TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NATIONALIST VETO ON THE IRISH COUNCIL BILL.
ON Tuesday the Nationalist Convention, on the motion of Mr. Redmond, unanimously condemned the Government's Irish Bill, not a single voice being raised in its favour. In view of this fact, no organ of Liberal opinion in the Press suggests that it will be possible to proceed with the Bill, and we may therefore assume that for Parliamentary purposes it has ceased to exist. Before we discuss the consequences of the Bill's rejection by Nationalists of all shades of opinion, as well as by all Irish Unionists, it will be best to consider some of the influences which caused that rejection. To begin with, the Bill was rejected because it was held not to be a first step in the direction of Home-rule. In other words, the Irish Nationalists rejected it on the grounds on which the Government defended it,—viz., that it did not in any sense involve Home-rule, and was not infringing the compact made by the Government with the Free-trade Unionists at the General Election that they would intro- duce no Home-rule measure in the present Parliament. It is true that Mr. Redmond, when the Bill was read a first time in the House of Commons, appeared to regard it as a possible foundation for Home-rule ; but in his speech of Tuesday he led the attack upon it on the ground that the constitution of the Council supplied no foundation upon which Home-rule could be built. Whether this is so or not we do not care to argue at the present moment. We objected to the Bill ourselves because, whether it implied Home- rule or not, it would certainly have created a Nationalist and Roman Catholic Ascendency in Irish administration, an Ascendency likely to be quite as injurious to Ireland as the old Orange and Protestant Ascendency which we have happily got rid of. Another influence which tended to the destruction of the Bill was the influence of the Irish Roman Catholic Church. The Irish Bishops and priests considered the Bill inimical to their claim to control Irish education, and they accordingly declared open war upon it. The third hostile influence was that of the extremists of the'Sinn Fein movement. As their programme is one of absolute independence, they had naturally no use for a Bill which professes to concede nothing more than glorified local government. When we come to discuss the results that are likely to be brought about by the rejection of the Bill, the first fact that is clear is that it cannot but produce a very con- siderable illumination of public opinion in Great Britain. There is always a large section of moderate-minded men in England and Scotland who tend in periods when Irish agitation is not specially rampant to lose touch with the realities of Irish political life. They are so moderate in their own views, and so much accustomed to be ruled by the give-and-take of compromise, that they find it exceed- ingly difficult to realise that other people do not always adopt a similar position. They naturally incline to the belief that Ireland is a kind of Scotland or smaller England, where men care more for practical results than fOr abstract theories, and where men must of course be willing to make the point of convenience take precedence of the point of theory. Their impulse, therefore, is to believe that talk about independence and separation and so forth must be poetry and rhetoric, and that at heart all the Irish people want is better management of tram: ways, fisheries, arterial drainage, and other matters of local government. Every now and then a movement like the Land League or the Home-rule agitation of Mr. Parnell compels them for a time to take another and truer view of the Irish situation, but they are always apt to relapse into the more comfortable and optimistic creed. Unless we are greatly mistaken, the rejection of Mr. Birrell's Bill will rouse them from their present state of self- delusion, and show them once more that what the Nationalist majority desire is not "better local government, but national independence, and that, if we are determined not to give them the thing which they do want, it is useless to try to conciliate them by giving them the thing which hey so emphatically declare they do not want. We feel tore that there are this week thousands of English and Scotch electors who are saying to themselves : " Well, we
were wrong after all thinking that the Irish would be satisfied by a compromise. It is clear that the only thing they desire is what they can't have."
Though the Liberal newspapers very naturally try to put as good a face on the situation as they can, it• is impossible for impartial observers not to realise that the direct blow administered by the Nationalists to the Government must have a weakening effect on the Administration. In a country like Britain, where • men, partly owing to temperament and partly to business training, always attach immense importance'to the charge of being unbusinesslike, such a result is inevitable. It is not businesslike to prepare an elaborate scheme solely with the object of satisfying a certain party, and when that scheme is made public to find that the party in question rejects it with hatred, ridicule, and contempt. Everywhere to-day men are saying in regard to the Government: " Why did not they find out first whether the Irish would or would not accept the most that the Government were prepared to give them ? If the Government found the Irish were not willing to take the proffered hand, they were mad to hold it out." It is no doubt easy to exaggerate the effects of Parliamentary discredit upon a Government, but some effect such discredit undoubtedly has, and to profess that Parliamentary discredit will not follow the fiasco of Mr. Birrell's Bill is impossible. That Mr. Birrell will also suffer personally from the rejection of the Bill is, we fear, only too likely, though we are bound to say that the loss of credit on his part is by no means merited. It is an open secret that he accepted the Irish appointment, not because be wished to fill the ungrateful post of. Chief Secretary, but because he was asked to sacrifice himself by his colleagues. Whether Mr. Birrell will continue to occupy the post of Chief Secretary or whether some change in the Cabinet will be made we cannot presume to say, but there can be little doubt that in a country like Ireland the open snub so successfully administered to him by the Nationalists will make his position at Dublin a very difficult one. Probably his witty, epigrammatic, and sensitive tempera- ment—like, and yet also most unlike, that of the typical Irishman—made him a persona ingratissima in Ireland. At any rate, the failure of judgment shown by the Prime Minister in Mr. Birrell's case ought not to prevent us feeling a very considerable amount of sympathy for the present Irish Secretary.
Another consequence of the decision of the Nationalist Convention must be a marked diminution of the authority of Mr. Redmond, and through that diminution a great deal of weakness and confusion, for the time at any rate, in the conduct and management of the Nationalist Party. It is all very well to say that Mr. Redmond gave only a reserved approval to the Bill when it was read for the first time. It is well known, however, that his true attitude was something of this kind. He said to the Government : ' I will do my best to get the Irish Nationalists to accept your Bill as an instalment of Home-rule, and I myself am willing to accept it in that spirit.' The fact that Mr. Redmond later found it so impossible to get the Nationalists to accept the Bill that he did not even make an attempt to persuade them, but, on the contrary, led the attack on the measure, will not deceive a single Irishman as to Mr. Redmond's original attitude. 4.t such a crisis the Nationalists not unnaturally desire that the leader of their party should be the man who really killed the Bill and led his followers to victory, not a man who was at heart willing to let the Bill pass and only on compulsion followed his followers to the attack. We do not imagine that there will be any immediate 'attempt to depose Mr. Redmond, but it is difficult to see, after the result of Tuesday's Convention, how he will be able to impose his will upon his party in the manner which experience shovis is required by the successors of Mr. Parnell. What we must expect is to see groups and sections formed in the Irish Party, each anxious to promote its own man to Mr. Redmond's place. Remember, too, that the ground is prepared for great changes in the Parliamentary Party by the growing discontent of a large section of Irishmen with latter-day Irish Parliamentarism, and with the action generally of the • Nationalists in the House of Commons. It is quite conceivable that we may be enter- ing upon an epoch when Parliamentary Nationalism will count for very much less than it has counted for in the past twenty years. .- Yet another consequence of the rejection of the Bill will be an increase in the power and preatige of the national Church. It has been customary of late for a certain section of Irish extremists to declare that the. Church has lost her authority in Ireland. Such persons have been telling the British public that they ought not, if they are true to their principles, to encourage the Roman Church, but rather to foster the anti-clerical party which has always existed, and which, it is alleged, is daily growing stronger in Ireland. We have always disbelieved such talk, and in the notion that it is possible to neglect the view of the Roman Church in Ireland, and we claim that the result of the Convention shows that we are right. For good or ill, the Roman Church still remains a mighty power in Ireland, and those who do not reckon with her are only deluding themselves.. It is for this reason we con- sider that it would be madness to try to solve the question of University education without giving the Roman Church what she desires in that respect. Any attempt to back a lay Roman Catholic party against the opinion of the Bishops and priests as regards education is foredoomed to failure.
It will be curious to observe the effect of the rejection of the Irish Bill by the Nationalist Convention upon the agitation in regard to the veto of the House of Lords. No doubt theoretically there is no analogy whatever between the Irish Nationalist veto and the veto of the House of Lords. At the same time, the plain man may be inclined to say : " If you hold it such a crime to reject what is considered right by a vast majority of the House of Commons, why don't you apply the same principle to the Irish Nationalists and denounce them as well as the Lords as the enemies of democracy ? " Illogical as such a view may be, we do not doubt that it will find a very large number of exponents in the country.
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