THE UPSHOT OF THE YEAR ON HOME-RULE.
IT cannot be doubted that, whether we look to the speeches of the Gladstonians or the speeches of Mr. Parnell, the upshot of the year's evidence as to Mr. Glad- stone's policy, is to represent to the electors of Great Britain that the Home-rule to be granted to Ireland will be a very humble sort of affair indeed, rather a County Council on a large scale than anything else. That is the view of it that would render it easiest for Scotland and Wales to follow in the wake of Ireland, and to demand Home-rule Parlia- ments of their own. That is the view of it that would make the British elector least unwilling to support Mr. Gladstone. And that, finally, is the view of it which would render it easiest for Mr. Gladstone to withhold his scheme for the retention of the Irish Members at Westminster till after he had fought out the battle of the General Election. So long as the Gladstonians can go to the country asking for decentralisation in regard to local matters, and for nothing more, they believe that they may very easily persuade the electors not to inquire too curiously what the special plans may be by which Mr. Gladstone proposes to work out a proposal so modest and relatively so unimportant. How could it be maintained that the fate of the United King- dom hangs on the creation of three big provincial Councils for Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, even though that should involve the creation of a fourth big provincial Council for England for which there is absolutely no demand at all ? That is the meaning, as it seems to us, of the sudden disposition to minimise the significance of the Irish Question, and to force a number of other political questions on the public mind which are no more practical for us at the present time than the politics of the planet Mars. The Gladstonians hope, by treating the Irish Question in the very modest fashion in which Mr. Parnell has treated it,—in England, be it remembered,—to render it quite unneces- sary to offer detailed explanations as to the special scope of the next measure, and so to postpone the great con- flict till after Mr. Gladstone has obtained a Parliamentary majority for the general principle of an Irish Parliament and an Irish Administration.
There is some astuteness in these tactics, but we do not think that they will succeed. In the first place, it will never do to tell the Irish people that they are not to have a separate national life at all, but only to get the power of passing what are now very often treated as private Bills without crossing the Channel, and an Administration of their own which will be more like the Administration of the City of Dublin on a larger scale, than anything deserving the name of a National Administration. The sort of Par- liament which is now generally spoken of would hardly even need the curb of such a law as Poynings' law, repealed before Grattan's Parliament was elected, to keep it in order, any more than the Lord Mayor of Dublin and his Council need a Poynings' law to keep them in order. It would be too insignificant to be dangerous. How would Irishmen like to be told by their idolised national orators that this was the upshot of the struggle of ninety years, and that there would be no more chance of putting a spoke in England's wheel after the great victory had been won, than there is now? No doubt the new Parliament and Administration might defy the British law as one Municipality,—was it not Limerick ?—defied the British law in Lord Carnarvon's time, and waited upon his lord- ship when he was in bed with the gout, to tell him that they had eaten his excellent lunch but had no intention at all of complying with the requirements of the law. Nevertheless, humble triumphs of this kind are not at all what the Irish are thirsting for. They cheer for the in- t, auguration of a new national life, and if Mr. Parnell were to explain what be expects to get out of Mr. Gladstone, in terms as humble as he explained himself at Nottingham, the dismay among the Irish constituencies would be universal,—unless, indeed, they got a hint that when they had obtained the modest concession now asked for, the game would be in their own hands, and that they could use what they had got, to obtain what they really intended to squeeze out of the parsimonious nation who, when they asked for bread, had given them a stone. Except on the understanding that they were cheating us out of what we were too stingy to give without being out- witted, the impression in Ireland which would be produced by the language now usually held concerning the meaning of Irish Home-rule, would be one of general wrath, and even fury. It is not certainly for a convenient organ of Private-Bill legislation that the Irish have been clamouring, and cheering Mr. O'Brien's frothy declamation to the skies: Englishmen should know better than to take Mr. Parnell's minimising language seriously. He may stand with his hat in his hand and talk of our great nation, and his un- willingness to run any risk of collision with our will ; but no reasonable being who has watched the course of the agitation, the language of the League, and the relative favour with which the violent men are regarded as com- pared with the moderate men, who stay in England and evade every opportunity of addressing Irish constituencies, will believe for a moment that Mr. Parnell's expectations and professions, if sincere, are an echo of the expectations and professions of the majority of the Irish people. No serious-minded politician, we say, can believe this for a moment. It is inconsistent with the main article of Mr. Gladstone's creed,—namely, that the law in Ireland is hated because it is imposed on Irishmen by a people whom they regard as foreigners. Mr. Parnell, in his excessive anxiety to represent to an English audience the field of Irish industrial development as the main field of labour for the future Parliament and Administration of Ireland, forgot to glance even at Mr. Gladstone's chief plea for Home-rule,- that Irishmen must transform the law before Irishmen would give it any but a reluctant obedience. He knew, no doubt, that that involves one of the greatest perplexities of the case, the dread which Englishmen feel that the loyal million and a quarter will have a very bad time of it under the legislation and administration of the disloyal three millions and three-quarters (to adopt, for the moment, figures which are, we believe, very unduly favourable to the Parnellites). It was clever tactics of Mr. Parnell to try and obscure the angry dissensions between the Irish Parnellites and the Anglo-Irish party, by thrusting forward local industrial enterprises into the foreground of the Irish Parliamentary prospect. But the criticism to which these tactics are open is very obvious. If, indeed, it be little more than a more satisfactory and intelligent species of Private-Bill legislation and administration for which he and his colleagues are contending, why are they not satisfied with County Councils, or Provincial Councils at the very most ? Why demand so very much larger political moulds than any which Private-Bill legislation and administration require ? The answer is very plain,—that what the true Nationalists want is true Nationalism, and that true Nationalism cares chiefly to have these larger moulds in order that when they get them, they may mould in them national institutions and national aspirations of a very much larger kind than any which could by any possibility be formed in moulds adapted to the preparation of industrial enterprises. The whole agitation, as the Irish popular leaders have represented it, as Mr. Parnell himself has a hundred times represented it, would have been a gigantic imposture, if the only end of it were to give a stimulus to Irish agriculture, and to relieve it by the careful nursing of commerce and other industries. It will not answer Mr. Parnell's purpose to speak humbly till he has cajoled the English people into granting what they are to be led to suppose his very modest demands, unless he can also let us hear the Irish leaders in their Irish speeches speaking after the same fashion, unless he can let us hear Mr. O'Brien denying that he is thinking of anything more serious than industrial enterprise, and Mr. Dillon assuring Irish audiences that he will always contend for the full rights of those who have been and are resisting his policy. Then indeed we might discern some plausi- bility in Mr. Parnell's position. But the secret of the situation is this,—that the minimising view of the Irish demand exactly suits the Welsh and Scotch Home- rulers, and is of all views the best suited to calm English fears and to win English votes ; but that, unfortunately, it is utterly inconsistent with the whole drift of Mr. Gladstone's argument, and is never heard of on any Irish platform. It is like building a steam-engine to crack nuts, to elaborate an Irish Parliament and Administration for the preparation and administration of Private Bills and Private Acts.
We sincerely hope, however, that the English people will not be taken in by the assurances which they are now re- ceiving, that Irish Home-rule is to mean nothing more serious than Scotch or Welsh Home-rule. That precisely suits the electioneerers ; but it is so absurdly inconsistent with all that has been dinned into the Irish by the Irish agitators, that it could only be enforced at the point of the bayonet. If Irish Home-rule be once granted, and Irish nationality, in the sense which Mr. O'Brien attaches to it, be then refused, we shall have simply prepared a train of political gunpowder for a new explosion in Ireland, and an explosion for which we, and not the Irish, will be responsible. A greater mockery to grant Ireland than a monster County Council, after all this talk of the alien character of British law and British institutions, or a better excuse for a new Irish rebellion, can hardly be imagined. Nor could there be a worse excuse for a new British conquest of Ireland than to plead that Irishmen would not be satisfied with a monster County Council after it had been offered them. For our own parts, we do not in the least believe that the British people will be taken in by the humble attitude of Mr. Parnell and the nonsense about asserting the complete supremacy of the Parliament at Westminster over every- thing that the Parliament of Dublin does. If that is the only kind of Home-rule that the British people are willing to concede, they are either deceiving Ireland or preparing to be deceived themselves. If they are doing the one, they are very guilty ; and if they are doing the other, they are very imbecile. Mr. Parnell has grossly understated what his agitation has been driving at, and nothing can be more silly than to suppose that Ireland, who is supposed to have had the resumption of a separate national career at heart throughout the whole century, would grate- fully welcome what Scotland and Wales,—who have only just got it into their heads that they must affect to want Home-rule for themselves,—might perhaps be persuaded to feel some languid disposition to accept. This representa- tion of the matter is an insincere electioneering manoeuvre. No sort of manipulation will get the true demand of the Parnellites into keeping with the artificial demand which is now put forward from other parts of the Kingdom ; and the British elector will prove himself destitute of all political sagacity if he allows himself to be persuaded for a moment that so it can be.
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