TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LA VENDEE OF IRELAND. THE first of the many answers to the Irish demand for national self-government is that Ireland is not a nation, though it may become one ; that it now contains two nations irreconcilably divided by history, by race, by creed, and by opinion, which are incapable of seeking the same ideals and which, for the present at least, detest each other with an energy presaging civil war. That is the cardinal truth which the grand demonstration of Tuesday in Belfast was intended to prove, and did prove for all but those who, like the Jacobins of France before La Vend& rose, seek truth only from their own convictions and pre- possessions. The vast crowds of resolute and excited men who welcomed Mr. Balfour, the eighty thousand who marched past him in military order for more than four hours, the other thousands who in the Ulster Hall ap- plauded enthusiastically every sentence he uttered that seemed to excited minds to hint at armed resistance, all bore testimony to the great fact which it is the habit of Gladatonians steadily to ignore,—that there is no Irish people, that there are two peoples en- camped upon one island, who, but for the moderating authority of Britain, would be at each other's throats, and who, if violently thrown together, as Mr. Gladstone proposes to throw them, will still carry on the struggle of centuries under conditions which must make the appeals to Britain, as the only possible umpire, as incessant and as embarrassing as Irish appeals to Westminster ever yet have been. The capital of the North was swarming on Tuesday with the friends of Britain ; the Englishmen whom we have planted there since the first conquest, the Scotch who have swarmed over to settle and enrich the land, the Irish Catholics whom we have enabled to grow rich under the order we have maintained, were all present to swell a demonstration which would at last, as they hoped, bring home the duality of Ire- land to the men who would fain treat it as one, and, by counting heads alone, would place one of the two nations—and that the more advanced one—under the unchecked dominance of the other. And these men of every grade and denomination and temper, who represent the whole wealth of Ireland other than the produce of her grass-fields, and probably one-half of her physical force— for they have allies all over Ireland silenced by the terrorism which prevails in the South—have but a single cry,—that they are content to be ruled by the British Par- liament; that they refuse all separation from England, even if it give the farmers among them farms for nothing ; and that if the government of their enemies is forced upon them by their natural friends, they will resist with such strength as they may find in their humiliation and despair. This is the meaning of the gathering, ad- mitted in Ireland alike by friends and foes ; and it should bring home to electors, in Great Britain at least, this con- viction, that the Home-rule Bill, which Mr. Gladstone threatens to carry in spite of their decision—which is, by a considerable majority, that no such Bill shall be carried— will be no message of peace to Ireland. ; that whatever else it does, it will reconcile no feuds, abate no enmities, diminish by no jot the necessity for the British Government, if it does not consent to total separation, to interfere daily in Ireland in order to keep the peace. The war of creeds will be changed for a war of races and castes, the rich all joining the Ulstermen ; the struggle between tenants and land- lords will be changed into a struggle between provinces and classes ; the hatreds between rich and poor will be changed into hatreds between the rich, fired at once with the sense of injustice and the pride of race, and the poor, maddened by prejudices of creed and belief that in the fact of their numbers resides not only legal, but moral right. The pacifying measure will be one intensifying every source of internal grievance, and therefore compelling Britain, unless she deserts Ireland altogether, leaving her to perish of the consequent anarchy, to interfere with a far heavier hand than she has recently stretched out, and to substitute for " coercion " by law, coercion by military repression. Take it that both parties are to be subjugated alike, and what is that but a recommencement of the old evil system which Mr. Balfour, at least, showed to be unnecessary or grant that only the Ulstermen are to be shot down by British soldiers for loving the British flag too well, and what is that but coercion in its nakedest form, exercised through the bullet and the sword ? It is civil war which Mr: Gladstone is introducing; though only three months ago these parties were at rest, the island was nearly as tranquil as England. every man was labouring in peace, and every man was free to utter, even with violence, every thought which rose in his mind, and which did not directly incite to crime. In the presence of such a demonstration, such an uprising of all Loyalist Ireland, what was said on platforms matters almost as little as Generals' exhortations matter when the armies are mobilised for strife. It is the fact of the two nations, not their motives, which Gladstonians need to. realise ; their deadly opposition, not the fears which place them in that attitude, which is of consequence to statesmen. An opponent, referring to the constant sentence, " Our necks are placed under their heels," asks, with pretended cynicism, that somebody shall explain what all " that neck-and-heel business " really means. He knows perfectly well what it means,—that all legislative and executive power in Ireland is transferred to one of the two nations ; that the two nations are irreconcilably at variance ; and that the smaller one therefore believes that it will be oppressed, that it will be governed by persons who wish it to suffer ; that in all religious laws, in all financial laws, in all laws of public safety, it will be legislated against. Its representatives will have no power ; its chiefs will have no dignity ; its ideas, religious or secular, will meet with nothing but derision. That is the thought which Protestant Ulster is trying to express by its demon- stration of Tuesday ; and, if it is well founded, it is ample reason for resistance ; if ill founded, ample reason for the demand for guarantees, of which, in the Home-rule Bill, there is not one which the Nationalist party, by accepting the Bill, does not acknowledge to be illusory. They mean to rule Ireland as they will, not as the minority wills. While, however, we hold speeches on such occasions to be of minor moment, we must pronounce Mr. Balfour's a fine one. A British statesman standing in such a position has an unspeakably difficult task before him. It is useless to argue, for every man in his audience knows the arguments better than himself. If he does not speak to the point, which is the meaning of the demonstra- tion, he makes a speech without meaning ; while if he does speak to it, he is sure to be accused of inflaming the ex- citement which he is there to measure, and, if he may, to cause his own people to measure also. if he speaks of resistance, he is accused of exciting it ; and if he leaves it wholly out, he omits the main factor in the situation, the very reason of the gathering around him. Under those circumstances, Mr. Balfour, who is no neophyte, but the one statesman who has found in a five years' success- ful government of Ireland the basis of a reputation instead. of a grave for it, spoke with equal statesmanship and courage. He did not deny the possibility that armed re- ristance might occur, or question that, as it might be justi- fied by a tyrannical or stupid King, so it might be justified by a tyrannical or stupid majority—to have done so, would have been hypocrisy—but he earnestly hoped and believed that the occasion would never occur, and that, bad as the Bill was, it would still be defeated by the exertions of Ulster and those of its allies, the British majority which has rejected it. And then, after describing the demonstration and the beliefs which had given rise to it, he passed to the central question, the only basis on which Mr. Gladstone can found his scheme, whether Ireland is a nation or not. Mr. Gladstone says it is ; but, asks Mr. Balfour,—" What is a nation ? Is a. nation a geographical expression and a geographical expression merely ? Does it represent only the people who live in a given geographical area ? No, that is but a very shallow interpretation to give to a, great word. Nationality in its full sense means something more than living together in one island. It means a community of political ideas. It means a community of religious views. It means an identity of ideal aspirations. In that sense is Ireland a nation ? It may some day be a nation. But is it a nation now ? Is there that identity and community of belief, interests, and ideas throughout the whole of the great community inhabiting this island which entitles us to say that Ireland is a single nation, whose aspirations it is our business to satisfy ?" So far is Ireland. from it, that a third of the nation, and that the cultivated, orderly, and successful third, was at that moment welcoming him with fierce acclamation to show its horror at the offer or idea of government by the remaining two- thirds. That horror of itself proved that this could be no final settlement ; and there was another reason yet. With the courage as well as breadth of view which marked his speech all through, Mr. Balfour ventured in that assemblage of Ulstermen to declare not only that Nationalists, Parnellites, or Anti-Parnellites would not be content, but that they "ought not" to be content, "could not reason- ably or logically be expected to be content " with the " paltry and beggarly contribution to nationality which this Home-rule Bill will give them." It is nothing but a contribution susceptible of indefinite increase ; and there- fore there is no finality in it, no riddance of the Irish question, nothing that can benefit Britain or save Ireland from being what she is, the home of two opposing peoples not yet welded together even by the weight of " foreign " rule. It was a fine speech, which, in some passages given elsewhere, brought the audience to their feet maddened with enthusiasm for the Union ; but its merits or demerits matter to the crisis hardly anything at all. The one serious reality is Ulster's demonstration that Mr. Gladstone is not sending to Ireland a message of peace, but an incentive to war ; that in raising, as he thinks, one nation, he is tread- ing down another ; that he is not terminating the historic difficulty of Britain, but only changing its form. If it is bad that Britain should govern Ireland, why is it good that Munster and Connaught, for Leinster is divided, should govern Ulster ? And yet even that is not the ques- tion, for Ulster announces, by every means short of armed insurrection, that she will not be so governed, and the old condition recurs that Britain, in the interest of Ire- land's peace, prosperity, and progress, must govern all alike. If not, the two nations of Ireland will either separate from each other, or fight out their ancient quarrel under conditions which can mean for all Ireland nothing but anarchy and ruin. Mr. Healy himself would not say that he can govern Ulster without conquering it ; he relies on the Queen's troops,—that is, he relies on the very exercise of military coercion which the Union has for nearly a century superseded by civil rule.
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