THE DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT.
THERE was something grotesque about the little defeat suffered by the Government on Friday week. It was very odd to see the Conservatives vying with the dubious Liberals in their zeal to thrust on the Government a thick stick for use against the Irish with which the Government do not desire to be armed. Of course, the Conservatives, though they professed to be eager to arm the Government with a new weapon, really coveted the opportunity of snubbing them for the concession made to Irish feeling, in other words, of passing a censure on them for being so squeamish about Irish feeling. The power you offer us will do more harm than good,' Lord Spencer is said to reply, 6 for even if it gives us some slight additional chance of detecting crime, it, will, in all probability, create so much anger against the law, that it will do more to stimulate the criminal impulses of the people, than to check them by the fear of discovery and the example of disgrace.' We doubt that,' the Conservatives virtually rejoin, and do not much respect the opinion of the Lord-Lieutenant on a point of that kind. At all events, we do not so much object to un- necessary irritation of the Irish people, if we can happily combine it with an unnecessary irritation of the Liberal Government. Both motives are quite familiar to our minds, and while we do not actually boast of the former, we are proud of the latter feeling. Therefore, we cannot allow ourselves to be over-scrupulous as to offending the quiet Irish, when there is such a golden opportunity offered us of obliging the Liberals to offend them against their own better judgment.' But even the plea of the Conservatives was hardly so grotesque as that of the Liberal mutineers. Mr. George Russell insisted that it was his extreme and almost redundant confi- dence in the Government that compelled him to thrust this addi- tional weapon upon the Government. It is, in short, he says, so excellent a Government, one so reluctant to use big sticks without the most absolute necessity, that he almost feels it a duty to force one big stick more into its hands than it wishes to carry. Its faults are all so obviously on the side of deli- cacy, that you ought to press it, as you would an over- modest man, to accept rather more responsibility than it declares itself willing to accept. As a Yorkshire host will sometimes heap the guest's plate with provisions that he professes' his.absolute inability to consume, out of a deep convic- tion that the guest practises an asceticism which it needs only a little wholesome• violence to overcome, so the fond Liberals will not hear of such modesty as the reluctance of the Administration to assume a power whieh would really make them stronger against the Irish conspirators ; and they even take infinite credit to themselves for having more confidence in Lord Spencer than Lord Spencer wishes them to have. It is true, of course, that though these over-trustful gentlemen insist on cramming into the over full hands,of the Government weapons which they positively object to receive, they are by no •means overtrustful of the statesmanship thus lightly overruled. Mr. George Ru8sell pays no attention at all to the remark that, in the opinion of the Government, this new power will excite much more popular disaffection than it will find the means to deter and to punish. Practically, Mr. Russell implies that this is all fudge, that the Government are no judges of what needlessly irritates the Irish, and that it is rather false delicacy than otherwise which makes them averse to this new power. Well, that seems to us very much like saying that, though the Government are so good and con- scientious that he can trust them implicitly with very danger- ous weapons, he has far less confidence in their estimate of Irish feeling than he has in his own. Worthy and excellent persons, but a little feeble and timid,' is his verdict. ' We must screw them up a peg, by insisting on their taking another life-preserver, but then we must also screw them down a peg, by making light of their fears. They want tone,' as the doctors say. And we will give it them, by showing at once our absolute confidence in their sobriety, and onr supreme contempt for their judgment.' Such, as we understand it, was Mr. George Russell's party loyalty. As for Mr. Cartwright's, it was more ambiguous. He has always leaned to the Conservative-Liberal side, and probably enjoyed the snub administered to the Government quite as much as he enjoyed any other result of the division. He wanted to say, in distinct terms, ' Mr. Gladstone's Govern- ment is not high-handed enough with the Irish for me,' and his speech and vote said it with quite sufficient distinctness.
Of course, the Government had no real choice but to take the half-accidental defeat as they did. It was the kind of thing on which a resignation, in such times as these, was a sheer impossibility. With Egypt in explosion, it would have been monstrous to bring on a Government crisis for so trifling a matter, even though the majority implied, and intended to imply, that they had no confidence in the judgment of the Government on a minute point of administrative statesman- ship. If you should not swap horses when you are crossing a stream, you certainly should not swap them when you are making a dash on the enemy's guns. It would have been absurd to make too much of the division of July 7th, and culpable to make so much of it as to break off the thread of our foreign policy while a Conference is sitting at Constanti- nople, and military mutineers are overthrowing the Govern- ment of Egypt. But though the defeat of Friday week is wholly insignificant in itself, and could only have involved the fate of the Govern- ment, if the Government had been so ill-advised as to make too much of it, it is of considerable importance as a symptom of what is going on beneath the surface of politics,—and especially of the under-current of impatience with what is called the tenderness of the Government for Irish feeling, which is gradually manifesting itself among the Liberal ranks. That Mr. Cartwright, who is the minority Member for Oxfordshire, and to whom it is not, perhaps, altogether un- pleasant to have opportunities of showing his sympathy with the majority of his constituents and his hesitating allegiance to the minority, should have proposed this snub to the Irish policy of the Government, is not surprising, and hardly anything new. But that a thorough-going Radical like Mr. George Russell, who has professed to belong to the left wing rather than to the right wing of the Liberal party, and who has de- dared himself with some emphasis to be favourable to a thorough-going reform of the Land Laws, should act with him, is a curious enough sign of the irritability and impatience which the Irish tactics cause among English Liberals. It is to that feeling that we look with the most apprehension, as likely, if it grows, to bring about the dissolution of the Liberal party. There is nothing more difficult than to reverse the evil policy of centuries, not only because it must have struck its roots deep in the soil, but also because the new policy never gains at once hearty adherence, or even any adherence worth much in point of strength, from the people who ultimately profit by the change. Nevertheless, this ungracious and sullen attitude on their part always irritates the party who have looked for something quite different, and leads to a bit- terness of feeling, a vacillation of purpose, and, at the best, an indifference to the policy and duty of the moment, which are almost certain to embarrass that most difficult of all under- takings, the gradual undoing of evil gradually done. We are beginning now to feel the mischievous results of this slacken- ing of Liberal enthusiasm, in the attitude of some of the weak- kneed Liberals towards Ireland. The peevishness manifest in the vote of Friday week is the peevishness, of men who are growing weary of ,well-doing, as soon as' they find that that well-doing, so far from getting them at once out of the labyrinth of difficulties summed up in the word Ireland, has involved them for the time more deeply than ever in the mazes of that labyrinth. Yet it is not want of heart of this kind that will solve such a difficulty as the Irish difficulty. Perseverance in well-doing, perfect indifference to the im- mediate success of what is done so long as it is just and ought to earn ultimate success,—a certain fortitude, in spite of all the insults both of those who resent the change of policy, and of those who demanded the change of policy, but decline to be satisfied with it,—this, and this only, will suffice to carry out so great a change as Mr. Gladstone is attempting in Ireland. The irritability and impatience of minds which look for immediate results are fatal to such a policy. The impatience of the child which wants to see the growth of a great tree before its seed has been a few days in the ground, is just of the same kind. And unless a great party can hold together in long discouragement, doing what is right, even though no one outside their ranks seems to see that it is right, and though those who should applaud most choose to hiss and sneer, it is not in any great party to accomplish the redemption of Ireland. We had hoped that the Liberal Party was capable of this great moral, nay, we may even, in the best sense, say this great spiritual, effort. But the symptoms of Friday week are, at the least, far from favourable. With many repetitions of them, we shall have the Liberal Party fall- ing asunder from sheer want of the magnanimity needful for the emergency with which it is grappling.
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