TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE'S ADDRESS.
MR. GLADSTONE has shown himself the skilful captain he always is, in so sharpening the point of his election address that it will present a very plain and easy question to the people of Great Britain. This is the question addressed to the constituencies as he puts it :—" Will you govern Ireland by coercion, or will you let her manage her own affairs I" We are quite sure that Mr. Gladstone regards that as the real issue. We are equally sure that the real issue might be placed in some half-dozen different forms, any one of which would be quite as simple and plausible as Mr. Gladstone's, and some of them, in our opinion, much more exact. For instance, we might put it thus :—' Will you hand over Ireland to the government of the National League, or endeavour to enforce equal justice on all ? ' Or we might formu- late it thus, as Mr. W. H. Hall, in his admirable and pithy address to the electors of the Eastern Division of Cambridgeshire, virtually puts it :—' Will you have as much coercion in Ireland as already prevails in Great Britain, namely, the amount necessary to repress crime and outrage without interfering with the liberty of any subjects not bent on mischief, or will you rather govern Ireland by the agency of the outrage-mongers ?' Or you might put the issue thus : —' Would you rather have (1), Home-rule in Ireland and no real responsibility anywhere ; or (2), Separation and full re- sponsibility alike in Ireland and Great Britain ; or (3), a real Union cemented by a just and popular policy all over the two islands But perhaps the truest way in which the issue of the Election could be condensed into a sentence,—truest, we mean, alike to Mr. Gladstone and to his opponents,—would be this :—' Will you see the agrarian question in Ireland fairly settled before you begin to meddle with the subordinate question of Home-rule, or will you encumber yourself with two most complicated questions at the same time, one of which might be more than half solved by the settlement of the other ?' For we must remember that the Conserva- tives, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Chamberlain are all united on the former policy, while Mr. Gladstone and his followers alone insist on the latter. What we arraign in Mr. Glad- stone's policy is the springing of the Home-rule Question upon us before the legislation which his own great Land Acts had inaugurated had been carefully matured and had borne fruit. And what pains us most in his address to the electors of Midlothian is the total disappearance from it of that great Land Question which he had so truly discerned to be at the root of Irish evils, and the substitution in its place of a ques- tion which till now he has himself regarded as entirely subor- dinate, only because it is forced on his attention as "an old Parliamentary hand " by the extended dimensions of the Par- nellite Party. This seems to us, we confess, unworthy of so great a statesman. No man knows so well as Mr. Gladstone that his land policy in 1881 was a blow at the very root of Irish anarchy. He is perfectly well aware that the sudden and unfortunate fall in the value of agricultural stock and produce was an immense stroke of luck for Mr. Parnell, who saw the agrarian question suddenly revived at the very moment when the Franchise Bill more than doubled his following. Mr. Glad- stone's true and consistent policy would, as it seems to us, have been to amend that Land Act by making the judicial rents vary in some given proportion to the price of stock and produce, and t, facilitate purchase by even stronger means than were sug- gested in the recent Land Bill of which now he drops all mention,—and then to await the result patiently before revo- lutionising the institutions of the United Kingdom. To our great surprise and grief, the policy he has adopted is to put this new and startling revolution in the front of the battle, and to suppress entirely, so far as the electoral campaign is concerned, all reference to that deeper question his courageous treatment of which had gained for him so much enthusiasm amongst all true Liberals.
But there is another point in Mr. Gladstone's address to which we must take at least as much exception as to his presentation of the issue. He wishes to fasten upon us the nickname of " Paper Unionists," and he claims for himself and his followers the name of true Unionists. " Our opponents, gentlemen, whether Tories or Seceders, have assumed the name of Unionists. I deny their title to it. In intention, indeed, we are all Unionists alike, but the Union which they refuse to modify is, in its present shape, a paper-Union, obtained by force and fraud, and never sanctioned or accepted by the Irish nation. They
are not Unionists, but paper-Unionists. A true Union is to be tested by the sentiments of the human beings united. Tried by this criterion, we have less union between Eng- land and Ireland now than we had under the settlement of 1782." We should call a paper-Union exactly such a union as that which Mr. Gladstone proposes, which is not, indeed, a union at all. He might just as well contend that a married couple who had obtained a judicial separation, and therefore had ceased to quarrel in person, had attained at last a " true union " by that judicial separation,—a union truer than married people enjoy who continue to live together, but quarrel a good deal over their plan of life. But who would concede such a conten- tion ? Mr. Gladstone proposes not to ask for a divorce a vinculo, but for a judicial separation of Ireland and England, and so far as his election address is any guide, he will probably return to that demand, for he says not a word in it that can lead to the supposition that the concessions made at the Foreign Office in the hope of carrying the second reading, are to be incorporated in the Bill of next Session. The difference between the state of things that would be created by Mr. Gladstone's Bill and the existing situation is this,—that Mr. Gladstone's Bill is a great stride towards Separation, but has hardly any of the advantages of Separation ; while so long as we retain the present Constitution, and apply ourselves to removing the real grounds of Irish discontent, we retain at least the hope of a true Union. Of course Mr. Gladstone is right in saying that there is no true Union at present. But Mr. Gladstone's Bill, far from tending to a true Union, intro- duces a multitude of fresh and very irritating subjects of dispute which do not exist now, while it only attempts to settle one, and that, we honestly believe, not the weightiest of all. To hope for a true Union under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, seems to us to be an indulging of the wildest of dreams. To hope for it under a United Parliament which should really settle the agrarian question, is a sober and reasonable expectation.
But even if that expectation were to be disappointed, what would be the true policy then ? We think that Mr. Gladstone is hardly justified in treating Separation, towards which he proposes to make so great a stride, as utterly out of the question. If it be true that the British democracy will never revert again to sheer force to recover Ireland,—and on that point we desire to express no opinion,—Separation is not out of the question, and statesmen ought to face it. The late Sir Robert Peel, to whom Mr. Gladstone looks up with reverence, did not agree with him in preferring a double Legislature to Separation. On the contrary, he preferred Separation decidedly to a double Legis- lature. And we think we may say with confidence that he would still more have preferred Separation to Mr. Gladstone's pro- posal to create both a double Legislature and a double Adminis- tration. Here are the words which the late Sir Robert Peel used on this subject in the House of Commons on April 25th, 1834 : —" I conceal from myself none of the vast evils and dangers of Separation,—the imminent hazard of collision between the two countries, the certain diminution to each of its power, in- fluence, prosperity, and social happiness. But presuming Separation to be an inevitable consequence of Repeal, I prefer Separation now to Separation embittered by the additional animosities of a protracted intermediate struggle. Separation, too, has this advantage. Powers independent of each other have definite relations, have mutual rights prescribed by the long-settled code of the law of nations ; but Powers standing in the relation in which after Repeal England and Ireland would hereafter stand towards each other, have the limits of their respective authorities quite unsettled, and have no known arbitration to refer to for the peaceful adjustment of their differences. Whenever, therefore, the success of the Repealers shall be inevitable, I shall be very much inclined to say to these gentlemen, 'Let us part in peace ; arrange your own form of government for Ireland; establish a Republic if you please, or replace on the throne of Ireland (if Monarchy be more acceptable to you) the descendants of your ancient Kings.' " Surely these words should have some weight with Mr. Gladstone. They seem to us the words of true statesmanship. And one of the great reasons why we have wished to see this appeal to the people, is that the candidates might elicit from their constituencies whether they would not prefer actual Separation to a policy which seems to us to combine happily all the evils of Separation with all the evils of a discordant Union, and to preserve to us none of the advantages of either Union or Separation.
Finally, we must say a word on Mr. Gladstone's hint that he really expects from his policy that development of Ireland's physical resources " which experience shows to be the natural consequerce of free and orderly government." That, we must say, is sanguine beyond even the measure of Mr. Gladstone's sanguineness. He proposes a policy which instals the National League in power, and expects from it "free and orderly government." He proposes a policy which debars Great Britain from ever interfering to secure the fulfilment of contracts, and expects a fuller development of Irish resources. We know something of the probable consequences of Mr. Gladstone's policy in the comparative value of Irish securities now and a year ago. We know that Great Britain certainly is not likely to entrust her wealth to a Government which has sprung out of a no-rent agitation. And yet Ireland is expected to prosper under these new conditions. If prosperity can be secured for Ireland under Home-rule, prosperity would have been secured for Sicily if Sicily had been granted Home-rule during the palmy days of Sicilian brigandage.
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