THE CONVENTION OF THE IRISH RACE. T HE Irish Convention is
regarded in Dublin as a great success, and it is a great success, for it proves to- demonstration that what the Irish people love is a declara- tion in favour of impossibilities, or at least of ideals so visionary that they have not the least relation to anything within their reach at the time at which they proclaim them. That is what irritates a practical Irishman like Mr. Healy into the attitude of disaffection which he takes up. If it had not been for Mr. Healy and Mr. Redmond we do not believe that the Irish Land Bill, which has just become law, would ever have passed the House of Commons. Mr. Davitt denounced and voted against it, Mr. Dillon did all in his power to throw discredit upon it short of voting against it, and but for the keenness of the minority who supported it, it would, we do not doubt, have succumbed to the many difficulties placed in Mr. Gerald Balfour's way. Even now, as may be seen from the long string of wordy resolutions moved and carried in "the Convention of the Irish Race at Home and Abroad," they throw cold water upon it and make as light of it as possible. What they really get, however useful it may be, loses all interest in their eyes. It is what they cannot get that they care for. One of the delegates of the Irish in Boston, U.S., said that if the Irish party had not done their duty in Parliament, "he believed also that the Irish people had not done their duty." That depends on what the Irish people think to be their duty, and this is just what it is ex- tremely difficult for any one to find out. We should say that what they really like best is to have a practical party in a minority carrying measures which are really for their benefit, and an unpractical party in a large majority cry- ing for the moon, and carefully pooh-poohing all that the shrewder Irishmen obtain for them, though not venturing to reject it. If that be the positive preference of the Irish nation, we do not agree with Mr. John B. O'Higgins, of Boston, that the Irish people have not done their duty as they understand it. They have certainly not silenced either Mr. John Redmond and his Parnellite followers, or Mr. Timothy Healy and his discontented Anti-Parnellite followers ; but so far as we can judge, they did not think it their duty to silence either of them. They cheer enthu- siastically for unity, but they are well pleased to have a few Irishmen who decline to be silenced by the great majority of Irish politicians and who insist on proclaim- ing the surpassing merits of their departed leader Mr. Parnell, even though he did fight for his own hand at the last ; and again, who understand so well what the Irish tenant-farmer wants, that they interrupt the chorus of depreciation with which their Parliamentary representa- tives decry any measure that the Government are willing to pass, by casually remarking that they should like to accept it all the same, so long as that does not prevent the great bulk of their party from pointing out how worthless the gift is. In the abstract the Irish people are all for unity in depreciating anything that the British Government will concede ; but in the concrete they like very much to receive a substantial boon so long as they are not obliged to express any gratitude for it,—which would hurt their feelings. Nothing, we suspect, would annoy them more than to have no chance of stretching out a prehensile hand for the gift that they have made light of, while swelling the chorus of not altogether insincere displeasure at the shabbiness of the concession. Mr. T. P. O'Connor con- cluded his speech by saying that "there was one way to restore unity and to put down dissension, and that was, that those who violated their pledge should know that they would be dealt with by a united, a determined, and. an angry people." But what seems to us quite clear is that the people are not at all angry with either Mr. Redmond or Mr. Healy. Both of them command the most hearty cheers from assemblies of their own supporters, and we should say that two of the safest seats in Ireland are Mr. Redmond's seat for Waterford and Mr. Healy's for North Louth. The "Convention of the Irish Race at Home and Abroad" may condemn both Members, and do what they can to get them expelled by the Parliamentary party from the ranks of that party, but so long as their own constituencies return them to Parliament, —as they certainly will do, — the condemnation of this showy Convention, which does not, and cannot, exert any real authority, will go for nothing. Mr. Redmond and Mr. Healy will continue to believe that they are the truest patriots in all Ireland, and a consider- able section of the Irish people will probably agree with them. It exactly suits the Irish genius to have a showy Convention " resoluting " themselves hoarse, as the Yankees say, in relation to all sorts of grievances, with no particular result, and one or two groups of business- like Members extracting a few solid boons from the Government, and bringing on themselves a good deal of perfectly futile invective by so doing. The "Convention of the Irish Race at Home and Abroad' will not produce the artificial unity for which it votes, and. after which, in the abstract at least, it aspires. Mr. Dillon says that no one will venture to deny the Convention's "supremacy." But whether it be supreme or not, it has at least no authority, no executive power to put down the resistance of the able leaders who, as a matter of fact, ignore its decision and get heartily cheered by consider- able gatherings of the Irish people for their contumacy. The Irish race would like to see Ireland with a prosperous Parliament and Administration of her own, but the truth is that she needs a preliminary despotism in order to obtain these political luxuries, and the despot is not forth- coming. In Mr. O'Connell's and Mr. Parnell's time she very nearly obtained the despot, but Mr. O'Connell was too early, and Mr. Parnell was too late. Mr. O'Connell was indeed the idol of the Irish people, and if he had lived another fifty years in the fullness of his strength, he might have succeeded in rendering government in Ireland. impossible except through himself. Mr. Parnell came rather near to achieving a somewhat similar result, but in the first place he was not patriot enough, in any sense whatever, to postpone his own interests to such patriotic purposes as he entertained, and in the next place, he had raised up for himself subordinates who not only saw through him, but who had the ability and the tenacity to dispute his decrees and to undermine his power. When the crash came in the revelation of his personal character to the world, these subordinates carried a great number, indeed the greater number, of the ecclesiastics with them, and that shook Mr. Parnell to his fall. And from that time forth the despotism became impossible. There were quite too many claimants in the field, and one of them at least, though not strong enough to succeed to Mr. Parnell's crown, was quite too strong to be overpowered by any of his rival lieutenants. And "the Convention of the Irish Race at Home and. Abroad" has no spell, no magic, for the imagination of the various Irish parties. They look upon it as, what indeed. it really is, a mere political expedient to improve the chance of the most numerous of the parties. For the object aimed at,—the extinguishing of the centrifugalista of Irish rivalries,—the common antipathy to English ascendency is indefinitely more efficacious. Indeed, if it were not fortunately impossible to use that antipathy for a double purpose,—first, to extinguish Irish squabbles, and next, to turn against itself and by annihilating English rule, to annihilate the unity it had fostered, we believe that the Irish leaders would use England with more success for the purpose of getting rid of England, than they would find in any other expedient. But fortunately for us even Irishmen cannot both have the cake and eat it too. If opposition to England is the strongest bond they can get for cementing Irish unity, the moment they begin to weaken or relax that bond, the rivalries of the Irish patriots revive. And that is precisely the political phenomenon which we are now witnessing. Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy are, each in his own way, using English help to subserve Irish ambitions. Mr. Dillon leans on the Opposition, Mr. Healy leans on the Government, and on the whole Mr. Healy has effected the most of the two, for he has rendered a great and most sensible service to the Irish tenant-farmers. But each alike, so far as he is a genuine Home-ruler, is cutting off the bough on which he himself is seated. Mr. Dillon, by leaning on the alliance of Englishmen, opens the door to the reproaches of those who treat every negotiation with the enemy as a sort of treason, and he, at least, has no immediate gain to set off against this reproach. Mr. Healy has a gain, and a very conspicuous gain, to set off against it, in the provisions of the Irish Land Act, but then he too cannot repel the charge that he obtained those concessions by the intervention of the very power which he desires, or professes his desire, to supersede. The most effective political bond of Irish parties is repulsion to England, but when they go to England for help in the attempt to extinguish their rivalries, they necessarily relax that bond, and are no longer able to flourish effectively their drawn sword in the face of English statesmen.
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