THE SCENE OP THURSDAY.
QIR WILLIAM HARCOURT is a master of the art of 1.3 provocation, and it is not, we think, at all for the benefit of the United Kingdom that a master of the art of provocation should introduce and carry Irish Coercion Bills through the House of Commons. If Mr. Forster has made a mistake at all in his Irish policy, it is not in this direction. He has well understood that the mere fact of applying coercion to Ireland is irritating enough, without inflaming that irritation by
his tone. If he has made errors in policy, he has cer- tainly made no error in the mode in which he has de- fended that policy. When insults were poured upon him from every side, Mr. Forster endured with as much stoicism as a Red Indian shows under the torture of his enemy,— or shall we say, with as much magnanimity as a Christian shows under the persecution of his enemy ? We will not say that a somewhat loftier tone might not have had more Parliamentary effect,—that the ideal tone towards Ireland should not have ben one of a rather grander note,—of the seine heartfelt sympathy with Ireland, but of a somewhat higher sense of the overwhelming urgency of imperial obligations. But though in talking of the ideal tone, it may be possible to see something lacking in Mr. Forster, there are very few statesmen in public life who would have contrived to do RO much that is inevitably galling to Ireland, and to endure such venomous attacks upon himself, in so calm a spirit. Sir William Harcourt brings to his task a totally different temper, and, unfortunately, a very biting wit. He forgets that the action of the Government, necessary though it may be, is in itself wounding, and more than wounding, inflaming, to the Irish spirit ; that on such a man as Mr. Dillon, who, whatever else he is, is assuredly as sin- cere as he is both short-sighted and violent in his patriotism, the whole of the Session has acted necessarily much as a blister acts upon the skin ; and that this being the case, to irritate by need- lessly biting words is wanting in magnanimity, as well as wanting in the higher political prudence. We do not so much object to the pungent attack made on Mr. Parnell for staying so long away in Paris • if the truth were known, probably the Irish Members are themselves glad enough to have had something said 'which made it essential for Mr. Parnell either to return to his post, as he has done, or to resign it. But the fine passage in which Sir William Harcourt compared the leaders of the Land League to Shakespeare's King John, who, "having excited others to crime, endeavoured to shuffle off the responsibility on some one else ;" and, indeed, the speech of Tuesday as a whole, was couched in a tone of sarcasm not altogether generous to the better and rasher men among the Land Leaguers, and certainly imprudent as regards its effect on Ireland itself. For this must be remembered by English statesmen, that whatever view they may themselves take, and, perhaps, justly take, of the Irish leaders, is not at all the view which it -is even pos- sible for the Irish people to take, and, therefore, not at all the view which, even if it be true, it is wise publicly to express, except so far as may be necessary to justify the measures taken. Rightly or wrongly, multitudes of Irishmen feel needless impu- tations on the motives of their leaders as needless imputations on their own honour. And if we are to work for the ultimate conciliation of Ireland, it is worse than injurious, it is wrong, to drop a single word of redundant scorn on those Irish mis- leaders, as we think them, whose practical efforts we are en- deavouring to foil. It can hardly be denied, we think, that the masterly gpoech of Tuesday, with its unfortunately taunt- ing tone, led up to the painful scene of Thursday, which, again, was greatly aggravated by the redoubled scorn poured forth on that occasion by the Home Secretary's unsparing
tongue.
We conceive that Mr. Dillon's furious and most hare-brained speech might have served as the final apology for both the Coercion Bills, had the Home Secretary commented on it in the right spirit, and with that willingness to make allowance for the passionate utterances of a hot-headed young man, which wJuld have given nothing but weight to the remark that such words spoken, however heedlessly and inconsiderately, in such a place, were only too illustrative of the danger of leaving Irish peasants with arms in their hands to interpret for themselves the significance of such advice. But that was not in the least Sir William Harcourt's tone. He triumphed in Mr. Dillon's outbeeak of passion, and seized the opportunity to speak of the whole Land League as a " vile conspiracy," and thereby, we suspect, prevented many Irish Members from expressing their consternation at Mr. Dillon's language, who would otherwise have expressed it. For an English Liberal Minister imposing a new Coercion Law on Ireland, we regard this tone as a mistake. The tone should be one of reluctant but imperious obligation,—one implying that whatever the cost, resistance to the law in Ireland must and shall be put down, but not one of triumphant, mach less of scornful superiority. The simple truth is that in the long-run we have no super- iority to boast of in this matter, except the superiority of force. We have brought all these miseries on ourselves, by our gross misgovernment of Ireland in the past ; and however discredit- able the action of the Land League chiefs in the present, and however pure our own intentions, it is not for us now to inflame the national bitterness which our own sins and blunders have caused. Mr. Dillon's mad speech justifies, as hardly any conceivable speech could have been expected to justify, what the Government are doing. He has been, since Mr. Devitt was arrested, the chief organiser of the Land League, and he speaks, therefore, with an official authority almost greater than that of Mr. Parnell. But even Mr. Dillon's wild speech does not justify a tone of almost Pharisaic sarcasm towards the Irish Irrecon- cilables ; and this was the tone taken by the Home Sec- retary. The Irish Irreconcilables,—explain it how we may,—command at the present moment the support of mil- lions of the Irish people, end the problem is how to wean the Irish people from giving that support. This will not be done with jibes and sneers, It may be done by nobility and con- stancy and unfaltering resoluteness of purpose,—by magnani- mity in bearing the insults which the wounded Irish feeling not unnaturally pours upon us,—by a due sense of English oppres- siveness in the past,—by a firm resolve not to incur one single flash of needless hatred from Irishmen in the present or the future. But that is unfortunately a very different attitude of mind, from the attitude of the brilliant but unreflective statesman who is now shooting his poisoned arrows from the position temporarily vacated by Mr. Forster.
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