THE NEW SOMERSAULT IN IRISH POLICY.
MR. G-LADSTONE has completely transformed his Bill. From being a Home-rule Bill for Ireland, it has now become a.Bill for preparing the way for Home- rule in Ireland six years hence. In the meantime, the United Kingdom is both to impose and to collect the great majority of the Irish taxes, with very inadequate means for the latter object, since an Irish Executive is to be created which will be in a position to place as many difficulties in the way of the collection as it may seem good to that Executive to invent. No wonder that Mr. John Redmond is wroth, and that the Parnellites appeal to their American allies to help them in their resistance to this half-and-half measure. If between 1894 and 1900 the Irish Executive is to be controlled by sincere allies of the British Government, it may prove at the end of the six years that Great Britain still holds the reins so firmly, that the Irish Party will have no chance under an Imperial Government which knows not Mr. Gladstone, of wresting the financial control of the country out of its hands. If, on the contrary, the Irish Executive is to be controlled in the meantime by Parnellites in disguise, even though they call themselves Anti-Parnel- lites, the collision may take place so soon between the British and the Irish Governments, as to explode every possibility of shading-off the British into the Irish rule. It is not easy to imagine a more effectual provision for precipitating the quarrel which is quite certain to come of this astound- ing Bill, should it ever pass, than the provision that the British G-overmient shall be responsible for collecting the Irish revenue, while tbe Irish Government shall have it in its power either to facilitate or to embarrass that collection of revenue at its own discretion. Of course, the logical corollary to this new absurdity is the corollary of which Sir John Lubbock has given notice,—to delay for the next six years the creation of a separate Irish Executive of any kind. If that were done, we should simply go on govern- ing Ireland as we do now, though in the presence of a legislative debating society in Dublin, whose decrees we should respect whenever they did not interfere with our responsibilities, and ignore whenever they did interfere with those respq,nsibilities. But against this corollary, of course, the whole Irish Home-rule Party would rise en masse; they would say, and say justly enough, that this would be not even keeping the word of promise to the ear, and that it would be a most monstrous breaking of it to the hope. Mr. Gladstone, if he accepted Sir John Lub- bock's proposal,—which of course he would never think of doing,—would lose his majority altogether, and be compelled to dissolve or resign. But that alternative is out of the question. He will strenuously resist Sir John Lubbock's amendment, and insist on the most preposterous com- promise which even the ingenuity of Gladstonian revo- lutionaries has yet conceived. He will declare that the Imperial Government is to go on bearing both the expense. and the responsibility of collecting a revenue which it cannot possibly collect adequately without the hearty co-operation of the Irish Executive, while that Irish Executive is to be given for six years the fullest power of interfering with our work. This must be the beginning of the end. If the new Irish Executive cordially .supports the Imperial Government, the Par- nellites will have the wind filling their sails at once. They will say that Irish Home-rule is a farce which, at the end of six years, will be seen to be a farce, since Mr. Gladstone will no longer be at the helm to prevent the disastrous collapse of their hopes. If, on the contrary, the Irish Executive show their resolve to BA the Imperial Government at defiance, the whole isli Constitution will come crashing about our ears before it has been in nominal operation for a single year. It is not to be supposed for an instant that even a Glad stonian Government would permit the Irish Executive to mock us by first interfering with our responsible duties as collectors of the Irish revenue, and then demanding of us the two-thirds of that pound of flesh which they had de- liberately rendered it impossible for us to obtain. This is the big new blot on a measure which is already so blotted all over as to seem a measure drafted on blotting- paper. It has been a mistake, we think, in the Unionist journals to dwell so much as they have done on the financial details of the new proposals. Though these are absurd enough, they are not nearly so absurd as the arrangement for leaving the collection of the revenue in Imperial hands, and yet establishing an Irish Executive controlling the Irish Civil Service, the only administrative medium by which that duty can be discharged. But it is impossible to ignore altogether the wonderful financial proposals themselves. At first, at all events, Irishmen are to pay towards the common expenses of the United Govern- ment hardly above one-sixth of what Englishmen and Scotchmen are to pay,—say, 6s. 8d. a head, instead of 36s. a head. It will be said, of course, that as thern expense of the Constabulary force is diminished, that proportion will increase; and that when it is extin- guished, it will be materially greater. So far as we can judge, it may perhaps be increased to as much as the proportion between 6s. 8d. and 35s. 6d. when we cease to pay anything towards the Irish Constabulary ; but that will be all. In other words, even then, and even if the Irish revenue keeps up at its present level,—which is most improbable,—every inhabitant of Great Britain will con- tribute considerably more than five Irishmen towards the common expenses of the United Kingdom. And that is not all. If the Irish revenue falls in consequence of Home- rule, as it certainly will do, we shall receive so much the less, for the Irish people are no longer to pay in a fixed proportion to what they get in the way of protection and advantage, but only in proportion to what they can manage to raise for their own revenue. If their revenue falls greatly, as we are only to get the third of that revenue, their contribution will fall greatly, and we shall have to make up the difference. In other words, every inhabitant of Great Britain, instead of paying more than five times as much as the Irishman towards common expenses, may very well have to pay six or seven times as much before the half of the proposed term of six years has expired, in order to secure the safety and efficiency of the United Kingdom.
A more grotesque arrangement can hardly be imagined. We are positively required to pay, and to pay liberally, for a policy which will be fruitful of more, and far more dangerous, quarrels than anything in the history of the last century can possibly parallel. Five Irishmen are to pay less than one Englishman for the next six years, and we are to indulge ourselves in visions that when the six years come to an end, we may so revise the bar- gain as to get more reasonable terms. Probably we shall get more reasonable terms, but not till after a great and bitter breach with Ireland, which will leave a terrible legacy of new resentments, jealousies, and fears. Any more hopeless provision for a "Union of Hearts" it is impossible to conceive. The Irish Members declare themselves utterly dissatisfied. The Parnellites evidently regard the postponement of financial self-government as a disguised treachery. The Anti-Parnellites are convinced that, in spite of the extraordinarily petty burden laid on Irish shoulders for the common expenses of the United Kingdom, they are going to lose more pecuniarily by the new arrangements than they can possibly afford to lose ; and there we fully agree with them. The people of Great Britain will not only think, but know, that they are being heavily taxed to diminish the strain put upon they by a constitutional scheme in which Englishmen have no sort of confidence. And yet these are the financial preparations for smoothing and diminishing the friction which all the other clauses of the Bill are accumulating upon the cog- wheels of one of the clumsiest pieces of federal machinery which it ever entered into the mind of man to devise.
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