IRELAND AN]) GREAT BRITAIN.
WHEN Mr. Balfour proposes to contribute materially from the resources of the richer island for the advantage of the poorer, he meets neither with dis- honourable reluctance on the part of Great Britain (for Mr. (Jonybeare does not count) to atone for our past injuries and display our hearty good-will, nor with any sulky reluctance on the part of Ireland to accept his over- tures. All goes as easily as marriage-bells. One or two Irish Members make a few criticisms on details, while intimating their approval of the substance of the proposals ; and one or two English Members growl a little at any proposal to anticipate the renovating magic of Home-rule by conferring any sort of benefit on Ireland pending the decision of the Home-rule Question. But, on the whole, it remains perfectly evident that British Members of Parliament think it quite the right thing that the richer country should help the poorer, while Irish Mem- bers of Parliament think it quite the right thing that the poorer country should receive help from the richer. We do not feel the least disposition to find fault with that condition of things. It seems to us to be the right state of mind on both sides, because the natural state of mind. It is as wise and right for England to contribute towards securing the prosperity of Ireland as it is for London to contribute,—as it does indirectly to a very large extent by the enormous contributions it makes towards the whole expenditure of the G-overnment—towards securing the prosperity of the poorest parts of England. There is no real society in existence in which the rich do not contribute vastly more than in the proportion of their numbers towards the removal of the evils which affect the poor, and. this even when they have no political power allotted to them in excess of that which their numerical force entitles them to wield. And if the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland be really a United Kingdom, it is quite right that the country of large resources should take far more than its proportional share of the duty of developing the resources of its poorer neighbour. Far from taunting Ireland with being ready to accept the atonement which Great Britain offers for old wrongs, an atonement, too, by which she intends to prove her desire for hearty co-operation in everything that benefits Ireland, we think it creditable to her that she should not be too proud to avail herself of the natural advantages of her place in the political unity of the Empire. But we should like to point out what this means. Mr. Balfour proposes a scheme for completing the drainage of three great Irish rivers, the Shannon, the Barrow, and the Bann, under which Great Britain will lend Ireland rather more than half the resources required,— namely, £65,000 for the Shannon, £20,000 for the Bann, and £215,000 for the Barrow, the river, apparently, whose floods do most mischief, though the immediate pro- sperity to be derived from preventing them is not rela- tively so considerable as may be expected in the case of the other two rivers. Except Mr. Conybeare,—who, as we say, does not count, —and in a half-hearted political way, Mr. Illingworth,—no one objects ; while the Irish Members only suggest that more might have been done, and lament over the year's postponement of a scheme for stimulating the Irish fisheries, and for improving railway communication at some further cost to Great Britain. Could anything make it plainer that Great Britain and Ireland alike think that the Union should involve mutual co-operation between the richer and poorer country, well- considered help willingly given by the former and willingly accepted by the latter ? And yet the whole Home-rule movement is based upon the cry for the local independence of Ireland, which must mean,—if it is to be realised at all,—the isolation of the poorer country, and its reliance not on the Kingdom of which it is so important a portion, but on itself alone,—at all events, as regards all internal finance and everything that cannot be included in military or naval defence. We should have expected to have English Home-rulers objecting that Ireland ought in these matters to lean on herself alone, and could not do better than repudiate aid which is sup- posed. to have the unfortunate effect of sapping the vigour and independence of Ireland. And we should certainly have expected to hear Irish Home-rulers eagerly repudiating the cold charity of the "brutal and bloody" Irish Secre- tary, and telling him that Ireland would not thank him for aid which she neither needs nor values from a neighbour whom she so heartily dislikes. Yet directly Bills like the three Drainage Bills are brought forward, all these artificial moods of mind vanish away, and even Mr. Biggar seems- to coo a sort of welcome to the accession of wealth and prosperity which British credit may secure to Irish industry. What becomes, then, of that passionate demand for a judicial separation which would involve an immediate discontinuance of all such schemes ? Of course, as in the case of other judicial separations, an allowance might be secured to the weaker party to the contract ; but even that allowance could not be settled under circumstances at all likely to make it particularly generous, and once secured, it certainly would not be increased when the whole significance of the Home-rule system consists in demanding that the people of Ireland shall be left to struggle with their own difficulties in their own fashion, and in assuring the people of this country that they must keep their hands off Irish affairs, and meddle no longer in what they are quite incompetent to regulate.
Irish Home-rule means the repudiation at once of both British help and British control. But the secret Irish feeling Welcome British help to any extent in which we can hope to secure it, so long as we repudiate British control.' Nay, in many forms in which the Irish idea has.
lately been advocated, it comes to Ireland must have as much influence as ever in controlling the whole- public life of the United Kingdom, and a great deal evert in controlling specially British undertakings and interests, seeing that it will be impossible effectually to separate them from the concerns of the United Kingdom ; but Great Britain must be altogether excluded from interference in the internal affairs of Ireland, which can easily be so insulated as not to bear in any important measure on the affairs of the United Kingdom.' That, if we under- stand it aright, is even the position taken up by so influential a statesman as Lord Rosebery, without protest of any kind from either Irish or British statesmen, and it seems to us one of the very quaintest positions which any statesman ever yet assumed,—being a demand for a very one-sided insulation indeed, and involving almost an Irish " bull " in politics and statesmanship. And yet, liberal as it is towards Ireland, and niggardly as it is towards Great Britain, in apportioning the relative influence of Ireland and Great Britain over the various sections of the United Kingdom, the position so taken up would still exclude the possibility of any such Drainage Bills as Mr. Balfour's,— the Bills introduced and read a first time on Monday almost . without an audible protest. Grant Ireland Home-rule, and; such Bills as these would become impossible even on Lord Rosebery's plan of leaving Irish representatives a large influence in Great Britain and excluding British repre- sentatives from any influence in Ireland. You can- .
not really combine the policy of local insulation of a part of the Kingdom, with the policy of cordial and thoroughgoing unity for the whole of it. And it is the latter policy which, on its helpful side, seems to be received almost as a matter of course by both Irish and British Members of Parliament. There was a literary man in the early part of this century who applied for and obtained a divorce from his wife, but none the less, after the law had granted the divorce, he used to call for her occasionally in the evening to take her to the play. It seems to us that not a few of the nominal Home-rulers on both sides of St George's Channel are looking for a separation of that kind. They would like a divorce, but they would. like it only on con- dition that after it had taken place the richer country should be allowed afcasiona,lly to treat the poorer to some- thing which the latter could not otherwise afford. Yet they argue for a divorce on the ground of such utter and com- plete incompatibility of temper, and even mutual hatred, that there is something almost ludicrous in the effect of the reception given to such a proposal as that which Mr._ Balfour brought forward last Monday, when the unreality of all the melodramatic blood-and-thunder of which we have heard so much, was practically avowed with a frank- ness almost cynical.
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