TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. MORLEY'S FINAL VOTE OF CENSURE.
MR. MORLEY told the House of Commons on Monday night that that was "probably the last occasion on which it would be his fortune to make a motion against the coercive system of the Government in Ireland in the present Parliament." If so, Mr. Morley's final censure of the Government was certainly a very dejected, though not a very mild or sober censure. He piled up the vituperative epithets as high as ever, but his speech had no note of confidence in it, no "delight of battle." He ventured to anticipate, indeed, that the rejoicings of the Unionists would soon be brought to "a stern and prompt end" when the appeal to the constituencies should be made. But the anticipation was put forth rather in the regulation fashion of a party leader than in the eagerness of personal conviction. There was a languid and exhausted air about the whole speech. Mr. Morley could not wind himself up to the usual pitch. His indignation was forced ; his predictions had. no accent of authority ; his omissions were significant ; and his political con- science disquieted him when he glanced almost in- voluntarily at Mr. Balfour's probable retort. The truth evidently was, that he would have spared himself the unwelcome task altogether, if he could. He found himself leaning on a broken reed,—a broken Irish Party, —for encouragement. He must have been conscious that the success of his party depends now wholly on the zeal shown by the Irish priesthood and Episcopate in per- suading the people of Ireland to shake off the sway of Mr. Parnell, and to substitute that of some nominee of Mr. Gladstone. And it cannot be an inspiriting thought for Mr. Morley, considering his literary antecedents as a most contemptuous agnostic, an admirer of Voltaire, an apologist for Diderot, to find himself absolutely identified in policy with a peasant priesthood and the least learned of European Episcopates, any more than it can be inspiriting to Mr. Gladstone to find himself at the mercy of the Bishops who defeated his University Bill, and at whom he levelled the attack of his anti-Vaticanist pamphlets. Perhaps there has never been a more grotesque alliance than that between Mr. John Morley and Archbishops Walsh and Croke. And we cannot wonder, therefore, at the obvious depression with which, now that he has to fight against Mr. Parne11,—a frigid Protestant versed in state- craft such as it was not unwelcome to Mr. Morley to take counsel with,—he finds himself compelled to address all his eloquence to a party steeped on the one side in Irish Nationalism of a very narrow kind, and on the other in a peculiar vein of Roman Catholic prejudices and Of Ultra- montane sympathies. The consequence was, that in the last vote of censure which it will be his destiny, as he believes, to propose on the present Government to the present Parliament, he had to avoid carefully everything that would redound to the credit of the Parnellite section of the Nationalist Party,—to drop the eloquent complaints of the wrongs inflicted on Mr. Harrison, the " stripling " whose broken head moved him so much when first he opened out the Tipperary case ; and to confine his attention to the " brutalities " of the police in dealing with the general crowd, and the wickedness of Mr. Balfour in con- tenting himself with securing for Irish misdeeds nothing better than "substantial justice."
No wonder that Mr. Morley's last censure on the Government for its Irish policy fell utterly fiat. It cannot be agreeable to him to assail the Constabulary, on whom he has had so frequently to rely, and on whose loyalty, if he should return to power, he would have to rely again. He knows perfectly well that what be now denounces as their excesses, all Irishmen when they get into the heart of a faction-fight are alike apt to commit in the lightness of their hearts, It is no special depravity of the best dis- ciplined force in Ireland that leads them into error. Indeed, the Constabulary display this weakness in a less degree than any other body of Irish partisans. It is of the essence of the Irish genius to become excited directly a collision begins, and if it ends as the Tipperary contest ended, in only a few superficial wounds, we may all feel pretty sure that a great deal of self-restraint was exercised. Mr. Morley's indignation at the disposition to estimate the wrongs inflicted by the number of broken heads, rather than by the heinousness of the attempt to keep the people out of a public Court of Justice to which they had right of access, was clearly artificial. He knows that it was a delicate question of discretion for Colonel Caddell, whether he should admit them or shut them out. If the result of admitting them had been a violent scene in Court, Colonel Caddell would have been seriously blamed for admitting them ; and there was every reason to fear that this might have been the result. As it was not the result after Mr. Morley had got them admitted, he is exceedingly- indignant that they were not admitted sooner ; but he knows very well that the scenes outside the Court- House were not of a kind to encourage the officer responsible for the protection of the Court to throw the gates wide at once. And nothing can be less reasonable,—indeed, the exigencies of rhetoric often make an orator unreasonable, —than to assail Colonel Caddell for not foreseeing that the crowd, which was so excitable outside, would behave well when it got in. All this wrath of Mr. Morley's as to the exclusion of a noisy mob from the Court- House was mere whipped-up invective. And the in- vective against Mr. Ba]four's choice of Magistratea for the investigation was still more unreal. Mr. Morley had to admit that the conduct of the Magistrates selected, showed no evidence of partiality. He had to make a great deal of the antecedent disputes between Mr.. Shannon and the accused, but, as he is perfectly well aware, there was probably not a judicial authority in Ireland who had not been attacked by Mr. O'Brien or his paper, and who could not be said to be disqualified in the same way. It has been proved by the judgment of the one Irish Judge whom the Irish Party respect, that the conduct of the Magistrates who investigated these matters, if it erred at all, erred in leaning to the side of the accused, not to that of severity. Mr. Morley saw the awkwardness of this fact, and launched out into a tirade against the allegation that, after all, "substantial justice" had been done. "I hate that expression, substantial justice,'" said Mr. Morley, "it is a most slippery and hazardous phrase; it was always in the mouth of the Grand In- quisitor, I feel sure." Mr. Morley's internal consciousness may or may not be a safe guide as to what was always in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor ; but he will hardly say that if Chief Baron Panes had to review the judgments of the Grand Inquisitor, be would accord them the same praise that he accorded to those of the Resident Magistrates, —namely, that they had done " substantial justice." "The law of England," said Mr. Morley, "is substantial justice enough for me." No doubt it is,—perhaps for the very reason that in Ireland it did not secure justice against boycotters and campaigners at all, but left them simply unpunished. That is what we call substantial injustice for Ireland, and we are very thankful, and we think that Ireland herself at bottom is very thankful, that Mr. - Balfour secures substantial justice to Ireland, and not the very substantial injustice of an inappropriate and un- workable English law. When Mr. Morley has to wind himself up into passionate invective against a system which secures to Ireland nothing better than "substantial justice," we think we may infer with some confidence that he is at the end of his tether, and does not really know what to say. Never did a speech seem to us fuller of manufactured indignation and utterly windy invective, than the speech in which Mr. Morley drew his last indictment against the Irish Government of Mr. Balfour. These indictments, instead of growing more effective from year to year, have declined steadily in power; and in this, the last of the series, Mr. Morley must himself have been aware that he had signally failed. When quite the worst thing that he can allege is that Mr. Balfour, instead of applying an English law which has notoriously failed to do any kind of justice in Ireland, had secured at best only "substantial justice," without any of those English formalities and technicalities by which hitherto all justice has been shut out from Ireland, we think that he admits and publishes to the - world the completeness of his failure. If the English constituencies really care about the Irish issue,—and we i greatly fear that they are losing their interest n it altogether,—they will keep in mind Mr. Morley's speech on this final vote of censure, and remember that year by year, as Mr. Balfour proceeded with his administration of Ireland, Mr. Morley's censures dwindled in effectiveness, till at last they expired in a strain of empty denunciation which was really equivalent to a confession that praise would have been far easier than blame.
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