TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BLOW AT THE NATIONAL LEAGUE.
WHEN, six years ago, Mr. Gladstone, without attempting to obtain the sanction of Parliament, suppressed the Land League root and branch, and threw its leaders and organisers into prison, we, like all other Liberals, supported him in the action he had taken. We deem it now, as we deemed it then, the first duty of a Government to maintain the law. The present Ministers have, after due consideration, come to the conclusion that if they are to govern Ireland as they conceive it ought to be governed, and as Parliament has by the voice of a large majority expressly directed that it shall be governed, those branches of the Irish National League which have directly countenanced outrage and directed resistance to the law can no longer be permitted to exist. We feel, therefore, that they have as good a right to demand that all good citizens shall support them in their action, as had Mr. Gladstone's Administration in 1881. Indeed, from a democratic stand- point, they have a far stronger claim for general support. Mr. Gladstone's Government acted merely on the general right of the Executive to preserve itself, and to put down Associations formed avowedly for unlawful purposes. The present Ministry are putting in force the positive enactment of a Parliament which deliberately gave them power to suppress a particular form of illegal combination.
No doubt to the opponents of the Government this action is peculiarly unbearable. In the first place, it may possibly, they feel, end in the pacification of Ireland without Home- rale, and this they consider would be among the greatest of evils. We do not write in irony. There are plenty of men who have persuaded themselves that Home-rule is the only final cure for the ills of Ireland, and who consider that Ireland had better be kept in a state of lawless- ness and outrage, since that alone will awaken the minds of Englishmen, than be allowed to sink into the condition of security and tranquillity which would harden our hearts and make us refuse to let her go. Ireland, it is admitted, is in a very bad condition ; but the severity of the disease, it is argued, does not excuse the use of wrong remedies. To yield to the Irish demands is the right remedy. That alone will pacify Ireland and do away with the present state of lawlessness and crime. Till, however, that true remedy can be applied, it is perfectly justifiable to prevent any wrong remedy being made use of. Though men who argue like this have, we conceive, every right to object to the action of the Government, and to take all legitimate means to defeat it, they are not justified in using the language employed by the chief organ of the Opposition in the London Press. To the Daily News the policy of the Government is "a policy of deception and betrayal," the Government itself is " this iniquitous Government," and "liberty, free speech, and freedom of political combination" have been assailed in Ireland. Surely this language is utterly unworthy of any serious attempt to carry on the controversy as to the proper way to govern Ireland. The Government has to deal with the condition of the County Clare, where such occurrences take place as the murder of Head-Constable Whelehan. They find that the local branch of the League marches, headed by a band, and makes a public demonstration against a yeoman who has evicted a tenant from a piece of his estate, and holds him up to odium among his neighbours. A little time after, the denuncia- tion takes effect in a midnight expedition to murder the "social leper," which is only frustrated by the action of the police, and which ends in so furious an encounter that a life is lost. Can there be a doubt that if the Government are to be responsible for law and order in Clare, they must put down the political combinations which encourage such acts & As Mr. Dillon frankly admits, the final struggle has come between the Government and the League, and it remains to be seen which will win. Mr. Dillon, in effect, takes the ground which, as an avowed enemy of England, and as one who holds that Ireland is of right an independent nation, he has a right to take,—that is, that Ireland is in revolt, and that those privileges which belong to rebels everywhere belong to the Irish people. But if Ireland is in a position of passive revolt, a revolt only tempered by the scarcity of firearms, the Government is entitled to use the powers which are neces- sary in order to deal with rebellion. Though arguing, as we have done, that it is childish to object to the Government doing what it has been commissioned to do by Parliament, we do not desire in any way to rejoice in the suppression of the branches of the League. We would far rather, were it possible, see a condition of things under which it should not be necessary for Government to deal with any- thing but overt acts ; where no inquiry would be made into the opinions of any Association, and where nothing but open breaches of law would meet with punishment. Such a state of things can, of course, only be obtained where Government exists by consent, and where, as in America, all but a ridiculously feeble minority acquiesce in the existing institutions, social and political. If every Irish- man accepted the rule under which he finds himself living, there would be no necessity to suppress branches of the League, any more than it is necessary in America to suppress the various anarchist societies. Since, however, it happens that in the Southern Provinces of Ireland government by consent does not exist, and since the people of the United Kingdom are determined, notwithstanding, that those Southern Provinces of Ireland shall continue to be ruled by the Imperial Parliament and the Imperial Government, it is necessary to. use powers that are not wanted, nor likely to be wanted, in England. When Lord Randolph Churchill declared, in the House of Commons, that the power of the Executive was practically without limit, he no doubt did not express himself in the words that a constitutional lawyer would have chosen. Still, for all that, Lord Randolph Churchill expressed a truth which no people living under a democratic Government are likely to fail ultimately to recognise. As long as Government is something external to the people, something different from themselves, they will insist on limits to its power. When, however, they themselves become the Govern- ment, they insist on showing that they are, in truth, one with the sovereign power, by rejecting all limits to its authority. No doubt this want of limitation is one of the chief dangers of a democracy ; but it cannot for that reason be ignored. In England, an Executive Government which has the confidence of Parliament—and the fact of its existence implies this—has certainly the right to carry on its work, the primary work of all rulers,—the administration of law and order. The English people, we believe, recognise this fact sufficiently to regard the action of the Government in Ireland as perfectly legitimate. They have seen the same sort of administrative act performed with far more violence and on a far larger scale by Mr. Gladstone, without expressing indignation. They are not, therefore, likely to be frightened now by the vehemence of the Home-rule Pres1. We may, then, assume that the bulk of Englishmen will regard the suppression of the dangerous branches of the League as a painful duty which the Government were bound to perform, if in their opinion the act was made necessary by the condition of 'rebind.
For ourselves, indeed, we feel convinced that the action of the Government was not taken a day too soon, and that the condition of the Southern Provinces more than justified the suppression of an organisation which openly defied the Govern- ment and declared itself their implacable opponent. For when considering whether the Government were justified in suppressing the two hundred most active branches of the League, we must not leave out of sight what is the real nature of those Associations. People sometimes talk as if the National League branches were like " habitations " of the affected organisation which sustains the status of the late Lord Beaconsfield. As a matter of fact, there does not exist the faintest resemblance. While these are harmless, if absurd Societies, content with the mutual distribution of favours and metal badges, the branches of the National League arrogate to themselves the very functions of govern- ment. There are districts in Ireland where there has been for months no law but the law of the League. Take, for instance, the case in which a branch of the League deliberately over- rode a decision of the Law Courts in a civil matter. The Master of the Rolls had made an order for the distribution of a property under a disputed family settlement. When the order was received in the place where the property was situated,. a meeting of the local branch was called to consider it, and resolved that the decision should not be acted on. Those in, possession of the property thereupon decided that it was better to carry out the decision of the League than that of one of the Queen's Judges. By its own confession, the League in many parts of Ireland has become the Government. How long do the Opposition suppose that any Ministry could tolerate such a condition of affairs I For the Adminis- tration of a free State to tolerate a rival Government, is to break its implied oath to the people, and to deserve impeach- ment for treason.
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