TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. PARNELL'S SPEECH.
THE meeting in the Dublin Rotunda on Tuesday was one obviously intended to be as unpleasant as might be in its effect on English statesmen and politicians. Mr. Sexton made a speech of which the purpose was to justify the hatred felt by Ireland for England ; the address to Mr. Parnell ex- pressly glorified him for the doings of the Land League, which it described by implication as achieved without sufferings or blood- shed, doings for some of which Mr. Parnell at one time,—we sup- pose in a weak moment,—had avowed something approaching
to regret. And finally, Mr. Parnell's own speech was devoted to the expression of loathing for Mr. Trevelyan and for the whole policy of the British Government in Ireland, while it overflowed with malicious triumph at the anticipation that, even if ho could not secure such an Irish policy as he wished, he could secure the fall of those statesmen who had granted Ireland all she has yet gained, and the return to power of those who resisted with all their might the passing of the Land Act, the Arrears Act, and the " Tramways " Act. To read the account of such a demonstration as this causes us, perhaps, even more dismay than those who arranged it would have desired ;—though not more dismay,—indeed very much less,—springing out of the grounds of dismay with which they hoped to overwhelm us. What Mr. Parnell, and Mr. Sex- ton, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin desired, was to fill the hearts of English Liberals with disappointment and rage at the dis- covery of how closely their fate as a party is identified with that of the Irish Home-rulers. The venom of the stab which Mr. Parnell gave was all concentrated in that concluding passage, in which he told us that though he could not win for Ireland her independence, he could inflict on Great Britain the yoke of subservience to a party which is in a clear minority, and which involves ns in wars which we condemn, and in a foreign policy which we abhor. He cannot, he admits, con- quer what he calls her freedom for Ireland, but he can inflict both uneasiness and disaster on England and Scot- land, by hoisting into the Administration men who not only coerce Ireland, but misgovern the Empire. Well, that is, no doubt, a formidable threat. It is very like Rehoboam's threat that whereas Solomon had chastised Israel with whips, he himself would chastise Israel with scorpions. But the most formidable part of it is not, after all, that which Mr. Parnell hints as its true sting,—not the dread of the Tory Government with which he threatens us, not even the dread of the unjust and disastrous policy of bluster which he holds over us. These things are formidable enough. We do not disguise from our- selves that he and his party may have the power to bring the Tories back, to undo all the Irish reforms with which the Tories dare to meddle, and to weave anew the web of confusion abroad. But, after all, we know very well that directly the retrograde policy in Ireland begins, half Mr. Parnell's own followers will desert him, unless he flings the Tories over ; and that directly the selfish and hectoring policy begins abroad, the feeling in this country will surge up as strongly as it did in 1878-1880, and paralyse even Lord Salisbury's hand. We know that the Liberals may be turned out of office by Mr. Parnell, but that will be, we suspect, almost the last victory of his malice. In Ireland he will not dare, in the Empire he will not be able, to hold up the hands of those who propose to make the British Government pursue a retrograde and selfish career. To us, these threats, though we do not make light of them, cause a very small part, indeed, of the dismay which his speech inspires. That dismay arises from very different causes, and chiefly from this cause,—that it brings out, as nothing yet has brought out, the political and moral ruin which our misrule in Ireland has caused, when it shows us the genuine enthusiasm of the Irish people for a statesman who can deliberately set this mean and vindictive ideal of action be- fore his countrymen, and who finds that mean and vindictive ideal received with something like ecstacy by the emancipated serfs to whom he discloses it. We doubt if there is in the records of any political movement a more ominous sign than the " great laughter and cheering " with which the following sen- tences of Mr. Parnell, deliberately prepared no doubt for the great occasion on which the Irish were making a hero of him and lavishing on him the yield of a great national subscription, were received :-
" If there be one fact more certain than another, it is that if we are to be coerced again—if the present Coercion Act, or any part of it, is to be renewed—these things shall be done by a Tory Govern- ment, and not by a Liberal Government (cheers); and shall carry with them, in the shape of increased taxes and foreign wars, penalties, in excess even of those inflicted upon us. Beyond a shadow of doubt, it will be for the Irish people in England, separated, isolated as they are, and for your independent Irish Members, to determine at the next general election whether a Tory or Liberal Ministry shall rule England. (Cheers.) This is a great force and a great power. If we cannot rule ourselves, we can at least cense them to be ruled as we choose. (Great laughter and cheering.)
That the idol of the hour should be not a man who is full of generous, if violent impulse, like O'Connell, or of passionate self-forgetfulness, like Grattan or Wolfe Tone, but a pallid and sneering schemer, who draws his companions apart to boast that if he cannot get what he wants, he can at least poison the peace of those who defeat his plans, is, to our minds, one of the most dismaying facts in the political history of Ireland, and one also that we should have least anticipated. We had always supposed that in Ireland at all events, popularity was impossible without the appearance, at least, of generous enthu- siasm, and yet the ominous sign of the times is that popular enthusiasm is best evoked by an ostentatious display of vindic- tive political cunning and triumphant electioneering craft.
And the worst of the whole matter is that this is the result of the old English misrule. The Irish character, which, while Ireland was sunk in utter misery, displayed many of the virtues peculiar to a state of suffering, great cheerfulness under misery, great patience, and apparently great gratitude to those who brought any succour, is, now that it is beginning to taste of freedom and prosperity, losing apparently all its noblest features, and, for the moment at least, giving birth to no new ones. In place of the cheerfulness of the age of misery, we have now nothing but gloom ; for its patience we have the fiercest impatience, under dwindling, instead of increasing evils ; for the gratitude the Irish used to show to their true friends, we have nothing but the most virulent denunciation and political slander,—like Mr. Parnell's criticism, for instance, on Mr. Trevelyan, a statesman whose speeches will seem to the world at large as full of eleva- tion and earnestness of purpose as Mr. Parnell's are osten- tatiously devoid of both. And all this, as we said, is really the doing of our ancestors. It is our misrule which has so formed the Irish character that when it emerges from the semi-submissive era in which it displayed so many virtues, it seems suddenly to lose them all, and to put on a fierceness, an irritability, and a vindictiveness which, though they may be, as we believe they are, only temporary, seem to reflect not the new policy of greater justice, but the old policy of gross and selfish tyranny. Well, we must bear as well as we can the dismay which this condition of things not only does, but ought to produce on us, and perhaps even to produce in still greater measure than it does. Mr. Parnell's speech appears to us one that should cause genuine affright, not at the threats with which he plies us,—for they might well bring their own cure,—but at the type of political character which Irish politicians delight to honour, and even to glorify. We do not wonder that the man who is supposed to have gained for Ireland the recent Land Acts should be held on that account in reverence ; but we do wonder that the more he vaunts his chill hatred of England, his thin indifference to the crimes and outrages of the Land League, his detestation for the English statesmen who have co-operated with him to give Ireland what she has got, and his acid calculations of revenge, the more heartily the once generous Irish people cheer him, and gloat over the astuteness of his statecraft. But if we can only bring home the lesson truly, even this bitter lesson may have its uses for us. That lesson we take to be that tyranny often bears its worst fruits after the tyranny has ceased ; that it is in the atmosphere of independence that the cruelty of the past brings forth its bitterest consequences, and that the broken spirit, weary of its long suffering, turns to the gall of bitterness and the extasy of revenge. That ought to make our policy of justice only the more tenacious, unweary- ing, and complete.
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