ANOTHER IRISH SESSION.
IT is of no use in politics to be impatient. Circumstances will no more grow because we are anxious for them, than the trees will. Nothing, of course, could be more vexatious than the fact which this week has made clear, that this Session also must be devoted to Irish business, to the exclusion alike of English affairs, and of legislative changes which would benefit the entire kingdom. Mr. Gladstone, in his Budget speech, announced that the greatest of all the reforms promised by this Government, the Bill for the reform of county govern- ment—that is, for the grant of municipal life to the county- districts—must be given up for the Session. That was the great measure which, when Parliament reassembled, the Cabinet, well aware that many measures must be put off, still sincerely hoped to pass. That was the measure upon which the hearts of Liberal politicians were fixed, which they ex- pected to pour new vigour and impulse into country life, and which they hoped would in the end, even more than the equalisation of the suffrage, liberalise rural opinion. A great political question, the transfer of the counties to their natural representatives, a great social question, the rise in the counties of the non-landholding classes to activity and influence, and a great fiscal question, the radical reform of the incidence of rating, which is now distinctly unfair and bad, all hung upon this proposal. It must have been most bitter to the Cabinet, pledged as it is to its lips, to give it up ; yet it has been finally and openly abandoned for the Session. Sir W. Har- court's Bill for the reform of London administration, though not publicly mentioned, has of course gone with it; and though Mr. Chamberlain will not formally abandon his Bankruptcy Bill, he has evidently given up all hope of passing it into law this year. In his short speech on the subject on Monday night, which was avowedly optimistic, he only hoped that if the new Rules of Procedure were passed, and if the Grand Committees were appointed, his Bill, and Mr. Barran's rival Bill, promoted by the Chambers of Commerce, might alike be referred to the Committee for Commercial Affairs. Clearly, he has little hope of its becoming law. These measures are the measures of the year, and if they have disappeared, as they have dis- appeared, into the future, the Session must, as regards general legislation, be absolutely barren. Nothing will be done, or even proposed, and the reforms hoped for must be taken up in the next Session, or the next Parliament, from the very be- ginning. Even the Budget, which was to have been an event,. has been made a small affair.
It is most vexatious, and we are not surprised at the de- spondent tone of the Liberal country Press ; but yet it is most natural, and even fitting. The reforms are postponed only to make more room for the Irish Question," and the Irish Question is the one which is just now real. Nobody speaks about any other. Nobody is passionately excited about any other. Nobody takes the trouble to formulate views, or make calculations, or publish pamphlets upon any other. Public men attack and defend foreign policy, or the Closure, or the " tone of her Majesty's Government upon religion ; " but they do it in a perfunctory manner, saying the usual things on either side, and broadly charging or broadly repelling accusations they only half believe, or hardly care to answer. Their hearts only grow warm and their audiences only truly responsive when they speak of Ireland. They know instinctively that it is by their success in Ireland that Government and' Opposition will alike be judged, that the issues at stake there are of historic magnitude, that the " settlement of Ireland," and no other thing, is the burden that must be taken up. Upon the measures of the next few years in Ireland, it may be of the next few months, the future of the kingdom will depend, and orators and public alike are drawn towards it by an irresistible attraction. There is a social revolution going on, and its progress absorbs, and, as it were, kills interest in matters other- wise of the highest importance. It is vain to say, as some say, that the whole matter is exaggerated ; that Ireland is, after all, but a seventh of the kingdom in population, and nothing like a seventh in wealth ; that rebellion there is impossible, that outrages are localised, that the Island is not unprosperous, that in Britain prosperity is reviving and Consols creeping above par. It is all felt to be true, and yet all false. Political principles, the laws of property, the social organisa- tion, the territorial integrity of the kingdom, even the first ideas of right and wrong, are all at stake in Ireland ; and until some issue has been reached, or some modus vioendi frankly accepted, eyes cannot be turned aside from the Island, which, if it has not, like Italy, " the fatal gift of beauty," has at least a gift of attraction, which acts on its own children like a spell, and compels the close regard of those who would so gladly turn away their eyes. When men expect an explosion in never so quiet a scene, if it be only near enough, they will gaze. Ireland will not be forgotten, and there is nothing for it in this Session, as in so many others, but to attend with more or less reluctant exclusiveness to Irish affairs. After all, they are most serious affairs. The effect of the outrages may be exaggerated by the English habit of forgetting that Ireland is not homogeneous, and that Antrim is as unlike Clare as Piedmont is unlike Sicily ; but still, it is not " outrages " only with which we have to deal, but the power of the State to make property and life secure throughout its domain, which is now visibly in peril. No matter how few or how many are the victims, if an anti-social organisation can take life with impunity, the first cause of the organism of a State is placed in danger. No matter whether the refusal of a fair rent is only partial, if it can be refused anywhere, and the land retained, land ceases to be an article of commerce, or indeed of value. Suppose the value of bank-notes fluctuated with every change in the temper, or views, or circumstances of those who were to cash them ? No matter if the unrest be unreasonable, or par- tial, or chronic, so long as it is deep enough to make the unity of the kingdom a subject for even thought—and this is undoubtedly the case—it must be the first preoccupation of any Government. We may fume with irritation at the few- ness of the Obstructives, as we may fret at the smallness of the grain of sand which is irritating the eyeball; but still, all other thought, even emergent thought, is suspended, and necessarily suspended, until it is removed. We may hate Ireland for her importunity, but until it is abated, the turnstile will register no passage.
Vexatious, therefore, as is the postponement of reforms— doubly vexatious, because the Tories, under the influence of their curious illusion about the " Gladstone period," will at heart be so exultant—we cannot blame the Government for postponing them. They are but falling back on the realities of things. Every Government must do its compulsory work first, and the compulsory work thrown upon this Cabinet is not only to devise means for quieting Ireland and restoring the supremacy of law, for " amending the Land Act," and " im- proving legal procedure in eases of agrarian outrage ;" but to convince Parliament and the country that the measures they will propose for those ends are the wisest, or at all events the most practical, that can be adopted. A British Government, after all, possesses only the initiative of persuasion. That is a work which consumes time. The two great parties in the State are not likely to agree as to those measures. The Third Party is likely to disagree with them violently. Opposition can only be surmounted by searching and long debate, and for actual debate that advances business, for the con- version of actual and controverted proposals into law, the time remaining may almost be counted by hours.
Supply takes nights. Members will claim their nights. There will be nights devoted to party contests, explana- tions, and oratory ; and when all these are allowed for, there remains the heavy consumption of time produced by the unforeseen. The time for labour absolutely essential, if the difficulties in Ireland are to be faced by legisla- tion, may, as we said, almost literally be counted by hours ; and the Government is right in devoting to it all its legislating energy, and the whole strength of its devising and administrative ability. The disappointment to itself, and especially to Mr. Gladstone, must be very great, but " we are," as he said, "in presence of a social revolution ;" and, in the presence of that phenomenon, all business not connected with itself must stand aside. The Government, however reluctant, has practically no option. It must do its duty and it must obey the people, and while its duty is to restore quiet in Ireland, the people on all hands describe that as its imperative work. Whatever the Land Act and the Coercion Bill may have effected, and they have effected much, they have not removed the necessity for regarding Irish affairs as of the first emergency. The Government must keep on with their task, and remain as hopeful as, after such endless disappointments, brave men may be.
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