TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE'S STEERING OF THE LAND BILL. THE Irish Land Bill will have passed its third reading before these pages are in our readers' hands, and Mr. Gladstone has already heard the gladdening cheer with which the House greeted the close of the Committee on the Bill. There will be a great many to agree with Sir William Har- court that the one personal impression which survives the almost interminable discussion on that Bill is that produced by the spectacle of Mr. Gladstone's wonderful and varied powers. He has steered the Irish Land Bill through diffi- culties such as no other Bill of this country has ever en- countered, difficulties of politics and difficulties of law, diffi- culties of principle and difficulties of detail, difficulties of party and difficulties of personnel, difficulties of race and difficulties of class, and he has never once failed, or even seemed to fail, in his clear command of the question, in his dignity and authority of demeanour, in his impartiality in accepting amending suggestions, in his firmness in resisting destructive suggestions, in his clear perception of his aim, and his strong grasp of the fitting means. And yet it is hardly possible to appreciate adequately the embarrassments of the situa- tion. When Mr. Gladstone introduced the Bill, he had to confront an Irish section rendered furious by the Coer- cion Bills, as well as aghast at the prospect of any measure that might render Ireland less disposed to support agitation. That was a double source of danger. It involved hosts of amendments conceived in a revolutionary sense ; and it involved also a good deal of secret support to amend- ments conceived not in a revolutionary sense, but in the sense of pure resistance. Indeed, no feature of the whole discus- sion has been more remarkable than the alliance between the extreme Irish Party and the so-called "Fourth Party," whose two leading men, Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Gorst, have more than once acted as tellers for the worst of the Irish amendments. But besides the dangers involved in the atti- tude of the Home-rulers proper, there has been a plethora of embarrassments of another kind,—disaffection among the Whigs panic among the Tories ; and even among the Radi- cals, admirably as they have supported the Government,—so admirably that it is hardly possible to speak too highly of their political sagacity, self-forgetfulness, and discipline, —a certain almost necessary coolness of interest, as they have patiently watched the slow progress of legislation in relation to a matter difficult to understand, almost im- possible fully to master, and far removed from their most active political convictions. If Mr. Gladstone had not had the moderate Irishmen at his back, the Irish party led by Mr. Shaw, he would have had none who could at once appre- ciate, as he appreciated, the magnitude and difficulty of the problem, and desired, as he desired, its adequate solution. Of the innumerable difficulties of the Bill, none has been greater than this,—that, except among a handful of Irishmen, the enthusiasm it excited was languid, and almost entirely excited by the spectacle of Mr. Gladstone's own efforts on its behalf. When Sir Stafford Northcote said even after the second reading, that though the Bill had been read a second time by a majority of two to one, hardly a man in the House cared a straw about it, he said what had far more truth in it than on the surfaCe would have seemed possible. The Liberal Party at large was abso- lutely determined to follow Mr. Gladstone in his great at- tempt to place the Irish Land question on a secure foundation ; but the Liberal Party at large knew so little about the matter that they were hardly able even to show at the right moment impatience of obstruction ; and nothing impedes the progress of a great measure of this kind more than any deficiency of knowledge in the House such as prevents it from adapting its attitude easily and effectually to the needs of the situa- tion. The House knew, of course, that when Mr. Biggar or one or two others were speaking, the chances were that they were obstructing. But in the general way, their grasp of the whole subject was not strong enough to temper with any delicacy the display of patience and impatience to the occasion. And we need hardly say that an intelligent display of patience and impatience in listening to debate is, perhaps, the most important stimulus conceivable to the due discharge of busi- ness in a popular assembly.
It is in the face of all these difficulties that Mr. Gladstone has achieved the greatest triumph of his Parliamentary career, and,—if the Act answers the sanguine hopes of all the ablest
Irish politicians,—the greatest triumph of his statesmanship.. At present, however, we are speaking only of his Parlia- mentary achievement, and it is almost impossible to exag- gerate the magnitude even of that. At one time, he was taunted with yielding everything to the Conservatives, and told day after day by some of the Irishmen that he had better send the Bill to the trunkmaker's, since it was perfectly worthless for any political, or economical, or social purpose. At another time, he was told that he was yielding everything to the Land League, and that the Bill was nothing but a device for driving all the landlords of Ireland into bankruptcy and exile. Not unfrequently, he has had to struggle against a secret combination of the two parties. Then, again, he had to deal with Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Mr. Brand, Mr. Heneage, and the Whig malcontents, with their morbid, dread of doing anything in Ireland that could by any possibility make a precedent for doing the same thing in England. And they always told him, what Mr. Goschen has lately repeated, that it is not true Liberalism to be carried away by a current of democratic exigency, if you can show that what the democracy desire is open to a number of intellectual objections. Nor was it desirable to meet this sort of taunt with impatience, or to suggest, what Mr. Gladstone must often have felt, that keen self-interest is prolific of imaginary fears. Not unfrequently, too, there was something of personal insult to be encountered, for some of the Irish Members were always on the watch for an opportunity of irritating the Prime Minister into unwary wrath. But through all these very different dangers Mr. Gladstone passed, without, so far as we remember, once losing his firm hold of the principle of the measure, once failing in the respect due to his numerous antagonists, once ref using a good amendment mainly because it came from a hostile quarter, once accepting a bad amendment merely because it would ease the passage of the Bill, once losing his composure and dignity under insult, or once letting go his perfect command of the House of Commons. He said in one of his earlier speeches that, desirous as he was of entertaining candidly any sugges- tion for improvement, from whatever quarter it might come,. he did not think it possible to deviate widely from the general lines of the Bill, whether on the side of the Conservatives or on that of the Irish Party,—and he has amply verified his own statement. From all sides he has cordially accepted slight elaborations and elucidations of what was intended by the Bill, and "preservative additions" for its development. But from no side has he admitted anything at all that either gave a more revolutionary character to the measure, or deprived it of that large and statesmanlike aspect needful in so great an experiment as the accommodation of an unsatisfactory land- tenure to the historical genius of a people. Nothing is more characteristic of this than the fate of the Emigration Clause. Mr. Gladstone from the first described this clause as a mere safety- valve, to relieve speedily the overcrowded districts ; in fact, as an auxiliary to the general operation of the Bill, but as wholly apart from its main purpose. When at length the Government limited the money to be spent in this way to £200,000, the Irish Irreconcilables mocked, and said that they had defeated the Government. But £200,000 will provide for the satisfactory emigration of at least as many families as would leave the crowded portions of Mayo and Galway in comparative pro- sperity ; and reclamation of waste lands will do the rest. Mr. Gladstone always insisted that he wanted to cure the land-. tenure, not to get rid of the problem by getting rid of the tenants. And in relation to emigration, as in relation to every other aspect of the Bill, he adhered strictly to his original design.
In all the history of great legislative changes, whether in this or any other country, ihere has besn, so far as we know, nothing to rival the rare command of principle, the perfect mastery of technical detail, the curious energy and lucidity of exposition, the rich facility of historical illustration, the earnestness of purpose, fullness of candour, dignity of rebuke, and coherence of judgment, which Mr. Gladstone has dis- played, morning after morning and midnight after midnight, in his long and difficult steering through the House of Commons of the Irish Land Bill.
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