TOPICS OF THE DAY. • THE TIMES AND MR. PARNELL.
TIISTICE must be done even to the internal enemies of the State. We have argued from the first that the authenticity of the letters attributed by the Times to Mr. Parnell could be proved or disproved only by evidence on oath ; that the Special Commission was a first-class Court, certain to do justice ; and that Englishmen were bound, as lovers of fair play, to abide by the result of the inquiry. That result was practically attained on Wednesday, when, after an investigation which is at all events a final answer to the charge that Mr. Parnell can get no justice in England, the Attorney-General withdrew the letters as not genuine, and offered an apology on behalf of his clients for their credulity in publishing them. It is the duty of all publicists to express their concurrence in that decision, and especially of all antagonistic to Mr. Parnell ; and we do so most heartily. There is, as regards the letters, no evidence whatever against Mr. Parnell, and no ground whatever for believing that they are anything but forgeries. With a deplorable want of judgment, inconsistent with the whole history of the great journal and the reputation of the Walter family for ability, the managers of the Times accepted the letters without other proof than the resemblance of their signatures to Mr. Parnell's writing, and the testimony of a man—the witness Pigott—whose antecedents should have excited acute suspicion. He had been accused before, it was alleged in Court, not only of crime, but of the special crime of forgery. Pigott was virtually their sole witness as to the letters, and as soon as he passed under cross-examination, the case was so far over. It was shown that he had offered Archbishop Walsh to disprove the case of the Times; that he made mistakes in spelling exactly like those in the letters ; that he had admitted, retracted, and admitted again the charge of forgery ; that he desired not to be examined, because, as he told the Times' solicitor, his character would not bear cross- examination; and that, in short, his testimony was worse than worthless. Finally, he fled, and the Times' counsel, followed by the Times itself, wisely and honourably withdrew the letters, admitted that they were not genuine, and apologised publicly to Mr. Parnell. The incident has, so far as his per- sonal character is concerned, ended with that apology, and though we regret deeply that the Times, after a career of a century, during which it has distinctly raised the character of all journalism, should have made so inexcusable a blunder, we rejoice, in the interests of public morality, that the inquiry has ended so. The Parnellites appear to us to be enemies of the State ; men who are seeking the disintegra- tion of the Empire ; as hostile to Britain as if they were at war with her ; but though we can scarcely even understand the alliance which a great party has formed with them, we hold it far better for the country, for Parliament, and above all for Ireland, that their leader should be shown, and shown so unmistakably, not to have been guilty of falsehood in repudiating those letters. We prefer honourable enemies to dishonourable, and if we believed for one moment the wild calumny of the Gladstonians, that there is a conspiracy of politicians behind the incident, that the Government had lent itself to the letter-charge, knowing it to be false, we should say at once, whatever the consequences to the Empire, let the Government fall. We do not want victory over the Parnellites, dangerous as we believe them to be, at the price of the degradation of Englishmen. We need not say that we believe all that to be mere political raving, inexcusable at any time, most inexcusable when the party which makes such charges has just secured an important political success.
For we have not the slightest intention of concealing that it has secured one. The charge about the letters is a mere incident in a great State trial, upon the major portion of which the defendants have not yet been heard, during which masses of incriminating evidence have been produced which have still to be rebutted, and in which the Judges are still impartial listeners who have given no hint of their opinion. To jump to the result of that trial because one witness upon one point has shown himself unworthy of a moment's attention—we purposely avoid much juster and therefore harsher language—is positively silly, as silly as it is to argue that because Mr. Walter, or Mr. Macdonald, or Mr. Soames, or any other person has been villainously taken in, therefore the Queen is to lose one of her Kingdoms,—the maddest deduction we ever saw drawn in an era of mad politics. Nevertheless, it is to be feared that a section of the electors will, for a moment at all events, arrive at this conclusion. Their imaginations have fastened on the letters as if they were the sole subjects of investigation, and with the explosion of all belief in their authenticity, they will think that all aceu- sations have gone to pieces, and be full of the excitement, which alone among mankind they enjoy as a luxury, of self- condemnation and self-distaste. Uninfluenced by general arguments, without waiting even for the result of the great trial, they will declare that because Mr. Parnell has been the victim of one unfounded charge, therefore all charges against him are false; and with a still more extraordinary mental jump, that if they are false, his policy, which would be bad. were he personally as good as Kossuth, or Detik-, or Mr. Gladstone, ought to be accepted. Mr. Parnell has been wronged by the Times on one point—no doubt, as respects him personally, a most grievous point—and therefore Ireland is wronged by England; that will be the conclusion, so absurd yet so characteristic, of thousands of English voters. As usual, their virtues are the sources of their weaknesses. They like to accuse themselves of injustice, they desire eagerly to make reparation, and they think the only real reparation must be the conces- sion which the wronged man most desires, though it may have absolutely no relation to his wrong, and be far in excess of either justice or good sense. Because John has been wronged by the law, therefore all John's relatives shall be above the law,—that is the kind of momentary desire. Fortunately for the future of the country, of which sensible men would otherwise be tempted to despair, the gusts of emotion to which Englishmen are liable, pass as rapidly as they arise, and they remain hard-headed and keen in their desire for facts. Once this gust has passed, the people will see that all the charges in " Parnellism and Crime" except the letters—no doubt a most grave exception—are still under investigation, and that if they were all declared to be disproved to-morrow, the question of the right relation of Ireland to the Empire would remain absolutely unaffected. Nobody pretends, we suppose, that Mr. Parnell or any other leader of his party is better morally than Mr. Gladstone, and the very essence of the contest is that Mr. Gladstone, in spite of his just claim to moral respect, in spite even of his claim to a certain moral grandeur—recollect, in excluding the Irish Members he would have destroyed his own chance of a permanent majority in Britain—is leading his party into a political abyss. Let the Courts clear Mr. Parnell as much as they choose—and the more he or any other leader is cleared, the better we shall be pleased—he will be no loftier figure than the Member for Midlothian, and the first duty of Englishmen is, on the question of Home-rule, to reject Mr. Gladstone's advice. Every apology is due to Mr. Parnell from those who maintained him guilty of writing the letters published in the Times, but no apology what- ever is needed for maintaining the integrity of the Empire, or refusing to hand Ireland over to men who decline to condemn the "Plan of Campaign," and declare the practice of boycotting—which is excommunication in its most con- crete and cruel form, excommunication often involving death—a justifiable punishment for the offence of taking an empty farm.
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