anxieties of personal arrangements. He avows the great We have
thought it better, in the interest of our readers, pain which it has caused him to separate himself from to skim the cream off Mr. Bright's great speech, rather than Mr. Gladstone, but he points out that for twenty-three to indulge in any elaborate comment. Both as regards years before Mr. Gladstone made the Irish Question his own, authority in relation to this question, and in regard to the he himself had devoted to it a degree and kind of attention parliamentary sagacity and experience for which he is that entitles him to be regarded as no light political authority famous, Mr. Bright may fairly rank on a level with Mr. upon it. Mr. Bright had made ten elaborate speeches on the Gladstone. What he thinks on this subject is entitled to a Irish Question, in some of which he pressed on Parliament careful and respectful hearing, both because he was the first great remedies which Mr. Gladstone has since seen his way to carry Irish reformer amongst English Liberals, and because he has into effect, in those twenty-three years of political life which always shown an instinctive knowledge of the English people, preceded the rise of Mr. Gladstone to the leadership of the and also that peculiar blending of audacity with prudence which Liberal Party. Mr. Bright claims that but for the serious especially fascinates English Liberals. We are far from say- illness in 1870 which eventually broke off his connection with ing that Mr. Bright's speech exhausts the question. No speech Mr. Gladstone's first Government, the "Bright" clauses of the could exhaust it. And Mr. Bright, sagacious as he is, no Land Act of that year might have been passed in a form that doubt understands the political heart of Great Britain a great would have spared us the more recent and serious Irish deal better than he understands the political heart of Ireland. troubles. Looking back over the last seventeen years, he asks But we are sore of this, that in declaring the economical clues- whether any Parliament in the world could have done more tion to be at the very root of Irish misery, Mr. Bright is as for the country it represented, than the Parliament of West- I right as Mr. Gladstone is bewildering, when he seriously tells
to Ireland. We are heartily with him, but we totally disagree as minster has done for Ireland. The result of all his to the best mode of undoing that wrong. We believe that his study of the Irish Question, a study conducted on the spot, mode would greatly aggravate that wrong, would multiply ten- in two long visits, as well as by careful reading, is this,— fold our causes of quarrel with Ireland and Ireland's reasons for " that with all my sympathy with Ireland, I am entirely hating us. As we conceive the question, the issue as to the against anything in any shape which shall be called a Parlia- ripe. We ought ment in Dublin." As for Mr. Gladstone's statutory Legislature, ultimate government of Ireland is far from to settle the agrarian question first. We should display the he graphically describes it as " a vestry which will be inces- patience which statesmanship requires, and which Mr. Glad- santly beating against the bars of its cage, striving to become stone himself has often recommended to us, in waiting for the a Parliament." Concerning the proposed arrangement for bring- results of that great and most urgent reform. If that fails, ing back Irish Members to Westminster to discuss Imperial the result of having an why, it may be right either to agree to Separation, or to some- questions, he asks, " What would be intermittent Irish fever in the House of Commons I" He pro- thing that goes very near indeed to Separation ; but then, even that would not be right till we had removed the chief tests indignantly against " thrusting out from the shelter and cause of civil discord which divides Ireland against herself. Mr, the justice of the United Parliament," the 2,000,000 out of 5,000,000 " who remain with us, who cling to us, who passion- Gladstone is hurrying unduly, and, as we think, most unwisely,
a question which it takes a great number of years to ripen for ately resent the attempt to drive them from the protection of the Parliament of their ancestors." He utterly declines solution. He put us all on the right track when he attacked the agrarian problem. He is now so disgusted with his slow to surrender the field to a Parliamentary party from Ireland, 66 one-half of whom have dollars in their pockets subscribed progress, that he is hurrying us off to an entirely new and premature policy, before we have even fairly planted the new by the enemies of England in the United States." "There seed which he has taught us to sow. Why appeal to our honour may be men," he says, " who have read more history than to do now what, if it were a question of honour at all, he should I have, and who remember better what they have read ; but I have put before us in 1869. It is no doubt an obligation of believe that history has no example of a Monarchy or a Republic honour to undo, as far and as fast as possible, the selfish and submitting to a capitulation at once so unnecessary and so evil statesmanship which brought about the Union ; but it is humiliating." Mr. Bright is utterly opposed to the land not an obligation of honour to try a new method of effecting scheme of the Government, which he describes as one for this before Mr. Gladstone's own old method has been really got making the English Chancellor of the Exchequer " the into operation. Let us first settle the agrarian question justly, universal absentee landlord " over the whole of Ireland. The and see Ireland in the hands of men who do not govern by Irish patriot, under the new system, would be sure to say,— terror and by outrage on man and beast, but by appeals to the " You have got free from the burden of the local proprietors nobler motives. And then if we still find Ireland immovably of the soil ; will you pay rents to a foreign Government sending hostile to the true Union, we may consider fairly the degree a collector in a foreign garb ?" And as for the security pro- of separation which is best for her benefit and for ours. At mised by the Prime Minister, " Go," says Mr. Bright, " to the present, honour requires us not to abandon her to a cruel and great house of Rothschild and Co., who can deal in untold unscrupulous party till we have healed the wound which we millions, and ask them on what terms they will hold you safe
ourselves have made. for this monstrous speculation on which you are invited to enter by the Prime Minister."
Mr. Bright does not close his great speech without offering
MR. BRIGHT'S SPEECH. a suggestion of his own, though he apologises for it as a very THERE was a languor in the voting during the early humble one. It is one, he says, which greatly struck the late polling hours of yesterday which suggests the hope that Mr. A. M. Sullivan,—one of the truest orators of the Irish dubious electors were delaying their votes till they had had Party,—and which he thinks might solve the great question the advantage of reading Mr. Bright's most striking, most all the more adequately because it would not need a sense- homely, and yet most eloquent speech. If we had tried to tional Bill, or a Bill at all, but simply a new Standing Order imagine a nervous and incisive reply to those who regard us of the House of Commons. It is that every Irish Bill after as having deserted the Liberal cause because we have been its first reading should be referred to the Irish Members as a compelled with great pain to separate ourselves on this ques- Grand Committee, and should be discussed and settled in tion from Mr. Gladstone, we could not have conceived one Committee by the Irish Members only. The stage of second more effective than is contained in Mr. Bright's speech. There reading Mr. Bright would omit altogether; but he would allow is the exposition of the issue which seems to us not only to the House of Commons to make alterations in the Bill so ' vindicate triumphantly the attitude we have taken, but to altered in Committee on the stage of Report, and then one vindicate it as a genuinely Liberal attitude, as the attitude of more reading in the whole House would pass the Bill. Modest men who have from the first sympathised deeply with the as the suggestion is, Mr. Bright is not entirely without sufferings and wrongs of Ireland, who have supported Mr. hope for it. He recently asked a friend how the National Gladstone with enthusiasm in his noble endeavour to mitigate Provincial Bank had become so prosperous a concern. His those sufferings and to rectify those wrongs, but who have friend hesitated for a moment or two, and then said :- stopped short at his last proposal because they thought that " Well, the only reason I can give you is this,—that it has while it would indefinitely aggravate the sufferings of Ireland, never had any very clever fellows about it." Mr. Bright it would also multiply vastly the wrongs to which Irishmen evidently thinks it possible that Mr. Gladstone's proposals are are subjected. Mr. Bright enforces his position with that far too elaborate and clever to yield a prosperous result. " Let shrewd and sagacious humour of which he is a master. He us try," said Mr. Bright, in reference to a celebrated phrase of laughs at the "personally conducted " Liberals who follow Mr. Gladstone's, " one of the unexhausted resources of civilise- Mr. Gladstone as Cook's tourists follow Cook's agents, and tion before we capitulate to one of the worst conspiracies that who thus relieve themselves from all the responsibilities and ever afflicted any country."
Lancashire electors that if they want to get rid of Irish- men, they have only to pass a Bill which will make Ireland the pride and delight of Irish hearts. Mr. Bright may underrate the attraction of Home-rule to Irish hearts, but at least he does not underrate it so much as Mr. Gladstone exaggerates it when he treats it as potent enough to turn economical poverty into economical wealth. Whatever else it does, the statutory Legislature will certainly not attract British capital. Nor can it lend efficiency to Irish capital, so long as the political heroes -of Ireland are utterly possessed,—as at present they certainly are, —by the most false and misleading notions which ever haunted Protectionist brains. If British eapital shuns Ireland, and Irish capital is embarked in all sorts of mad enterprises, at least two Irishmen will have to emigrate in future for every Irishman who emigrates now, and that even though the adminis- trative government of Ireland should •be as prudent as Mr. Gladstone himself anticipates. Mr. Bright at least holds fast one of the necessary limits to Irish prosperity which Mr. Glad- stone has let drop. And even if, as we admit to be possible, he underrates the force of the political idealism of Ireland, he insists with sufficient shrewdness on the con- ditions under which alone we ought to listen to these pleas of national ambition. We must at -least tackle the agrarian question before we surrender anything ; and we must grant some reasonable scope to Irish Parliamentary opinion as regards Irish affairs, before we rush into enterprises as dangerous and as vague as Mr. Gladstone's. The real planting in Ireland of a peasant-proprietary such as Mr. Bright first sought to establish in 1870, as well as a willingness to listen to special Irish opinion on Irish affairs, constitute at least the first steps which should be securely taken before any leap in the dark is risked. Probably enough, the result might be that no leap in the dark need ever be risked at all.
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