MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S ATTITUDE.
WE must say plainly that we regret Mr. Chamberlain's recent speeches and letters. It is not that we suspect• him of deserting the Unionist cause, or of giving any reason for the exultation expressed by some sections of Mr. Gladstone's more irritated followers. The Parnellites and their ally, Mr. Labouchere, have a keener eye for the situation than that ; they see clearly that Mr. Chamberlain is not with them in purpose, and they keep up, in consequence, their fire of denun- ciations. Mr. Labouchere says Mr. Chamberlain wants to be the Liberal Pope, and the Freeman says Ireland will have none of his scheme ; and their instinct, we believe, is truer than that of Mr. Chamberlain's other enemies. Indeed, we need not talk about instinct, for Mr. Chamberlain, in his letter to Mr. Hurlbert of January 18th, published in the Times. of Tuesday, rejects the very basis of all Irish claims, and blankly denies that Ireland is a nation. " The national idea, as distinguished from the provincial, is essentially separatist. Once grant that Ireland is entitled to be considered as a nation, and not as a part of a nation, or a State within a nation, and you must follow this out to its logical conclusion, and give them all the rights of a nation, including separate taxation, foreign relations, and military force." That is as strong a Unionist utterance as any statesman has yet delivered, and, in fact, amounts to our own repeatedly offered opinion that if we are bound to concede Home-rule to Ireland on the ground of her nationality, we have no moral excuse for war with her people when they demand their independence. We could plead nothing but necessity, and must abandon the moral ground altogether. Nevertheless, though we regard this letter as conclusive evidence of Mr. Chamberlain's ultimate position, we regret his speech at Hawick, and his letter to the Times of January 25th, as likely, though not intended, to weaken the fidelity of the average voter to the Unionist cause. Mr. Chamberlain is so strongly Liberal, or rather Radical, by temperament, and feels so keenly both the attractive force of Liberalism and the repulsive force of Con- servatism, that he concedes too much,—so much, that numbers of his own Birmingham electors will imagine he has conceded all. He has not done that, or anything like that ; but he has fallen back on his old thought, which at one time he seemed to abandon under stress of the Irish repudiation of his pro- ject, that a compromise may be found in a Constitution based on the principles which bind together the Canadian Provinces and the Canadian Dominion. The Federal scheme of that vast territory contains two provisions, or rather prin-. ciples, which are unusual in modern Federations, though one of them also exists in part in the Germanic Empire. In the. first place, the Provinces possess no legislative rights except. those delegated to them, an arrangement which, if applied to Ireland, would in theory allow the Imperial Parliament to reserve questions like religion, education, and property in its own hands, and would generally cripple, though it would not prevent, any Irish efforts at unjust legislation. In the second place, the Dominion Parliament possesses full power of con- current legislation with the Provinces, and can, Mr. Chamber- lain thinks, use that power to modify, or even to override any Acts of the Provincial Legislatures which it thinks unjust or inexpedient, or in excess of their legitimate authority. This provision applied to Ireland would leave the Imperial Parliament sovereign, and entirely prevent any misuse of the powers delegated to the local Legislature. The latter would be overridden if they trespassed, just as the Birmingham Town Council would be overridden, and would be equally powerless to resist. With these two grand provisoes, and a third retaining the administration of criminal justice in Imperial hands, Mr. Chamberlain thinks we might safely grant Home-rule.
We might as well, or better, grant Repeal in its fullest
sense. We understand perfectly the theoretic distinction which Mr. Chamberlain draws, and can believe that it satisfies his own political conscience ; but how does it apply to the actual facts ? The proviso about criminal justice is from the first mere words. What does it signify who appoints the Judge, or even who controls the police, when a jury cannot be trusted to do justice ? The Imperial Government in Germany can issue a Criminal Code, and it will be executed everywhere,—first, because all Germans are ready to execute it ; and secondly, because the German Army stands ready to kill anybody who forcibly resists it ; and the Government of the Dominion is, for different reasons, nearly as powerful. But where is the analogy in Ireland ? If we cannot carry out the criminal law now, when there is no one to resist it, how should we carry it out then, when the local Legislature and the local Executive alike favoured lawlessness ? The criminal law would still be "English," that is, "foreign," that is, " detested :" criminals of a certain kind would still be patriots ; and juries would still be, in a higher degree than ever, at the mercy of the law-breakers. Nothing would be gained on the most essential point of all, while the dislike to English law and English Judges, as relics of the half-dead English authority, would be sharply intensified. As to the delegation of powers, all that would secure would be a bitter and incessant battle for the extension of the powers delegated, —a battle in which the plea for extension would be favoured in England by the Home-rule Radicals, and fought for by the Irish Members who, under the concurrent jurisdiction clauses, must be left in the British Parliament to turn out Governments and obstruct legislation whenever they wanted to secure either powers or guarantees for loans. If Parliament did not use its revising rights, Ireland would be practicably independent ; and if it did, the friction would be twice as great as now, when it absorbs all attention. Mr. Gladstone's scheme is a far better one than this, and we do not believe that this, detested as it would be in Ireland, where men are sighing for nationality, and not for a new kind of provincial life, will ever be seriously discussed. We have no dread of the scheme, but we have of its effect among Radical Unionists, who, if they accept it, will, as the controversy pro- ceeds, give up point after point rather than impair unity again, until they find themselves landed in a form of Home- rule worse than Mr. Gladstone's, which, except as regards finance, offered far fewer opportunities for future contest. The true issue is, in fact, between Union and Repeal ; and any com- promise which concedes legislative power to a local body does but weaken the hearts and hands of Englishmen for the struggle against a more complete division. Mr. Chamberlain, of course, does not acknowledge this ; but he might learn something from the very eagerness with which English Home- rulers accept his overture, and express their willingness for any amount of discussion upon his basis.
With the other portion of Mr. Chamberlain's speech—that on the agrarian question—we have, subject to one restriction, no quarrel. We entirely agree with him that it would be "base " to desert the owners of land before settling the great conflict into which we, and nobody else, originally plunged them. We also agree that ownership of some kind, whether copyhold or freehold, must take the place of the dual owner- ship established by the Act of 1881. And, finally, we think it highly probable that if Ireland is to be quieted, the land in the congested districts must be redistributed as well as enfran- chised, the holdings being now so small that their tenants could not live on them even if they were free of rent. But then, if Mr. Chamberlain really sees his way to these great and most desirable changes without plundering the landlords, is it not almost time that he should explain his method ? He has only to do it successfully to be recognised as the greatest administrator in the Three Kingdoms. Both the islands are hungering for a plan which, without " base " injustice, shall solve this, the greatest of all economic difficulties that have ever interrupted the progress of the country,— hungering to such a degree that, as we believe, though Mr. Chamberlain does not, they would not, if success were assured, resist a heavy, but at the same time final and well-defined, sacrifice of money, Mr. Chamberlain intimates all through his speech that he sees, at all events, glimpses of such a plan, and one which would succeed ; and why not let the country have it ? He is not in power, of course, and therefore not absolutely bound to come forward ; but there is no Constitu- tional objection to his doing so, and the gain to Great Britain, to Ireland, and to himself would be indefinite. His weight in the Home-rule controversy would be multiplied tenfold, and the controversy itself would assume a totally different complexion, becoming for the first time political, and not moral. We can- not, for ourselves, imagine how a scheme meeting so many mutually destructive conditions is to be framed ; but Mr. Chamberlain is a great administrator, accustomed to deal in Birmingham with large sums ; and if he believes in a plan, we may be certain it is at least well worthy of discussion. Then let us have it.
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