MR. BRIGHT AND HOME-RULE. T HE Unionist Party owes an incalculable
debt of gratitude to Mr. Bright. It was he who made the country realise that the question of Home-rule was above party, and that no man could fairly be accused of being a traitor to Liberalism because he was opposed to Mr. Glad- stone's policy. It might have been possible for the more unscrupulous Gladstonians to pretend that Lord Harting- ton, Mr. Goschen, and Sir Henry James were " mere Whigs," that Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Jesse Collings were filled with personal rancour, and that the rest of the Liberal Unionists simply followed their leaders ; but in the case of Mr. Bright they dared not make these accusa- tions. Even to those who were incapable of reasoning, or whose judgments were easily perverted, the fact of his attachment to the cause of the Union was an outward visible proof that Liberalism and Home-rule had no essential connection. In spite of Mr. Gladstone's personal popularity, the country instinctively felt that Mr. Bright had the better title to be held the representative of Liberal principles and traditions. He was a Liberal when Mr. Gladstone was a Tory, and again and again he had sacrificed his personal ambition to the cause of Liberalism. Whenever Mr. Bright and the leaders of the Liberal Party had parted company for a time, the country had always recognised. in the end that Mr. Bright had stuck to the main road, and that it was those from whom he differed who had taken the wrong path. When Lord Palmerston led the Liberal Party into war with Russia, Mr. Bright protested. Who now doubts that Mr. Bright was the true Liberal ? When Mr. Gladstone evoked Liberal cheers at Newcastle by declaring that the Southern States would win, and that Mr. Jefferson Davis " had made a nation," and when a Liberal Govern- ment failed to do its duty to our kinsmen in America, Mr. Bright once more raised his voice in protest. Who, again, doubts now that Mr. Bright was right ? Mr. Bright's supporters, then, made no unwarrantable claim in declaring that he had a far better right to be regarded as the exponent of Liberalism than Mr. Gladstone. Hence it happens that Unionists find Mr. Bright's name and authority invaluable in combating that monstrous but none the less widely extended notion that Liberal electors must support Home-rule because it is the Liberal policy. Though we shall not at the next General Election have the advantage of Mr. Bright's personal influence, we shall, happily, be able to keep his views on Home-rule before the country. Mr. Bright, during the years 1886, 1887, and 1888, dealt with every phase of the Home-rule Question, in public letters which might serve as models for that form of political appeal. Short, clear, and yet im- pregnated with the passion of conviction, they go to the very heart of the Irish Question. Brilliant and profound as have been the utterances of the other Unionist leaders, none of them can compare for popular effectiveness with the letters of Mr. Bright. They are the " first reader" in which the electors must be taught the true issues of the Home-rule controversy. This being so, we are exceedingly glad to see that the Birmingham Daily Gazette Company has reprinted Mr. Bright's letters on Home-rule in a penny pamphlet. The more these letters are pressed upon the consideration of the electors, the better for the cause. In re-reading them in a collected form, it is impossible not to be struck with the extraordinary keenness and insight with which Mr. Bright picked out the essentials of the question and drove them home. Not only did he always hit the nail full on the head, but it was always the right nail. Mr. Bright's main points were :—(1), That it was because he desired the welfare of Ireland, and was in sym- pathy with her—in a word, because it was best for Ireland —that he supported the Union ; (2), that the bulk of the Gladstonian Party were not sincere in their adoption of Home-rule ; (3), that it would be a monstrous injusticelo place the Protestant North under a Dublin Parliament; (4), that Mr. Gladstone had no right to keep the country in the dark as to the nature of his proposals ; (5), that the maintenance of law and order was necessary ; (6), that the Liberal Unionists had done well in subordinating party to principle. Here were half-a-dozen plain points, all vital and all of a kind which could be brought home to the mind in language " understanded of the people." The very first letter Mr. Bright wrote on the Home-rule Question, that dated May 31st, 1886, fastened upon the first point, and urged it strongly. " My sympathy," he says," with Ireland, North and South, compels me to condemn the proposed legislation. I believe the United Parliament can be and will be more just to all classes in Ireland than any Parlia- ment that can meet in Dublin under the provisions of Mr. Gladstone's Bill." Of the belief expressed by Mr. Bright that the majority of Home-rulers did not hold their opinions conscientiously, it is not necessary to give any examples. Scattered broadcast throughout the letters are indications of Mr. Bright's conviction on this point. Ia regard to Ulster, Mr. Bright always spoke with special force and solemnity. Perhaps his most telling reference to the matter is that contained in a letter addressed to Mr. Thomas Sinclair, of Belfast, and dated June 6th, 1887. In it the cases of Ulster and Wales are compared. " I have just been reading Mr. Gladstone's speeches in South Wales. He speaks as if there were no Province of Ulster, and no Protestant or loyal Roman Catholic population in Ireland. He seems ignorant or unconscious of the fact that the whole of Wales had a population in 1881 of only 1,360,000, which is, I think, less than that of Ulster by something more than 300,000. Ulster may be deemed a nationality differing from the rest of Ireland at least as much as Wales differs from England, but Wales is treated to a flattery which, if not insincere, seems to be childish, and Ulster is forgotten in the dis- cussion of the Irish Question." The passage immediately succeeding this is worth quoting also, as it illustrates the attitude which Mr. Bright assumed in regard to Mr. Glad- stone's adoption of Home-rule at any price :—" Is it not wonderful how decided Mr. Gladstone can be, and how his great intellect can be subjected to one idea, and how he can banish from his mind everything, however important, which does not suit the subject or object which he has before him ? He speaks, too, as if it were a good thing to make Wales almost as un-English as he assumes all Ireland to be. He conceals the fact that there are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole popula- tion of men and women in Wales. It is sad that an ex-Minister should descend to artifices so transparent, and that crowds of his countrymen should be thus imposed upon." The attempt which is still being made by Mr. Gladstone to induce the country " to go it blind " on Home- rule, naturally found little favour with a man to whom intellectual honesty was so dear as Mr. Bright. It is thus he deals with the policy of concealment, in a letter dated February 13th, 1888 :—" It is said Mr. Gladstone's Irish Bills are dead. Then what are we contending for ? Has he still the old Bills in his pocket, or has he new ones ? If new ones, why not bring them before Parliament or the public for discussion ? Are you willing to go on blind- fold, happy only to follow, and in total ignorance as to where you are going If Mr. Gladstone has made so grievous a blunder less than two years ago in measures which are now universally condemned, how dare you trust him further in that which he studiously conceals from Parliament and the country ? " The so-called coercion policy of the Government won the fullest support from Mr. Bright, and he showed with ease that his action in regard to the maintenance of law and order was perfectly consistent with his deeds and words in the past. In justi- fication of the action of the Liberal Unionist Party, Mr. Bright said many things, but none better than his answer to the self-asked question : " What has the Unionist section of the once honoured and powerful Liberal Party done ?" " It has," he says, in a letter dated January 9th, 1888, " saved the nation from a great peril, and it has saved the Sovereign of three Kingdoms and of a wide Empire from the terrible indignity to which the passions of a statesman, aged and most eminent, and the credulity of a rash and unthinking party, would have subjected her. Let us, then, be content with what we have done. The future will not fail us if we remain firm and true to our principles and to our faith."
We cannot do better than close our re-reading of Mr. Bright's letters than with this passage. It was Mr. Bright's firm conviction that in politics it was not only right, but emphatically the best policy, to be honest. " Our duty is to go on—honestly acting up to our convictions of what is true." That those who did so would prevail in the end, he never doubted for a moment. And he was right. Whatever superficial discouragements the Unionists may meet with, in the end they are certain of their reward. The march of history is not going to be stayed or turned aside because Mr. Gladstone in 1886 changed his mind on the Irish question.
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