THE ALTERNATIVES.
MR. GLADSTONE is thought to have made a great point when he declared that there was no alternative plan before the country, and that his own " was in possession of the field ;" and, no doubt, as an incident of Parliamentary debate the point was an effective one. No other plan of Home- rule is before the country. No statesman as yet speaks of Separation, except as an impossible alternative; the Parnellites have abstained with a strange caution from stating any plan of their own, or even any willingness, except to be relieved from all share in the burden of empire; Mr. Trevelyan's alter- native was rejected on the spot by the Irish ; and the House listened with cold hesitation to Mr. Chamberlain's Federal scheme. As far as Parliament is concerned, Mr. Gladstone is in the right ; but then, he and those who admire this argument miss the centre of the case at issue. They assume that Home-rule of some sort is inevitable, now, in this year 1886 ; whereas the essence of the convic- tion of those who oppose them is that, under existing conditions, Home-rule in any shape is a dangerous and im- moral experiment ; that Irish society is at present too dis- organised to govern itself justly or wisely without British assistance ; that the hatred of ages has grown stronger with every concession, and would be concentrated and energised by Home-rule ; and that, consequently, the only course for states- men is to govern from Westminster, granting any solution that can be devised for the agrarian difficulty, conceding all the freedom of county government conceded to any part of Great Britain, arranging education in accordance with Irish ideas, but maintaining the full legislative sovereignty of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Rather than recede from that cardinal datum, they would accept Separation, which, though involving an equal surrender of duty, would at least leave a united and homogenous Kingdom of thirty-two millions free to commence a new career, un- hampered, as Macaulay said, by the effort to drag along an unwilling, and while unwilling a worse than useless, ally. To this argument Mr. Gladstone's point is no answer at all ; it is a mere denial of all the conditions on which the argument rests. Very few reject his plan as in itself a bad one, and certainly we are not among the number. On the contrary, we agree with him that of all proposed, or likely to be proposed, it is the best, the most com- plete, the one most certain to facilitate the Separation which, if Union is abandoned, is, under the conditions, the solitary and the inevitable ultimate result. We do not deny, do not even doubt, that were the conditions altered, were Ireland even as Canada, were the agrarian war at an end, were social morality restored by the rise of a generation accustomed to obey the law, were even the loathing of England extinct among Irishmen, Mr. Gladstone's scheme, with or without Irish representatives in Westminster, might work fairly well, though probably not so well as, under those conditions, Union would. There is an element of character in good Irishmen which good Englishmen sadly lack, and the three-stranded rope might be stronger than the two- stranded, if we bind it never so well,—but all that is of the future. What we contend is that for the pre- sent, for the only time statesmen can consider, the conditions are inexorable ; and that under the conditions, Home-rule cannot with either safety or justice be conceded. There is no need to propose an alternative. The statesmen who are to govern must govern on the Spencer plan, calmly but resolutely enforcing the common law of the land, improved by new provisions in England as well as Ireland, while they concede county government and prepare that large and liberal solution for the agrarian difficulty which, as we fully acknow- ledge, English mistakes, as well as economic circumstances and Irish perversity, must compel them to undertake. If the misfortunes come with which Mr. Morley, by a rare defect in his usually keen instinct for men, threatened the House of Commons, we must bear them with what fortitude prosperity has left us, and draw what consolation we may from the history of six hundred years. Mr. Parnell is hardly more formidable than Philip of Spain, or Patrick Ford than Guy Fawkes, and England has survived and forgotten both.
We hope that the statesmen who direct the resistance to Mr. Gladstone's scheme will not weaken their case with the people by discussing alternative schemes of Home-rule, or " broad plans " for local self-government either. The latter, even if all is granted to Ireland that is granted to England and Scotland, labour under this incurable defect, that they do
not in the slightest satisfy the Irish demand. As substitutes for Home-rule, they are simply despised. The Catholic Prelates. in Ireland might look at a plan like Mr. Trevelyan's, which,. in fact, concedes municipal power and the control of education to local elected bodies, because it would give the Church the control of the young; but the Nationalist Party, good and bad, the old party intent on making a nation, and the new party intent on injuring England, would, as an alterna- tive to Home-rule, alike reject it with scorn. Their ideas, to do them justice, are bigger than that ; they care for some- thing other than material improvement, and aspire to be rulers, and not glorified vestrymen. Mr. Trevelyan's scheme is excellent as something to be done under the Union, but as a substitute for self-government it lacks the first conditions of acceptability. The Irish, wholly unpacified, would have the control of some thirty or forty new instruments of annoyance.. On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain ended the very re- markable and bitter speech of Friday week, in which he explained his withdrawal from the Cabinet, a speech full of destructive criticism of the plan proposed by the Premier, by a statement that he would suggest as his alternative a Federal scheme. He did not describe the scheme he desired, but indicated that he would retain the Irish Members, and the power of raising taxes for Imperial ends, and the appointment of all Judges and Magistrates, and that he would seek guidan'e either in the American Constitution, or that of Switzerland, or that of the Canadian Dominion. In this proposal he seems to us to have given up his whole case. He does not defend the Union, but only a rival scheme of Disruption, and one which, so far from being better than Mr. Gladstone's, is decidedly worse. He deprives the British of their one com- pensation for the loss of Ireland, their regained freedom of action in their own affairs, grants to Ireland legislative power—for in all the countries he names, the States, or Cantons, or Provinces possess legislative power—and then, by restricting the use of that power, provides endless occasions for friction. and resistance. He says his scheme works in the countries to. which he points ; but, not to mention that unity has on occasion only been maintained in America and Switzerland by the unsparing use of the sword, the States of these Unions in their normal condition desire the union, and are content to fight 04 causes of dispute under an arbitrating authority. There is no State in the Union, or Canton in Switzerland, or Province in the Canadian Dominion, which hates the Federation as Ireland hates England ; nor is there in those countries any one legis- lating division which could, if excited, master all the others combined as England could do, and on occasion has done. Imagine Wales with England at her throat! Mr. Chamber- lain's scheme is not an alternative, but a rival scheme to Mr.. Gladstone's, intended hereafter, if the latter is defeated, to attract the Irish vote, and based, equally with Mr. Gladstone's, upon the assumption that not only has the Union failed, but that it never can be made to succeed. Mr. Chamberlain declares that the Cabinet measure is " thinly veiled Separation," and claims for his own that it preserves unity ; but what is its special guarantee f Simply the retention of the Irish Members in. Westminster, where they do not wish to be. They are there• now, and surely the result of their presence, whatever else it. may be, is not the development of union. If the Irish desire Separation, force would be the sole nexus, as it is now, and will be for a time, under Mr. Gladstone's scheme or any other.
If the Radicals were to follow Mr. Chamberlain, instead of Lord Hartington, they would cut the ground of resistance from under their own feet, for they would have accepted Disruption as a principle, though under a different name, and with some differences of detail. Moreover, they would have- deprived themselves of all logical foothold for resisting the grant of Home-rule to Scotland, or Wales, or East Anglia, or London, or any portion of the country which desired it, and would stand committed to the recasting of the entire frame- work of the United Kingdom upon the federal basis,—a basis upon which the unaccustomed people, with their history suddenly and sharply cleft asunder, would be able to build nothing. Mr. Chamberlain seems to us far too anxious to maintain a separate position, and will end, if he is not more
self-restrained, in finding himself alone. There are not many men in England who want Home-rule and to be rid of Mr.
Gladstone ; yet that must be the mental attitude of a man who rejects the present proposal because, judged from the Consti- tutional point of view, it is rather Colonial than Federal.
Both are bad ; but if we must have either, let us have the one which at least leaves Great Britain mistress of herself, though, with a dangerous dependency upon her flank.
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