MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S IRISH POLICY.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN made two very important pro- posals in his striking and hopeful speech at Birmingham on Monday. The first was that the Irish policy of the Government should be embodied in resolu- tions, and so submitted to the House of Commons, just as the India Bill was thirty-one years ago, and Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill twenty-two years ago. Mr. Chamberlain's object is to lift the fundamental Irish Questions,—especially, as we understand him, the Land Question,—out of the heated region of party politics into a less troubled and more impartial atmosphere. We should heartily support the suggestion if statesmen of all parties really believe that asperities would be softened, and a more statesman- like tone imported into the discussion by that course of procedure. At present, we cannot help entertaining a doubt whether that would be the effect. There is so much difficulty in getting any important measure through the House of Commons with the great number of separate parties which are now pursuing different ends in that assembly, that it is a rather serious matter to offer a double series of discussions on the principles of any difficult measure, and we cannot help fearing that the only effect of proceeding by resolution in the case of the Irish Land Bill would be to give an im- pression of weakness and indecision which would greatly intensify all the difficulties of the situation. If, however, it was found on application to the different party leaders in the House that such a course would soothe rancour and reconcile opposition, nothing could be wiser than to adopt it. And whether it be adopted or not, Mr. Chamberlain's proposal shows decisively how free from party spirit he is in the matter, and how willing to concede to the Opposition their full share in moulding legislation on this difficult subject. We only fear that by abandoning the initiative and appearing to invite pressure from the other side the Govern- ment might produce on the House that impression of indeci- sion which, in such a condition of parties as the present, is apt to increase instead of to attenuate every difficulty. Still, ,Mr. Chamberlain's proposal deserves the most careful con- sideration of the Government, and if it be not ultimately ,adopted,—of which we have great doubts,—it should at least clear his own position, and restore to him some of that influence with the Opposition of which the re- dundance of party spirit has lately, though most unjustly, almost deprived him.
Of Mr. Chamberlain's other suggestion we cannot speak so appreciatively. " By common consent," he says, " the Land and Local Government Questions come before the question of education, although you will remember that the question of higher education was one of the three branches of the Upas-tree which Mr. Gladstone in 1868 proposed to level -to the ground." Well, by common consent the Land Question comes before the question of education, but it is .a grave mistake to assert that by common consent the Local Government question comes before it. There is hardly any consent on the subject, and a great deal of dis- sent. Sir George Errington, for instance, speaking on the same day at Ilkeston, and speaking with a minute and fresh knowledge of the state of Ireland, earnestly -deprecated any hurrying-on of the Local Government question in Ireland, expressly on the ground that the suc- cess of the future measure may be very greatly endangered by hurry, while to secure its success in Ireland, whenever it shall be carried, is vastly more important than to arrange that it should be carried in 1890 rather than in 1891 or 1892. To our mind, nothing can be more desirable than to let the settlement of the Land question precede by at least a year the settlement of the Local Government question ; and we claim Mr. Chamberlain himself as the most weighty witness on our side. What does he say on this subject in the very speech with which we are dealing ? " No doubt," he says, " it " [the Local Government Question] " is surrounded with difficulties. The objection, and the only objection which is taken to giving to Ireland. such an extension of local government as has been conferred on England and Scotland, is that in- stead of using those privileges as England and Scotland are using them, for local advantage, they would be abused. They would be made an instrument by which the property of the minority might be confiscated, and thus be made a lever for political agitation. I am not disposed to underrate these objections. I admit their importance. But I should like to point out that if the Land Question were settled, there would no longer be a bitter local strife in Ireland." " If the Land. Question were settled !" but how could the Land. Question be settled in the proper sense, i.e., be settled, and be known to be settled by the whole Irish pe.asantry,—for the legal settlement of the question is not enough for the purposes of removing all occasion for strife, so long as the whole public affected had not been made fully aware that that settlement was satis- factory and final,—unless at the very least a year had passed between this settlement and the proposal of a measure to confer new forms of self-government on the Irish counties and towns ? Mr. Chamberlain says that if the Land Question had been settled,—which, as we contend, means if the Irish public had become thoroughly acquainted with the terms of the settlement, and were thoroughly satisfied. that it was final,—" the conflict of interests would have disappeared, and then the minority need no longer fear for its liberty or its property." But how could the conflict of interests have died away if the two measures were being discussed simultaneously, and no one, even in Parliament, knew what would be the final form of the Land Bill at the time they were discussing the clauses of the Local Govern- ment Bill. It seems to us of very great importance that time should be allowed. for the terms of the settlement of the Land Question to sink into the minds both of Par- liamentary parties and of the whole Irish people, before any attempt were made to determine how much power local assemblies should receive, to throw difficulties in the way of the Irish Administration.
Mr Chamberlain's real object, however, in hurrying on the Irish Local Government Bill comes out in his next sentence. He desires, he says, to see this Local Government measure passed at once, " partly because I desire to see equality of privilege as between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom ; partly because I desire that the Irish people shall feel the responsibility of the administration of their own affairs and partly, also, because I believe that no scheme of land settlement can be satisfactorily administered without the creation of some local authority, more popular and more influential than any which is at present in existence." The last reason is the true motive for hurry in Mr. Chamberlain's mind. He has committed himself so deeply to the position that English and Scotch taxpayers should not be at any material cost for the redemption of Irish land, that he is intent upon getting influential local bodies in Ireland which may stand between the Irish peasant and the British guarantee. We have never sympathised with this desire to repudiate any British re- sponsibility for the great remedial measure which British misgovernment in the past has rendered necessary, and we should earnestly condemn the policy resulting from that desire if it involved the hurrying on of a local government measure before the safe and final settlement of the land question on a firm and just basis. Popular bodies con- structed for the very purpose of guaranteeing the col- lection of the peasants' purchase-money, before the peasantry had learned to consider the purchase scheme as final, would be under the strongest possible temptation to begin their career by reducing the pressure on the peasant- proprietors, and so to create the worst possible precedents for their future conduct. We are profoundly convinced that there ought to be at least a year's delay between the Land measure and the Local Government measure,—a year being quite the minimum period within which the principles of the former measure could so sink into the minds of the peasantry as to render them safe and conservative adminis- trators of the latter measure. And if the Education' measure could be interposed between the two, so much the better. It would give the Roman Catholic population the requisite assurance that the Parliament at Westminster really does intend to treat them justly, and it would need no precautions of the kind which are obviously needful in the preparation of a Bill which, .if not very carefully drawn, will furnish the Irish people with new and dan- gerous weapons against the British Government, as well as new and urgent temptations to brandish these weapons in our faces.
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