MR. JUSTIN McCARTHY'S PROPOSED (ECUMENICAL COUNCIL.
MR. .T17STIN McCARTHY'S speech at Walworth on Tuesday evening seems to us a profoundly pathetic one. We understand the policy which a great leader sometimes adopts of summoning an imposing meeting of all the possible representatives of a great nation, to give him a new impulse and a new authority by demonstrating to the world at large how completely be can sway the tide of popular feeling. That is a very natural and often a very shrewd device for increasing his command over the springs of political power. But the whole value of that manceuvre depends on the assumption that the true popular leader is already found, and that he knows his own power. O'Connell was the great illustration of the success of that kind of manoeuvre ; but fortunately for the Act of Union, O'Connell, though he ruled popular feeling in Ireland as surely as the moon rules the flowing of the tides, had not conceived the art of organising a separate Irish party in Parliament as Mr. Parnell ultimately conceived and applied to the pur- poses of Parliamentary strategy. Indeed, before the age of the popular suffrage in Ireland, it would have been wholly premature to attempt its application for such pur- poses as those for which Mr. Parnell in 1880, and still more effectually after 1885, applied and wielded it. And fortunately again for the Act of Union, Mr. Parnell, though he had many of the gifts of a Parliamentary leader which O'Connell had not, had not those great gifts of popular oratory with a magic in controlling the tides of popular passion which O'Connell had. He acquired a mighty control over his Parliamentary followers by his reserve and his arbitrary confidence in himself ; but he could never sway the passions of hundreds of thousands after the fashion of his great predecessor. He was a strong disciplinarian leader of a Parliamentary party, but not a great tribune of the people. What he did in America and in Ireland to gain popularity, he did by force of will, and not by force of any natural magic of temperament or eloquence. And he had only five years of full power. What he gained in 1885 by the extension of the popular suffrage to Ireland, he lost in 1890, after the suit in the Divorce Court, by the explosion of the English Nonconformist con- science against his partnership in that alliance with the English Radical leader which his policy had brought about. But now Mr. Justin McCarthy hopes to conjure with a policy which really needs both an O'Connell and a Parnell rolled into one,—without either an O'Connell or a Parnell. He promises "to call together a great inter- national Convention of the Irish race both at home and abroad to meet in Dublin within a few months. They expected to have representatives of Irishmen in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope, South America,—indeed, wherever the Irish race had planted its foot, and to that great Convention they would submit the cause and the hopes of the country for the coming generation." And all this is to be done in the hope that from that vasty deep some im- perious spirit might be elicited which would take com- mand of the Irish cause for the future. Mr. Justin McCarthy expresses his hopes in the most innocent con- stitutional language :—" All they wanted was to get the opinion of the great majority of the Irish race, and by that opinion they would stand or fall,"—the opinion, observe,—not the opinions, the innumerable opinions,— of a mighty host, without any great leader competent to guide and control them. The Convention, if we under- stand anything of the matter, will prove to be a monster without any distinct character of its own, a democratic Frankenstein without a master and without a mind. Even the little Parliamentary party of Irish Home-rulers, which had a sort of provisional organisation, has burst into three fragments, and no longer obeys the rule of any one mind. So to improve the situation, Mr. Justin McCarthy proposes to summon a great (Ecumenical Council of the Irish race, with all its divided counsels of dynamiter or. Fenian or semi-constitutional or wholly constitutional elements, from O'Donovan Rossa to himself, and to submit to this leviathan of democratic mould the various quarrels and diversity of views by which the Irish race is divided,—and then further to ask it for its "opinion" of Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, and Mr. Davitt and Mr. Sexton, and himself. We cannot conceive a more pathetic device of constitutional superstition than this. If the (Ecumenical Council could indeed evoke any political spirit of order and unity, to control and render mutually in- telligible, the confusion of tongues which must proceed from such an assembly, there would obviously be some significance and reason in such a proceeding. But what in the present complete chaos of the Irish party is to be expected, is a new tower of Babel, in which every one will speak in different political tongues, and disorder will re- solve itself into absolute chaos. If Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Healy cannot come to an understanding, what are we to hope from Mr. O'Brien, Mr. O'Donovan Rossa, and such men as Mr. Stephens, the head centre, multiplied by scores and hundreds? Nothing is more pitiable than the new super- stition, that in order to find a political mind, you have only to bring together a vast number of people who have not a political mind amongst them. Yet this is Mr. Justin McCarthy's great prescription for healing the fierce quarrels and animosities of the widely severed fragments of the Irish race. The discords of a few having overwhelmed him with bewilderment, he hopes to recover from the confusion by appealing to a many-headed monster haunted by the still more discordant fancies and dreams of a highly unprac- tical race scattered over all the different quarters of the globe. We cannot imagine a poorer form of irrational democratic superstition.
It is, indeed, possible that Mr. Justin McCarthy has a secret hope that thereis already in existence some leader strong enough to fill the place which he is said to desire to vacate, and that he may think Mr. Sexton or Mr. Davitt men of sufficient calibre to fill it. At any rate a rumour is gaining ground that he hopes to retire in either Mr. Sexton's or Mr. Davitt's favour, and to gain for his successor the ad- hesion of this proposed representation of the Celtic genius for either conspiracy or some less-unconstitutional rhetoric. We cannot believe that either hope has any foundation. Mr. Sexton is eloquent enough, but has shown no sort of capacity for command, and indeed has shown a fastidious- ness and disgust for the meaner elements of political in- trigue which commands our respect, but not any confidence in his power of will. Mr. Davitt is of sturdy stuff, and is bolder and franker than most of his colleagues, but he has no magic in him, has neither the curt and imperious temper of Mr. Parnell nor the wonderful fascination and persuasiveness of Mr. O'Connell. Besides, he has given indications of a wish for that nationalisation of the land which might certainly bring the Socialists of the Con- tinent to his side, but not the Irish peasantry, whose one load- stone is absolute peasant-proprietorship with no suspicion of Collectivism. So far as appears at present there is no living man to succeed Mr. Parnell. And in all probability the storm in a tea-cup, which now prevails in the Irish Parlia- mentary party, will only be magnified into a storm in a pond, and a rather muddy pond, by the summons of all possible representatives of Irish dreams from all the four quarters of the globe. Constitutional superstition can hardly go further than the illusion that the divisions of a small party may be cured by calling in a vast number of fanatics from outside, without any knowledge of the origin of their divisions, and without the smallest experi- ence of the practical points which have occasioned the quarrel, to arbitrate amongst the combatants and overawe them into harmony.
The helpless cry of eaoriatur aliquis has never been more hopelessly raised than in this appeal of Mr. Justin McCarthy urbi et orbi to send him out of the wilds some commander in whom they may trust. " He hoped," he said, " that this great Convention would lay down a policy and strict rules for the party, and would tell them what constituted a breach of faith and of pledges which made a man no longer fit to be a member of the Irish Nationalist party." Just imagine asking Parthians and Medea and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, " for a. policy " and new tables of stone to help the apostles of a new gospel to preach it effectually. Had that been the demand from the assembly which actually started the organisation of Christianity, we do not suppose that any Gospel could have been preached at all. What the Irish party want is an authority over them, not a still greater mass of confusion under them. What Mr. Justin McCarthy proposes is to invite from all parts of the world elements of new confusion, and to trust to them when they have met together to fuse themselves by a sort of miracle into a body that can both initiate a discipline and lay down a law of their own !
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