ITS HISTORY AND ISSUES.
BY REV. H. HEWITT.
By far the most thorny problem of British statesmanship at the present moment is the persistent and pressing demand made by the Irish people through the Irish press and their representatives in Parliament for the repeal of the Union and the recognition of their right to national self-government. Incessantly, earnestly, eloquently, the question has been agitated for the past dozen years or so. Adroitly and skilfully it has been manipulated by some of the most brilliant, sagacious, and resolute agitators Ireland has ever known. Slowly but steadily it has grown, passing from stage to stage with ever-brightening prospect of ultimate success, until it has now become the aspiration, we might almost say, the one, quenchless, all-absorbing passion of the Irish people. The consequence is that the first calm moment after a most exciting and vigorous electoral contest, during which "the fire out of the bramble" has devoured many "cedars of Lebanon," the two great parties in the State find themselves face to face with a difficulty which, even for the most zealous aspirant to place and power, robs the honors and emoluments of office of more than half their charm. Neither Liberal nor Conservative will care to incur the displeasure of the Queen and the implacable wrath of the English aristocracy—both Whig and Tory—by consenting to the political divorcement of Ireland, and to what would be regarded as the disruption of the empire. For it is felt, not without good reason, that the indirect and ultimate consequences of the severance would be far more serious than any direct and immediate effects. The efforts of popular statesmen, in recent times, have been mainly directed toward the maintenance of the prestige of the Crown. This was the sole motive of Lord Beaconsfield's "spirited foreign policy." It was the one consideration that made the "Imperial Titles Bill," and the imperial measures of which it proved to be the too significant prelude, so immensely popular in London. So sure was he of the strength and predominance of this patriotic sentiment in England that he made his appeal almost exclusively to it, in asking in 1880 for a fresh lease of power. The occasion was critical, he said. "The peace of Europe, and the ascendency of England in the councils of Europe" depended upon the verdict the country was now called upon to give. The policy of the party opposed to his own was declared to be a "policy of decomposition." But the concession of self-government in the form demanded by the Irish Parliamentary party, whatever might be the political necessity pleaded in justification of it, would be certain to be interpreted in England, in the colonies and dependencies of the British empire, and by all foreign States, as a sure omen of the decline of the British Crown. To us it is utterly inconceivable that the Queen, who is profoundly conscious of her power, keenly sensitive as to her royal dignities, rights, and prerogatives, and proud, as she has reason to be, of her long and prosperous reign, should ever consent to a policy of dismemberment, by whatever political party proposed. The Conservatives cannot afford to purchase the influence and assistance of the Irish vote at the price Mr. Parnell has fixed and is every way likely to insist on. They would have to belie the best traditions of the party, and discredit the cardinal principles of their once powerful and still deeply revered chief—the late Lord Beaconsfield—to whom Home Rule meant "veiled rebellion," and presented a danger "scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine." The Liberals are equally unlikely to risk the integrity and unity of the party by the concession of a claim which even an advanced Radical like Mr. Chamberlain has condemned as unwarrantable, unwise, and impossible to be granted. Still this and nothing less than this is the hope and expectation of the great majority of the Irish people. This and nothing less will be the demand of the Irish leaders as soon as Parliament assembles at the beginning of the ensuing year.
In order to a clear and correct understanding of the position of Irish affairs at the present juncture, and of the nature and ground of the Home Rule demand, it will be necessary briefly to sketch the history of the agitation's genesis and growth. It is all the more necessary to do this as there are few political or social problems, even in England itself, more grievously misunderstood and wantonly misstated. It is truly surprising how much confusion, ignorance, and irrational antipathy may be nursed and maintained by an excited state of public feeling and a partisan and prejudiced press. Mr. Justin McCarthy complains with some bitterness that "people found their deepest sympathies stirred by the sufferings of cattle and horses in Ireland, who never were known to feel one throb of compunction over the fashionable sin of torturing pigeons at Hurlingham." And the words he quotes from a letter addressed to the Times of Dec. 3, 1880, by the illustrious General Gordon, after a visit to the much afflicted country, show with equal clearness the sad condition of affairs in Ireland, and the apparent incapability of the English public to realize it. "I have been lately over the south-west of Ireland," he wrote, "in the hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of the Irish question, which, like a fretting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation." After the bold and, as some would think, unstatesmanlike proposal, "that the government should, at a cost of eighty millions, convert the greater part of the south-west of Ireland into Crown lands, in which landlords should have no power of control," Gordon concluded, "I must say, from all accounts and my own observations, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation, in places where we would not keep our cattle.... Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which affects our existence."
To Gordon's appeal on behalf of Ireland no one was more ready to listen with sympathy than the Prime Minister himself. The claims and grievances of the people whose magnanimous endurance, self-restraint, and patience had so excited Gordon's admiration and called forth his warmest words of praise, the great Liberal statesman had never been slow to recognize. Ireland has not always been willing to be grateful to him; but he has always striven to be more than just to her, and has more than once incurred the odium and reproach of the aristocracy of England, and even the disaffection of many of his followers, in his truly heroic "attempts to mitigate the miseries of the Irish people." When he surprised the country by his sudden and unexpected dissolution of Parliament in 1874, he had certainly done something to earn the gratitude and confidence of Ireland. He had disestablished the Irish Protestant Church. He had passed a Land Act, which at the time (1870) was regarded as a valuable contribution to the settlement of the land problem, aiming, as it did, first, to give the tenant some security of tenure where, as in the majority of cases, he had been practically unable to plead any rights as against the landlord; second, to encourage the making of needful improvements throughout the country; and, thirdly, to promote the establishment of a peasant proprietorship. In the attempt to confer a third great boon on the discontented nation in the shape of the Irish University Education Bill, he and his administration went to pieces on the immovable rock of Protestant prejudice.
Of course the provisions of the Land Act, while they occasioned some fretting and exasperation among the land-owners, who are in the habit of regarding every effort of legislation for the benefit of their tenants with a fixed sense of calamity, failed entirely to satisfy the more aggressive and eager of the Irish Parliamentary party. The Land Act had not taken its place upon the statute book before a meeting of representative Irishmen was called in Dublin with the view of framing some scheme of Home Government, and organizing measures for its advocacy in Parliament, and in the towns and cities of Ireland. In the course of discussion, one of the speakers used the words "Home Rule," and they were formally and forthwith adopted as the war-cry of the Nationalist party.
For the first five years the new organization made little headway. Its leader, Mr. Isaac Butt, was an able man—a lawyer of some distinction and a Protestant—but he was not a man to set the Thames on fire; he was not the man to control the fierce and fiery young politicians that had begun to flock to the standard of the National cause. With unromantic dutifulness to his place and his party, he annually brought his motion for Home Rule before the notice of the House, and was supported by some fifty or sixty members and a few sympathetic Radicals, but the Conservative government and its solid majority were of one mind on the matter. Mr. Butt died in 1879, and Mr. Shaw succeeded to the leadership, but on the organization of the Land League in the same year, he was quietly shunted in favor of Mr. Parnell, who, as the Corypheus of the party, has so far displayed great skill, coolness, and self-command, and has been rewarded in Ireland by regal ovations, and by the suggestive title of the "uncrowned king."
Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, who was declared by one of the speakers at a recent meeting of Irish citizens held in Faneuil Hall, and more recently by Mr. J. B. O'Reilly in the North American Review, to be of American birth, is really a man of English descent. One of his ancestors was the poet Parnell. Another, Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards created Lord Congleton, was the associate of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne in the reform movement of 1829-32. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, and a Protestant in religion. By birth, by training, and by creed, he seemed to be of all persons the most unsuited to the task in which he has been so eminently successful. "In 1871, after some years of travel in America, among other places, he settled down on his estate at Avondale, in Wicklow, within whose boundaries is to be found Moore's Vale of Avoca, with its meeting waters." Like many who in spite of early failures have afterwards risen to distinction, Mr. Parnell's first public appearance was a great disappointment to himself and his friends. Before the electors of Dublin he completely broke down in his first attempt at public speaking, and the great city which has since showered upon him the highest honors it can give, rejected him. In 1875, he entered the House of Commons for the first time as member for Meath. For the first few years of his Parliamentary life he was mainly distinguished for the skill and unwearied persistency of his tactics as an obstructionist, though he also succeeded in carrying useful amendments to such measures as the Factories and Workshops Bill and the Bill for the Abolition of Flogging in the Army and Navy.
The Land League organization gave him just the kind of political machinery he wanted, though the credit of its creation belongs more to Michael Davitt and John Dillon than to him. It soon became immensely popular in Ireland, and, for a time, its orders and decrees superseded the established law of the land, with the seeming result of replacing social order and tranquillity by a condition of widespread anarchy, confusion, and lawlessness. It is only fair to say, however, that the Land League meetings did not create but only revealed the misery, distress, and discontent of the Irish rural populace. The country had recently suffered from a severe visitation of famine. Evictions for non-payment of rent had been steadily increasing for several years past. In 1877 the number stood at 463; in 1878 it swelled to nearly 1,000; at the end of 1880 it had actually reached 2,110. A bill was introduced by one of the Irish members with a view to mitigating the rigors of the law as regarded the impoverished tenantry. The government refused to adopt the measure, but sought to meet the case by framing a remedial scheme of their own which was introduced under the name of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. This bill, which was vigorously assailed from opposite quarters in the Commons, was unceremoniously rejected by the Lords, who denounced it as a flagrant encroachment on the rights of property. It must ever be regretted in the interests of mere humanity that Mr. Gladstone's government did not compel the recalcitrant peers to abandon their attitude of defiance in regard to that much-needed piece of ameliorative legislation. The House of Lords takes nothing so ill as open and avowed conflict with a powerful and popular ministry. In such a case the issue is never doubtful. And if the ministry had shown a determination to nail their colors to the mast, the Lords would have lost no time in unfurling a flag of truce. As it was, their practical acquiescence in the rejection of the bill consummated the rupture between the Irish party and themselves. The speeches of the chiefs of the Land League grew fierce, and at times violent, in their denunciation of Her Majesty's ministers. Mr. W. E. Forster, especially, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, a man of invincible resolution and ineradicable prejudices, and yet withal a man of much rugged kindliness of nature, became the victim of incessant interrogation and attack in Parliament, and the object of an unrelenting and quenchless hate in Ireland.
At one time the tone and temper of leading agitators were all that could be desired. "Abstain," said Mr. Davitt, "from all acts of violence, repel every incentive to outrage. Glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for free land, as to march to success through privation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty of anything which could sully the character of a brave and Christian people." Later on Mr. Davitt's feelings were less calm and his language less measured, mild and sober; as when, for instance, he pictured to his excited auditors "the wolf-dog of Irish vengeance leaping across the Atlantic to redress and avenge the wrongs of Ireland." Mr. John Dillon went further still, and ventured to intimate in a speech delivered at Kildare the advisability of military drill and general preparation for a resort to arms should the necessity arise.
Among the various means, legitimate and otherwise, adopted by the League for the accomplishment of its ends, was that form of social ostracism now familiarly known as "boycotting." Captain Boycott was an Englishman, employed as agent of Lord Earne, and occupied a farm at Ballinrobe, near Lough Mask. Emboldened by the powerful protection of the League, Lord Earne's tenants had refused to pay the stipulated rents, and Boycott served notices of eviction upon them. Whereupon not only the tenants on the estate but the population for miles on every side of him resolved not to have anything to do with him in any shape, whether of barter, business, or intercourse, nor was any one else permitted to relieve his isolation, or do him or his family any service, or supply him with any necessity of life. The Orangemen of Ulster organized and went armed to his relief, and under the protection of a small band of soldiers and police, his harvests were gathered in, and his produce conveyed to the nearest available market. Boycott went to England for a short time, and on his return to Lough Mask at once extricated himself from his painful and perilous position by giving up his agency. His unexpected surrender, strange to tell, brought about a complete revulsion of feeling among the dwellers of that wild and lovely district. He now became as popular as he had before been obnoxious. In the course of a speech delivered at a mass meeting of from fifteen to twenty thousand men at Waterford, in September, 1883, Michael Davitt said, "It was better for all concerned that the truth should be plainly and bluntly told, in order that English quack statesmen might be saved the trouble of proposing half measures to satisfy the Irish people.... Let the landlords of Ireland resign their unpopular positions, follow the example of Captain Boycott, and nobody would molest them, but if they did not, they would be grievously surprised by and by, for they would make the discovery which Captain Boycott had made, that the English government would find that it did not pay from an Imperial point of view to support a worse than useless class against the Irish nation. The 'lifeboat for the landlords,' as Lord Derby had once called the Land Act (1881), rescued them from the rocks upon which they were hurled by the waves of the Land League, but they had not reached the shores of safety yet. There were other breakers ahead that would do more damage to their rotten system than the storm of the Land League. When the laborers and the artisans of Ireland or of England and Scotland were enfranchised, was it to be supposed that the educated millions of industry would allow the national patrimony—the land—to be any longer the property of a useless class? In the language of scripture, the landlords would be asked to give an account of their stewardship, for they could be no longer stewards."
While, however, the Land Leaguers were jubilant at the success of their movement, the government were preparing to take strenuous measures for its suppression. Its leaders, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Sexton, along with the Treasurer, Mr. Egan, and the Secretary, Mr. Brennan, and several others, were prosecuted by the Crown on the charge of inciting to outrage. The prosecution, however, broke down, as everybody expected it would, through disagreement of the jury.
When Parliament assembled in January, 1881, the policy announced for Ireland was, as usual, one of concession and coercion. There was to be a Land Act, and there was to be a Bill which would give the Lord-lieutenant "power by warrant to arrest any person reasonably suspected of treason, treasonable felony, or treasonable practices, and the commission, whether before or after the Act, of crimes of intimidation, or incitement thereto." The conflict over the latter bill, which was first introduced, made the House of Commons more like a bear-garden than a place of rational deliberation and debate. Even Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone became exasperated, and charged back upon their assailants with an energy and violence quite unwonted. Mr. Gladstone's speech in particular aroused the House, angered the Irish members, and proved to be the prelude to a prolonged conflict with systematic obstruction, which went on for some time, night and day, without break. Even Mr. Parnell for the moment lost all self-command, entered into an angry conflict with the Prime Minister, defied the ruling of the Speaker, and was expelled the House, as Mr. Dillon had been the evening before. Some thirty others of the National party followed his example of defiance with a similar result. At the close of February the Coercion Bill was sent up to the Lords, and on the beginning of March received the Queen's assent. The end of July saw the third reading of the Land Bill in the Commons, after long and wearisome debate. The Lords amended it to death, and sent it back to the Commons—the poor and pithless shadow of its former self. Restored to life in the Lower House, it was again presented for the acceptance of the peers. Again they struck at its vitality, but the Commons said, Nulla vestigia retrorsum. A thousand popular platforms and almost the whole provincial press called upon the government to be firm; mass meetings in London and other large cities and towns clamored for the abolition of the House of Lords and the extinction of hereditary rule. Eventually the courage of the peers gave way, and the Land Bill of 1881 became law.
The closing months of the year saw the Land League chiefs in Kilmainham Prison. Mr. Gladstone on his visit to Leeds, early in October, had met with a reception more than royal from the folks of Yorkshire. For two or three days special trains from every part of that densely populated county poured into the great emporium of the cloth-trade thousands of enthusiastic admirers eager to catch a near glimpse of the foremost statesman of the age as he rode from point to point through the barricaded streets. In one of the speeches made during the visit, he had strongly reprobated the policy and proceedings of Mr. Parnell. At a meeting in Wexford, a few days after, Mr. Parnell replied with some bitterness. A few days more brought the exciting news of the arrests by the Irish Executive. The situation was desperate. The imprisoned leaders at once issued a manifesto calling upon the tenantry of Ireland to withhold payment of rents. This was a direct violation of the law, as well as a great political blunder, and the government at once seized the occasion as a fitting opportunity for suppressing the Land League and the advanced Nationalist press. In the session of 1882 there appeared a manifest indisposition on the part of a majority of the cabinet to give further sanction to the policy of Mr. Forster in Ireland. The imprisoned Home Rulers were released from Kilmainham on conditions which he thought perilously lenient, and he resigned, as also did Earl Cowper. The entry of the new Lord-lieutenant, Earl Spencer, on the 6th of May, into the Irish capital, promised well; but the assassin had bargained with the fates for the day, and before the sun had ceased to shed his bright beams on the green grass and budding trees of Phœnix Park, a scion of the noble house of Devonshire and his companion in office had been immolated on the altar of Irish vengeance before the eyes of the new viceroy as he stood in the window of the viceregal lodge. The civilized world was horror-struck. Ireland expressed her profound regret at a transaction which was thought to have been planned and executed by some designing foe. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt hastily met to disclaim any sympathy with the crime and to denounce the criminals. The rest of the story is now familiar and needs not be retold. The government was known to have been contemplating a milder régime for Ireland; but the disastrous incident of the 6th of May drove them back upon their former policy. A Crimes Bill was passed, followed by a measure of alleviation, known as the Arrears Bill, with the view of keeping the scales of justice even. In the middle of August the exhibition of Irish Art and Manufactures was opened in Dublin, and the unveiling of the statue of O'Connell, in Sackville Street, was part of the programme of the ceremonies. On the following day, Messrs. Parnell and Dillon received the freedom of the city, and Mr. E. D. Gray, M. P., proprietor of Freeman's Journal, and High Sheriff of Dublin, was committed to Richmond gaol for contempt of Court.
Whatever necessity may be pleaded for such measures as these, they only had one result, namely, the steady advancement of the Irish National cause. Dynamite explosions in London, Glasgow, and elsewhere, troubles in Egypt and the Soudan, complications with Russia as to the Afghan frontier, left little time for attention to Irish affairs during the last years of the existence of the Liberal ministry. The Irish Nationalist leaders had convinced themselves that they owed no gratitude to the government, and could hope for nothing from the Liberal party, except "chains, imprisonment, and death," to cite the words of Mr. Gladstone's recent reply to the Irish citizens of St. Louis. They had been long biding their time and watching for their opportunity, when suddenly it presented itself. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers, in presenting the Annual Budget, "ran a tilt" against the "beer and spirit" interest—a sin unpardonable, for any minister in England. The Budget was defeated, and ministers accepted the hint, rejoicing that, for a time at least, their troubles were ended.
Meanwhile the organization of the Irish National party had been developed to a point of perfection in anticipation of the New Reform Bill. That bill promised nothing in particular either to Gladstone or Salisbury, and it has given to neither any particular advantage over the other. In the counties the Liberal interest has advanced; in the boroughs it has markedly declined. But it promised everything to Parnell, and the fulfilment has been equal to the promise. It is no exaggeration to say that with a compact following of eighty-six he is virtually "master of the situation." But his position, on the other hand, is undoubtedly very critical. It is one which few men are likely to envy; it is one which not one in a thousand is competent to fill. Will he be equal to it? Where Grattan—sagacious, eloquent, high-minded and sincere—so signally failed, is Parnell likely to succeed? To-day his party is united, enthusiastic and strong, but when the hour for compromise and concession arrives, will the unanimity be maintained? Does Mr. Parnell himself know how much to ask, how little he ought to take, and where to draw the limit of compromise? Repeatedly Mr. Gladstone has invited Irish leaders to bring forward some definite scheme, and let the country know what they meant by "Home Rule." The cry, as a party watchword, has served admirably—seldom has a couple of words served so well—because, as expressing Irish National aspirations, it meant everything in general and nothing in particular; but the moment is at hand when it will be necessary to reduce it to a definite and feasible scheme of domestic government and policy. When that moment comes, will the prince of obstructionists in St. Stephen's prove himself equally capable as a constructive statesman on College Green? Should Mr. Gladstone find himself in a position soon after the opening of Parliament (he is not in a position now) to enter into practical negotiation with Mr. Parnell, may not the latter discover, as many an able and successful leader of men has done before him, that the next sad thing to a great defeat is a great victory? It is no secret that the demand Mr. Parnell, as the head of the Irish Nationalist party, is commissioned to make on behalf of Ireland, is a demand for national self-government almost, if not quite, amounting to national independence: it is equally well known that no British statesman would ever think, in the present state of public sentiment, of countenancing such a claim. For ourselves we do not venture to forecast the issue of the conflict; for "prophecy is the most gratuitous style of error." We content ourselves with hoping that the settlement may be speedy, pacific, satisfactory, and lasting.