LORD HARTINGTON'S THREE GREAT POINTS. L ORD HARTINGTON'S admirable speech at
Rawten- stall last Saturday contained more than the usual proportion of statesmanlike " mind-stuff " which gives so unique an interest and character to his public addresses. We will single out three principal points on which he seems to us to have laid the stress of a statesman, and which have never before been brought into so clear a relief.
The first is the point on which there has been a good deal already said, but yet never as much as Lord Harting- ton said, nor has it been said with so steady and temperate a voice. Both parties now concede, as Lord Hartington points out, that Dlr. Parnell is just the sort of politician to whom no sane British statesman would be willing to confide the guidance and destiny of one of the British islands. We Unionists regarded him as wholly unfit for such a trust five years ago, as Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues (who were then supposed to be Unionists) also did nine years ago. Now, after an interval of five years' hallucination on the subject, they have come round to our opinion again, and on this point at least we are agreed. It would alarm Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt,—if, indeed, anything that tended to secure the momentary ascendency of his party would alarm Sir William Harcourt,—to see Mr. Parnell at the head of an Irish Administration with which the Gladstonians were bound to co-operate. And yet, as Lord Hartington says, that would have been the direct result of Mr. Gladstone's policy in 1880, which, had it been successful, would have raised Mr. Parnell to a height of popularity in Ireland with which even the popularity of O'Connell himself could not have been compared. Well, but if Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues were bent only two or three months ago on taking so disastrous a step (as it would oven in their own opinion now have turned out), a step which all of them now confess that it is most neces- sary to avoid, what scrap or atom of evidence is there,— not to speak of such large and substantial evidence as that on which alone statesmen ought to act,—that we shall be any better off if we put Mr. O'Brien or Mr. Dillon or Mr. Healy in the place of Mr. Parnell, and not only put him, but contrive to keep him there (which is a more difficult matter, with Mr. Parnell to contest the throne) ? There is nothing Mr. Parnell has said which the Anti-Parnellites have not also said, and lately said, as to the jealousy with which Irish patriots would regard all English guarantees. Mr. Gladstone will reply : 'Whatever they say in theory, they retract in practice, for they pro- fess their wish to act with us, and avow that it • is just because we will not act with Mr. Parnell that they deemed it their duty to throw him over.' That is perfectly true. But it is also perfectly true, by Mr. Parnell's own admission, that when he too believed that he could command power in Ireland by talking mildly and deferentially in England, he did so, and according to his present statement, this is just what his conscience now reproaches him with. Now, what shadow of a ground have we for supposing that those who have been his eager accomplices in the violence and duplicity of the past, will not be his rivals in the violence and duplicity of the future ? Of course, as Lord Hartington pointed, out, while it is a question of the best mode of getting their foot firmly planted on the first rung of the ladder, they are quite ready to show the same complaisance to Mr. Gladstone as Mr. Parnell, under the same circumstances, showed before them. But why should it mean more in their case, than it meant in his ? Th.ey.go as far as he does in repudiating all limitations of principle on Irish self-government. Many of them went even further than he did in defying existing law and usage. All of them are as eager as ever he was, to squeeze aid and money out of the open enemies of England. Where is there even an excuse for thinking that if once they find themselves firmly seated in the saddle, they will scruple to thwart England up to the point at which they would fear the use of overwhelming force to put them down ? Why should we attach any more importance to their smooth words now, than even the Gladstouians themselves attach to the smooth words used by Mr. Parnell up to the time of Mr. Gladstone's interference to get him deposed ? This is Lord Hartington's first point. The second to which we call attention is an equally strong one, and closely connected with it. It is the evidence which" recent events " have produced that what the Irish people demand under the name of Home-rule is not at all the thing which even the average English Home-ruler is willing to grant under that name. Surely, says Lord Hartington, we have heard enough recently to render this point more than doubtful. Yet it is a most serious point. If we• are to pull our British Constitution to pieces to please Irishmen, let us be quite sure that we shall please Irishmen by what we are willing to do. If it could be shown, or even shown to be probable, that what English Home- rulers think safe and wise would not please Irish Home- rulers at all, unless it were as a step towards a good deal more which would not please English Home-rulers at all, is it worth while, is it prudent, is it even sane, to go through that most dangerous operation with no clear understanding between the two countries as to what the result will be ? Who would pull down an ancient and picturesque mansion, to rebuild it more to the taste of some fastidious person, without at least being quite clear that he really understood the taste of that fastidious person, and that he should certainly please him by the change ? After recent events, can any one honestly say that what English Home-rulers as a class are ready to grant, Irish Home-rulers as a class are disposed to be satisfied with ? And if not, what can be more monstrously absurd than to embark in such complicated and risky operations for a purpose which is likely to prove wholly illusory and vain ?
But the third point in Lord Hartington's speech to which we wish to call attention, seems to us the most original, if not the most weighty, of all. It is that the danger of the new policy of dissecting the United Kingdom into political fragments, which are to be put together again on some new principle, is one which arises from no cause peculiar to Ireland, or connected solely with the recent course of Irish history, but which would arise equally if you gave any local fragment of this great Kingdom the right to determine important matters more or less inseparable from the policy of the whole State, without any uniform and constant reference to the judgment of the whole State. In Lord Hartington's mind, the whole is politically much greater than even all its parts. It is the restraining and sobering judgment of the whole which keeps the parts from heady and unwise action. He thinks that the Highlands of Scotland, with their crofter population, might, if allowed to take their own way, very likely do what would be almost as dangerous as what Ireland would do ; that the mining counties of England might make some similar blunder ; that the farmers of Wales might lose their heads in like fashion ; that the East End of London might plunge into some vortex of Socialist experiment,—in short, that there are few parts of the United Kingdom which, if allowed to judge on any important matter without deferring to the mind and will of the whole nation, might not make some disastrous blunder which the judgment of the whole nation would certainly have detected and corrected. That seems to us a most wise and weighty opinion, and we believe it to touch the very core of the question at issue. Undoubtedly Ireland is the very last fragment that we should like to see left to itself. But it is by no means the only fragment. There are very many others which, if allowed to set up for themselves, would run even Ireland very close in rashness and presumption. Lord Hartington's three great points seem to us most weighty contributions to the political judgment of the United Kingdom at the present critical Juncture.
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