TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A GREAT SPEECH AGAINST THE BILL.
-ENGLAND suffers greatly in one way from the super- session of the "Ten-pounders." Those electors read the great speeches in Parliament and out of Parliament, and therefore learned something of the serious arguments producible on either side of any important proposal,—the arguments which weigh with those who are competent to govern. They might not understand all, but they under- stood a great deal, especially as to the main intention with which statesmen were bestirring themselves. We should be slow to say that they did not see what Sir Robert Peel was at in his Bank Act, and they caught the whole argu- ment for and against Free-trade with an acumen which, considering the superficial perplexities of the question, was really astonishing. The new electors do not read the speeches, contenting themselves for the most part with con- densed reports, usually bald to dAllness, or newspaper com- ments, often unfair, and almost always one-sided. The local journals, indeed, outside the greater cities, have not the space for full or even adequate reporting of more than one side. The weight of the arguments on both sides does not, therefore, reach the majority, and as they are honestly desirous of guidance of some sort, they place their trust in individuals or—for we must not forget this side of it—they distrust because of individuals. Home-rule to them is wise or unwise because they accept or reject Mr. Gladstone as the depositary of all pelitical wisdom. So thoroughly aware are the Gladstonians of this change that they abstain during the very crisis of the discussion from addressing popular audiences, and, but for decency and the antagonism natural to parties in popular assemblies, would be quite content to leave the Unionists in the House unanswered, and bear them down by trooping into the lobbies as a silent mass of inconvincible voters. "Let us not talk" is the Radical mot d'ordre ; and though it is sometimes disobeyed, it is from individual vanity and not from any fear lest their constituents should read and believe the unanswered arguments of Unionists. If it were not for this change we do not believe that the Home- rule Bill—we do not mean Home-rule in the abstract, but this present Bill—could survive speeches such as have dis- tinguished the past ten days, and specially Mr. Chamberlain's speeches in the House on Monday and at Birmingham on Wednesday, and Lord Randolph Churchill's at Liverpool and Perth on Thursday week and Tuesday. We pick those out, not only for their eloquence, which is hardly with our present audiences an advantage, but because they are addressed straight to the Bill, because they tear it to tatters, and show it for what it is,—a foolish attempt to reach an impossible ideal accepted by one great, though mistaken, man out of a self-generated faith. We do not hesitate to say, although we probably feel more strongly than the public will the flavour that is in it of rhetorical exaggeration, that we never read a speech intended for a popular audience, quite equal to Mr. Chamberlain's in Birmingham, so glowing with the fire of the great orator, yet so full of closely reasoned and locked-up argument. It is a masterpiece to be bracketed with the best speeches of Cobden and Bright on Free-trade, which persuaded a whole community. If that speech could be repeated audibly to every elector in Great Britain, there would be no fear even of the vote on the second reading, for the electors would release their representatives from the pledges which alone bind many of them to the support of this preposterous Home-rule Bill. They would for the first time understand its real effects; that it places Ireland under the dictatorship of Archbishop Walsh, and Britain under that of Mr. Timothy Healy, who will have the control of the new Irish Members in Westminster with their 'limited liability" and "unlimited power" of destroying British Governments. They would understand that the Bill will surrender more than we could be asked to surrender after defeat in a great war ; for, though Germany asked pro- vinces from France and a great indemnity, as Mr. Glad- stone asks from Britain provinces and a great indemnity, she did not ask the right of seating eighty representa- tives in the French Parliament to shake hands with their foes (from within the very citadel), "to decide their policy, to dictate their legislation, to elect their Government, and to endanger their national existence." They would comprehend that no relief from the Irish question will come to them ; for in Ireland itself no class heartily approves this Bill. It is resisted by all Protestants whatsoever, and all Catholics who have anything to lose ; it is doubted even by the small farmers, who foresee the loss of English help in trouble, larger expenditure, and heavier taxation ; and throughout the length and breadth of the island no genuinely popular meeting has been held to demand the Bill, the Bill in its entirety. They would see that when Mr. Chamberlain rose in the House of Commons on Monday "to challenge the Nationalist Members in their places, when he challenged them to rise and say that they or any one of them accepted this Bill frankly as a final settlement, there was not one who dared to rise and make a reply. If they had done so, they would have been repu- diated by their constituents. They cannot accept this Bill as a final settlement." They would see that the Bill forms of the Irish Members left in Westminster "a battering-ram to force open the doors of Parliament ;" and, so seeing and so understanding, they would realise at last that the idea which so many entertained that" Mr. Gladstone had a patent Bill in his pocket" which would remove all objections, was utterly erroneous. They would recognise fully that his Bill, whether it passes or not, is worse than the Bill of l886.—an unstatesnaanlike and unworkable measure for an unattainable end.
The electors of whom we speak would not profit so much .by Mr. Chamberlain's speech of Monday in the House, extraordinarily able as it is, because it entered more into detail ; because much of it was occupied with finance, which they leave very wisely to their leaders ; and because some of it was devoted to prove that opponents had been inconsistent with their own previous utterances, an argu- ment which influences the House of Commons, but not the masses of the people. Nothing could be more con- clusive than Mr. Chamberlain's evidence that many of Mr. Gladstone's prophecies had failed, and that consequently he might be a misleading prophet now ; but that, though it weighs with Members, would hardly affect villagers and artisans more than the unexpected literary felicity with which the orator turned an allu- sion to Tennyson's " Vivien " into a crushing blow to those who interrupted him. "Trust them," he quoted, in the words of Vivien, "trust them all in all, or not at all," and the Ministerialists cheered the sentiment, which they are always repeating but never act on, with a sort of rapture. "Yes," observed their opponent, "but in the poem we learn that when the great enchanter yielded to the temptress, he brought about his own anni- hilation." All that is above the village readers ; but even they would recognise as clearly as the old" Ten-pounders" that the safeguards for the minority in the Bill are worthless unless supported by armed force, and that every such safeguard makes a Bill illogical which is to secure a "Union of Hearts." They would perceive that, as the orator alleged, the Irish desire Protection, and the Bill refuses it ; that the Irish desire an amnesty, including dynamiters, and that the Government refuses it ; that the Irish Catholics desire ascendency for their creed, and that the Bill refuses it; that the Irish are anxious to spend upon their country, and that the Bill so regulates their Treasury that, if they raise money, it must be by taxation on the laud; and that, consequently, the Bill contains no. element of finality or of peace between the two nations. It is, however, the speech Mr. Chamberlain made out of doors of which we regret the electors' loss, and though in a far lesa degree, that of Lord Randolph Churchill, whose first speech at Liverpool on the 6th inst., noticed last week, was alive with argument expressed with the people's own rough vigour; whose second speech at Liverpool on the 7th inst. brought home to a commercial community that a surrender to enemies like that contained in this Bill weakened that power abroad without which trade is never safe ; and whose third speech at Perth on Tuesday contains the mca t closely reasoned argument against the " safeguards " that has yet appeared. Lord Randolph shows beyond contradic- tion that they do not exist, and that even as regards the pay- ment of revenue, the Irish Executive has only to plead poverty and no revenue can be exacted. "The whole revenue of Ireland—you must bear this in mind, because it is most important—is absolutely under the control of the Irish Parliament ; under the management of the Irish Ministers ; under the custody of Irish civil officials, to say nothing of the new force of police they are going to estab- lish; and now, mind you, all the Judges, all the Sheriffs. all the Magistrates, all the Crown prosecutors will be appointed by the Irish Ministers acting in accordance with the views of the majority in the Irish Parliament. That I wan!, you to bear in mind,—the tremendous grasp which the Irish Parliament have got through their Ministers on the Executive and on the revenue of the country." There are two Exchequer Judges appointed to prevent this " grasp " being misused ; but there is no power whatever placed at their disposal, and if the Irish Executive chooses, their orders will be empty wind. The electors, if they but read these speeches, would. see clearly that under the Bill there is no guarantee for any Irish subject except the good-will of the majority, and that imaginary " Union of Hearts" which for six hundred years have been so severed, that the living leaders of Ireland. but recently pronounced it their first object to compel the English to go ; and that all Pro- testants in Ireland disbelieve in the good-will of Catholics SO completely, that they are threatening, in dread of the malign hatred of the majority, to resist the Bill by insur- rection. There is no help, we suppose, for it now, but the householders have lost an educative privilege which the " Ten-pounders " enjoyed, and which they need far more than even their predecessors. In exchange, they have only local speeches, which are but poor substitutes for the discourses that, whatever their incidental demerits may have been, at least conveyed the thoughts of statesmen upon the changes they proposed. One-half at least of the electors in this country, when they are consulted, as they must be next year, will not know how Mr. Gladstone supports, or how Mr. Chamberlain refutes, the Home-rule Bill.
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