TOPICS OF THE DAY. •
LORD HARTINGTON ON IRELAND.
T,ORD HARTINGTON'S speech at Blackburn on Saturday was not, in any sense, a great effort. But it was, perhaps, something better, it was the speech of a man of very strong common-sense, who saw that a great effort was in no way needful for the occasion,—that a slight effort would do, and would sufficiently dispose of all the virulent attacks of the Opposition. We shall not follow him into the Eastern or the Afghan questions, because no one now seriously affects to think the Eastern or Afghan policy of the Government a source of weakness. As the Times frankly admitted, in the passage which Lord Hartington quoted from it, the whole country is greatly relieved at having been extricated so easily " from external complications, which, during the ascendancy of Lord Beaconsfield, were perpetually disquieting commerce with rumours of war, and paralysing enterprise with fear of change." On the Irish question, however, there is no doubt that the mind of the country is at present, and very justly, uneasy. And accordingly, the policy of the Conservatives has been to represent Lord Hartington's views as over-ruled by those of his colleagues on this subject, that the Cabinet may seem to the country divided, and that the great authority of Lord Hartington may seem to go, not with Mr. Gladstone, but rather with Sir Stafford Northcote or Lord Salisbury. At Bristol, the other day, Lord Salisbury,—though with especial reference at the moment rather to the English land- lords than to the Irish,—threw out the general suggestion that Lord Hartington had no influence at all in the Cabinet to which he belongs. Now if the English people believed that this were in any way true of Lord Hartington's attitude on the Irish question, no doubt it would tend to render the disquiet on this subject even more considerable than it has actually been. However, it will be difficult for this delusion as to a divided Cabinet to survive the Blackburn speech,—at least so far as Lord Hartington himself is concerned. As we said, Lord Hartington made no kind of effort at oratory, or even at moral effect. His speech reminds one of the batting of a lazy cricket-player, who finds that he is receiving a number of very easy balls, and who, without exerting himself perceptibly at all, blocks off one after another, and scores a run or two on each. There is so complete a want of basis for all these rumours, that Lord Hartington does not trouble himself to refute them. It is enough for him to put the matter just as Mr. Chamber- lain had put it, but with a somewhat sharper and more definite outline, and there to leave it, secure that the Tories are quite certain to find no distinction between his speech and Mr. Chamberlain's, at all to the disadvantage of the latter. For example, the Tory leader in the Lords had expressed the greatest horror at Mr. Chamberlain's doctrine that a policy of coercion in Ireland could not have been sooner attempted without alienating a large part of the popular support which it bad, in the end, re- ceived. Lord Hartington took up precisely the same position, and enforced it with his accustomed vigour :—" I say that a Coercion Act is of no use, unless there exists the power to put it into force vigorously. I say that no Government can enforce coercion vigorously, unless it is supported by the great majority of opinion in Parliament and in the country. We have seen —we saw in the last Session—the reluctance with which many Members of Parliament approached the question of Coercion. Will any one tell me that if the Government had sought to introduce such measures sooner, or to carry them out before the time when they did carry them out, that reluctance would not have been greatly intensified? Will they tell me it would have been possible to carry a Coercion Act, untll, we were prepared at the same time to promise and to undertake that we would also introduce, if we could, a remedial measure of land reform ? Will any one tell me that it would have been possible for the English Government, if the party of revolution had been reinforced, as it undoubtedly would have been reinforced, by precipitate action on the part of the Government, by a large contingent of sympathy and opinion in England,—would it have been possible for them to have made that vigorous, but I think necessary use of the Coercion Act, which has lately been made of it ?" It would be impossible to re-echo Mr. Chamberlain's contentions in more distinct and unmistakable words. Lord Hartington declares that an effective Coercion Act could not have been carried sooner than it was, and more than this, that it could not beneficially have been put in full force sooner than it was ; that the recent vigorous use of it to put down the Land League could not have been beneficially anticipated, because. if anticipated, a great deal of important opinion, the concur- rence of which is absolutely essential to success in such at policy as that, would have been withheld. Nothing said by Mr. Chamberlain went farther than that. And yet, as Lord Hartington's opponents well know, it is literally true and un- deniable. If a feeble Coercion Act had been passed before a vigorous Coercion Act had been rendered possible, pure harm would have been done. If the vigorous Coercion Act which was at length passed, had been used, as it has recently been used, to put down the Land League, sooner than it was, pure harm would have been done. The Government waited till public opinion was ripe for passing the Act suspending the Constitu- tion; and they passed it. But even then, public opinion was. by no means ripe for a strong use of it. It was not till the mild use of it had been tried, and had conspicuously failed, while the administrative preparations for the application of the remedial measure, on the other hand, were already matured, that the public voice justified the vigorous policy adopted within the last month or two. Whatever else may be said of Lord Hartington, it can hardly be said of him, again that he shrinks from accepting his full responsibility, first, for the delay in bringing forward Coercion, and them for the delay in enforcing the full powers which the Coercion. Act conferred.
But there is still another important point in Lord Harting- ton's mode of dealing with the Irish question, on which he' speaks even more explicitly than Mr. Chamberlain,—the. alleged right of the Irish landlords to compensation for the' privileges forfeited by some of them through the Land Act of last Session :—" As to compensation, of which we hear so much, that question was never raised openly and fully, even by the Opposition, in Parliament ; and it would be well for those who talk so freely about it, to remember that it is a very large question. It is not a question merely of compensation to a few landlords, but to the whole of the landlords of Ireland. If it is necessary to compensate landlords whose rents were avowedly rack-rents for the reduction they have suffered, why is it not also necessary to compensate good landlords who have not thus raised their rents ?" That goes to the very bottom of the question. Either you must compensate all,.
or none. To compensate those who have used their full power to screw the last penny out of their tenants, and to leave those landlords uncompensated who, partly from a sense of justice and partly from a sense of patriot- ism, have refused to adopt this policy, would be to pay a bounty to those who deserve least, and to refuse it to those who deserve most. You have the choice between two courses. Either you must say that to rack-rent tenants who had-made their own improvements was intrinsically unjust,—though it was unfortunately legal,—and that so to change the law, as to make what was intrinsically unjust also illegal, — is not a change of the character for which compensation is due ; or if you do not say that,—if you contend that the whole country which sanctioned the injustice, and not the un- just landlords alone, should be prepared to bear the burden of the sacrifice involved in removing that injustice,—then the persons who have the first right of all to be considered are those who voluntarily ignored their legal rights, in their consideration for the prosperity of the country and the welfare of their tenants. This is a point which needed clear statement, and no state- ment could be clearer than Lord Hartington's. We should be surprised if, after the speech at Blackburn, any Member of the Cabinet is supposed to hold clearer views of the wisdom, and equity of the Irish policy of the Government, than Lord Hartington. Moreover, in our opinion, the country will never sanction the compensation of a great class for the non-enforce- ment of legal but inequitable rights. But if not, still less will it sanction the compensation of that part of the class which did not hesitate to enforce those inequitable rights.
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