THE DANGER OF THE SITUATION.
WE are compelled to write before the Irish debate is concluded, before Mr. Gladstone has spoken, before Mr. Parnell has spoken, before the Government has given its final reply. But none the less we can see clearly what the debate shows the peril of the political situation to be. Mr. Chamberlain, in his powerful and most effective speech, pointed out in language so lucid that we should have thought it likely to impress even the most impatient of those who thirst for the blood of the Government, that no ultimate success is possible in dealing with the Irish Question which does not win the practical support of moderate men on both sides of the House. Now, what the week's debate seems to us to show is that, at present at all events, there is no Irish policy at all in which any group of men taken from both sides of the House would be in the least likely to concur. Passion has risen so high that it has come to this, that neither side can at all endure the prospect of co-operating with the other side. There are various reasons for this. The most important of them is that Mr. Parnell dictates the policy of the Opposition, and that Mr. Parnell sees his way, or thinks that he sees his way, to a complete personal victory. But there is a still more effectual reason,—namely, that compromise is hardly possible, reluctant as Mr. Chamberlain is to see that it is impossible. What "moderate men on both sides" are willing to concede to Ireland, is complete self-govern- ment in relation to Private-Bill legislation, and hardly anything more,—perhaps a certain amount of provisional freedom in dealing with popular education, so long as the Parliament at Westminster reserves full power to over- rule anything like substantial injustice to the Protestants. But as for any concession which would enable Irish repre- sentatives to pass their own land code, their own code of criminal law, and their own tariff, or to appoint their own Judges and release at pleasure their own prisoners, it is as much out of the question, to the mind of all true Unionists, as conceding the same power to London or Yorkshire. Such a concession really means a first step towards a dissolution of the Union and towards a federal system, and no reasonable man is prepared to take a first step in such a direction who is not also prepared to take the second step and the third. But now, besides these two enormous difficulties in the way, there is the third and very great additional difficulty to which we have alluded in the rising temper of the House, which is, we think, a great deal hotter than the country itself. This is a very natural result of the fact that the whole Irish difficulty of the moment is much more of Parliamentary than of popular origin,—we mean, of course, that part of the difficulty which is not agrarian, and which, in our opinion, would hardly exist at all if the Parliamentary Parnellites had not set their hearts on using agrarian discontents as gunpowder in the service of legislative independence, instead of on removing those discontents in the most direct and effectual way. But this is just what they are determined upon. And, of course, now that they have got a section of the Gladstonian Party up to the same point of white-heat, they will not throw away their advantage.
And this is, to us, the moral of the whole debate. It is not a debate. It is, with very rare exceptions, a hurling of spears between the two parties, a discharge of weapons not in the least intended to settle anything either to the judgment or the reason, but, so far as it has a clear purpose at all, as distinguished from the function of expressing mutual enmities, its purpose is to bring the final issue nearer by inflaming the whole atmosphere of the contro- versy. The speeches are really very little but declarations on one side that Mr. Balfour and all his myrmidons are cruel and untrustworthy tyrants, and declarations on the other side that Mr. O'Brien and all his colleagues are unscrupulous actors and incendiaries who crane at nothing so long as they can put new difficulties in Mr. Balfour's way. And this is the danger of the situation,—that the Opposition, partly in consequence of recent events which have made them unusually sanguine of a triumph only the more enjoyable because they expect it to be extremely humiliating to the Government, and partly because this wish for a humiliation of the English party has been one of the great inspiring influences of the whole Irish move- ment, are not in the least in the humour to listen to any argument such as that of Mr. Chamberlain, are not, indeed, in the mood for asking themselves what 'moderate men on both sides" either do actually wish for, or ought to wish for. They are in the mood for victory, and even for a sanguinary victory, and though we blame the sanguinary tone which they assume, we do not exactly blame them for thinking that there is very little room for political compromise in the ease. We ourselves fail to see any hope in the direction in which Mr. Chamber- lain appears to see hope. For heartily as we agree with Mr. Chamberlain that if only both parties could agree on a final agrarian measure, and carry that, it might very well prove to be the end of the whole matter, we fully recognise the fact that this is precisely the reason why Mr. Parnell and his followers never will agree to any agrarian measure which is not to be entrusted to an Irish Legislature to carry out. In- deed, Mr. Gladstone himself has repeatedly declared that he could see no security for any large Purchase measure, unless a popular Leglislature had previously been created in Ireland which, would stand between the Irish peasantry and the Parliament of the United Kingdom ; and in that declaration we have always conceived that Mr. Parnell's hand might be discovered. For assuredly the greatest calamity which could happen to the Parnellites would be the carrying of any large agrarian measure without the simultaneous creation of an independent Irish Legislature. It is not to the interests of the Parnellites that any such measure ever should be carried. It would be most irritating to the feelings of the English Radicals if any such measure should be carried. And the whole purpose,—so far as there is a clear purpose,—in the ex- tremely aggressive tone of the Opposition at the present moment, is to prevent any such catastrophe. This, then, is the peril of the situation,—that in a case in which anything like compromise has always been well-nigh impossible, the political blood-thirst is now rising fast on both sides, and faster, of course, amongst those who have hitherto been defeated, than amongst those who are still in command of the situation. Now, though we fully admit that the issue must be determined at last by a stand-up fight, and that it does not in reality admit of compromise, we see the utmost danger in this rapidly rising anger on both sides ; first, because it will render the defeated party, whichever that may be, utterly unwilling to accept defeat without a kind of fury which may further endanger the popularity of a Parliamentary system already very deeply discredited ; and next, because the existence of a bitter feud of this kind, in which all the deepest passions of patriotism are engaged, will make it almost impossible to give a fair trial to either policy in Ireland, whether it be the Unionist or the Home-rule. You cannot try a great and difficult experiment,—and either the Irish policy of the present Government or the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone and his friends must be a great and difficult experiment,— with much chance of success, if a furious foe is raging in the immediate neighbourhood, misrepresenting everything that is done, raising a cloud of scandal con- cerning everything which is contemplated, covering the leading administrators with ridicule and false accusations, and, in short, doing all in their power to render both Ireland and England unwilling to acquiesce in the decision of the constituencies. Yet that is the situation with which we are threatened, and with which we shall soon be con- fronted unless the leaders on both sides show a self- restraint and magnanimity of which, in the last year or two, we have had but very few examples.
Previous page
