kingdom has decided is being recklessly applied in order to arrest the other most needful and urgent reforms to which the devolution of Irish business to an Irish Parliament was intended to lead. Mr. Glad- stone is perfectly aware that his present majority is inadequate to what is required of it. A great constitu- tional change of the most critical kind cannot be carried against the will of the English people, and by virtue of a mere chance alliance between Scotch and Welsh advocates for Disestablishment and a body of more or less insolent Irish free-lances. Sooner or later there must be a very different declaration of resolve by the English people, if the cause is to be victorious. And Mr. Gladstone no doubt thinks that it should be sooner rather than later, and that it should be challenged boldly by himself and not by his foes. No doubt he thinks that both the nation's and the Queen's irresolution needs but one bold stroke to bring it to the point of a final and irrevocable decision. If he could but get the people at large to see that the unconstitutional , obstinacy of a-party desirous of evading all the changes for which the people eagerly crave, is overpowering a popular statesman who has displayed the utmost gentleness and conciliation, without reaping any sort of forbearance from his antagonists as the result of all that geniality and magnanimity,—if he could but get the con- stituencies to see that all the great questions of the Labour party and of the social reformers are hung up for an in- definite period by the tenacious obstinacy of Conservatives who prefer a dead-block to any sort of movement, then, he thinks, that he might appeal to the country for a free hand, and that the country would reply in a peremptory tone which would end the difficulty at once. No doubt, his chief anxiety is the growing presumption of his Irish allies. That is the one obstacle to what he thinks would be otherwise a suc- cessful appeal to the people of Great Britain. If he could but say that his Irish allies have been as meek as the relative power of the two islands seems to require,—if he could but ridicule with success the notion that there is any sort of real danger to the power of the United King- dom in giving Ireland the domestic Legislature and Administration for which she asks, he would feel com- paratively safe in making this appeal. But, unfortunately, this is not so. The Irish vanity has been roused. The Irish Party are becoming dictatorial. They talk of his own urbanity and magnanimity as mere "fatuity." Instead of playing into his hands by quieting all English fears, they are endangering his game by assuming the tone of arrogance to which the English people are most sensitive, and he waits, therefore, anxiously for a favourable moment at which this presumptuousness of his Irish allies shall be thrown into the shade, and his own patient and conciliatory attitude shall contrast vividly with the obstructive strategy of his opponents. If on the cry of unconstitutional obstruc- tion he could sweep the constituencies, he justly thinks that his difficulties would be at an end, and that even the House of Lords could no longer stand in his way. He is, we imagine, waiting for the moment when lie can say with most effect, See how long-suffering and anxious to meet every reasonable objection I have been ; even the Irish Party, though they have now and then emitted a spark, under much provocation, have on the whole assented most frankly to many very trying and humilitating condi- tions; only the most unconstitutional determination to concede nothing to a clear popular majority, could have pretended to find all the guarantees I have conceded, worthless. Now I must ask for a clear manifestation of resolve that this endless resistance to the people shall be peremptorily put down, and that there shall be no more grudging and craning against the will of the people.' We have little doubt that this is the prospect whic'i ren- ders Mr. Gladstone so cheery and genial in the presence of what look like insurmountable difficulties. He thinks they are not insurmountable, that they may all be surmounted by a new-recourse to the democracy, to be made after the speci- men the Unionists have given to the country of the temper of their obstructiveness. But then all this is on the assump- tion that the arguments against the Home-rule Bill have really no popular substance in them, that they are the mere moonshine which Mr. Gladstone himself thinks them, that the Ulster demonstrations have produced no great im- pression at all, that Mr. Sexton's and Mr. Healy's quarrels have struck nobody as symptomatic of what the Irish Legislature will be, that the Scotch are honestly hungering for Disestablishment, that the Labour party really know what they want and are convinced they can get it,—in short, that Unionism has not succeeded at all in kindling Conservative feelings and fears in the breasts of the English people. These are, in all probability, Mr. Gladstone's own assumptions. We are convinced that they are false assumptions. We believe that the debates have impressed the English people with the extreme rashness of this measure, that the Irish minority have inspired a great deal of sympathy and have managed to excite a great deal of fear in the minds of Englishmen ; that the dictatorial attitude of the Irish Members has struck the public imagination ; that their quarrels at this critical moment have given us a notion of what Irish patriotism is worth ; that the Scotch are finding out that their Established Church is dearer to them than they knew ; that the Labour party are not ready with their programme, and are very much divided as to what it ought to be ; and that Unionists have succeeded in con- vincing the majority of the people that nothing is easier than to go farther and fare worse. Mr. Gladstone's san- guine and eager mind has no doubt convinced itself that he shall still drive his enemies like "the dust before the wind, and the angel of the Lord scattering them." But in our belief, a new Dissolution would only give the coup de grdce to a policy which has from the first been received with great hesitation and doubt even by his own followers, and which every day of the debates of this year has weakened, till it is all but crumbling away beneath their feet. The Irish have fairly succeeded in convincing us that, however troublesome they are now at Westminster, they would be ten times as troublesome when they are solidly established both at Westminster and at Dublin.
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