TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD SALISBURY IN ULSTER.
TOED SALISBURY had to admit, in his first speech to 1 the people of Belfast, that the English people have not been as quick to catch the significance and peril of the pre- sent national crisis as the people of Ulster might reasonably have expected. Englishmen are, he said, not directly interested in the matter, though indirectly they are most deeply in- terested, and they have therefore too often allowed themselves to be diverted from the true issue by all sorts of minute questions like those concerniug the Suffrage, those concern- ing Temperance, those concerning the Welsh Suspensory Bill, the Parish Councils Bill, the Eight-Hours Bill, and the Payment of Members Bill, which the Newcastle Conference adroitly drew across the trail. Lord Salisbury is, of all our statesmen, the one most likely to restore that direct personal interest in the unity and strength of the United Kingdom which seems at the present moment to be more or less deficient in Great Britain ; but it is not irrelevant to ask parenthetically, whence proceeds the British in- difference, not to say apathy, in relation to a, question which threatens the very national existence of England, in just the same way in which the proposal to break up France by restoring the old independence of Burgundy, for example,—a suggestion really discussed by the Press after the German conquest of 1870-71,—would have threatened the very national existence of Prance? Is it due to sluggishness, or unimaginativeness, or rather, to excess of self-confidence in English political feeling ? And how is the indifference, or apathy, or excess of self-confidence to be removed ? What sort of appeal is most likely to rekindle the patriotic ardour which resents all this dangerous trilling with the national feeling and character of England ? In our opinion, it is not any excess of self-confidence, but rather a habit in the most powerful section of the English democracy of the present day, of forgetting that there is such a thing as national life at all, which lends itself to this indifference whether the Constitution be dangerously weakened or not. And so far from thinking, as some of our contemporaries think, that Lord Salisbury is carrying coals to Newcastle when he goes to Ulster to address a people already fully awake to the peril they are incurring, that seems to us just one of the most effective of all the ways in which the torpidity of the dormant English patriotism may best be dispelled. What England needs is to forget for a few days those small class-cares, those cravings after rather less work, those hungerings after rather more comfort, those petty jealousies between employers and employed, those hankerings after better wages, of which the mind of the new democracy has lately been so full. It is all very natural, and, in its proper place, perfectly legitimate, no doubt ; but it is an oblivion of the true national life in the suffocating cares of this world and the deceitfulness of comforts ; and England can no more afford to forget her national life in her domestic life and her class-life, than any other nation. The Continental peoples are, we believe, quite right in saying that England is beginning in some respects to suffer by the comparative safety of her insular position. She is beginning to forget that her insular position is not a security against decay, against collective sluggishness to noble ambitions, against that loss of sensitiveness to moral responsibilities which is apt to overtake nations too much absorbed in driving the hungry wolf,—orrather, perhaps, the restless hyena,—from the door. For some time past, now, the true democracy of England, —namely, her working classes,—have been so intent upon securing for themselves some of the richer prizes of life, that they have forgotten that still greater essential of national progress, patriotic sensitiveness to half-fulfilled or unfulfilled responsibilities which affect the whole nation. We do not in the least deny that there are many of the Gladstonians who are honestly persuaded, with Mr. Gladstone, that in giving with both hands to Ireland, they are really redeeming instead of neglecting these responsibilities. But this is precisely the point on which Ulster, and Ulster alone, can teach them to hesitate. There we see a part of the United Kingdom, at least as eager for the progress and happiness of Ireland as any other, and much more successful in their pursuit, but deeply convinced that that progress and happiness depend not on a great radical change, but on a steady development of the many conditions of progress which are already at work, and profoundly distrustful of the ruling minds which Mr. Gladstone's revolution is. certain to bring to the head of Irish politics. And after all, it is not the few Gladstonians who are in eager and generous sympathy with the strangely visionary hopes. of their leader, who influence the English democracy most powerfully at the present crisis. On the contrary, it is the great mass of apathetic Gladstonians, who think ten times as much of class-gains as they do of Irish Nationalism, who are persuaded that if they give Mr. Gladstone his way on Ireland, they shall get their own way on matters which just now concern them much more,. —the hours of labour, the rate of wages, the increase in the number of social amusements, the gratification of class-revenges, the triumph of Trades-Unions over the free labourers. These are the really active competitors for the devotees of national life and duty, and not the generous sympathies of the few who have really persuaded themselves, with Mr. Gladstone, that Ireland will spring into a greater and nobler existence directly Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy and Mr. Redmond have been placed at the head of Irish affairs. The truth is that English electors are losing all interest in the great- ness and responsibilities of the English nation, amidst the petty rivalries of class-feeling ; and it is the revival of the larger and more magnanimous attitude of mind that we need most, not the exposure of the thrice-exposed Glad stonian dream that Irish Nationalists will fulfil all the aspirations of true Irish patriots.
So far from agreeing that this visit of Lord Salis- bury to Ulster is a work of supererogation, and that he would have done much better to visit some specially apathetic British district, say Northumberland or the Scotch Lowlands, we believe that his addresses in Ulster will do more to revive the failing spirit of English national feeling than any addresses he could deliver to those who are craving for the flesh-pots of Trades-Unionism, or the confiscation of tithes. Lord Salisbury has devoted so much of his life to the duties of the Foreign Office, that he of all men is best fitted for the task of regarding the United Kingdom as a whole, and for measuring the degree in which the breaking-off of the great Irish fragment will impair our national strength, and undermine our national unity. With Ulster, too, in all its resolute purpose, before his eyes, he can give English feeling a lesson in the moral responsibilities of Empire, which he would never be able to give by mere appeals to the apparently selfish fears of a dwindling national pride. It is Ulster on which we are preparing to inflict a fatal wound by installing the leaders of the Land League and the National League in power in Ireland. Ulster would be the first to feel the blow. As Lord Salisbury justly says, it is on the perfectly welded union between England and Ireland that the whole energy and enterprise of Ulster, no less than her wealth, depend. Cut off from the fellow-citizens with whom she has most in common, Ulster would never keep her self-confidence, her commercial daring, her political courage, her power to stimulate the aspirations of Ire- land. And yet it is to Ulster we shall say, if this Bill ever passes, We are going to sacrifice your loyalty and your interests to the ambitions of a class of men who have taught Ireland to be cruel, crafty, idle, and envious of the independence and industry of her own most honourable sons, and who now endeavour to persuade the world that, by winking hard at bandits, by organising suspicion, and by systematic contract-breaking, the noble aspirations of Irish patriots may be most amply justified and fulfilled.' We do not believe that a, more awakening lesson could be given to British apathy, than Lord Salis- bury is actually giving in his Ulster visit. It is perfectly true, of course, that Ulster does not herself need awakening. But England does need to be reminded of her responsi- bilities to Ulster, and of what Ulster must suffer if England does not keep the United Kingdom intact ; and it is by his visit to Ulster that Lord Salisbury best impresses this lesson upon Great Britain. For without the active co-operation of Ulster, the lesson would fall comparatively dead. We need teaching what sort of a race it is that Mr. Gladstone is proposing to abandon to the tender mercies of trained boycotters, and the wild injustice of those who organised the "Plan of Campaign," and who made away with the books of the National League accounts at the first approach of official investigation.
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