TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. FORSTER'S PROPOSAL.
MR. FORSTER'S speech on Monday night was admitted by both friends and foes to have been a very powerful speech ;—his friends holding that his enthusiasm was excited by the desire to restore order in Ireland, his foes that it was stirred by the satisfaction he felt in curbing Irish liberty. No political historian who has the least regard for truth will lend any credence to the latter accusation. Mr. Forster's earliest great experience in public life was acquired in trying to relieve the miseries of the Irish famine. Since he became a states- man, he has never distinguished himself more than by his resolve to secure justice for the oppressed races, as, for instance, in relation to Governor Eyre's violent proceedings with the negroes of Jamaica. There is no doubt in the world that he sympathises as deeply with the Irish as any living Englishman, nor that he feels for all who are oppressed, or who are liable to oppression, as much as any living Englishman. It was, we be- lieve, on this account that he spoke out with so much force and
courage. He regards the victims of the Land League as the oppressed, and its agents as the oppressors. Therefore, he wishes to " strike terror into " the ruffianly Land-league police, as they have struck terror into peaceable Irishmen who will not combine against the landlords. The Irish party,—who, like the reputed Jesuits,think little of unscrupulous means,so long as these means answer the end for which they strive, and who consider that to strike terror into the landlords is a truly patriotic work,—of course resent this view. If they said what they think, they would avow that " carding " tenants who pay their rent, firing shots into the houses of people who will not join the League, and even mutilating the cattle of recalcitrant farmers, is, at the worst, the result of an amiable excess of zeal, and is not to be compared in iniquity with disloyalty to the Land League. Of course, between people who hold views so diametrically opposite, there is no common basis of comparison, Mr. Forster, no doubt, regards a land reform as highly desirable, but not in the least as so desirable as to excuse secret societies and the cruel tyranny of a band of Ribbonmen.. The Irish party, on the other hand, regard it as a great triumph that by this or any other agency, however odious, the Irish question is brought before the world with a force and emphasis that brook no delay, And in their hearts they extenuate, as patriotic, even crimes, and base crimes too, that have brought about this result. The Irish party and Mr. Forster differ in this,—that Mr. Forster thinks moral offences abominable, even though they tend to secure a legitimate social and political end, and the leaders of the Land League do not. They condemn faintly with their lips what in their hearts they cannot affect to regret.
In this matter at least, Mr. Forster is right. Even granting that the lawlessness of the Land Leaguers secures their end, —the land reform which Ireland needs,—it will do so at a fearful price. Irishmen will long remember the tyranny to which the conspirators condemned them ; and while they re- member it, there will be no growth of mutual confidence and trust in Ireland. They will always be fearing that the same machinery will spring up again, and be put to new purposes. What is gained by such bad means will be enjoyed under all the reserves due to the fear of seeing those bad means em- ployed again. But though Mr. Forster is right in denouncing with so much force and courage the agents of this tyranny, he is making a serious mistake in not weaning all honest Irish- men from their half-sympathy with the Land League, by show- ing how much the Government feels the evils at which the Land League is aimed, and how resolved it is to remove them. And if he has gone further than it was needful to go, in his proposals for restraining liberty,—a point on which we have
an opinion of our own, though not perhaps an opinion which can claim such authority as that of the Government,—he has made another, though a less serious, mistake. We call this last mistake the less serious of the two, because we hold it oven more important to assure all true Irish patriots that they will gain their end by nobler methods than those of the Land League, than even to prevent the temporary arrest of a few innocent men.
That Mr. Forster made out his case for a large strengthen- ing of the powers of the Executive is not open to reasonable doubt. When of 1,158 agrarian offences committed,—without counting threatening letters,—only 182 result in the apprehen- sion of any supposed offender at all, while in relation to 2,657 non-agrarian offences, there are 1,255 apprehensions, it is obvious enough that agrarian crime has an artificial shelter of its own which ought to be taken away. And when we know what cruelties these offences involve,—the mutilation of animals, the- bullying and "carding" of men who incur this terrorism only by discharging moral obligations,—the burning of pro- perty,—the firing into houses with a view to keep their owners• under the constant fear of assassination,—it is not to be denied that action, and strong action, is called for. But though this cannot be denied, it is a very different question how muck power Mr. Forster should have asked for, for it not unfrequently happens that taking too much weakens the Executive, as well as startles and paralyses the people, instead of strengthening both. Mr. Forster, perhaps, hardly appreciates, what many of his predecessors could explain to him, the terrible and almost intolerable responsibility of ordering the arrest of persons of whom he knows nothing on the advice of persons of whom he knows the next thing to nothing,—his knowledge being limited to their official position, with, perhaps, a hardly accurate estimate of their prejudices. Mr. O'Donnell's account of the Magistrates of Ireland is the account of a man whose furious hatred leaves him without self-control, but de- ducting liberally for his violent prepossessions, it still remains true that this great Irish feud is pre-eminently a landlords' feud,. that the landlords are the people who have been chiefly at- tacked and often grievously oppressed and embittered, and that except where there are Stipendiaries, Mr. Forster is absolutely dependent upon landlord magistrates and the local police who are necessarily under their influence, for the advice upon which he must order the arrest of the village ruffians whom he so graphi- cally described. Mr. Labouchere showed, we think, on Thurs- day night that in the returns of agrarian crime these prejudices had sufficiently shown themselves by a certain factitious multi- plication of what needed no multiplication to impress deeply
the English people. Yet Mr. Forster proposes to take' power to proclaim any county in Ireland, and to arrest, by the warrant of the Lord-Lieutenant, any one in that dis- trict whom he may think dangerous to the public peace. Such a power, exercised on advice so questionable in its origin, seems to us too large to add to the real strength of the Executive ; for nothing can add to its real strength which so profoundly embarrasses its judgment, and lands it in so many mistakes, that it weakens the respect in which it is held, as well as that self-confidence without which no Executive is strong. Why did Mr. Forster go beyond the precedent which was so exactly to his purpose in the Peace Preservation Act of 18701 By that Act, the Executive took power to arrest arbitrarily, under the warrant of the Lord- Lieutenant, only two classes of persons,—strangers who could, give no satisfactory account of themselves, and persons "found'. out at night under suspicious circumstances," These were powers which did not interfere largely with the personal free- dom of any Irish subject, and yet no one knows better than Mr. Forster how effectual they were. In the that four months. of 1870, the number of agrarian offences reported were 1,161. On April 4th the new Act came into force, and during the next four months the number reported was only 91,— considerably less than one-tenth. To our mind, that shows the value of moderation in asking for new powers, no less than the value of those powers themselves. It was not possi- ble under that Act to advise the arrest of anybody merely because dreaded or disliked by landlords. Except as regards strangers unable to give account of themselves, it was not possible to arrest any one without suspicious circum- stances of a very definite kind to justify the arrest, and such circumstances could not be invented by any imagination, how- ever partisan. Under the powers for which Mr. Forster now asks, no discretion is given to the local authorities at all, —and, of course, no discretion could have been given where the power is so large and where there are no limits to its exercise ; on the contrary, only the warrant of the Lord-Lieutenant has power to supersede the ordinary law, and that warrant must necessarily be given in the case of all the village ruffians whom Mr. Forster describes, on the authority of local informa- tion which it will generally be simply impossible for him to weigh and appreciate. He will at once be inundated by recommenda- tions from all the proclaimed districts for the arrest of A, B, and C ; he will seldom know what to allow for the vehem- ence of local feuds ; he will be overwhelmed with com- plaints of injustice if he orders the arrest, and with complaints of the dangers he is causing if he refuses to order the arrest ; and unless, therefore, his Coercion Bill acts, as be evidently hopes it may, chiefly by its in terrorent influence, he will be torn in pieces with opposite charges of tyranny and weakness.
Now, as far as we can see, it is not at all safe to trust to the mere in terrorem effects of the measure. Mr. Forster avows that what he desires to do is to set the law-abiding and orderly Irishmen free from the terror under which they now live. But can he do so without a multitude of arrests ? While the " police " of the Land League are at liberty, the orderly Irish will not give evidence, for fear of the future. And who is to judge who constitute the "police" of the Land League, except the local authorities in whose hands Mr. Forster prac- tically is ? We gravely fear that the measure proposed is much too strong in appearance to be strong in result. We sincerely believe that a re-enactment of the Peace Preservation Act of 1870 would have proved far more efficient, and seeing how magical its effects were when it was first tried, we think, with all deference to the Government, that it should have been tried again. One word more. We earnestly entreat the Government to explain its land measure at least before the second, or at all events before the third, reading of its Coercion Bill. Mr. Bright's fine speech and encouraging descrip- tion of the Land Bill, promising as it is, is not enough. It is hardly fair to the important body of loyal Irish Liberals, to such men as Mr. Shaw, Mr. Errington, the Blennerhassetts, Mr. Litton, or many another, to ask for their support for the strongest and, in our opinion, the most questionable of all Coercion Bills,—which could only be yielded out of profound confidence in the Government,—and yet not to justify that confidence by producing the proposals resolved upon on the most critical and important of all the Irish questions of the day. To loyal Irish Liberals, it is bare justice to give them ample grounds for that large expression of confidence in the Government which the Coercion Bill,—even if it be as wise as it is strong.—certainly demands.
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