TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR MORLEY AND SIR HENRY JAMES. THERE are two rather remarkable arguments used, the one by Mr. Morley in his speech of Friday week at Glasgow, the other by Sir Henry James in his speech on Monday at Newcastle-under-Lyme, which ought to be paired off together, and are, to our mind, very instructive if so paired off together. Mr. Morley, in remarking on what Mr. Balfour had said at Partick on the question of a Catholic University, pointed out very properly, and with exceedingly good effect, that in that speech of Mr. Balfour's we find a powerful Minister of the Unionist Party con- fessing frankly that he could not do what he thought the good of Ireland required, on account of the difficulties thrown in his way by (1) the Ulster Orangemen, and (2) the general opinion of English and Scotch electorates, which is confessedly unfavourable to the concession of even the most just and indispensable Catholic claims. What better argument, said Mr. Morley, could you find for Home-rule, than such a confession by such a Minister that he is prevented by the prejudices of England, Scotland, and part of Ireland, from doing what he deems necessary for the welfare of Ireland ? Sir Henry James, in his speech on Monday at Newcastle- under-Lyme, though without making any explicit reference to Mr. Morley's remark on this point, rallied Mr. Morley and his colleagues on maintaining in the same breath that the opinion of Great Britain and Ireland is driving us rapidly into Home-rule, and yet that the public opinion of this country is so reluctant to do justice to Ireland, that the concession of Irish Home-rule is necessary in order to pro- tect Ireland against the prejudice and prepossessions of Great Britain. If, he said, the people of Great Britain are already converted by Mr. Gladstone to the radical injustice of our Irish policy, Irishmen are at least secured against any deliberate repetition of the injustice com- plained of. It is hardly decent to exclaim at the same moment that nothing but Home-rule can save Ireland from oppression, and that the British people are so determined to put down oppression, that they will at the next General Election hand Ireland over to an Irish Legislature and an Irish Administration. Thus we have a very curious thrust and parry. Do not tell me,' says in effect Mr. John Morley, ' that Great Britain can govern Ireland as she ought ; why, your own Minister avows and regrets his inability to concede to the Roman Catholics a reasonable claim.' To which Sir Henry James virtually replies: 'What do you mean by speaking of the unconquerable injustice of this country towards Ireland, when your boast is that at the very next Election an immense majority will be returned for righting the wrongs of Ireland ? And surely, if they be willing to right the wrongs of Ireland by a surgical operation of a very perilous kind for Great Britain, it can scarcely be argued that they would be bitterly opposed to the application of an ordinary and unsensational remedy to a special grievance which would hardly survive that sensational political surgery.' It seems to us that both statesmen are in the right, but that Sir Henry James's position is far the more important of the two in its bearing on the great controversy of the day. It is perfectly true that, so far as it goes, the indifference of the British population to a real Irish Catholic grievance is an argument for Home-rule, and would be a much stronger argument for it, if that in- difference did not reach its highest point among the Ulster Protestants, who would probably have far more power to obstruct the needful remedy in an Irish Parliament than in the Parliament at Westminster. Still, so far as it goes, it is an argument on Mr. Morley's side, though it is scarcely conceivable that even the admitted need of better provision for Irish Catholic education of the higher kind, could count for much against any proposal which would endanger the unity of the Kingdom. But though this is so, though it is a real reproach to the Unionist Party that in their present condition of Parliamentary strength they cannot do what the Government admit that they ought to do,—at all events while the Opposition (who agree with them in principle) are so anxious to trip them up that they will not give the slightest support to their proposal,—yet it is equally true, and much more important, that this is a reproach which is not likely to endure, and can hardly survive the next (11-eneral Electim, even if it survives so long. At the present moment there must be a great majority in Parlia- ment for Mr. Balfour's policy, if it were not Mr. Glad stone's and Mr. Parnell's cue to accept no boon to the- Irish Catholics from the present Ministry. If the General Election were to settle the question of Irish Home-rule at all, whether this way or that, whether against it or in favour of it, the Unionists would hardly be again liable to the reproach of shrinking from the solution of the diffi, culty. If an Irish Legislature were established, and if it dealt with the University question, the Unionist Opposi- tion at Westminster would certainly accede cordially to any reasonable settlement. If Irish Home-rule were defeated, and the Unionists remained in office, they would certainly have their hands sufficiently strengthened by the General Election to enable them to carry out in Ireland such reasonable reforms as they considered necessary for the policy of conciliation. The Orange prejudices which oppose proper provisions for Irish Catholic education would be more formidable in any Dublin Legislature than: they would be at Westminster.
On the other hand, Sir Henry James's plea that if the- Opposition are so powerful as they maintain in British constituencies, or even much less powerful than they main- tain, there is nothing to fear for Ireland from British narrowness and prepossessions, except, indeed, through the direct connivance of the Gladstonians, seems to us quite- unanswerable. The Unionists will go to the country on the policy of conciliation to Ireland without any tampering: with the Union. If they get a majority, they must get it for a policy of conciliation to Ireland in every respect that is perfectly consistent with the maintenance• of the Union. Even if this majority be but small,. yet on any issue that involves the question of justice- to Ireland, they ought to receive,—we hope they would receive,—cordial support from a considerable number of Gladstonians. If they did not, the Gladstonians would. only show that it is not justice to Ireland for which they are contending, but the privilege of settling for them- selves the fate of Ireland. The whole drift of opinion in this country is towards putting all the various religious• denominations on the same political footing, and rectifying- any inequality which the past has bequeathed to us. It is. simply impossible that a General Election should not render it much easier to enforce that policy than it is now.. The blot which Mr. John Morley points out is one which is rapidly vanishing, and must vanish altogether before many years are out. Exceedingly few candidates for Par- liament, whether Unionists or Home-rulers, will venture. to announce an anti-Catholic Irish policy as having their approval. On the other hand, the constitutional danger of which the Unionists are the official exponents, is. not recognised, but wholly ignored, by the other party.. There is no excuse for saying that that danger is: disappearing, and that the mischiefs which the Unionists anticipate from it are heartily recognised by their opponents. Mr. John Morley reproaches us with a source of weakness which is necessarily transient. We reproach him with a. source of weakness which we believe likely to prove more and more serious, the sooner he and his friends come into• power, and the longer they remain there. We hold, therefore, that while Mr. Morley has hit a blot in our policy, Sir Henry James has shown that that blot cannot be of long endurance or of serious significance ; that even our opponents are in principle under an obligation to help us in getting rid of it ; while the mischief which we. anticipate from their proposals will grow even more and more in dimensions, till it ends in civil war or something worse.
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