TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DEBATE ON THE COMMISSION.
THE country is thoroughly weary of the long wrangle which terminated on Friday morning,—not a moment too soon. We suppose that even now the Report stage and third reading of the Commission Bill will not be allowed to pass without melodrama; but the less of it there is, the better for all parties. The country believes justly that in handing over to such a Judicial Commission as the Bill establishes, the duty of investigating the whole subject of the con- nection between the criminal and the political movements in Ireland, Parliament is acting with the same wisdom with which it acted when it delegated, to the Judges the duty of inquiring into the allegations of the election petitions. No sympathy whatever is, we are sure, felt with the attempts that have been made to fetter the Commission in the free use of its large powers of discretion and action. If it had been Mr. Parnell's and Mr. Gladstone's and Sir William Harcourt's deliberate intention to demonstrate to the country that a Committee of the House of Commons would be one of the very worst tribunals to which so delicate an investigation could possibly be submitted, they certainly acted with great judgment in the course they took. Nor can we deny that the Government not un- frequently acted in a manner to enforce the same convic- tion,—in other words, in a manner to justify their own earnest expression of opinion that a party tribunal is the worst possible Court of Justice for party issues. It would have been wonderful indeed if, treated as the Govern- ment were, as utterly unworthy of any sort of moral con- fidence, accused of conspiracy with the Times, of extracting advice from their Attorney-General which only his know- ledge of the Times' case could have enabled him to give, their word of honour rejected, their patience branded as virtually a plea of "Guilty," they had yet been able to speak without any accent of passion, or any deficiency of judgment. Individual Ministers made two or three notable blunders. The First Lord of the Treasury ought to have had an instinct against receiving any visit from Mr. Walter under the circumstances of the case, not from any distrust of himself, but from the consideration of what a man in his position owes to the public. Further, so soon as the Government had decided,—what, in our opinion, they had a perfect right to decide, and probably were quite wise in deciding,—that if they proposed a Judicial Commission of Inquiry at all, it should go into the whole question of the relation between Irish politics and Irish crime ; that is, that the actions of " other persons," whether in league with the Parliamentary chiefs or not, who seemed to have meddled in Irish crime, should be thoroughly investigated,—they should have felt that it was no longer becoming to treat the proposal as an offer made to Mr. Parnell and his col- leagues which they might either " take or leave." That was a very serious blunder of attitude, and derogated greatly from the dignity of the Government in the matter. Directly they determined to make the investigation into the connection between Irish crime and Irish political movements complete, they ought to have felt that there was no longer any question of asking Mr. Parnell whether he would take or whether he would refuse it. Mr. Glad- stone should never have had it in his power to say, as he unquestionably had it in his power to say, that the proposal had had all the appearance of a " covenant " between the Government and Mr. Parnell, and that, too, even at the time when it had been decided to push it beyond the limit of any offer of satisfaction for Mr. Parnell's supposed grievance. Again the Government blundered when they did not take care that the title of the Bill corresponded to its scope. They gave an opening for the many gross charges brought against them when they suffered a Bill deliberately intended to have so large a scope, to be called a " Members of Parliament Charges and Allegations Bill," which is undoubtedly a misleading title and a misnomer. That they did. not make more mistakes in the heat of this furious affray, is perhaps more to he wondered at than that they made so many ; but undoubtedly they contributed some- thing to the practical evidence for their own contention that a Committee of the House of Commons is one of the least suitable of all possible tribunals for investigating charges which vehemently excite the passions of three distinct Parliamentary parties. But if the Government by their errors have contributed evidence of the soundness of their own course in refusing to appoint a Parliamentary Committee to inquire into the charges against the Parnellites, the Opposition have, as we said, acted as if their sole object was to show how monstrous would have been the folly of acceding to their wish. Not content with pointing out the errors to which we have called attention, some of the leaders have treated every step of the Government as if it were the outcome of a malicious determination to entrap the Parnellites to their destruction, as if it were what Sir William Harcourt called. it, a " race for blood." They have failed to see how shock- ingly disrespectful this view is to the three dignified and non-political Judges who are to have a perfectly free hand in conducting this investigation, and who are about as well chosen to be the tools of a malicious Unionist Administra- tion, as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Morley would be to become the tools of the same Government. If the Judicial Commission do not carry matters with a high hand. as against all mere partisan views, the whole nation will be bitterly chagrined and surprised. - We venture to say that no Judge will be more careful to guard the interests of the Nationalist Members than Mr. Justice Day, who has been so fiercely attacked by the Nationalists for his supposed pre- possessions against them. In a Judge of his calibre, prepossessions, if he has them, are explicit warnings to lean towards the other side. The habits of mind of a high-minded Judge are directed to compensating his own bias, when he is conscious of any, by extreme care to give additional weight to all the evidence which thwarts that bias. Every attempt of the Opposition to trammel the Commission, to dictate to them what they should do first, what they should not do at all, what clues they are bound to drop and what to follow, seems to us so much evidence that they think the Commission less able, less fair, less competent to guide their own proceedings than a party which has displayed the utmost incapacity to treat an open question as open. at all. We are simply astounded when we find so great a leader as Mr. Gladstone, who a week or two ago was arguing that the Government ought to submit the deliberate charges of the Times to a Committee of the House, openly speaking of one of the most im- portant issues to be thus submitted, as decided against the Times without any investigation at all. We should. be sorry, indeed, to assume that Mr. Parnell will not be able to clear himself of the charges involved in the letters attributed to him by the Times ; but while these letters are, according to Mr. Gladstone and his friends, the most important of all the issues in dispute, to assume that they are forgeries, as Mr. Gladstone did, is prejudgment of so flagrant a kind, that it amounts to a confession of utter incapacity to look at the investigation from a judicial point of view at all. Again, what could be more un- worthy of a great party than the attempt made to attribute dishonesty to the Government because Mr. W. H. Smith, on Thursday, July 12th, omitted to read the words " and others " which had been determined on in the committee of the Cabinet, adopted by the Cabinet, and incorporated in the description of the Bill ? If anything had been gained by the omission of the words, the charge might at least have been plausible. But as absolutely nothing was gained by it but a certain reputa- tion for blundering, as the words appeared in print two days before any sort of action in connection with them was called for, the supposed dishonesty would have been as inept as discreditable. Nothing but the plague of suspicions which these party-fights engender, could have in- duced reasonable men to found attacks so furious on ground so absurdly inadequate. The First Lord of the Treasury evidently had not grasped the importance of the words as the Home Secretary had grasped it. The disputes about the scope of the inquiry had not yet arisen. He was still thinking of nothing but offering Mr. Parnell a tribunal which he would trust more than a London jury. He omitted to read the words which subsequently became so important, and omitted to remember what they implied, at the moment when he still treated the inquiry as one which Mr. Parnell might take or leave, as he chose. It was a blunder, no doubt, and one proving that he had not realised how important a step had been taken since the time when the only question was how to afford Mr. Parnell an equivalent for a London jury. But to make a fraud of it was as foolish as it was unfair to a man of Mr. W. H. Smith's character and standing.
The English people will, we think, indulge in a sigh of relief when the whole controversy passes from the hands of these bitter combatants who have shown their utter incapacity for anything like fairness, to Judges who will feel that the impartiality, the keenness, the wisdom, the sobriety they display will be the measure for the English people, and for many a. foreign nation besides, of the present standard of English character. For our own part, we are prepared to accord the utmost confidence to the Commissioners' reports, whether they are in keeping with or in opposition to our own prepossessions. But the debates of the last fortnight will not have raised the House of Commons as a whole in the estimation of Englishmen, and will greatly have lowered their estimate of the calm- ness and fairness of the Opposition.
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