MR. PARNELL'S MANIFESTO.
MR. PARNELL'S manifesto presents to almost all Englishmen an almost insoluble intellectual puzzle. Why does he, of all men in the world, sanction writing like that We all know the general meaning of his proclamation. It signifies that, after a momentary hesitation, which will pro- bably never be fully explained, Mr. Parnell has decided, in the interest of his separate policy, to throw the whole weight of his following in England upon the anti-Liberal side. That is an intelligible policy, whatever its morality, for Mr. Parnell wishes to hold the balance of power between British parties in the House of Commons ; and, seeing that the Tories by themselves cannot win in any case, he tries to increase
their minority so much that the Irish Party shall, in all effective controversies, hold the casting-vote. That is—at all events, for his purpose—able electioneering ; but then why does he not announce his decision in his own style, in those coldly measured words which apparently convey to his followers the impression of an irresistible will ? Why does he allow his own subordinates, whom he certainly does not reverence, to announce his view in the screaming rigmarole which the " Irish National League of Great Britain have given to the world as his " Manifesto "? It is not even an Irish paper. We do not suppose that Mr. Grenfell has authority for saying that it was written by Lord Randolph Churchill ; but it reads exactly as if he had written it, and then given it to be touched up by Mr. Biggar. The indictment of the Liberals for making war in the Soudan, for menacing the Establishment, for threatening religious education, and for menacing freedom of speech in Parliament, is exactly in Lord Randolph's audacious style, and full of his contempt for facts ; while we may, we hope, attribute the assertion that innocent men have been either hung or sent to living death in Ireland by Mr. Forster and Lord Spencer, to the still more inventive genius of Mr. Biggar. Be that as it may, the manifesto is high-flown rubbish, as unlike Mr. Parnell as it is unworthy of him, and he can have sanctioned it only under the idea either that it would attract more votes than anything he himself could write, or that it was necessary for him to allow it to be written. Why does he think either of those thoughts ?
We confess to being utterly perplexed. That Irishmen, even when educated, are moved by the eloquence of exaggeration, that over-statement or even misrepresentation stirs and enlivens them, and that they shrink from the " frozen" truthfulness of English speech, may be conceded without greatly depreciating -their character. Every race has its own peculiarities of intellect ; we should no more expect an Irishman to declaim like an Englishman than we expect an English poet to write like Racine ; and we have heard one of the ablest of living Americans declare that Englishmen had lost the very concep- tion of true oratory, but the reasons against adopting this style would, one would have thought, have seemed very grave to Mr. ParnelL He must know that on English questions most Irishmen are Liberals, though they suppress their Liberalism for the sake of Home-rule ; yet he allows his advisers to make of his manifesto a distinctly and savagely Tory proclamation. He must wish to conciliate those English Radicals who are at heart in favour of Home-rule ; yet he rouses them, as it were of designed malice, into 'fury by an attack on their favourite and least popular ideas. He must be aware that Tories viewed with disgust and annoyance the attacks upon Lord Spencer, and regarded Mr. Forster as the least objectionable of Liberals. Yet he goes far out of his way to accentuate the expression of Extremist feeling against those two gentlemen, and the Liberals, who, he maintains, in partial defiance of the facts, sustained them both in their earlier coercion policy. He must recognise that now, of all moments in his life, is the time for showing him- self a statesman, for mastering the enragis around him, and showing that it is possible for him and England to exist together ; yet he chooses this instant to issue a document which no Englishman, whatever his view of the future of Ireland, can read without a certain contempt, and which an English Liberal cannot study without a sense that to make political Irishmen grateful is a hopeless task. The Liberals have abolished a Church and revolutionised a tenure in order to please Irishmen ; and their reward is to be told that they are " a servile and unprincipled herd, who would break every pledge and violate every principle in obedience- to the call of the Whip and the mandate of the Caucus." Yet knowing all these things, knowing that his policy may yet be thwarted by a revolt of Tories specifically directed against
him—as has already occurred in Liverpool—Mr. Parnell, whose glory is his self-restraint, and who has no trace of the Irish recklessness in him, allows his followers thus to endanger his chances merely at best to indulge a profitless and half-factitious hate. At the most difficult moment of a difficult drive—for in England his course, from his own point of view, is beset with obstacles—he throws the rein on the necks of his horses, and bids them rush on in their own way at their own pace.
It is conceivable, though improbable, that Mr. Parnell does not think of Englishmen at all ; and that believing his immediate followers to understand Irishmen better than himself, he does not care to irritate them upon points which concern their amour propre. He agrees with their irritation against the Coercion Bill, under which he was himself arrested and imprisoned, and thinks that if that and the Crimes Act are lumped together, it is safe and popular to denounce them both. There must be classes even among Nationalists who desire that the law should be carried out, and who dislike to see murderers escaping and Jurymen forswearing themselves ; but he may calculate that they will not desert him, and that it is really only the violent whom he has to secure. They are secured by the Nationalist League, and the ultra-leaders generally, and he therefore, throwing over his chances in England, risks the revolt of the moderate Tories, and allows the most bitter of his followers, even in a supreme hour, to say what they wilL That is a possible explanation of his action ; but then what a light does it throw upon his position as a statesman, and, in his own theory, a possible ruler of Ireland 1 He is not a dictator with whom Englishmen might negotiate, but only a leader all-powerful so long as he consults, conciliates, and obeys more violent men than himself. They, and they only, understand the soldiery which supports him ; and when opposed to them he stands almost alone, powerless to execute the comparatively workable plans which he himself approves. He is the Commander-in-Chief ; but he governs by aid of a Council of War, and in that secret assemblage more sinister minds than his have far more influence than himself. The order that ultimately comes forth is Mr. Parnell's, but the mind that suggested and almost extorted it may be Mr. Biggar's. It is this perpetually recurring feature in Mr. Parnell's career which electors in all the elections that remain unfought have carefully to study. He has him- self acknowledged that he took up the agrarian ques- tion in deference to Mr. Devitt. The strike against rent can hardly have come out of his own mind, and, indeed, has been denied by him ; while the outrages, though they benefited him, belong to another school, we will not say of statesmen, altogether. He is a man who, though not always, is often in bonds ; and it is this fact which electors in the districts yet to be tested ought most carefully to consider. The Liberals who abstain from the polls, and the Tories who vote for Tory can- didates, are not voting to invest Mr. Parnell with the balance of power—dangerous as we believe that would be—bat the darker spirits who, on critical occasions, can either compel him to obey them, or in some way not yet quite revealed, mould him to their will. It is not an Irish statesman of extreme opinions whom they are voting for, and who might conceivably grant certain guarantees to the Empire ; but a knot of Irish agitators avowedly irreconcilable, who would keep those guarantees just so long as they were popular with the masses, and would then declare, as they made Mr. Parnell declare about " the judicial rent," that one contract was not more " sacred" than another. These men do not mean to compromise with England, or to compensate the landlords, or to maintain the law when once passed by an Irish Parliament ; but to govern Ireland after their own fancy, and in the interest of that lower section of the mass which looks to them for guidance. They are, when reduced to a personal expression, not Mr. Parnell, but Mr. Biggar. Are the Liberals who are annoyed with Mr. Chamberlain going to vote that Mr. Biggar be entrusted with the government of Ireland ? for that, they may rely on it, an equality, or even a comparative equality, between the two parties, would ultimately mean. So far as it signified any sort of Home-rule for Ireland —and if the parties are equal, some sort of Home-rule may prove unavoidable—it signifies that this Home-rule shall be worked out, not by Mr. Parnell, who is a statesman, or even by Mr. Healy, who might be an able attorney, but by the men who guide the counsels, write the manifestoes, and make the speeches of the Nationalist League.
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