THE WORST RUMOUR.
AMIDST the medley of stories, rumours, " disclosures," and falsehoods now circulating in the political world, it is difficult to be sure of anything, except that Heligoland is not in the Baltic, as some Opposition papers think ; but at all events we may earnestly trust that one particular rumour is not true. It is said that the Govern- ment intend. to withdraw the Land-Purchase Bill, with a pledge to reintroduce it next Session. The Bill, it is certain, could not pass this year, the Irish Members being determined. to delay it, and being supported in this, as in all other plans of obstruction, by the Gladstonians ; but it was intended, instead of abandoning it, to pass a resolu- tion allowing the Bill to be taken up next Session at any stage it might this Session have reached. The Govern- ment, however, has met with such factious resistance, that it has been obliged to consider the possibility of lightening the ship even by flinging over treasure-boxes, and has, it is said, listened to those who urge that the resolution will offer new occasion for debate. The Opposition, it is argued, will discuss the constitutional expediency of the suggested device to expedite the Bill fur days and days ; and at the end, the Government will be compelled to give up their project, and begin de novo with the Bill next Session. It is thought better, therefore, to avoid. that worry, and save those hours for Supply, which is unusually behind-hand. If that rumour is true, the consequences to the reputation of the Cabinet will be most serious. The Land-Purchase Bill is not only the Bill of the Session, but it is the Irish Bill of the present Administration, the measure by which they show that their care for Ireland is not limited to maintaining external order, but extends to the removal of her greatest grievance, the maintenance of a tenure un- suited to the circumstances of the country. All Irish tenants are interested. in it, and especially those of Ulster, while all Unionist Members are pledged up to their lips in its support. Their very principle is, that whatever a good Irish Parliament would. do, the Parliament at Westminster can do as rapidly and well. To withdraw such a Bill even for one Session would be a fatal revelation of weakness. If the Government, it will be said, cannot even hang up a Bill to which they attach the first importance, they must have lost the control of their own followers, and have practically ceased to be a Government. It is impossible, it will be alleged, that with their majority on all Irish questions, a majority of ninety, they should really be so weak ; and they will be suspected, however unjustly, of indifference to the fate of the Bill. The Irish landlords, it will be said, many of whom are living in a fog and, being hardly aware that a revolution is on foot, believe that they can go on without any further change of tenure, have " got at " Lord Salisbury with their plea for delay, and intend to make it im possible to pass the Bill at all. The Government, it will be urged, must see that if the Bill is reintroduced. next year, it will never pass. Ministers must know Irish Members will either fight it clause by clause, they knowing it is the death-warrant of their agitation, or, if they are- afraid to do that, will discuss other subjects night after night until the Session is exhausted ; and if Ministers do know this, and yet withdraw the Bill for this Session, they cannot be sincere in their wish to see it pass. If they were, they would either sit till the Bill was accepted, or they would- send Mr. Smith to the Upper House and call an Autumn Session, or they would, by hanging the Bill up, announce to all opponents that their determination was unshakeable, and that the House of Commons must before the dissolu- tion either reject or pass their Irish Purchase Law. As they propose to do neither of these things, they must have meant the Bill as a sop to weak-kneed Unionists, in. Birmingham and elsewhere, and not as a policy upon, which their existence as a Government was staked.
The Government, we believe, is sincere enough—indeed, Mr. Balfour's reputation is staked upon the Bill, upon which he has expended. so much thought and labour—but it is impossible to deny that if they withdraw the Bill, the consequences which their angry critics prophesy from their action will in all human probability occur. An angry declaration of opinion from Irish tenants, and the starting of a few " Free-soil " candidates against Parnellites, might save the Bill; but nothing short of that nearly impossible exhibition of independence would do it. The• Opposition expect a dissolution in September, 1891, and their one idea will be to discredit the Government by allowing nothing to pass. They will fight everything, from) the debate on the Address to the Army Estimates ; wilt discuss everything, from foreign policy to legal load-lines ; will ask questions by the hundred every night, and will raise every trumpery Irish police case into a question of principle. They can almost all talk, and they will delight/ in talking just before a dissolution ; they will know that the struggle need only extend over five months ; and they will be- excited to enthusiasm by what they will deem the weakness„ perhaps even the insincerity, of the Government, which,. after all its pledges, will have left a long and contentious Bill, to be re-debated from the beginning in the last Session of an expiring Parliament. We all know how difficult it in to pass anything now, when the minority determine to begin " filibustering," as the Americans, with their felicity in inventing words of opprobrium, call obstruction ; and. to pass a long and complicated Bill dreaded by that minority will be next to impossible. It could only be carried through by fixing a day, as the Americans do, on which the vote must be taken ; but to employ that device requires energy, and energy is just the quality which the apparent spiritlessness of the Cabinet will have killed in their supporters, who will be asking themselves, not whether such a termination of debate is indispensable,. but whether some doubtful knot of voters in their con- stituencies may not make of it an excuse for abstaining from the polls. The end of it will be that the Bill will, not pass Parliament, and that a Ministry successful in so- many ways will go to the country with a reputation for mis- management, and for half-heartedness in carrying through their most important business.
The truth is, we suppose, that Ministers are weary and vexed and eager to be done with chatter at almost any sacri- fice, sentiments for which the humane will forgive them, but to which they must not yield. The Opposition have com- menced a system under which life is only tolerable to a. Minister who is also a Peer, and every Secretary of State who sits in the Commons loses at once health and energy.. That system, we fully agree, must be put down ; but until, it is put down, the first duty of Cabinets is to resist its, effects, and maintain to the close of a Parliament the energy they showed at its beginning. The only way to shorten proceedings in a period when factiousness is held, to be a virtue, is to show clearly that obstruction is use- less, that business will be done if the autumn is lost, and that obstructiveness will only wear out the constitutions of those who practise it. On the subjects they sincerely care about, Ministers must be as obstinate as mules, or as Lord.
Palmerston was in carrying the Divorce Bill, and they will find obstacles melt away. If, however, they yield to menaces, try to conciliate by forgetting their promises,. and seek respites for themselves and their followers by- unworthy concessions, they will soon learn by sad ex- perience that political, like social black-mailers, can never be contented, and that Irishmen are not the only people in the world whom it is bad to run away from.
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