LORD RANDOLPH versus MR. FORSTER.
"Frit , hark, I hear the strain of strutting Chanticleer!"
says Ariel, in the Tempest ; and the ears of the. canny Scots who listened to Lord Randolph Churchill's speech of Thursday on Ireland must have• been assailed by very similar music. Every sentence in that speech has a, strut in it, every climax is a crow. But the remarkable feature of the speech is. that its best, part consists of a spoiled. edition of Mr. Leatham's recent speech at Huddersfield, on the inviolability of the Union ; while it concludes with a shrill denunciation of the Liberals for not being guided by Lord Hartiaigton's, Mr. Forster's, and Mr. Goschen's view of the Irish question, though the fact is that Mr. Forster, whose experience of Ireland is really large, has supported with all the great weight of his authority the very policy for Ireland which Lord Randolph Churchill describes as so evil, that it would, in his opinion, be better even to return to power a Tory Govern- ment " as wicked and as stupid as their foes declare them to be," than to give a renewed lease of power to the present Adminis- tration.
Let us deal with the part purloined from Mr. Leathern, and spoiled in the purloining, first. Mr. Leatham, as our readers will remember—for we called their special attention to his speech—made the following declaration on the Irish question, on October 23rd. Lord Randolph Churchill gives us a revised version of that speech, but he deliberately spoils it of its weight in the revising :—
" We must persist in our policy of absolute and unfaltering jastice ; but, on the other hand, there must be no trifling about the mainten-
ance of the Union
Sincerely as I am attached to the Liberal party, and warm as is my allegiance to those who lead it, I would. renounce both, rather than admit that upon this supreme and cardinal question it was possible to give way. The country which begins to parley with its own dissolution is lost. The obligation to maintain. the body politic is vital; it is this which made the Americans of the. North struggle to the death in order to maintain the Union, and the same obligation compels us. To maintain their great America.whole and indivisible, the Americans of the North changed for a time their whole nature. God grant that it may never be necessary for us to change ourselves. A nation of nnmartial shopkeepers and of patient farmers became at once the most resolute, the sternest, and perhaps the fiercest amongst men. They flung economy to the winds ; they turned their backs upon prosperity ; steadfastly they looked death in the face. Is it nothing—a sentiment which is so great that it should so seize upon a whole people and change and transform them at its pleasure ? The whole world trembled with the shook and shuddered at the carnage. But they saved their country. And so, if the worst comes to the worst, we can save ourselves."
Now, observe how Lord Randolph treats that masculine and statesmanlike passage in his shrill parody :-
"In this difficulty learn a lesson from the United States, which possess the most purely democratic Government the world has ever seen. It is generally supposed that the War of the Secession was caused by the question of slavery. This is a great error. Slavery had little to do with the war—certainly not more than the-Irish Famine had to do with the repeal of the Corn Laws. The cause.ot the war—that long and bloody war—was the demand put forward by the South for what were called State rights.' Now, 'State rights' were very plausible. They merely meant that Virginia wanted one sort of government, Carolina another, and Texas a third ; that whet' was suited to other States was not suited to them ; and that Virginia, Carolina, and Texas should be governed according to Virginian, Carob
liaise, and Texan ideas What did the Northern States do, with these demands ? Did they tamperwith them, palter with thorn, yield to them little by little ? Not they; they knew that 'State rights' were death to the Union ; they knew that the whole future of North America hung upon the maintenance of the Union ; they said 'No,' shortly and simply, and they fought. Nor did they shrink from any sacrifice. If there was a people on the face of the earth who loathed war, it was the citizens of the Northern States. They carried on a bloody war for four years. If there was a people on the face of the earth who dreaded a large standing army, it was thee citizens of the Northern States. For more than five years they maintained a military force of over half.a-million of men. If there was a people on the face of the earth who had a horror of debt, public or private, it was the citizens of the Northern States. They incurred a debt of seven hundred millions sterling, and depreciated their currency 70 per cent. If there was a people on the face of the earth who loved and worshipped their Constitution, with all its rights and liberties, it was the citizens of the Northern States. For. four years and more they suspended that Constitution, and placed them. selves under the dictatorship of one man. So they went on ; they fought for four years ; they fought desperately, bloodily ; 250,-000 men lost their lives in the fight ; innumerable towns, and villages, and homesteads blazed and were destroyed ; wealth, property, credit went down and vanished. Still they fought, and at last they won. State rights' were conquered, and the Union emerged trium- phant from that awful four years' battle. And who will say now, comparing the United States of 1860 with the United States of 1880, who will dare to say that the citizens of the Northern States were not right, were not justified, were not rewarded ?"
Now, Lord Randolph Churchill may be excused for being very ignorant about the American Civil War. He was not so ola, even when it concluded, as Mr. Jefferson Brick, the war corre- spondent in Martin Chuzzlewit, whose style he sometimes emulates, and certainly knew even leas of the United States than that worthy. But he should not lug into his speeches statements of facts on which he happens to be completely ignorant, and rear a great superstructure on them. No- thing can be more ridiculously absurd than to say that the South fought for State rights, and the North against them. Mr. Lincoln was absolutely opposed to any interference with State rights. If the South had stuck to their State rights alone, the North would not have moved a finger against. them for another quarter of a century, even though the whites had clung to slavery in every Southern State. But the South- was not content with State rights. It wanted to condi- tion for the free extension of slavery, and to insist that slavery should be as fully tolerated, and that slaves should be as easily recovered by their owners, in the Free States as in the South. Rather than concede that, the North fought, not against State rights, which the Southerners had to the full, and have had restored to them again for many years back, but against the right of the South to dominate the whole Union with their policy of slavery. Rather than concede that, the North fought,—fought on behalf of the Constitution,—and though they extinguished slavery as an incident of the war, it was because it had been notorious that it was slavery which had prompted the aggres- sion of the South, and that till that malignant sting was extracted, the South would never respect the conditions of the Union. Well, what bearing has all this on the Irish question ? A very clear bearing, but one absolutely fatal to Lord Randolph Churchill's analogy. Mr. Leatham said, 'give Ireland absolutely the same rights under the Constitution as England, as the South had the same rights under the Constitution as the North ; but then fight, rather than permit her to violate the Union, of which equality of treatment is the reasonable con- dition.' Lord Randolph says, 'Deny Ireland the same rights under the Constitution as England, and then fight to prevent her gaining the same rights ;' and he probably thinks that he is saying what Mr. Leatham said, in a better form. He is really advocating the one injustice which would make the en- forcement of the authority of the Empire unreasonable, and unjust. And yet he mimics the firm and patriotic language of the man who had insisted first on treating Ireland as we treat ourselves, and, only on that condition, on refusing to Ireland a liberty which we would not accord to any portion of Great Britain.
But Lord Randolph appeals to the authority of Mr. Forster, against whom, as he declares, the Liberal Cabinet "conspired" and ejected him from their ranks. Mr. Forster is the one un- answerable witness on our side. In the masterly speech at Bradford, which we criticised at length last week, Mr. Forster scouted the idea that we could afford to insist on the Union, if we did not fulfil in spirit the condition that Ireland should be treated in that Union like any other integral portion of the United Kingdom. If any man understands the evil lurking in Mr. Parnell's movement, it is Mr. Forster. If any one knows what the mischief would be of increasing materially Mr. Parnell's Parliamentary strength, it is Mr. Forster. Yet "I shall be told," says Mr. Forster, "' You will increase the number of Home-rulers, and Home-rule will be passed.' Well, Home-rule will be passed when the majority of the Members of the Imperial Parliament think it ought to be agreed to. But did the members for Virginia and the members for Louisiana force the disunion of the American Union? The Members for the various parts of Ireland will not be able to force Home-rule against the convictions of the rest of their fellow-countrymen What, after all, is the real and greatest argument against separation ? It is that we believe it to be to the interest of both islands that they should be one country. How can we treat them as one country, unless we treat them with equality on such a question as this • of the franchise ? How can we call them one country, if we should declare that the Irish franchise should be partial and .artificial, should be so framed as to exclude the masses from participation, and that the English and Scotch franchises should be—as I trust they will be—general and impartial, and based upon the grand, great principle of hearthstone suffrage ? " What Lord Randolph Churchill cries out for is that we should fight to the death to keep Ireland in the clutches of a Power which absolutely refuses to give her that equality to which, under the Act of Union, she is entitled.
Lord Randolph may, perhaps, say that he protested most strongly against the idea of suspending the Parliamentary rights of Ireland. No doubt, he did. But though he pro- tested against suspending the Parliamentary rights which Ireland already has, he protested also most strongly against conceding anything more to Ireland, even though the conces- sion demanded is the concession of something already enjoyed by England,—like household suffrage in the boroughs,--and he proposed, by way of set-off, to bribe Ireland, as much as the
Government can be persuaded to bribe her, with money grants. In other words, though Lord Randolph would not incur the scandal of establishing a despotism in Ireland, he would
refuse her equality in one breath, offer her bribes with the nest, and threaten her with military conquest with the third
if she did not accept the inequality and console herself with the bribes. A baser Irish policy we can hardly conceive. And for our own parts, we doubt whether it will be acceptable to any one, Tory, Liberal, or Radical, compounded as it seems to be of the most ignoble elements of all those creeds. Lord Randolph Churchill has crowed his loudest in Edinburgh ; but now the din is over, Midlothian will calmly return to the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster, with a sense of relief that the Tory accuser has found nothing better to say against it than was contained in this shrill and ignorant speech.
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