TOPICS OF THE DAY.
. THE BATTLE ROUND MR. PARNELL.
THE political situation was never more grotesque than at the present moment. The enthusiasts for Home- rule are moving heaven and. earth to deprive the Irish majority of their right to choose their own leader ; while the opponents of Home-rule can hardly conceal their passionate desire that Mr. Parnell may remain where he is, in order that the party which he leads may lose all the English and Scotch sympathy which it had gained. The British Home-rulers wish to suppress the very first mani- festation of political free choice in Ireland ; while the Unionist organs, so far as we can judge, are eager almost to indecency in their desire that the leader who will do most to injure the cause shall remain at the head of the Irish Party. What could prove more conclusively that there is no thoroughgoing belief in the principle of Home-rule for Ireland on the Liberal side, whatever the Liberals may say ?
or, again, that many of the Unionists would be quite as willing to defeat the cause of Home-rule by a side-wind, —by an accident that has no proper connection with the controversy,—as to defeat it on the merits of the case ? For our own parts, we should not think the victory over Irish Home-rule half a victory, if it were gained only because Mr. Parnell had acted a disgraceful part in private life. But it is well to point out that Mr. Gladstone has evidently no very serious belief in his own principle. The moment he is asked to co-operate in politics with a man who, though he is the unanimous choice of the Irish Party, is a poli- tical colleague with whom he could not co-operate with any satisfaction to himself, the deference for Irish responsi- bility disappears wholly from his mind, as he considers how sullying the necessary co-operation might be to his own reputation, and. how many thousands of votes it would cost him at the General Election. We cannot say that we feel any surprise either at Mr. Gladstone's personal reluctance to co-operate with Mr. Parnell, or at the dismay with which he contemplates the consequences in the consti- tuencies. But surely he ought to read himself a lesson on the true significance of this reluctance and this dismay ? What does it portend if Home-rule were granted ? Does it not mean that whenever the British people were repelled by the action of the majority in Ireland, whether in choosing a leader or in choosing a policy, precisely the same reluctance and dismay would recur, and would not only recur, but would dominate the situation ? We should always be having the British majority finding their British concep- tions of what was right and proper revolted by the very different ideas which prevail in Ireland. And whenever that was so, we should have something like the events of the last few days returning upon us. A great cry would go forth that the Irish leader was taking a flagrant liberty with British ideas of justice or right conduct, and that it would become a serious question for the constituencies, whether it were not the first condition of harmony between Great Britain and Ireland that the objectionable leader or the objection- able policy should. be thrown over. The constituencies, it would. be said, as it has been said. in this case, would never support a Minister who aid not overrule the decision of Ireland on any question, however purely Irish, that offended the English conscience or the English sense of propriety. And so what we have always predicted would come to pass, that after we had given Home-rule to Ireland, we should begin at once dictating to Ireland what Home-rule ought to mean, and threatening Irishmen with the triumph of the Unionist Party in this country in case the Irish Government did not conform their policy to the views of their British allies. Mr. Gladstone is giving us a most instructive object-lesson in the absolute hollowness of the principle of Home-rule. The simple truth is, that Great Britain is far too big in pro- portion to Ireland to respect Irelands's liberty of political choice as the theory of Home-rule requires that we should respect it. The moment it is proposed to let Ireland. go her own way in any matter on which British taste or feeling or morality holds a very strong view, the British Members would begin to fidget, as the Gladstonians have been fidgeting for the last ten days; the British elector would. begin to cry out ; the British newspaper would get as furious as the Daily News has been getting, at the bare notion of Irish feeling over- ruling English feeling ; and the British people would declare, in constituency after constituency, that if their chosen leader were willing to co-operate with such a Govern- ment as the Irish Government had shown itself to be, they- would go back to the old Unionist Party, and throw over the self-government of Ireland altogether. It is simply impossible that, with the consciousness of overwhelming power which the British constituencies would always possess, the Irish constituencies would be allowed any.- thing like real freedom of choice' as te their own policy. British prejudice is extremely obstinate ; British Philistinism is extremely overbearing ; and we may add that British common-sense is extremely tenacious. If Mr_ Gladstone really wants to establish Home-rule on a safe basis, he must break up the population of Great Britain into fragments of the size of the Irish population at, least, and try to play off some of them against the others. So, and so only, can he hope to give Ireland a real freedom of choice. If you have an elephant pulling one way,. and only a pony pulling the other, it is easy to predict that the pony's freedom of choice will not be very large. This we have been preaching for years. But we little thought that Mr. Gladstone would. be the very first. statesman to bring home to the British public how little he is disposed to respect the free-will of Ireland, even in the one matter on which it has most right to choose for itself. Ex pede Hereulem. From the very first decision which Mr. Gladstone has taken, when the Irish Home-rule Party. have disappointed him and his most influential followers, we may judge how far he and his successors will be disposed to defer to Irish convictions when the same party disappoint them in the same way again. Indeed, such breaks with logic- are almost forced upon them by their popular following.. The Whips go about saying it will cost them thousands and thousands of votes, if Irish predilections are to be re- spected by the leaders of the party which is at the moment actingin concert with the Irish majority. And of a sudden all deference to the sacred principle of Irish self-government is swept away like dust before the wind.
For our own parts, we have no wish to win the battle against Home-rule simply because Mr. Parnell has personally discredited himself without revolting the political consciences of the Irish people. We want to. see the battle fought out on principle, and. not on an acci- dental issue of this kind. To our thinking, Mr. Parnell did not discredit himself for the first time in the re- cent divorce suit. It is very difficult to compare moral and political offences, but we feel no doubt that,. whatever his own conscience may tell him as to the relative morality of his own actions, he was at least the cause of far more guilt in others when he made the great speech which initiated the policy of boycotting in Ireland, than when he betrayed his friend, and degraded. the woman he loved. We wish he had been politically condemned. as a statesman for his political conduct, and not for conduct which, bad as it is, does not involve immediate political consequences. There is to us something in the highest degree unsatisfactory in snatching a victory, if we do snatch one, from a totally irrelevant issue. We do not expect Mr. Parnell to resign. If we understand that political sphinx at all, his promise to Mr. Gladstone in 1882 to retire from political life if Mr. Gladstone wished it, was probably only given because he had a shrewd suspicion that, instead of being accepted, it would more or less gain over Mr. Gladstone,—as no doubt it really did. Now, when Mr. Gladstone means, if he can, to get him out of the way, we should feel greatly surprised if he gave way. But if he does, we should certainly feel this satis- faction in the result, that then at last the battle would be fought on a true and not on a false issue,—indeed, even at some disadvantage to the Unionists, so far as the enthusiasm for Mr. Gladstone's attitude on the moral question might be likely to reinforce his party in Great Britain.
At the same time, we should have reaped this great intellectual advantage out of a most grotesque catastrophe, that the sincerity of British respect for Ireland's free choice would have been fully tested, and would have been shown to be a very shallow and unreal affair. We should fight against perhaps a still stronger current of sympathy with the great leader who has intimated his willingness to give up the battle and retire into private life rather than co- operate with a man who has privately disgraced. himself, —though why Mr. Gladstone so carefully limited the length of Mr. Parnell's retirement in the matter of time, and strove to be so tender of his feelings, we do not under- stand,—but we should fight with the advantage of being able to show that, directly Irish freedom was exerted in a sense annoying and irritating to British pride, it would be decisively overruled. at once. What is the use, we should ask, of pleading for a Home-rule which you will not allow to be exercised ? The battle would be a harder one, but it would be fought out on a truer issue. We do not care to win this great fight on any but a strictly political and constitutional ground. We do not want to win solely because Mr. Parnell has lost a place which he never deserved, and could never have gained. except in the esteem of care- less and ignorant constituencies.
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