THE constitutional fanaticism which insisted on count- ing the Irish
majority for Home-rule as if that were the Veto Bill, the Employers' Liability Bill, the Welsh decisive of the national question, is working out gradually its own destruction. Mr. Whitbread was put up on Monday to justify the Government iu ignoring altogether the jaded appetites of the electors. He was not con- the British maility against the Bill, and forcing it down the throats of the people of Great Britain by the unsparing use of a weapon which is adapted to destroy Parliamentary Government altogether. Yet, if the representative principle is so sacred in every portion of the United Kingdom that Ireland is entitled to a separate Legislature and a separate Administration on the strength of it, it seems a mockery of the most extravagant kind to enlarge, as Mr. Whitbread did, on the enormity of insisting that a British majority discussion the subject is not disposed of. A Bill that against the Bill, of a much less artificial kind,—indis- not only sets up a brand-new Constitution for near putably much less artificial, considering the confessed over- five millions of people, bitterly divided among themselves,. representation of Ireland in the present Parliament,—has no locus standi in the argument at all. If Mr. Gladstone were true to his fanaticism, he would be more staggered by the necessity of ignoring a British majority against his proposed recast of the Union, than he was by the arrogance of the Unionists in ignoring an Irish majority in its favour. But Mr. Gladstone strains at an Irish gnat, when he is quite ready to swallow a British camel. He is going on steadily in the direction of abolishing Parliamentary Government in Great Britain, in order that he may establish it in Ireland. By his resolution of Monday, he not only stopped discussion on the amend- the classes. He wants a dictatorship. And a dictatorship, manta of the Opposition, but stopped even voting upon sition even so much as to vote 'without discussion on amendments of which full notice had been constitu- tionally given. Mr. Gladstone gives the word, and amendments are swept away like the summer leaves before the gusty winds of last week. The superstitious con- stitutionalist who has moved. heaTventnseriadr;;esreitsf:rid"ttdeiele: free Parliaineutary utterajnetsiltui on was of the nature and all the Corres_psliti:rt- y to it is to ba set free from its Oa) ing appear ineoundEr it, it is only common fairness nless that the of 'r party to it should be equally set at liberty to moon- eider the contract. But no ; what is sauce for the goose ' account, what the r ia,raent of the United my lips, let no dog bark." Mr. Glad ' store is the oracle give Ireland a separate voice on a great issue on which he w i silences England by a mere gesture. For the one country his constitutionalismruns mad ; for the other, he can find when lie thinks it needful to stifle the voice of England in it passes a new Education Code. order that he may give full scope to the voice of. Ireland, he seems— "As happy as a lover, and attired With sudden brightness like a man inspired." tary debate, than that it should be veiled as it is now- Yet his plea that all Constitutional Government depends veiled under " an organised hypocrisy." It is a system on letting the majority ultimately have its way, has no that we should not be surprised to see any impatient and applicability to the present case. The majority might ness to the electorate of Great Britaiu, that he sent five or TOPICS OF THE DAY. six other great measures treading close upon its heels to- , -- waste the time that ought to have been kept sacred to THE NEW DICTATORSHIP. that subject alone. The last thing he wished waa to elicit a distinct and separate vote upon it. He- wished the Registration Bill, the Parish Councils Bill; Disestablishment Bill, to distract attention from the unwelcome details of Home-rule, and to stimulate tent with a huge sixteen-fold Bill big enough to occupy Parliament for two or three years without any other- legislative work at all. He took special pains to take the wind out of the sails of Parliament as regards Homo-rule, by raising half-a-dozen other great questions, and devoting much of the early part of the Session' to their preliminary stages. And then he poses as an injured Minister because after eighty nights of but breaks down an old Constitution for near thirty mil- lions more who are quite content with the Constitution they have, should, if there is any real value in Parlia- mentary discussion, have had not only eighty nights, but ii, hundred and eighty, to itself. But the truth is, that Mr. Gladstone is getting impatient of Parliamentary dis- cussion except for Ireland, where he has not yet tried it. In England it is too great a hindrance and embarrassment to his imperious will. He does not find the slow dropping of constitutional argument suit his case. He is for rushing measures whenever the masses can be trusted to overwhelm though only a very temporary one, he has for the present them. For the first time in the history of Parlia- indubitably established. The people, he thinks, are much. ment since Cromwell arbitrarily broke up the House more competent to determine who shall rule them, than of Commons, it has not been allowed to the Oppo- they are to rule themselves, and so long as he is their mouthpiece, ho is not at all distressed by their willingness. to waive that discussion which he used to regard as of the very essence of the political eclueation of the people. Forsoursclvestwee tilebretai3d4IC-Mrl'eafignajeT such seven if there had been evidence of mature considerationniii. the Home-rulers of this island the structure of the Bill, would willingly have waited some years for it without die- any irrepressible impatience. But there was the very best evidence of the complete absence of that mature consideration. Many of the most important parts of the Bill have been fundamentally revolutionised since it was. is first introduced. The finance of the Bill has been com not in this case sauce for the gander; the difference has been so sud- pletely recast, and the Ninth Clause h b - being that Mr. Gladstone favours the ie goose and has no denly altered that the Gladstonians in Hereford were sympathy at all with the gander. The wrongs of Ireland distributing only last week a completely false account have a fascination for him, and the wrongs ofEngland have none. The "pure Scotchman " only asks himself of what the Ninth Clause proposed to do. They had not what Ireland and Scotland and "gallant little lttle 'Wales " even realised that that great organic portion of the Bill think on this subject, and feels no compunction at all in had been suddenly turned topsy-turvy as well as the blotting altogether out of the political finance. Mr. Gladstone has shown us in every way he ri countrywhich merely happens to constitute the backbone of could, that his seven years' meditation, instead of maturing his plans, have only betrayed to him their insuperable the United Kingdom, desires the Pa 1' ' ' difficulties ; and yet Parliament ,is asked to forego dr Kingdom to consider. "I am Sir Oracle, rac e, and when I ope cussion on it, as if it were a measure on which gall the of the United Kingdom. He agitates for seven years to resources of statesmanship had been exhausted. It would . be fatal indeed to the political sagacity of England, if she - seized such an occasion as this for approving the final des- truction of the Parliamentary systemor it of a Dictatorial Cabinet that , ' and the substitution no reserve of constitutionalism at all. On the contrary, for passes a revolution as If that system is really preferred by the democracy, it would be far better that it should be openly adopted and professedly worked without the affectation of Parliamen- With sudden brightness like a man inspired." tary debate, than that it should be veiled as it is now- Yet his plea that all Constitutional Government depends veiled under " an organised hypocrisy." It is a system on letting the majority ultimately have its way, has no that we should not be surprised to see any impatient and applicability to the present case. The majority might somewhat ignorant democracy preferring to elaborate have had its way in due time without this tyrannical Parliamentary debates in which they took no interest, and use of the guillotine. As Mr. Goschen said, the present, the various points of which they wholly failed to under- Home-rule Bill is a gigantic compound of all sorts of big stand. But we should be both greatly astonished and measures. If, as Mr. Gladstone once declared, a whole greatly grieved to find that the democracy of Great Britain Session is not too much for the revision of the death-duties, accepted that view of its own political incapacity for dis- a very simple rule-of-three sum would show how many cussion, and of its own eagerness to rush into dangerous Sessions ought to be devoted to a revolution which is made experiments in the absence of all adequate delibe, at on. up of sixteen first-class measures at least. Yet Mr. Glad- Nobody could deny that this would. be a very great and stone would not even give it one Session, He was so anxious abrupt descent from the level of political intel i; e .ce not to present Irish Home-rule in its naked unattractive- at which, hitherto, our people have claimed to stand, and have, indeed, actually stood. And what would be worse even than that sudden decline in self-respect itself, would be the further decline in political capacity which would inevitably follow from the practice of leaving all real dis- cussion to the Cabinet, and asking Parliament only for its endorsement of the Cabinet's proposals. If the people of England once gave up the wish to see Parliament threshing out the proposals of the Ministry, they would give up their best political schooling, their one political discipline; and after that they would rapidly grow less and less competent even to choose the dictatorship to which they would have to delegate the functions hitherto discharged by Parlianientary debate. Mr. Gladstone, unless promptly disavowed by the people of this country, as we believe he soon will be, will shatter what has hitherto appeared to be his idol, the Parliamentary system, and substitute a system certainly much quicker in operation, but for that very reason infinitely less safe, infinitely more dangerous. Cabinet deliberations are deliberations by men of one party actuated by one type of party spirit. They are therefore not really sifting discussions at all. They are discussions of which the chief drift generally is to deter- mine what will be most effective in keeping up the courage of their party and reinforcing that courage by the stimulus of popular passion. No such deliberations could possibly weed out schemes dangerous to the welfare of the nation, schemes which the cairn intellect of dispassionate thinkers had shown to be f ull of peril as. well as of the glamour which so often dazzles and deceives the eyes of the people. In order that Ireland may have the opportunity of separately discussing and resolving upon matters which such represen- tatives as she now sends to Westminster are certainly very ill qualified either to discuss or to resolve upon apart from the representatives of Great Britain, Mr. Gladstone is taking step after step to deprive the English Parliament of all its independence, and the English people of the political education for which they are chiefly indebted to Parliamentary debate. He is asking us, as Mr. Chamber- lain says, to ruin the Parliament of Westminster, in order that he may the more conveniently emancipate the country which gains most by its association with England, and will lose most by being severely let alone. He is so anxious to set up a ricketty fancy Constitution of his own designing, that he does not hesitate to prosecute his pur- pose by ruthlessly applying the axe to the root of a most stately tree which has grown steadily in girth, strength, and grandeur, for more than six hundred eventful years.
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