THE GLADSTONIANS ON TORY CONVERSION TO HOME-RULE.
WE observe that Mr. Herbert Gladstone, speaking last Saturday at Knighton, near Leicester, predicted for the hundredth time what the Gladstonians have always shown a very pronounced wish to believe,—that if the Tories come in again, they will give Home-rule to Ire- land, though they have fought so resolutely against the Gladstonian measure. We cannot understand why the Gladstonians are so eager to prophesy this,—unless, in- deed, they have already become aware that their eager- ness for Home-rule counts to their discredit in the con- stituencies, and wish therefore to diffuse the rumour that there is nothing to choose between the two parties on this head, just as a schoolboy always resorts to the "You're another !" argument, as a full and sufficient answer to every accusation. If they really gloried in being the party willing to give Home-rule to Ireland, they would be glad to keep the credit to themselves, and would prefer at least to think that the loss of their support for Irish Home-rule would be equivalent to the failure of Irish Home-rule altogether. Yet they never take this line. They were from the firsts and have been all along, only too eager to convince the country that the Tories are sure to give Home-rule sooner or later, even if Mr. Gladstone's efforts are in vain. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone's impression that Lord Salisbury was contem- plating some enterprise of the sort,—the idea of which, no doubt, was in 1885 speculatively entertained by him, though never resolved upon,—almost certainly led to Mr. Gladstone's own premature leap in the dark. But it is one thing for a party to coquet with an enterprise of this kind while it is still quite fresh to them, and quite another for that party to be willing to go back to it after they have deliberately rejected and fought a long and arduous campaign against it. You might as well say that because Mr. Fox and 'some' of the Liberals were Gallicans and against war with France in the early days of the French Revolution, the remainder of the party would have been willing to go back to their old attitude, and take the side of Napoleon after his return from Elba. The simple truth is that when Lord Salisbury was un- wise enough to hesitate and to acquiesce in Lord Carnar- von's negotiations with Mr. Parnell, he soon discovered that he had made a grave mistake, not only because the Liberal Unionists were utterly opposed to that policy, but because the rank-and-file of his own party were quite as much opposed to it as the Liberal Unionists themselves. Lord Salisbury wavered for a few weeks, but the bulk of his party never wavered ; and to talk now of his going back to the old blunder of 1885, is like talking of restoring the Irish Established Church or re-enacting the repealed Ecclesiastical Titles Act. It would simply shatter the Con- servative Party into atoms if, after pledging it so deeply as Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour have done to resist the recognition of Ireland as a separate nation, they were to appeal to the Conservatives to create an Irish National Parliament and an Irish National Administration. Mr.
Herbert Gladstone could hardly find a statement savouring more strongly of pure political delirium than that with which he amused the meeting at Knighton last Saturday.
He had much better have boasted that his father, and his father alone, has the full glory of that prescription for making the confusion of British and Irish politics still worse confounded. No one would ever dispute that claim, though, so far as the mere title to the abstract idea is concerned, Lord Salisbury might put in a plea .for it, if it were not much better worth his while to "give aims," as Shakespeare says, " to oblivion " to conceal it,— that is, to conceal his share in the origination of that unfortunate device.
Why, then, it will be asked, do the Gladstonians seem so anxious to share the credit of their political prescription for Ireland with Lord Salisbury ? In the first place, we imagine, for the reason already suggested, because they have discovered clearly that though they are committed soul and body to that fatal policy, it is one that they would rather excuse than make a boast of. It is a heavy burden to them, not a feather in their cap. They wish to do all in their power to make as little as they can of the nauseous element in their policy, and they think the best way is to dwell persistently on the fancy that Lord Salisbury's political imagination anticipated Mr. Gladstone's. An idea which the Tories coquetted with before the Liberals eagerly adopted it, does not burden the conscience of their party so much as it would if they had had the sole responsibility both of its invention and its adoption. How can it be wholly revolutionary if it can be traced back to a Cecil brain Does it not seem almost venerable and constitutional when it has been shown that it was admitted into Lord Salisbury's list of conceivable political remedies for Irish discontent, before Mr. Gladstone ven- tured to adopt it for his own ? Again, the Gladstonians are most anxous to represent the one unpopular item in their programme as strictly inevitable, as a manifest destiny which no statesman, willing or unwilling, can escape. Nothing contributes more to impress that wholly false conception on the minds of the constituencies than the representation of Irish Home-rule as so inevitable that, even if the Gladstonians are defeated now, the Tories would be compelled a few years hence to take up and brandish the very weapon .which they had compelled Mr. Gladstone to drop. There never was a more baseless notion. If Mr. Gladstone is defeated,—as he will be,—Irish Home-rule will be defeated for ever. The Irishmen will have to make up their minds to be no more than Scotohmen or Welshmen,—nay, no more even than mere Englishmen,—contributing their fair quota to the opinion and policy of the United Kingdom, but no more than their quota. This will be a grievous come-down for them, no doubt ; but this, un- palatable as the notion is to them, is their really manifest destiny. In the meantime, the Gladstonians are moving heaven and earth to make the constituencies think that they had no choice in the matter ; and what occurs to them as the best mode of showing this, is to proclaim their conviction that the Tories themselves will have to fall back on this unpalatable policy, even if they succeed now in persuading the constituencies to reject it. It is in their opinion, like Catholic Emancipation, or the Reform Bill, or the Ballot, the inevitable destiny of the country, whoever may struggle against it,—a sheer democratic necessity which the progress of the age and the development of popular life will bring with it as assuredly as it brings the era of great cities and the march of electricity and steam. That is what the Gladstonians wish the people to think ; but it is the very reverse of the truth. The truth is that the march of democracy favours not the multiplication and fostering of these minute nationalities, but their gradual and sure extinction. If Home-rule for Ireland were passed to-morrow, it would have to be abandoned the day after. It may be a question whether Alsace and Lorraine shall be ultimately German or ultimately French, but it is not a question at all whether Alsace and Lorraine shall ultimately have Home-rule, and exist as a separate State. And it is the same with Ireland. She cannot stand alone. She might, perhaps, if we degenerate sufficiently, lean upon the United States or France instead of leaning upon England ; but so long as England is what she is, Ireland can no more make good her claim to Home-rule than Scotland, or Wales, or Cornwall. Democracy forbids the separate nationality of these snippets of patriotic aspiration, especially when the snippet is itself divided into smaller snippets, one of which is as determined not to be amputated, as the other is to be cut off.
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