THE PARNELLITE AVOWALS. T HE speeches delivered by Mr. Dillon and
Mr. O'Brien in Limerick on Sunday, should be distributed by the hundred thousand amongst the English and Scotch con- stituencies. They simply make the case of the Unionists against the Home-rule policy impregnable. They sub- stantiate every word that has been said against the policy of the Irish Nationalists, and prove to demonstration not only that they wholly and frankly ignore the moral prin- ciples of all law, when Irish party questions are raised, but that if they were to attempt to govern Ireland on the policy they now avow, Ireland would be almost uninhabitable within a few years. The excuse for the demonstration was a dispute between the Roman Catholic Bishop O'Dwyer, the Bishop of Limerick, and Mr. Dillon, which Mr. Dillon, as he himself admits, began by a most violent and unseemly attack on the Bishop for saying, what we believe every temperate politician in Ireland thinks, that the judgment of the Land Court on the rents of the Glenshaxrold estate was a perfectly just and reasonable judgment, and that it removed every vestige of excuse for pressing the lawless policy which is generally known as the "Plan of Campaign" on that estate. Dr. O'Dwyer, far from being, as the speeches of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien would make him, a "Dublin Castle" Bishop, has been throughout his career a hearty friend of the tenant- farmer, a strong advocate of the moderate form of Home- rule, and a steady antagonist of the rack-renters. There is not the shadow of a pretence for reckoning him amongst the mere partisans of the British Government, and still less for reckoning him among the mere partisans of the Irish landlords. No doubt he believed long before the Pope's Rescript was received in this country, that " Boy- cotting " and the "Plan of Campaign" were making havoc of the fundamental principles of Irish morality,—that the one substituted universal terrorism and suspicion for the spirit of charity, and that the other made the principle of honour in commercial contract, a principle by which hangs all the intercourse of commercial life, a mere mockery. He could not have believed anything else, as a representative and preacher of the Decalogue ; but he was one of the few Irish prelates who believed more sincerely in the Decalogue than he believed in party spirit or party politics of any kind. Yet apart from this determination of Dr. O'Dwyer's to uphold the moral law above all the spleen and wrath of party, there has been no Bishop on the Bench who has been a more genuine Irish patriot. Indeed, he has never shrunk from avowing himself a Home-ruler, though the treatment he has received from his own party in Irish politics shows more convincingly than anything else how little use it is in Ireland to accept the policy of Home-rule, unless you are prepared to press it at the cost of all those moral and social principles which, if honestly observed, would keep up the distinction between Home-rule and anarchy. The Pope disapproves of " Boycotting " and the "Plan of Cam- paign," though expressing himself favourable to Home-rule; the few Irish Bishops who remain faithful to their Catholic religion disapprove of these ruinous policies also ; even Mr. Parnell, in his tepid politic way, disapproves of the "Plan of Campaign," thinks that it was a mistake to start it, and. insisted on its being limited to a few estates ; but all this makes no impression at all on the great number of his followers, and in the speeches of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien on Sunday, we have a frank con- fession of their absolute indifference to any consequences, political, social, or moral, which would follow from pushing these anti-social and immoral doctrines to their extreme issue.
Here is Mr. Dillon's confession of what he thinks Irish patriotism involves :—" When I read," he says, "the letter in the Freeman" [i.e., Bishop O'Dwyer's letter on the perfect reasonableness and justice of the decisions of the Land Court as to the Glensharrold rents] "side by side with the account of the evictions, I must confess to you that my blood boiled that a Catholic Bishop could be found in Ireland who would, no matter what the merits of the case might be, write to justify the eviction of his own people,—so that these poor creatures would be driven from their homes, and see in the next morning's paper a letter justifying the Court which had evicted them." Note the words which we have printed in italics. Mr. Dillon is really prepared to say that no Irish tenant should ever be ejected from his holding, whether he keeps the terms of the most reasonable contract or not. "No matter what the merits of the case may be," an Irish peasant should never be driven forth on the world, even though he sits at home without an effort to put that industry into the soil by which alone the soil can be made of service either to himself or the community. There we have the avowed principle of the most popular of all the Irish Nationalists, a principle which justifies thriftlessness, idleness, beggary, and breach of contract, and regards the application of any adequate remedy to these evils as so unpatriotic that it ought to make Irish blood boil. God help the land which should be governed by a party of which Mr. Dillon is the leader ! It would justify not merely the rooting of a thriftless and ne'er-do-weel peasantry in the soil, but so far as principle goes, the rooting of thriftless and ne'er-do- weel labourers in their employers' farms ; and not that only, but the rooting of thriftless and ne'er-do-weel clerks and assistants in merchants' offices or tradesmen's shops, and every other commercial employment. What is the difference between turning out a peasant who will not pay a moderate and reasonable rent, and turning off a bank-clerk who will not do a moderate and reasonable day's work, or discharging a porter who will not carry the goods intrusted to him on the terms to which he has agreed, or discharging a car-driver who does not satisfy his employer with his diligence and punctuality ? Of course there is no difference of principle at all. If a lazy and spendthrift tenant is to be secure in his possession of the soil, even though he sits idle in his cabin and lets his land go to ruin, and never pays his baker or the person from whom he buys his seed-potatoes, why should any other employ 6 in Ireland be turned out of his post for like thriftlessness and indolence ? Mr. Dillon announces that, "no matter what the merits of the case may be," it is a base and unpatriotic act to justify eviction, and we do not see how his principle can possibly be applied to eviction, and yet not be applied to those dismissals of employes from their posts which sooner or later imply an eviction of the family from the lodging for which it only pays by the proceeds of that post. What Mr. Dillon openly proclaims to the Irish Bishops, is that they shall only at their peril announce the principle that when strictly just terms have been offered to the tenants of Ireland, they shall be strictly held to those terms,—which really means that they shall only at their peril enforce the natural as well as revealed law, that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.
Then Mr. Dillon goes on to defend boycotting as the righteous and just instrument of the popular movement. "I say deliberately, and with the full knowledge that comes from intimate acquaintance with the facts, that but for the practice of boycotting and the weapon of boy- cotting, not a single step could have been taken of all that have been taken in the cause of the people." Very likely not. That only shows how utterly rotten is the policy which has been regarded in Ireland as the popular policy. Boycotting is nothing but an anti-social principle, and an anti-social principle applied in a vast number of cases not to the deterring of cruelty and tyranny, but to the deterring of just and honest enforcement of reasonable and freely accepted terms. Boycotting means, according to Mr. Parnell's own definition, treating like lepers all those who take the land from which another has been evicted, and that, remember, whether justly or unjustly evicted ; for, as we have seen, Mr. Dillon thinks it shameful to evict even those who will not pay a just rent. And that undoubtedly has been the rule with the Irish Nationalists. We have never even heard of a case in which it has been admitted by the Nationalists that a tenant ought to have been evicted, and in which accordingly the man who afterwards succeeded him in his tenancy and farmed his land, has been regarded as in his full right in doing so. On the contrary, whether justly or unjustly evicted, the man who succeeds him is boycotted by the Nationalists with all the stringency of the leper's ostracism. He is made to feel an outcast and a pariah, and that whether he is tilling diligently and faithfully the land of the man who had been an idle and worthless loafer, or whether he has replaced the most industrious and honest of misused peasants. These are the principles which Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien avow and defend. And we say that they would be the ruin of any country in the world. Let Ireland once be governed by a party of which Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien are the spokesmen, and we may be sure that the miserable end of the miserable tragedy of Irish history will not be far off.
There is but one ground of satisfaction in the Limerick meeting. None of the priests attended it. Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien failed to induce Bishop O'Dwyer's clergy to range themselves against him, and along with the foes of the Decalogue and the advocates of anti-social principles. If Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien had to answer the question put after Our Lord had narrated the parable of the good Samaritan, "Which, now, of these three was neighbour to him who fell among thieves ? " they would certainly have asked first whether the man was a "land-grabber," and if satisfied that he was, would have replied, "they that showed no mercy on him."
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