TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROGRAMME OF THE SESSION.
pE first Cabinet Council has been held, and the order of the measures to be introduced this Session has probably been discussed. We wish to support very strongly the demand made by the Liberal Members who spoke at the Swansea banquet given last week to Mr. Dillwyn, that the first care should be given to measures of general interest affecting the interests of England and Scotland, and not exclusively affect- ing Ireland ; and that for this purpose, the Bill for reforming the Municipal Government of London should not be regarded as a measure of general interest. It is not for us to depreciate the importance or magnitude of that measure. We have always held a real incorporation of the Capital, in the large sense of that term, as a measure of genuinely national importance ; and we hold this still. But the constituencies which have waited so patiently for three years to reap even the first-fruits of their efforts in 1880, have some right to see what they in their own locality will recognise as those visible first-fruits gathered in at the end of the present Session. This they will not see, if they only see the Government of London reformed. Great as it is, the municipal life of London is not present to a Northumberland or Cornwall voter's mind during all the vicissitudes of the year. The people of Scotland, England, and Wales are fairly entitled, we think, in this the fourth Session of the present Parliament, to see a great reform carried that will signify something even in the neighbourhood of their own homes, and the reform of the Government of London will not be such a reform. We earnestly press, then, on the Government, as the Member for Swansea and the Member for Wolverhampton have already pressed on it, that the County Government Bill and the Tenant-farmers' Compensation Bill should be regarded as taking rank even of the Government of London Bill,—that is, as needing even more urgent attention and an earlier discussion. That three Ses- sions should have passed before the English constituencies see anything like the realisation of their hopes, except the some- what trivial Burials Act and Ground Game Act, is surely enough. The fourth Session at least ought to carry some reform which will bring conspicuously before the eyes of all men, wherever they may live, the significance of a Liberal Administration. We observe the statement that the Govern- ment have decided,—very judiciously, we think,—to bring in a Bill for settling the question of compensation to tenant- farmers for unexhausted improvements, and we heartily agree that no measure affecting chiefly a single class in the com- munity, is more urgent. But even such a measure as this hardly satisfies the conditions which we have laid down. The tenant- farmers, of course, have the most undoubted right to a thorough discussion and complete settlement of their claim. None have suffered recently so much as they from causes over which Par- liament has no control, and none, therefore, have a better title to have those grievances fully considered over the continued opera- tion of which Parliament may exert a very real control. Still, the tenant-farmers, though they may have a claim to some priority by reason of their serious calamities, constitute only a small class of the people ; and of the urgent measures waiting for the opportunity of legislation in this fourth Session of procrastinated hopes, that one may be said to be the first in interest to the country at large which will publish most clearly to the whole electorate the difference between a Parliament of Liberals and a Parliament of Tories.
Now, considering that the extension of household franchise to the counties cannot properly long precede a dissolution, it seems to us that these conditions are best satisfied by the pro- duction of the Bill for creating a popular County Government. And we must express our most earnest hope that Mr. Chamber- lain's hint at Swansea that this measure, too, might well be delayed till the County Franchise Bill is passed, does not represent the serious intention of the Government. There is no measure which would better stimulate the local activity of the country, or train the people more effectually for the exercise of their larger duties as the electorate of the House of Commons itself. A good County Government Bill would be the best pos- sible preparation for the exercise of the Parliamentary Franchise by the mass of the county population, and therefore the natural herald of the latter Bill. There is no good pretext for delay- ing this Bill in Mr. Chamberlain's suggestion. On the contrary, we believe that the Conservative party at least, would be less dis- posed to disappoint every popular hope in dealing with the ques- tion of Local Government, if they had yet to make their great fight for Conservatism on the larger measure, instead of having already fought and lost it, for there is no reactionary temper so acrid as that of the representatives of a lost cause. On the' other hand, the Liberals would be well aware that if they are to- do a bit of lasting work, they must legislate in the fashion which the householders of the counties will approve, and not leave to them a mere legacy of crude beginnings to complete. A good' County Government Bill alone, so far as we can judge, would* satisfy the country that the Liberal Administration of 1880 had begun in earnest to redeem the promises then made to the- electors.
There is, however, the anti-Irish panic to be met. The Times, and those who, like the Times, are always preaching that Ireland wants nothing except a rigid enforcement of the Pre- vention of Crimes Act, are afraid that if a County Government Bill for England be introduced, there will be a great cry for its immediate extension to Ireland,—where the local government is, no doubt, even worse than in England,—and these organs. preach that to let Irish counties govern themselves in local matters, means the same thing as letting them extirpate the landlords and plunder the middle class. In. the mind of the leading journal, the panic on this subject is so great that all its ancient literary power deserts it, and' articles intended to end in a solemn warning against the danger of stimulating Irish mobs to the work of persecution and con- fiscation, begin in drivelling statements that Mr. Gladstone and. the Prince of Wales cannot properly be regarded in the light of dethroned Sovereigns,—a truism utterly without meaning in. itself, and apparently only made in order to drag in an allusion to Voltaire's " Candide," and to convey what was intended as an insidious sneer at Mr. Gladstone. However, the mild_ fatuity of the opening passage is quite atoned for by the blind anger of the close, where Mr. Courtney, who stated expressly- in his speech at Liskeard that he thought a County Govern- ment Bill should be produced, and that its provisions should at once be frankly extended to Ireland, so far as they suit the Irish, is referred to exactly as if he had thrown the weight of his authority against that voluntary extension of justice to Ireland. In truth, the article in Wednesday's. Times was one of the most curious illustrations of the para- lysing and blinding effects of panic that we have ever read. Now, what is the ground for that panic ? Mr. Forster, who. knows Ireland well, believes that it will be quite safe, and not only quite safe but a measure tending in the direction of safety, to grant Ireland a better local government, so long as you keep the Police under central authority. The Times writes- as if County Boards for making roads and canals, discussing- lines of rail, looking after the county asylums, entering into- exceptional draining operations, and so forth, were institutions in which conspiracies could be hatched and murder threatened.. We have little doubt, as we said last week, that they would be safety-valves for letting off a good deal of waste steam. against the hated Saxon. England would be vehemently de- nounced at scores of them as having retarded for ages the physical development of the country, and in the main the- indictment, though to-day a little belated, would be perfectly true. But men are not massacred because speeches are made against the Saxon, especially if, as would very often happen, the persons to be threatened took the popular side- on local questions of this sort. What we maintain is that it is precisely the want of outlets for this sort of steam which makes the discontent of the Irish people so dangerous. If local patriotism could exhale itself in Boards of. this kind, Fenianism would lose a great number of its supporters. The policy which stifles local life in Ireland in order to prevent disloyalty, is just like an attempt to suppress the rash in scarlet-fever,—you drive the heat inwards, and then delirium is the result. The Irish cry so fiercely for Home-rule, in great measure because their local institutions are so wretchedly in- adequate, and because it is in local institutions that the shoe- pinches most. Mr. Healy's very masterly speech on Wednes- day on this subject deserves the most careful consideration. Fas eat ab hoste docer i, especially when, as we have a shrewd suspicion in this case, the enemy tells us the truth not in the hope that we shall profit by it, but rather in the hope that his, recommendation will prevent all chance of our adopting it. Let the, panic-mongers put a little faith in Mr. Forster, whom they are always panegyrising for resenting the release of Mr.. Parnell. Mr. Forster says plainly that Ireland needs nothing- so much as a little decentralisation, and that if you keep the Police in the hands of the central authorities, a good scheme of local government in Ireland would do more to satisfy Irish wants than any other feasible remedy. Well, Mr. Forster is: - the last man to underrate the danger of conspiracy in Ireland..
He escaped assassination himself only as by a miracle. He is familiar with all the ramifications of treason in Ireland. But for all that, he can see, as all but panic-mongers see, that it is the worst policy in the world to drive treason inwards, and that a little free-speaking is one of the best possible cures for pent-up wrath.
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