TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DEBATE ON THE COMMISSION.
attitude of the Parnellites and the Liberals in the debate on the " Members of Parliament Allegations and Charges " Bill, appears to have but one explanation. They did not choose to oppose it, but they did choose to assume that it is intended not to discover the truth about the connection or disconnection of the Land League and of those who guided it, with acts of violence, but to make out a case against the Parnellites. Well, if that could have been shown to be the object of the Bill, they ought to have given it the most unqualified and unremitting resistance. They ought to have voted in a body against the second of the Bill, more especially as none of the con- cessions were made to them which Mr. Parnell demanded, and to Mr. Parnell's demand for which Mr. Gladstone subscribed. But while no division was taken against the second reading,not a speech delivered by any Member either of the Parnellite or of the Gladstone Party, failed to pour the most hostile fire into the Government for what was openly described by Sir William Harcourt, for instance, as their utter indifference to justice in the whole proceeding,—nay, their more than indifference, their " race for blood." Sir William Harcourt declared that the Commission was to be worked in order to bring before it " political adversaries, and so make use of the Special Commission for the sake of putting down the National League." Well, if he thought so, how base it was not to resist the second reading of the Bill by every device in his power ; yet he did not even divide against it. And it is just the same with the Parnellites. Mr. Healy declared on Tuesday night that, for his part, he preferred the acts of both Patrick Ford and Frank Byrne,—the criminal complicity of Byrne in murder having been frankly admitted by Mr. T. P. O'Connor on the previous night,—to those of the Attorney- General,—whom he spoke of as the " confederate" of the Home Secretary in the course now taken by the Government; and yet this fire-eating denouncer of a Government which is in confederation with a man described as worse than a mur- derer, tamely accepts the second reading of the Bill without the slightest opposition. One would have thought that a Government bent on a " race for blood," a Government in confederation with an Attorney-General who is worse than an organiser of dynamite outrages and an accomplice in murder, should have been arrested in its course, and defied in the act of committing these abominable acts of deliberate injustice. Nothing of the sort. Though every kind of attack on the Government was made in connection with this Bill ; though even the Judges who are to enforce it were criticised by Mr. Gladstone himself as by no means those who would have at once commanded the approval of the House, and were scoffed at by Mr. Healy ; though it was maintained in speech after speech that the Govern- ment were proposing this Bill not to discover the truth, but to sustain accusations against political opponents ; though immense pains were taken to throw personal and professional contumely (altogether irrelevantly as regards the Bill) on the Attorney-General for having stated his case against the Parnellites at all in his defence of the Times,—a course as to which he had no more choice, if he were to defend his clients effectively, than the Lord Chief Justice had as to his summing-up, or the jury as to their verdict,—though every effort was made to divert the atten- tion of the House from the leading aspects of the case in order to disparage the Government,—yet, in spite of all these virulent and often irrelevant attacks on the Govern- ment, which appeared to be made for no purpose in the world but the diminution of their majority, when it should have come to a division, there was no one who even asked for a division. The whole force of these virulent attacks had, it appeared, been used not to win votes against the Government, but to undermine the confidence of the country in a measure which no one dared openly to oppose.
To what purpose, then, had been these elaborate and singularly furious attacks on the Government ? It is not usual for ex-Prime Ministers to reflect on English Judges, appointed by his own Government, in a manner that at least betokens his doubt of their abilities. It is not common for ex-Secretaries of State to accuse their antagonists of running " a race for blood." Even Parnellite Members rarely go so far as comparing unfavourably such a man as Sir Richard Webster with dynamiters and murderers. Distinguished members of the Bar are still less accustomed to accuse such a man as the Attorney- General of professional misconduct in the management of his case. Yet all these things-have been done in the course of this debate, and all without even the excuse of a great division which it is hoped to influence. What is the explanation ? We suppose the truth to be, that the Parnellite Members, who do not, if Mr. Healy is to be their spokesman, attach any grave guilt, if any guilt at all, to the " disinterested " crimes, as they call them, which have been the boast of Patrick Ford and Frank Byrne,—Mr. Healy at least regards the Attorney-General as a much more serious offender, on the ground that he took a brief from the Times at all,—are irritated and impatient at the prospect of having all the doings of the Land. League in Ireland and America exposed before the English people, who, as they know, do attach the gravest guilt to such " disinterested " crimes, and yet, these Parnellite members, knowing that it will not do for them blankly to decline the Commission, wish to discredit it as much as they can, even if they cannot defeat it without having openly declined it. We cannot attribute any feeling of that kind to Mr. Gladstone. We are bound to believe that he really thinks the unlimited scope of the Commission likely to lead to grave injustice, though we have the greatest difficulty in making out what sort of injustice it is that he apprehends, unless he believes the Judges named, on whose com- petence for the task he deliberately cast a doubt, likely to prejudice innocent men, to dawdle through the part of the case which most seriously affects the Irish leaders, and generally to play into the hands of the enemies of Home- rule. We can scarcely believe that Mr. Gladstone actually thinks this. If men of the high standing of Mr. Justice Hannen, Mr. Justice A. L. Smith,—the most accomplished of lawyers and the most non-political of Judges, whom the Lord. Chief Justice always selects for his colleague when he can get him, so profoundly does he trust his. legal knowledge and acumen,—and Mr. Justice Day,. who is said to be a Catholic, and therefore certainly not without sympathy for the Irish popular cause, are supposed to be likely to become mere tools of the Unionist cause, all we can say is that the purest English institutions are already so deeply distrusted by our statesmen, that we only wonder that they are not openly crying out for a root-and-branch revolution. It is to us almost incredible that Mr. Gladstone should. think such a Commission as this, armed with full powers, less likely to bring to light the innocence of innocent men than a Committee of the House of Commons. That Sir William Harcourt should impute anything whatever, however blood- thirsty, to his political enemies, is nothing new. He speaks of the present Government now no more respectfully than he spoke of the Land League and the National League three years ago. But then, we do not regard Sir William Har- court's language as any exact clue to his thoughts ; it is a clue rather to his purposes ; you know from it what he wants to effect, rather than what he thinks. And when he talks of the policy of the Government being a " race for blood," we only know how eager he is in the race for power. But Mr. Gladstone does not use language in the same reckless way. When he tells us that he apprehends all sorts of evil consequences to the cause of justice from the appointment of a Commission of three non-political Judges of the highest reputation, to find out for themselves what is the truth and what the falsehood in the Times' charges against the Land League and the Parnellites, we are bound to believe that 'he seriously apprehends mischief. Yet no one has ever yet asserted that the Sheffield Commission, which had powers quite as large, and a duty certainly not so clearly defined, no persons having been accused of definite crimes at the time it was appointed, led to any injustice due to its large powers of investigation. No one has asserted that the Commission sitting to investigate the charges against the Metropolitan Board of Works has led to injustice due to its large powers of investigation. And we must say that if these fears are really entertained in the present case, they can only be entertained because the three Judges who are to constitute the Commission are held to be either intellectually or morally unfit for their work. Is that a reasonable, or even a plausible supposition? Can any- thing be imagined much more impossible, even if so wicked. an intention were in the minds of the Government, than to " manipulate,"—according to the phrase used by a leading member of the Opposition below the gangway,—Mr. Justice Hannen, Mr. Justice A. L. Smith, and Mr. Justice Day. We know that any Government that attempted such an operation would be exposed at once by the proud integrity of the Commission, and would fall before the contempt of the English people. The " manipulation " of such a Commission is beyond the art of the most artful Government, and we know no member of the Govern- ment quite so imbecile as to be at all likely to make the attempt. The truth as regards the Gladstonian Party evi- dently is, that they feel the utmost annoyance at their allies being placed in the position of a party whose sympathy with crime is sufficiently open to doubt to be the subject of investigation at all ; and yet they must be perfectly aware, when they listen to such speeches as Mr. Healy's, that Patrick Ford and Frank Byrne, and men of that stamp, are not regarded with any sort of dislike by their allies,—at all events, with any dislike at all approaching that with which the out-and-out partisans of the existing Union between Great Britain and Ireland are regarded ; and the sensitiveness of the Liberals to the discredit of such an investigation as is proposed into the conduct of their allies on the one hand, and their annoyance at the indif- ference with which that charge is received by those allies on the other hand, combine to make Mr. Gladstone and his followers simply unreasonable. Hence, we suppose, the wild hitting of the recent debate. It will, of course, be renewed with double vigour in Committee ; but the Govern- ment are now bound to go on. They cannot give up the " Members of Parliament Allegations and Charges ' Bill without discredit to themselves. The country has been taught to expect that it shall at last hear the truth on the subject of this long controversy. And whether the Unionists like it or not, whether the Parnellites like it or not, whether the Gladstonians like it or not, the Commission proposed will certainly get at the truth and bring it plainly before the country.
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