THE IRISH VOTE.
THE result of the Irish Elections so far—and all the Borough elections, three-fourths of the County elections, are now over—nearly, if not completely confirms our anticipations. Mr. Butt is said to have confidently predicted last autumn to an interviewing American editor that in the event of a Dissolu- tion, at least eighty Home-rulers would be elected by the Irish constituencies. We have not been able to count so many as eighty Home-rule candidates in all ; and the number of real and soi-disant Home-rulers elected will, it is now evident, not exceed, if it should reach fifty. If this calculation be correct, there would therefore be a small majority against Home- rule, if the question were to be referred for settlement to the Irish Members themselves; but if the Irish Members could, like their constituents, vote by ballot, we strongly suspect the result would be like that of the Tralee election, where, in spite of all the fuss and fury of the last four months, the O'Donoghue quietly headed the poll, leaving the Home-rule candidate well behind. A not less significant symptom in its way is the utter defeat of the candidature of Mr. Mitchel at Cork. Mr. Mitchel was transported for treason-felony in 1848. By what was alleged to be a breach of parole, he escaped from Tasmania to the United States, where he has since lived. A fortnight ago his friends in Cork were inspired with the brilliant idea of inveigling him into undergoing the unexpired period of his penal servitude under pretence of electing him to Parliament ; and with characteristic obtuseness to the promptings of common- sense, he at once " cabled " his assent. But Cork would not be made a party to this act of felo de se, and tacitly dropped Mr. Mitchel to the very bottom of the poll. It is still possible, but not probable, that Tipperary may raise him to the seat once designated for O'Donovan Rossa. Whether Mr. Disraeli's sympathy with intellect would lead him in that event to advise Her Majesty to pardon Mr. Mitchel, is un- certain; if he should, the House of Commons would, at all events, have the advantage of hearing the most irreconcilable Irish politics expressed by a man of genuine earnestness of spirit in a style of remarkable distinctness and finish. The power of the Home.rule Party in the House will not otherwise, it is already evident, be augmented in the way of talent. On the contrary, if all we hear be correct, there will be among the Irish Members of the next Parliament quite a small but curious squad of the sort that Horace describes as grieving for the death of the benign Tigellius. To the embarrassed squire of a former day succeeds the embar- rassed farmer of this. To the ambitious and audacious lawyer of old—for whom Parliament was the short cut to the Bench—succeeds a swarm of professional men in a small way, who cannot carry their clients, or their patients, or their newspapers to London with them, and for whom a Parliamentary career would only be, if they were Englishmen, a sort of covered way to the Bankruptcy Court.
The Home-rule party in the next Parliament may be most conveniently divided, as we have indicated above, into real and so-called Home-rulers. It is a matter of very great difficulty to say to which class the leader of the movement, Mr. Butt, should be assigned. How far O'Connell really meant Repeal is still open to serious doubt, If Mr. Butt believes that he will induce not merely the Irish, but the English and Scotch peoples to revolutionise the whole system of the Imperial Government, and set up his Federal scheme in its stead, his capacity of self-delusion must be more considerable than generally consorts with much practice at Nisi Prins. That work would overtask the genius of Kossuth and the purpose of Deak. Mr. Butt has neither. It did not need much insight to discern that in the last Parliament there were nevertheless a few really sincere advocates of Home-rule, such as Mr. Martin and Mr. Smyth. Of this class we believe there may be ten, perhaps twelve, in the new House of Commons. But can anyone imagine that Major O'Reilly and Captain Stacpoole, that the O'Conor Don and Mr. Herbert have been meta- morphosed out of the staunch Liberals they were last session into plastic puppets, or even eager auxiliaries of Mr. Butt They have inserted some vague phrase about Home-rule in their addresses with much the same reluctance with which an English Tory now and then finds himself agreeing to vote for the Permissive Bill, or a Scotch in committing him- self very seriously about Hypothec. Some of these gentle- men no doubt already know that the concession was not really expected by their constituencies, and that they would have been elected all the same if they had stood upon the simple straightforward ground of what was due to their Parliamentary services in connection with Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. In certain constituencies it was evidently a great advantage to a candidate to be utterly unknown. The confidence of the Irish patriot, and especially of the Irish patriotic parish priest, is often most easily enlisted by some candidate who has not a shred of public character of any sort, good, bad, or indifferent. Such a candidate is a living exercise of faith, hope, and charity ; and he has, besides (which is important in Ireland), no need to pray to be saved from the animosities of his friends. Some roving Englishmen from the Temple and the City have thus found harbour under the Home-rule flag in places where their names had never been heard on the day Mr. Gladstone declared the Dissolution ; and on terms preposterously reason- able, when compared with those which obtain in the boroughs of their native land, where there is besides a prejudice that a man had better be more or less known before he is trusted. In these curious elections, our old idea that "virtue and Erin" and the "Saxon and guilt" were invariably opposed to each other becomes disconcerted. Nevertheless, we do not appre- hend the dismemberment of the Empire in consequence. By far the most discreditable contest in Ireland, however, is that in Louth. There is a peculiar ingratitude about the assault made upon the seat of Mr. Fortescue. It reminds one of Sir Charles Duffy's famous saying, "Ireland is like a corpse on the dissecting-table." In the proceedings as recorded in tho local papers, we seem to watch a state of moral decomposition. We are glad to see that the rowdyism for which this contest is unhappily conspicuous, has roused the Catholic Primate to write a letter in Mr. Fortescue's defence breathing in every line manly shame and indignation. Such a contest as this exactly explains why Ireland is what she is—the last title to her regard at present apparently being the memory of service rendered.
In Ulster, not so much has been achieved as we expected, but the old party of Orange• oligarchy has received, and has yet to receive, several weighty blows. Lord Newry has been defeated in his own town, Major Knox has been dismissed by Dungannon, Coleraine no more gives Sir Hervey Bruce its local designation to his name, Carrickfergus remains represented as it was by a follower of Mr. Gladstone. The great county of Down has given one of its seats to a staunch Liberal, the son of Mr. Sharman Crawford, long Member for Rochdale; and Lord Claud Hamilton has lost Tyrone after a tenure of forty years. On the other hand, the Conservative working-man, abundant as the locust, has, in Belfast as in other big borough constituences, drawn his politics at the tap, and so Mr. M'Clure is replaced by a Tory. The compact phalanx of the Ulster Members is, however, broken, and it is not, perhaps, a less benefit to Mr. Disraeli that it should be so than it is to the Ulster Catholics. The Irish vote, as a whole, could not, in the present state of parties, wield much influence, even if the Home-rulers were as compact and loyal to each other as the old Ulster Orange Party was. Mr. Disraeli is not merely free from any danger of the balance of power falling again within reach of the Irish Catholics ; he could afford to send his few remaining Orangemen into opposition. Irishmen and Irish affairs will, it is already evident, be in the next Parliament, as in contrast with the last, nowhere ; and it is just. From those to whom much is given, even though it be but justice, much is expected. Ireland had, it appears, only ingratitude to give. The most unpopular name in Ireland to-day is that of Mr. Gladstone, the seat most fiercely coetested is that of Mr. Fortescue, and they are the Ministers who carried the Irish Church and Laud Acts. It is a warning.
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