HULL AND BELFAST. T HE more thoughtful Gladstonians—and of course there
are many thoughtful men among them—ought to study carefully the lessons now offered them by the occurrences in Hull and Belfast. The motor which ulti- mately gives force to their party is faith in humanity, a new belief that the necessity for force has somehow come to an end ; that Governments have only to grant the wishes of their peoples, and everything will at once be smooth. The people will govern themselves ; even policemen will hardly be required, and as for the bayonet, it is almost an insult to modern principles, certainly a derogation from them even to think that it will be required to maintain order. The law of love as Gladstonians think is Accepted, and there can be no necessity for refusing powers of any kind, even municipal independence, to any mass of men who sincerely desire to possess it. If Ireland likes to govern itself, let it govern ; or let London, or, in fact, any city large enough to consti- tute an entity. No one wishes harm to any one else, and therefore no harm can happen that cannot immediately be repaired. All subjects of quarrel have been swept away by enlightenment, and the idea that civil war is a possibility is either inspired by rhetoricians or is based on a profound ignorance of the milder spirit of the age. Well, just look at Hull. The people there have no political quarrel with each other,—indeed, it may be said that the excited parties bold precisely the same political ideas. They have no differences about religion, and, indeed, never give religion a moment's thought. They are not overtaxed ; they are not hungry ; they have no quarrel with the laws ; they are, in fact, as a community, prosperous and contented folk ; and yet they are in a condition of scarcely veiled civil war. One side would, if it could, use soldiers, and the other side does use the torch, intending to risk the destruction of their city rather than be defeated. They have found a ground of quarrel as sufficient as the old reasons for fighting, and they are as savage as their ancestors ever were. The quarrel, however veiled, is really one between capital and labour, capital insisting on its right to choose labourers, and labour insisting on its right to give a monopoly of work to a guild, and that is sufficient to stir the old deadly passions to the old deadly issues. The employers would not hesitate, by deserting Hull, to ruin it, and the labourers cut the hose of the fire-engines sent to preserve the town from being burnt. Of bloodshed there- has been none yet, beyond an occasional incident, because the law is still supported by external force ; but no sane Hull man doubts that if force were absent, if Hull were for a month an independent commune, there would be a regular civil war ; that the Union men would kill the free labourers ; that the employers would be compelled to bring hired soldiers to defend them ; and that in all probability the prosperity of Hull would end, for the time at all events, in blood and flame. The old passions are there, though stirred in a new way ; they are just as fierce as ever, and, as ever, they manifest themselves by destructive attacks upon life and property. The new law of love does not prevent the " People " from burning property essential to their own livelihood, as well, as to owners' profits ; nor would it prevent those owners, if they had the force at disposal, from guarding their property by flinging showers of. rifle-bullets. The old necessity for external arbitration, and for the force which makes that arbitration effective, is as great as ever it was when their Austrian lords insisted with their lances that the citizens of the flourishing cities of Belgium should not massacre each other for trade quarrels whenever they lost their heads. The scene is no better in Belfast ; indeed, in ono way, it is a little worse. Religion is a nobler ground for civil war than any quarrel about trade ; but then a religious difference admits of no compromise, and a trade quarrel does. The Protestant and Catholic citizens of Belfast, highly excited because the one side fears, and the other exults in, a triumph for one religious party, are ready to kill one another with revolver-bullets, iron bars, heavy clubs, anything that comes handy, and but for external force, would do it. As it happens, the principal men on both sides think an outbreak would be highly injurious to a cause they have at heart, and are eagerly advising their followers to forbear ; but if the armed police were with- drawn, their advice would soon be disregarded. It is superior force directed by impartial authority which keeps the peace in Belfast, and nothing else. If the city were independent, one-tenth of its inhabitants would be killed within the next month fighting in the streets, and the city itself would be in danger of a conflagration lighted up by the losing party. There, as in Hull, the old passions are in a blaze, there is the old readiness to resort to fire and slaughter as the road to victory or the consolation in defeat, and there is the old recklessness, old as the world, as to the consequences of the struggle. The supposed tolerance of modern thought, the supposed mildness of modern manners, the supposed supremacy of the law of love, all leave the citizens of two great and prosperous towns in England and Ireland not only within measurable distance of civil war, but staring it in the face, and with no apparent dislike for its ghastliest or most abhorrent features. They are willing to kill, and they are willing to burn. The factions in Belfast would shoot each other down, or fire each others' quarters, just as readily as the factions in Hull, and the fanatics of labour and capital in Hull are no whit milder than the fanatics of Protestantism and Catholicism in Belfast. The only dif- ference is that the central authority and the body of the reasonable who support it are more shocked by the out- break of passion than of old they would have been, and are consequently a little readier to apply the force which compels the combatants to separate, or at least to con- sider themselves, before dying. The truth is, the Gladstonians, even if they are right in their theory of progress—and we heartily hope they are, though we are a little slow to believe it—are absurdly pre- mature. It may be questioned whether even the civilised classes are yet quite orderly ; whether, if law were sus- pended, the House of Commons would get through a night without the crack of a revolver ; or whether its Members would, not enter its precincts armed, like legislators in Arkansas ; but it is not questionable that the law of love has not been embraced by the great majority, The mass of mankind are nearly as liable to be ex- cited to fury as ever they were by adequate cause, and they find adequate cause, as they always did, in any- thing which deeply injures either their feelings, or their idea of justice, or their interests. It was because of this fury and its perceived results that men set up Governments with authority to use forco, and the Govern- ments and their force are as necessary as ever., If the Government is impartial and the force adequate, their intervention always succeeds ; but nothing else' is of the slightest value. The Labour disputants in Hull laugh at arbitration, and we do not think that even Mr. Hodgson Pratt would rely upon its successful use in Belfast. The higher principles to which Gladstonians appeal, even if they are as strong as is imagined—and we should be sorry as yet to trust an assemblage of Bishops to discuss a burning question without imperative rules of debate—have not filtered down to the bottom, and the majority still feel that force is the only judge who can solve really knotty problems. One can arbitrate about trifles, but when it comes to possessions like a province or a shilling a week, or to broad ideas like the truth of a religion or the sanctity of Trades-Unionism, the mind of the " People " reverts instinctively to force ; and civil war, if it be only in the way of rick-burning, is always near at hand. How anybody can doubt this about the Ireland of to-day we cannot even imagine, any more than we can understand how men, presumably desirous of order and progress, can readily surrender their own right to cause the moderating and peacemaking inter- vener, tho armed force directed by the whole community, to appear in the common interest of all. That they do give it up in Ireland in voting the Home-rule Bill is patent on the face of things. Force would no longer be in the hands of impartial authority, but of par- tisans. Mr. Dillon would control the police, and practically the Queen's troops, and the whole idea of impartiality would vanish. It hardly matters whether Mr. Dillon were impartial or not, whether he was intent on paying off old scores, as he said in one of his speeches he would be, or whether, being in power, he grew more states- manlike. In no case would he be believed, and his force would be resisted. That opinion proceeds from dislike of the Irish, or their politics ? Nonsense. Apply the test to Hull, which is English to the core, and then see bow it works. Imagine the civil war broken out at Hull, and all power of moving police and soldiers in the hands, say, of Mr. G. Livesey, the gentleman who crushed the great gas strike in London. He may have been, for what we know, the most impartial of mankind, as he certainly was one of the most efficient; but what would be the effect of a force so commanded upon Hull ? A blazing civil war, conducted with every resource the people . possessed, and marked with a diabolical malice and fury such as led to the cutting of the hose of the fire-engines. And so it will be in Belfast, with this aggravation, that half the fighters there on either side think they are doing the Lord's work, and half-hope or wholly hope that he will give them an unexpected victory,—a belief which, if human experience is of any value, encourages at once self-sacrifice and blood- thirst. The people would die in heaps in Hull under such provocation, and so they will in Belfast if Mr. Gladstone's proposal is accepted.
We have carefully abstained from even hinting on which side we consider right to lie either in Belfast or Hull, our desire being only to warn our readers how near both places have been, or are, to murderous civil war. They are bemused—we say it to Unionists as well as to Gladstonians —by the habitualness of the peaceful order around them, by the tranquillity which an irresistible force alike of opinion and of rifles maintains in England, and forget that, once adequately moved, men fall back almost instinctively upon older ideas, and kill one another with as little compunction as they once fought duels. Civil war is a great deal nearer than we think, both in the Labour question and the Irish question,—or at least it will be, if we surrender for one moment that "authority of the whole" which, in any one locality, enforces peace. " We always have fought at this season," said the Mussulmans and Hindoos of Lucknow, in 18M, to the then Acting-Resident Major Hayes, " and we cannot help fighting." "But I shall fire at you both if you de." " Then we will postpone the fight for this year." They did, and it has not been fought ever since.
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