A NEW DANGER TO PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT:
WE were unable to regard, with the glee felt by some of our contemporaries, the failure of the O'Connell Centenary in Dublin. Though sympathising very little either with any of O'Connell's political aims after he had once. achieved Catholic -Emancipation, or with the work of his suc- cessors, the Home-rulers, we should have seen with satisfaction a great Irish patriot duly honoured in Dublin. Nor was it any consolation to us that it was exceedingly difficult to ap- portion fairly the discredit of the failure between the parties to whose quarrels it was apparently due. This having been our feeling in relation to the Dublin fiasco of last month, it is, of course, only with pain that we see the revival of the squabble in a fresh form,—in a proposal of the Dublin Lord Mayor M'Swiney to found an Association on the cry of " Faith and Fatherland," which has, of course, been met by the Home- rulers with most violent invective, as an attempt to undermine the Home-rule movement by raising jealousies between the Catholic and Protestant supporters of that movement. The- proposal seems to us unwise, and much more likely to end in proving that the Home-rulers have the priests behind them, than in proving that the Roman Catholic party can gain the fall command of the situation. But little, as we approve the proposal, we are still less able to sym- pathise with the virulent and hardly articulate passion with which it has been received by the Irish National Press. To speak of Mr. M'Swiuey's advisers as men " so despicable and so wicked, as to dream pf converting an occasion so great, so grand, so solemn as the O'Connell Centenary, into £he miserable opportunity of gratifying petty personal spites "or faction-feuds," may be merely Irish for saying that these gentle- men are ill-advised men. But the redundant wrath expressed looks a little like uneasiness and fear, as well as disapprobation. We suspect that there is but little real ground for that fear._ The Irish priests are almost all Home-rulers, and therefore we hardly suppose that they will approve a policy which deprives them of the valuable aid of their Protestant allies. But whether there is real ground for the anger expressed or not,. it is certain that these Billingsgate invectives on either side lower Irish political influence, and indefinitely postpone the day- of political regeneration. Our own fear is rather that this little succession of squabbles between the friends of the Irish hierarchy and the Home- rulers may serve, not indeed to raise the dignity of either party,. but to give new confidence to the unpractical and dangerous Home-rule party, in the hold its cry has obtained on the Irish peasantry. Nothing has been done so likely to bring out the real power of the Home-rulers, and so to make them respect- able, as the course of action throughout which, whoever may have secretly pulled the strings, Lord Mayor M'Swiney has been the visible operator. Up to the epoch of the O'Connell Centenary, there was a comfortable notion current amongst English politicians that the Home-rulers, powerful as they zniglit appear at Westminster, were subject to the danger of sudden collapse at home, and that the limits of their political action were practically bounded by the Roman Catholic in- stincts of the people. Evidence of a struggle against this mastery was occasionally seen, and with complacency, for it was thought by English cynics that in the interests of Ireland, Home-rulers and political priests could not be better employed than in countermining each other. But however the issue of the struggle might vary on minor points, it was a familiar article of political faith that the dominant power in Ireland rested with the Catholic Church, and that though the Rome-rulers might be noisy, they could do nothing against the real wishes of the Roman Catholics. If the Lord Mayor of Dublin had earnestly desired to inspire the world with a deep sense of the power of the Home-rule party, he could not Dave done better than to propose the establishment of an "O'Connell National Committee," the motto of which should be "Faith and Fatherland." The meaning of this proposal Las been taken up quickly enough in Ireland. It is the gauntlet which the Church—for it is difficult, in the absence of repudiation, to regard Mr. M'Swiney as acting in this matter otherwise than as a representative of the Church party—has thrown down to the soi-disant leaders of the people, challenging them to an open combat for political predominance in Ireland. The cartel has been promptly accepted, and so eager are the Home-rulers for the fray, that their chief anxiety appears to be lest the Lord Mayor, cowed by the outburst his circular has brought about his ears, shall withdraw the document, and that there will be no fight after all. An insidious step has been taken to push him into battle, by the formal declaration of the Nation that withdrawal from the proposal to establish the " Committee " will be regarded as an admission of utter defeat. Thus the hostile forces are being rallied, and in the meantime we have nothing to do but to look on and watch the issue of the quarrel. At present, it must be admitted that the odds are in favour of the Home-rulers. They hold them- selves the victors in the struggle of the O'Connell Centenary, and, moreover, they appear to have logically the better same, for whilst they do not deny the church-membership of O'Connell, and are prepared to pay due honour to that side of his character, the Lord Mayor, like the Archbishop of Cashel, will have it that O'Connell was so far " above all a good Churchman," that any other features of his life, including his zeal for Fatherland, are scarcely worth mentioning. Indeed, the battle-ground is from all points of view so ill-chosen that it gives rise to the only doubt which exists that the Lord Mayor is not acting on his own account, but is playing the game of a hierarchy that has been usually famous for its skill in political strategy.
If the Nationalists win the day, the victory will be one the significance of which it would be difficult to over-estimate. For the first time since the birth of the party which in a happy hour for its cause was endowed with the name of "Home-rule," it finds itself directly and undisguisedly opposed to the influence which has hitherto dominated Irish political life. We shall see, amongst other things, how far the Irish priesthood are in- clined to place Faith above Fatherland, and whether, when Home- rale and episcopal influence pull them in contrary directions,
they will placatly follow the latter. On this point we suspect new and instructive lights may be forthcoming, and it may startle the Church to find how comparatively feeble is its influence when its opponents have a popular cry and can conjure with appeals to patriotism. The possible triumph of the Home-rulers is a matter, too, which is worth re- flecting upon in its relation to our Parliamentary Government. Owing to certain peculiarities on the part of individuals among the Home-rule members of the House of Commons, the party has not received that serious attention which its numerical weight deserves. Naturally, it appears impossible to suppose that such men as Mr. Biggar or Major O'Gorman could have any serious influence upon the destinies of the British Empire. But they are units of a party of which we may count in " Dod " fifty- seven declared and pledged members. It is claimed by those who profess to have an intimate- acquaintance with Irish constitu- encies, that at the next general election this number will be raised beyond seventy ; and it is promised that with longer time for preparation, and benefiting by past experience, the 'Lew members, without being men who Shall compel the ad- miration of the House, shall at least be gentlemen who may earn its common respect. It is not necessary for our purpose to speculate on the fulfilment or failure of this promise. It will suffice to take Irish Members as they now stand on the roll of Parliament, and to suppose that of the fifty-seven, a compact body of fifty might be depended upon to follow their leader, and to vote as he bids them in the name of Ireland. In the present state of parties in the House of Commons, an erratic and independent force of fifty votes could not do any serious injury. But it is not difficult to conceive a crisis when Liberals and Conservatives shall be more evenly balanced, and wherein fifty members prepared to vote as one man would become the absolute arbiters of the cause at issue. We do not wrong the Home-rule Members, or go beyond their own declarations, when we surmise that if the question was an English one, such as occasionally gives rise to pitched battles between the Government of the day and the Opposition, they would not be greatly hampered by con- siderations of its intrinsic merits, but would vote with a single eye to the advancement of their own cause. At such a crisis the Ministry might be incorruptible and the Opposition scorn- ful of the splendid bribe. But at best, it does not appear to be a desirable thing that the issue of a question, possibly of -im- perial interest, should be at the mercy of a section of members who will deal with it from the stand-point of the advance- ment of the cause of Home-rule for Ireland. We heard quite enough in the last Parliament of the party value of the Irish vote, Irish Members being then fairly enough divided between Liberals and Conservatives, with but a sprinkling of Nationalists. In the present Parliament, whilst the ranks of the Home rulers have suddenly been swelled till they count nearly threescore, the accident of a rarely precedented Conservative majority has deprived them of that sort of absolute power which, under another and more limited phase, we see wielded by the minority in a three-cornered constituency. But Ministerial majorities have a way of dwindling, and even before the present Parliament is dissolved, we may see something of the action of what we venture to regard as a serious danger to the working of our Parliamentary machinery. For the attain- ment of that end, it may presently appear that Lord Mayor M'Swiney, by consolidating and strengthening the Home-rule party, has made himself an unconscious and unhappy instrument.
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