TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD MAYO'S IRISH PROGRAMME.
yr R. MAGUIRE'S too declamatory eloquence, the dropping I fire of Mr. Neate's intellectual pea-shooter as it rained its harmless artillery on Mr. Mill, Sir F. Heygate's fluent optimism, Lord A. Clinton's written periods, Mr. O'Beirne's plausible rhetoric in behalf of his "noble friend," and Lord Mayo's unapproached and unapproachable sublimity of dullness, filled up between them on Tuesday nine hours of as intolerable verbiage as a British public ever yet respected under the name of Parliamentary eloquence. Mr. Maguire's speech was pro- bably the least hollow part of the performance, but even he seldom gave the House the feeling that he was speaking from deep personal conviction, and not rather performing the allotted part of an Irish patriot in an English Parliament. The whole of Tuesday's debate was pervaded by an impression of a half- sincere battle against time, of a performance intended to satisfy the dramatic exigencies of the situation, rather than to reach any definite remedy for the condition of Ireland, which seems to us far more hopeless than the most violent clashing of contending passions. The Irish Liberals,— unlike Mr. Mill,—hover round their point without dar- ing to be explicit, and let off the surplus steam, or what they like to be considered surplus steam, in vague and violent declamation. The Irish Conservatives don't venture to say what they mean and justify it,—that nothing is to be done, —bat throw out tub after tub to the whale, and sit down with their lips as weary with pronouncing empty professions of liberality as the Irish Liberals with empty declamations against inaction. We would far rather,—we do not mean for party motives, but from pure sympathy with Ireland,— have heard Lord Mayo say shortly and sternly that the Government meant to concede nothing of moment ; that they believe Ireland to be very well governed as it is ; that all, or almost all, the fault of the recent conspiracy lies with the people, and not with the law or the Government ; that they propose to stick to the old policy of endurance and hope, and to propose nothing beyond small improvements of an im- material kind which do not deserve the name of a policy,—than have heard Lord Mayo's incoherent and illogical tisane of apologies for things as they are, and concessions in name only to the demand for remedial measures. Inconceivably tedious as Lord Mayo was, the insincerity of his proposals was even more depressing than his tedium. The following are his remedies for the ills of Ireland,—(1) a paltry measure, received with considerable contempt last session on both sides of the House, for registering tenants' improvements, supplemented by one giving additional powers of improvement to "limited owners," and provisions intended specially to encourage written contracts ; (2) inquiry for the T-F lth time into the relation of landlord and tenant' in Ireland, the inquiry, however, being explicitly enjoined and even pledged this time, by the noble lord who advises it, to bring out a particular result favourable to the present landlord system [" Another thing will be shown by that Commission,—that there is no founda- tion for the statements made about the extreme dissatisfaction of the tenants in Ireland "],—which is candid, if not satis- factory; (3) inquiry into the Railway system, with a bias towards subsidizing the railways, if we understand Lord Mayo aright [" I believe a great boon would be conferred on Ireland by taking some means of improving the management and increasing the efficiency of the Railways in Ireland, and I am not without hope that we shall be able to submit a proposal to the House on that subject 1 ; (4) the endowment of a separate Catholic University; (5) inquiry into the Irish Church, accom- panied with hints that the true policy is to endow the Catholics up to the level of the Protestant endowmeiits, and to increase materially the Regium Donum bribe to the Presbyterians. Such is the Conservative policy,—three tubs to the whale in the way of "inquiries,"—one distinct offer of money to the Catholic prelates,—one anticipation-sketch-estimate (as the Indian officials say) of the possible offer of a still more enormous bribe, if only the bribees will consent, which Mr. Maguire says they won't. For our own parts we don't see how they can. It is a good rule for persons who have already assumed the attitude of indomitable virtue and self- denial to keep the full advantages of that attitude, till at least they see that the more tangible advantages proposed ta them are in esse, and not merely in posse. Where is the bribe to come from if you are to "level up" (we use Lord Mayo's own beautiful and classical language) the Catholic Church to the same height of endowment as that at which the Protestant Church now stands ? As we pointed out last week, the Irish won't bear 3,000,000/. or 4,000,000/. a year extra taxation in order to pay money to their own priests through the State, which they now pay voluntarily and directly. And if the Tories sup- pose that England and Scotland are going to endow generously
an Ultramontane Church out of their Protestant pockets, we- suspect they must be getting a little delirious, and have not taken counsel with their Orange allies. Besides, there is only too much truth in what Mr. Maguire says, that the influence of the Catholic priesthood in preserving order and resisting Fenianism,—already not so strong as might be wished,—would dwindle to nothing, nay, would be less than nothing, an irritant in the direction of sedition,—if once they were to take pay from the English Treasury. It is only their known disinterestedness which gives them any influence in this direction now.
This policy is mischievous, illusory, and dishonest. What it gives is bad. The baits it dangles before Irish eyes are false. What it withholds is not honestly and boldly stated. Theonly thing definitely given is the separate Catholic Univer- sity. Now, we are not going to raise again the cry which we- steadily resisted during the attack of temporary insanity which came on English Liberal journals and politicians a year or two ago, against the denominational system of education so far as the denominations prefer it. We have always said that if the Catholics prefer to educate either children or young men, apart, the Catholics have a perfect right to do so, and that State aid should be given them, on condition that the education they do give is sound, just as freely in Ireland as in England_ Wesupported strongly the proposal of Lord Russell's Government to admit students from the Catholic University to the degrees of the Queen's University, and to reconstitute the senate of that University, so that the Catholic as well as the Protestant Colleges might have full faith in it. But what the- Tories propose is not this. They are committed by their factious and indecent opposition to that scheme, and are com- pelled now to satisfy the reasonable demands of Catholics in another way, by conferring a separate charter containing the- power to confer degrees on a purely Catholic institution,. and also endowing that institution. The Government are going to give the power to confer degrees to a new body, over which they profess and anxiously declare that they shall keep no kind of control. "One feature of the new University should be, that it should after the first establishment be alto- gether free from Government control." The scheme is care- fully contrived to exclude any Government regulation after the University is once started. The State offers a new power of granting degrees to a learned body for whose learn- ing it takes absolutely no security. If the new University chooses to make a good examination in the Schoolmen the test for a degree in science, it may do so,—the State cannot object. The Tories do indeed strain out gnats and swallow camels. They raised no end of uproar two years ago because the Liberals were willing to give degrees to Catholic youths who had not been trained in company with Protestants, but whose education was to be tested in company with Protestants, and by common tests the efficiency of which the State kept full power of securing. Now they voluntarily offer the Catholics the right not only to educate their young men separately, but to examine them absolutely on their own prin- ciples, without reserving the slightest power to condition for the efficiency of those examinations. They objected to give degrees which were only tests determined by the Govern- ment or their nominees of an efficient training to Catholics unless those Catholics were trained in common with Protes- tants in special Colleges,—now they give up voluntarily not only the common training, but the right to test efficiency at all. This is a piece of political hypocrisy which almost equals and exactly parallels the outcry against a 71. suffrage raised by those who granted Household Suffrage themselves. But if what the Government do offer is bad, what they don't offer, what they pretend to offer, and what they offer in hieroglyphic hints, is worse. Lord Mayo meant, but dared not say, that on the subject of land-tenure the English system is to be forced on Ireland at any cost. If he had said that, it would have been manly ; though his wearisome dissertations on the firkins of butter sold in Cork market in 1867 as compared with the number sold in 1831, 1841, 1851, and 1861, would not have even offered a faint show of reason for his case. Of course, if you turn a country from a farming into a grazing country, the firkins of butter should either increase in number, or you are losing your capital altogether. Lord Mayo chose his statistics
very carefully, both as to years and as to their subject- matter, so as to suit his case. But he did not see that the argument for the increased physical prosperity of Ireland now, —which in general we may fairly grant,—is the most telling point of his adversary's case, not of his own. If it be true that greatly increased rentals, increased advantages in the way of roads, increased farming stock, increased deposits in joint-stock banks, have all failed in producing increased loyalty,—if it be true that the poorest class has shown more obstinate disaffection wit/tout leaders in 1866-8 than it showed in 1798 with the most distinguished leaders,—it is ridiculous and scarcely sane to assert that we are on the right track of reform. No doubt the truth is that the increase in rentals has been caused by the tenants, but enjoyed by the landlords, —that the tenants, or at least the occupiers, have paid almost all the rates which have improved so greatly the Irish roads, -while the landlords have reaped the fruits,—that the deposit accounts grow at the banks because they cannot be invested in the land with any certainty of securing returns to their owners. Lord Mayo's argument on the land question was as 'bad as his oratory.
With the Church question it is even worse. The Government at last admit the injustice of the ecclesiastical monopoly, and offer an impossible solution, the difficulties of which they know so well that they stave them off with an indefinite "inquiry," while on the Railway question they dangle a vague -bribe before the eyes of Irish shareholders. This is not the policy of men. It is a policy of insincerity, cowardice, and place-holding. The Government are finessing for delay, stav- ing off every really critical question as long as they can, offering bribes where they dare, the hope of distant bribes where they dare not, and where their minds are really and finally made up, veiling their thoughts in the language of delusive hesitation and provisional promise. The Irish policy of the Government is so bad as to furnish ground enough to turn them out of office, even in a session so exceptional as this.
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