HOW TO WHITTLE AWAY THE IRISH DIFFICULTY.
MR. STEAD has applied his ingenious mind in the Contemporary Review to the whittling away of the Irish difficulty. Amateur statesmen are, however, very apt to find solutions for the problems they set themselves to solve, which have just the opposite effect to that which they intend. And we strongly suspect that Mr. Stead's advice will do more to show his friends, the English Home- rulers, the magnitude and formidableness of the obstacles besetting the policy to which they are committed, than it will to attenuate or remove them. His very candid opening statement of the embarrassing character of the situation will certainly not raise the spirits of his allies. As for passing a Home-rule Bill, he dismisses the notion as simply out of the question. The only thing to be done, he says, is to get such a Bill through the House of Commons, and even that is no easy enterprise. A majority of 38, he remarks, is not sufficient even to secure passing the Bill through the House of Commons, except on one condition. And that one condition is that the Bill shall not attempt to deal with more than half the problem,— namely, the setting up of a statutory Parliament in Ire- land, without any " proposal to deal simultaneously with the constitution of the Imperial Parliament." For the present, at least, that question must, in his opinion, be left severely alone. The Irish Members must be left in their full number ; no attempt must be made to limit the absolute right of the Imperial Parliament to revise and over-rule and abolish any measure which the Irish statutory Parliament may pass. The only practicable Home-rule measure, the only one that can ever pass the House of Commons, must be content with estab- lishing a statutory Parliament and Administration in Dublin, without in any way limiting the power of the Imperial Parliament and the Imperial Administration to mutilate, repeal, or reverse the decisions arrived at by that subordinate Parliament and Administration. This Mr. Stead regards as the thin end of the wedge. If that can be achieved by the House of Commons, and if popular English or Scottish measures follow, he trusts to the appetite for a popular policy in Great Britain to force down the distasteful dose which will secure to Ireland a Nationalist Government and an independence of her own. All this very despondent estimate of the situation will not be exhilarating to the very ill-compacted majority led by Mr. Gladstone. But let us consider how far Mr. Stead's pro- posal is likely to attenuate the confessedly great, and indeed gigantic, difficulties of the situation.
In the first place, Mr. Stead forgets that Mr. Labouchere has declared absolutely against the policy of giving Ireland a separate Parliament and Adminis- tration of her own so long as Great Britain is to be hampered by Irish representatives in passing the measures necessary for the welfare of Great Britain. Mr. Stead will say, we suppose, that so long as the Imperial Parliament retains undiminished power to undo all that the statutory Irish Constitution does, Ireland will be as much governed from Westminster,—either indirectly or directly,—as if no delegated Parliament and Administra- tion had been created at all. But will Mr. Labouchere take this view ? He is evidently not at all disposed to smooth the way for an Irish revolution, unless he can first get up the steam for a revolutionary movement in England, in which the other revolution would be merged. He is obviously in a mood to avenge himself on the Cabinet for his exclusion. And, besides, he really cares much more to stimulate the democratic movement in Great Britain, than he does to fulfil the hopes of the Irish Nationalists. Will he not, in all probability, say to himself : ' I must not let this opportunity drop of insisting that the thin end of the democratic wedge shall be inserted in the British Consti- tution before, rather than after, it is inserted in the Irish Constitution ? I am sure of the popular vote in Ireland ; I have got to secure it in England, and how am I to do that if we show ourselves so much more eager on behalf of Ireland than we are on be- half of England, as Mr. Stead requires of us ? ' It is, of course, quite uncertain as yet what line Mr. Labouchere would take. But depend upon it, if he hears Welsh or Scotch or English Radicals grumbling at this new self-denying ordinance,—as he almost certainly will, he will not be slow to avail himself of the opportunity for stimulating the discontent of the grumblers into positive mutiny. But in the next place, even if Mr. Labouchere could in any fashion be "squared," what will English Home-rulers say to the proposal to postpone the whole pinch of the ques- tion,—the possibility of securing a safe and practicable Union,—as if that were something absolutely secondary and subordinate to the imperious necessity of establishing a Nationalist Legislature and Administration in Ireland ? Hitherto, it has always been said that this should only be done, if it can be done consistently with the perfect safety and tranquillity of the United Kingdom. Now it is pro- posed to lay it down, that this is the one thing needful, and that as for the safety and tranquillity of the United Kingdom, that is a wholly subordinate consideration which need not for the present be even considered further than to retain full power in the hands of the Imperial Parliament to undo all or anything that an Irish Parliament or Administration may chance to do. Yet nothing can be clearer than that to set up an in- dependent Nationalist Parliament and Administration in Ireland without defining in any way the conditions of subordination to the United Kingdom, and the limita- tions which should be imposed by that subordination, will either give the most tremendous stimulus to the anti= English temper in Ireland, or else reduce the English veto to a mere abstract constitutional right which is never to be used. If it is to be used, if the Imperial Parliament and Ministry should at once commence vetoing or undoing anything that the Irish Parliament and Administration do, the Irish passion of former days will be nothing to the Irish passion of that day. Just imagine how the first issue is likely to be raised between the Irish and the British Legislatures and Administrations. The Irish Legislature will be full of men anxious to get rid of the Judges, Constabulary, Commissioners, and so forth, who, to their minds, represent the alien rulers, and who, to the English Parliament, represent impartial justice,—the only sort of justice which can be trusted to deal fairly with Orangemen and Catholics alike. The Irish Parliament and Administration will soon begin making a clean sweep of these alien influences. The English Parliament might possibly take up the question; in- deed, it will be the most interesting and characteristic of all questions, because on both sides of the Channel the most passionate feelings of equity, the most pas- sionate sense of right and wrong, will be involved, and it may be assumed as certain that the Ulster Conserva- tives or Liberal Unionists will appeal to English opinion to reverse what they will regard as the wrong done. Then, in all probability, some of the most unpopular of the officers dispossessed would be reinstated, for the transfer of only 20 votes from one side to the other would reverse the balance of parties. What would the con- sequence be to Irish Nationalist feeling ? One, clearly, of the most bitter exacerbation. It would be felt, and not unreasonably felt, that Home-rule was a farce, that it simply amounted to making innumerable opportunities for openly shaming and humiliating Nationalist sentiment. Yet this consequence would be of the very essence of Mr. Stead's proposal, unless the British veto were never exercised. " If the statue quo is left intact," says Mr. Stead, " no question as to the subordinate nature of the Assembly" [i.e., the Irish Assembly] " can possibly arise." No, and therefore there would be no sort of means of preventing the public humiliation of that Nationalist spirit which had just been so carefully organised and stimulated. Mr. Stead, indeed, says that " the presence of eighty, or eighty-five, Home-rule Members in the House would be an ample guarantee against any capricious or wanton intervention by the Imperial Par- liament in Irish affairs." Would it ? Mr. Stead forgets that the whole stress of the conflict turns upon the very different impression of Irish Nationalists and English Pro- testants as to what " capricious or wanton intervention" means. Does Mr. Stead suppose for a moment that even Mr. H. H. Fowler and Mr. Davitt would be agreed as to what was or was not a capricious or wanton intervention in Irish affairs. Would the " gas and water" men, as those Glad- stonians are called who contend for the absolute supremacy of the Legislature and Administration at Westminster, agree in the least with Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien as to what is or is not a capricious or wanton assertion of the rights of the Belfast Protestants against Anti-Parnellite Ultramontanes like Mr. Sexton ? If Home-rule is granted without any attempt to limit the exercise of authority by the Imperial Parliament over Nationalist attempts to realise what Nationalists mean by justice and patriotism, the only result will be more furious strife than ever on the subject of Irish affairs in the Imperial Parlia- ment, and a number of new and aggravated insults to what the priestly party regard as the most sacred instincts of Irish Nationalist feeling. What can eighty, or even eighty- five vehement Home-rulers, do to convince sober Pro- testants that their co-religionists in Belfast or the South are not being exposed to great injustice and persecution by the total reversal of all the administrative principles on which Irish justice has recently been administered. It appears to us certain that Mr. Stead's proposal is a pro- posal for making the Parliament at Westminster the arena of more frequent and deadly Irish strife than ever, and for multiplying shocks to the patriotic prejudices of men like Mr. Dillon and Mr. Davitt.
But besides all this, what will moderate English opinion say to the proposal to postpone altogether the settlement of the most critical issue in the whole matter,—namely, the issue as to the safety and strength of the Union ? Mr. Stead's only security for that is that he leaves the Imperial Parliament in complete theoretical command of the situation, without laying down any general prin- ciples as to the proper relations of the subordinate and the supreme Parliament. But that is only another way of saying : Instead of settling conditions of peace, we will provide for the immediate renewal of war, and even for an aggravated kind of war. If Irish opinion outrages English opinion (as of course it will do), we will give English opinion every opportunity of putting its heel down upon the authorised expression of Irish opinion, and making it feel its impotence.' That does not seem to us a very hopeful solution of the Irish difficulty. Mr. Stead counts, we suppose, upon the reluctance of the Imperial Parliament to interfere with any distinct decision of the subordinate Parliament and Administration which it would have only just called into being. But he forgets how bitter the feelings on both sides will be, and how sensitive English opinion will be to anything like the appearance even of a deliberate aban- donment of the Irish loyalist minority. In 1886, Mr. Gladstone made what he regarded as the security of the Union, against either violent disruption or the per- petration of injustice that would endanger violent disruption, the very first condition of his proposals. Mr. Stead wants to make the actual erection of a subordinate Parliament and Administration the first condition of his proposal, and to leave the rest to the chances of war. That is really an absurd suggestion. If the relation of the new Nationalist power to the superior power cannot be so shaped and defined as to promise peace and harmony, the new Nationalist power will never be created at all. Mr. Stead wants to bring his Parliamentary Frankenstein into existence, and then to trust it for inspiring such dislike and dismay that the supreme Parliament will shrink from dealing with its misdeeds, lest it should undo all that has been done. That does not seem to us a proposal founded on even a superficial knowledge of the British character and history.
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