MR. DILLON'S THREAT.
MR. DILLON'S speech on Tuesday night should be dis- tributed far and wide amongst those constituencies which are disposed to adopt the Parnellite cause. Mr. Dillon is a dangerous friend for Liberal politicians. One of the most accomplished and earnest of the Irish partisans, with an air and an authority that carry influence even on questions where Mr. Parnell's colder judgment carries none, he can afford sometimes to defy his leader, and never fails to sound the praises of that "Plan of Campaign" which Mr. Parnell, with his more politic mind, has been shrewd enough to depreciate and repudiate. But that is just why Mr. Dillon is so dangerous when the object is, as, of course, it now is, not to foster Irish loyalty, but to remove the sturdy scruples of English electors. Mr. Dillon has no sym- pathy with these sturdy scruples. He thinks it a far nobler course to win Irish independence by breaking deliberate engagements on a large scale, even though they might easily be kept, than to forfeit an independence which can only be won by such means. Mr. Dillon boasted how successful the Land League and National League had been in running down the price of land. in Ireland, and he did not hesitate to give reiterated warning to the English taxpayer that if the additional £5,000,000 of advances necessary to carry out the purchase system under Lord. Ashbourne's Act for another two years or so should be authorised, the Irish Party would. very probably find it necessary to direct that the instalments on the new peasant purchases are not to be paid. It would be just as easy, he reminded. Parliament,—indeed, he quoted Mr. Chamberlain to the same effect,—to raise the cry of " no instalments," as to raise the cry of " no rent." But what made the difference between Mr. Chamberlain's warning and Mr. Dillon's was this, that while Mr. Cham- berlain warned the English taxpayer of the danger of Irish repudiation as an event the malignant conse- quences of which every one would regret, Mr. Dillon warned the English taxpayer that such an event might very well result from the deliberate counsel of himself and his friends. True, he himself had approved the Ashbourne Act when it was first passed by a Tory Government which promised not to renew the Crimes Act. But it was one thing to offer a scheme of purchase to a peasantry at liberty to coerce their landlords by an illegal " Plan of Campaign," and quite another to offer the same scheme to a peasantry who might be punished. and receive sentences of several months' imprisonment for adopting the " Plan of Campaign." Mr. Dillon thinks that with illegal coercion at high pressure against the landlords, it may be very fair to let the peasants buy their land for the most that the landlords can, under such a regime, hope to obtain ; but that with legal coercion of the most moderate kind. to repress intimidation of this sort, it would be impossible to sanction any sort of purchase scheme without, as Mr. O'Brien terms it, " shovelling gold" to which they have no right, into the pockets of the landlords. No one could have put the case with more impressive and more imprudent frankness to the British electors than Mr. Dillon :—" He would be false," he said, "to the people of Ireland and the people of England, who had trusted in the honour of his party, if he did not oppose the Bill. He believed that they had as large a number of people in England who trusted in their honour as honourable gentlemen on the Ministerial benches had, and he should. be false to the people of England if he did not warn them that their money was seriously in danger. He felt it his duty on the part of the people of Ireland. to inform the people of England that the time might come when the Nationalist Party might seize upon this weapon and use it against them." And again :—" It was perfectly true that by agitation they had succeeded in pulling down the price of Irish land to something like a reasonable level. It was true that by years of toil they had freed the Irish tenant from the terrorism that had made him little better than a bond slave, and to some extent they had elevated him into the position of a man making a bargain with an equal. The business to which the Government set themselves was to bring back the Irish tenant to the condition in which he was found in 1879 and 1880, and he was held down, bound hand and foot, by the Coercion Act. He protested against cruel, mean, and dastardly conduct on the part of the Government in Ireland. He had no objection that the land should pass back to the people who for so many years had been despoiled of the fruit of their own toil. He had struggled and run great risk in striving for an object which he was denounced for endeavouring to obstruct ; he was prepared to run further risk in standing by the people ; he was not willing, while they were bound. down and trampled upon by armed. agents, that they should purchase their land ; but he was willing that, as free agents, they should be able to make free bargains. These were the reasons why he felt called upon to vote against this par- ticular measure. He had no objection to the abstract principle of land-purchase; indeed, he had always advo- cated it. He had always held, as the hon. Member for Cork had held, that the people of Ireland had got to fight for their land or to pay for it. He believed they were not able to fight for it ; and it was cheaper in the end to pay for it. Because the effect of coercion had been artificially to raise the price of land, and because liberty did not exist in Ireland under the present regime to enable tenants to make free bargains, he should oppose this Bill." In other words, if after eight years of pro-tenant legisla- tion, the landlords are to be allowed to keep the tenants to their spontaneous engagements, those engagements ought not to be sanctioned. At least, the leaders of the Irish Party should hold themselves quite free to advise the deliberate repudiation of their engagements so soon as the critical moment comes when the repudiation would involve the landlords in the most absolute ruin. Nothing can be more objectionable, in Mr. Dillon's mind, than to enforce the law against a tenant, unless illegal agencies which counteract the due working of that law be first allowed full swing. He is good enough not to object to a renewal of the advances under the Ashbourne Act, on condition that illegal methods, like the " Plan of Campaign," may be set in motion to beat down the landlords and to stimulate the tenants to combine. But if these advances are to be renewed without a repeal of. the law which renders these illegal practices dangerous, why then it may probably become necessary for him and his friends to give the word. of command. to the tenants who have agreed to buy their holdings, to desist from paying the in- stalments agreed upon. And as that would. involve the English taxpayer in a deficit, Mr. Dillon very candidly warns him of his danger, and suggests to him to have nothing to do with a scheme of purchase for which eventually he may have to pay out of his own pocket.
This warning of Mr. Dillon's is exceedingly frank, but not exceedingly politic. The British elector will not admire the character of the man who gives him these very cynical warnings. The British elector will open his eyes very wide when he is told that it is not fair to insist on an Irish peasant keeping an agreement into which he voluntarily enters, unless he is aided by an illegal Association to contract that engage- ment on terms that are exceptionally favourable to himself. That is exactly like saying that an English shop- keeper may properly be compelled to pay his debts so long as there is no power in the State to put down the smuggling by which he gets his goods at a price far below the minimum which he would have to pay if he satisfied the proper claims of the Exciseman ; but that if once you are to enforce the law against the smugglers, you must treat British shopkeepers as an oppressed class whose engagements it may be a perfectly right policy for them to combine in repudiating. That is a position which we do not think that the British elector will be at all disposed to approve. He is not a sensitive person, but he likes the commonplace sort of honesty. And he will not see the common honesty of encouraging one class, and one class only, to ignore its legal debts, unless those debts have been endorsed by the wholly illegal Association which has been organised under the " Plan of Campaign." What Mr. Dillon proposes comes to this, that after the unjust steward, in the shape of the organisation created under the " Plan of Campaign," has revised the rents of the various tenants, by telling one to take his bill, and sit down quickly and write eighty instead of a hundred, while another has been told to take his bill, and sit down quickly and write sixty for a hundred, the tenants may fairly be left to the mercy of the various Courts to enforce payment of their debts on this diminished scale ; but that until the unjust steward has gone through this process of arbitrary reduction, it would be the greatest oppression to give the debtors up to justice. That is not the sort of contention which will endear the Irish Party to the English electors. And the sooner the English electors understand what is intended by Mr. Dillon, the sooner they will turn against his doctrines. On the whole, they will not like being told that they stand to lose a good bit of money by the policy of a party which contemplates advising its followers not to pay their just debts, unless those debts have first been reduced by their own partisans to such dwindled dimensions as they themselves approve.
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