LORD LYMINGTON'S LETTER.
LORD LYMINGTON is a young man, and apparently an impatient man, or he would have known that the letter which he wrote to Wednesday's Times is far better calculated to "take all heart, as well as all principle, out of the Union cause " than any proceeding of the Government. He com- plains of "the want of action, of nerve, and of courage which is paralysing their [the Government's] treatment of the Irish Question ;" but his letter does not supply a single hint as to what, with the means at their disposal, they might have done which they have not done, except the very unfortunate one that they might have proposed a change in the law of the kind needed to enforce order in Ireland, without first dealing with the Procedure of the House of Commons. "If," says Lord Lymington, " to assert the authority of law is the first duty of Government, the measure necessary to effect that assertion should be the first, and, so long as the need exists, its exclusive business." And what would be the use of that, if Parliament has so little control of its own time that every word in such a measure might be made the subject of a whole night's debate Those who know the difficulties and feel the humiliations of the present situation far more keenly than Lord Lymington' believe that every minute spent in obtaining a form of Procedure which will give Parliament something like a reasonable control of the apportionment of its own time, so far from causing delay in the passing of the needful Irish measure, will directly hasten that event. Lord Lymington should look at the condition of his own party, should mark its eagerness to discuss a bit of supposed Aldermanic jobbing at the cost of half a night's debate on the Closure, should observe how every delay which the Gladstonians can decently support they do support, and should then ask himself where we should be now, if the first measure introduced, in place of the reform of Procedure, had been a Bill to amend criminal procedure in Ireland. On such a Bill, not only would Mr. Labouehere with all his followers have adhered en masse to Mr. Parnell, and have aided him in every feat of obstruction, but Sir William Harcourt's active cynicisms would have been freely scattered on behalf of Mr. Parnell's aide, and it is probable that the House would not yet have finished even the "preliminary" discussion on such a mea- sure —that leave would not yet have been given to read the Bill a first time. Fortunately for the Unionists, Sir William Har- court and the greater number of his party are already so deeply committed to a reform of Procedure, that it is only now and again, and with much fear and trembling, that they can venture to throw their influence into the Parnellite scale. But a party committed to Home-rule would have no scruples at all on the subject of a Bill which they would call, and, indeed, already call, a Coercion Bill. They would probably give their whole force to the effort to resist it, and to compel the Government to resign or dissolve on the question of policy implied in what they call Coercion. Why, even Mr. Winter- botham, and several of the party who call themselves Unionists, have already stated in Parliament that they will sanction no new Coercion measure ; and yet this is what Lord Lymington pro- poses to ask the House to pass, without even that power of appor- tioning its own disposable time to its needs, which the reform of Procedure would give it. We venture to say that a lees reasonable display of impatience than Lord Lymington's letter has not been put forth by any politician daring the past year ; and in the midst of the impatience and irritability which almost all parties are displaying, that is saying a great deal.
Of course, if Lord Lymington holds, as, if we are to judge by some expressions in his letter, he might seem to hold, that a better Executive than that of the existing Government for the purpose of enforcing order in Ireland, might be estab- lished there by the Parnellites themselves, we should quite understand his contention that the Government are blocking the way. That is what Mr. Frederic Harrison appears to hold, and he is extremely angry with any one who imputes to him that, because he favours Home-rule with all its dangers, he favours anarchy. But the action of the Liberal Unionists proceeds on an assumption precisely opposite. We say that the tree is known by its fruits ; that we know what the Parnellites wish and what they promise ; that the "Plan of Campaign " expresses their notion of order ; and boycotting or moonlighting their conception of the agencies by which it is legitimate to enforce order. We say that, bad as the state of Ireland is, it is not so bad, nor within any reasonable distance of such badness, as the Parnellite rule in Ireland would be. And we had suppposed till now that Lord Lymington had been of a like mind, and that, ill-satisfied as he is and must be with the condition of Ireland, anxious as he must be for a vast change in the administration of order in that country, he still held that everything saved from the hands of the Parnellites is a gain, and that no worse fate can befall Ireland than to hand her over to the tender mercies of the National League. If he does not hold this, he may be quite right in turning Home-ruler at once. But if he does hold it, he cannot do a more mischievous thing than to throw up his hands in despair, and say,—. Better Home-rule at once, than this hopeless struggle against it.'
Impatience is perhaps, of all political faults, the most fatal to true progress. And impatience in statesmen who, with nothing but a Parliamentary machinery adapted to the conditions of such a country as Great Britain at their disposal, have to pass laws for the benefit of a country in such a state as Ireland, is the next thing to pure folly. Doubtless the very essence of the evil is that we have to use the very same instrument for the treatment of two countries in a totally different social condition. We are perfectly aware that that is the strength of the argument for Home-rule. But we are also perfectly aware that it is the strength of the argument against it. If we had at the head of the Irish statesmen men who were eager for the restoration of a noble and dignified order, men who, if the country passed into their hands, would be the first to punish crime, and to pro- tect liberty, and to defend right whether on behalf of rich or poor, then, indeed, there might be little to urge against Home- rule. But as every one knows that it is just the reverse, that the most law-abiding of the Irish people dread the Saturnalia of a Parnellite Government as we should dread the triumph of the Socialists in London ; as every struggle even for popular re- forms in recent years has been resisted by the Parnellites because it would have snatched the reins out of their hands; as Mr. Glad- stone found in them his worst enemies up to the very moment when he turned round and offered to surrender everything into their hands,—what can we do but struggle to restore order in Ireland in the old fashion, and by the old means, until those means are really exhausted ? They are by no means exhausted yet. And we feel no doubt that while for the present the influence which the Government still exert in Ireland is so much gained from anarchy, a steady struggle with the anarchists of the House of Commons will give the present Administration a much stronger hold of Ireland, and will enable them to pass laws,—not temporary laws, such as the Crimes Act of l882,—which will advance permanently in Ireland the cause of order, of liberty, and of peace. No dis- creet Unionist will assail the Government for difficulties which are not of their creating, and with which they are struggling as manfully as the highest courage and earnestness would enable them to struggle.
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