THE IRISH LEADERS. T HERE is a curious episode visible just
now in the long and tiresome history of the Home-rule struggle. As all who read newspapers are aware, a kind of insur- rection of opinion has broken out in Ireland against Mr. Gladstone's latest Bill. All who are cultivated—Catholics as well as Protestants, Presbyterians as much as Episcopa- lians, hereditary Liberals by the side of fanatic Tories—all who have anything to lose, all who dread a religious war, and all the English and Scotch Irishmen in Ulster, are protesting against a measure which, apart from its object, they believe to be so badly conceived that it can produce nothing in its working but anarchy and pauperism within the island itself. Opponents living in places where for years their side has been silent, are now speaking out ; the speeches are better, because more direct and simple, than they ever have been yet ; and even the farmers, hitherto the stoutest of Home-rulers because they see freeholds in the scheme, betray an uneasy sense of doubt as to its financial consequences. They detest the English, but they love the English freehandedness in alms- giving., All this while, however, the Nationalist Members are lying low. They give little or no help to their allies, they produce no arguments in answer to their opponents, they do not even indulge in the rhetoric which in Ireland, as in Spain and Southern France, is so often accepted as a sub- stitute for cold reason. Why ? Is it a coolly matured plan, or is it a result of inner dislike to a Bill which, in his heart, must fret every Nationalist Member ; or is it a sense of incompetence for the intellectual fight ? We believe the silence to proceed from all three causes ; and to the future historian, the last will be the most perplexing. Nothing in this struggle has been more extraordinary than the failure of Ireland to produce considerable men. The whole population on both sides has been called on, and this by the whole race as well as by the whole nation, and it has yielded nothing but Mr. Parnell. In the burst of fury on both sides, both, with a passion which we count entirely to their intellectual credit, have thrown down all barriers against ability, have estab- lished equality for the competent, and have sent up repre- sentatives chosen from choice alone, without reference to pedigree, or position, or means. The Irish representation on both sides is, in that respect, a true Convention ; and yet neither side can. be said—with the single and partial exception of Mr. Parnell, who, though a great leader, was in no sense a constructive statesman—to have sent up a man even of second-rate political force. The North chooses sensible men, and in Colonel Saunder- son it has a fiery, and in Mr. T. W. Russell a judicious, persuasive orator with much skill in tactics ; but the North has no man who can nominate himself by sheer, right of capacity to a Cabinet seat. The South sends men who are resolute, very quick to perceive points, and capable of quite remarkable self-suppression for party combinations ; but among them there is no one who can give Mr. Gladstone solid help. It is not because there is no Peel among them that the historian will be surprised, for the qualities of the Southern race in Ire- land are unfavourable to that type, but that there is no Mirabeau, no Gambetta, ; no one who, in the hour of strain, can impress himself upon both sides, and make Mr. Glad- stone's intervention in debate a superfluity. Nobody has really helped him with his Bill, which is simply the Bill of 1886 spoiled ; and nobody helps him in his oratorical efforts. Mr. Healy is a clever man ; but his is the cleverness of an attorney., not of a statesman ; Mr. Sexton might be a great orator if he could put into his speeches the something that convinces, but he cannot do it ; and Mr. Dillon, though he has the fire of the South, and something of the Girondist charm in speaking, gives no sign of the kind of governing force required in a leader of men. The remaining Nationalists are for the most part merely voters, sometimes able, sometimes the reverse ; but never of the calibre which comes almost of itself to the front, makes a hostile audience ponder, and propounds the solution, say, of a problem like that involved in the Ninth Clause—the retention or dismissal of Irish Members— which both wings of the Home-rule party can accept. We hear much, and for our parts believe much, as to Irish finesse ; but where is the master of finesse who can persuade the House, even for an hour, of the neces- sary "union of hearts" which is to result from the measure ? Mr. Gladstone can; but among all Mr. Glad- stone's vast claims on Southern Ireland, the claim of being an Irishman is certainly not one. We hear much of Irish adroitness, and never ourselves met but one Irishman who was not adroit ; but is it adroitness in a whole party who desire English assistance, to create a, marked dislike in both the English sides ? We hear much of Irish humour, and truly the land is full of it ; but who can quote from the Irish side one single epigram, one incisive sentence, one jest, which at once lives in the mind, and throws a bright light on the situation ? Of constructive statesmanship there is hardly a trace, though, according to the theory of the majority, it is a new Constitu- tion for Ireland that is being born. Mr. Gladstone would give a finger at this minute for an Irishman who could put that Bill of his straight, so as to satisfy both wings of his is army ; but where, we ask Irishmen themselves, is he to look for such aid P It is said the task is impossible, and, of course, if we include Unionists, that is true ; but we are not including them ; and for Qtladstonians only, surely the task is not more impossible than the one Beak per- formed for Hungary. He actually contented Hungarians and Hapsburgs, au a made a scheme which has resisted the friction of twenty-six years. Who is the Irish Deak ? It is certainly not the leader behind the mist, Dr. Walsh, for he cannot wholly control even his own party, and his utterances produce among Englishmen—whom, remember, it is necessary to conciliate—mere suspicion. The Irish Members, who are sometimes most unjustifiably and snobbishly despised for their poverty, are no poorer than Beak, and few of them are worse educated ; yet where among them is his cool statesmanship, his moderation, or his magical influence over all who, by interest, prejudice, or conviction, seemed a priori bound to reject his advice ? The historian, we say, will be in perplexity to account for such a phenomenon, and we rather wonder to what cause he will be tempted to refer it. It may be he will speak of those periods of political sterility which recur in the lives of all nations, one of which, for example, is apparent in the history of France to-day. All France is in a snarl, and there is no one to give the releasing touch, or say the solving word. It may be so, perhaps, in Ireland now ; and it would be in accord with the perpetual ironies of her destiny that such a period should be synchronous with the centre-time of her greatest struggle. Placed in the wrong sea—for she is essentially Southern—given to the one race which can understand neither the good nor the evil in her, her people divided in two , by the one fissure which is never bridged, unable to stand alone, unwilling to be bound by any tie, it would be like Ireland, with a people full of genius, to produce no genius competent to aid her in her time of need. There is, how- ever, in that argument no solution, only confessed inability to solve. The historian may say that oppressed races, in the hour of emancipation, cannot throw up com- petent leaders, any more than a mob, when it bursts out in rage, can throw up a skilled disciplinarian ; but the argument is not true ; for " oppressor " and "oppressed" in Ireland are equally sterile in Par- liamentary statesmen, and France, when she awoke, had in her no resources in men other than Nationalists possess. One man she chose from a great House ; but every other Revolutionary leader, constructive states- man, or soldier, sprung from the classes who make up the majority on the Irish benches. Mirabeau was a noble; but Danton and Carnot, Napoleon and his Marshals, his lawyers and financiers, all who really acted or con- structed, came from the professional classes, or from those below them. The historian will hardly believe that theory; which has been falsified by events in every country, except, perhaps, ancient Rome, -where no doubt patricians con- structed alike the Republic and the Empire ; but, then, what is he to substitute for it ? Perhaps this, that no nation chooses the right men except by spontaneous choice! and that, except when they chose Parnell, the Irish people have not chosen spontaneously, their Members being always nominated either by Mr. Parnell or by the Land League, or by the priesthood, or by some Other central set of wire- pullers, not themselves. There is something in that, for controlling bodies, whether they be popular or aristocratic, a Liberal Hundred or an Aulic Council, are apt to regard original men with s, kind of detestation, which results, we believe, neither from envy nor fear, often as those motives are assigned in explanation, but from the sheer inability of a corporation to understand genius until re- vealed by some event. Until compelled by victory, or a popular cry, they choose " safe " men, and in the death- throe of a people, safe men are not very useful guides. That would be a fair explanation, but that the North, where constituencies are free, has not thrown up great men either ; and the historian must, we fear, leave it as one more puzzle among the many with which he has to deal. After all, we do not know why a dynasty throws out great rulers inter- mittently, or why a nation ceases for a century to produce a first-class poet.
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