It is not surprising that Mr. Lecky, in former years the most distinguished advocate of Irish Nationalism, in what may be called its social aspects, should say of the organ of the National League, 'United Ireland,' 'any English statesman who reads that paper, and then proposes to hand over the property and the virtual government of Ireland to the men whose ideas it represents, must be either a traitor or a fool.'
There is no occasion to dwell on the existence of this body or the character of its operations. They are part of the case of the Government. Mr. Morley has frankly told us, that we ought to pass the new Bill, because the League is so strong. If we did not, we should have to quarrel with the League, and to meet not only this great association as we knew it in its times of prosperity, but the League as supported by all the reserve forces of Mr. Egan and Mr. Ford. At present these leaders of public opinion send money; but if the National League, its staff, its secretaries, its branches, its newspapers and Members of Parliament, are not enough, they are ready to send dynamite.
One remarkable fact, however, in connection with the National League deserves special consideration, for it illustrates the singularly disastrous character of Mr. Gladstone's interposition in Irish affairs. The society, which we have endeavoured to describe, and which Mr. Morley recommends to our attention as the locum tenens of dynamite and the dagger, is now officered in nearly every village by the priests of the Roman Church. At the beginning of his career, Mr. Parnell personally was regarded by the Roman Catholic hierarchy with suspicion, if not with hostility. Mr. Butt had never succeeded in securing their hearty co-operation in his Home Rule scheme. Mr. Parnell was not only a Protestant, but expressed his contempt very freely for the adherents of the Roman Church, whilst he avowed his sympathy with Revolutionists, whom the Irish Catholic had been taught to regard as enemies of the Holy Father. We can always trace in the history of this Church two forces at work; the principle of order and authority, worldly and calculating, in sympathy with the powers that be, trusting by skill and caution to manipulate them for its own ends; and on the other hand, the wilder spirit of sacerdotal ambition ready to ride the storm and dare catastrophe. Before Mr. Gladstone's second Administration, the former influence was gaining much strength in Ireland. Even if we make allowance for the social origin of the Irish priests, filled from their infancy with the rebel sentiment of the peasantry, there are many sins that the disposition of their Church was until very recently to rely upon intrigue and organization for gaining its ends, rather than to ally itself openly with the Irish Revolution. Even after Mr. Parnell had secured the allegiance of the farmer class by his great largess in the shape of 20 per cent. reduction of rent, not only did Cardinal McCabe continue to oppose him, but Archbishop Croke evinced a desire to act on the side of Government.
Such a line of action, however, was only possible on the supposition, that government was to be maintained in Ireland; and the tenure of Ireland by Lord Spencer gave no such assurance. We know the passionate efforts which Mr. Gladstone made to exclude Archbishop Walsh from the See of Dublin. Sir George Errington was sent to Rome to get the Pope to do what Mr. Gladstone dare not do himself—bid defiance to the Irish leader. That resolute politician had a policy; the English Minister had none. A quarrel with the Nationalist party meant to the Roman Church loss of income, loss of influence—influence which, in these iconoclastic days, it might take them generations to recover; and, after all their sacrifices, they might find that Mr. Gladstone had capitulated, and had handed them and the rest of Ireland over to the National League. Their only practical course, as discreet politicians, was to throw in their lot with the great Nationalist leader, relying on the old traditions of the Irish peasant to protect clerical interests against the host of Revolutionists, who would, on Mr. Parnell's triumph, flock into Ireland from all the ends of the earth. The priests do not forget that the member for Cork denounced their co-religionists. They have no enthusiasm for a revolutionary dictator, who, whatever his opinions on religious matters, cannot be claimed as a son of the Church. Mr. Gladstone, however, left the sacerdotal power no choice but to make the best terms they could with the Irish leader, who was only too glad to secure their co-operation. Archbishop Walsh has been accepted as a sort of ecclesiastical assessor to Mr. Parnell's government, and at the last election the priests went as one man for the National League.
It is an Ireland, thus abandoned for years to the evil spirits evoked by the rhetorician of Southport—an Ireland, in which the natural springs of Conservatism have been dried up by the fever of slumbering revolution—that England is now called upon to deal with, and the remedy of the Ministry is to call into power a public opinion schooled in conspiracy and violence; for now at length Mr. Gladstone has given up the notion of intervening between Mr. Parnell and the Irish crowd. The preachers of the gospel of plunder are invited to share in the government of a part of the Kingdom.
We shall not attempt to examine further the scheme which Mr. Gladstone has foreshadowed, but which, as we write, is not yet published in detail. One characteristic, we may note, in the Prime Minister's speech was very unusual with him. It is full of admissions which seem to be due not so much to his habitual daring as to unconsciousness of their import. He is ready to buy out the landlords at a great cost to the English taxpayer, because the idea of landed property came to the Irishman in English garb, and is therefore not likely to be respected in the new system; but why should he be obliged to make special provision for the Irish judges? They are men of ability, of stainless character. They do not belong to any particular party, or race, or creed; they are members of a great profession which all civilized societies require. They have that experience of their profession which would make their services particularly useful to a community entering on a new social stage; but the mere fact, that they have been engaged in applying the law, makes their position dangerous, and Mr. Gladstone is obliged to ask England to provide that they shall not suffer in purse from the opening of the new era which he proposes in that part of the United Kingdom where he has undertaken to reconstruct society.
For the moment Mr. Morley prefers the rôle of Siéyes rather than of Danton, but the outcome of the legislation, proposed by the Ministry with the assent of Mr. Parnell, must be to advance, if not to consummate, the theory of Irish Independence. We thus arrive at that result which Mr. Morley, on his own principles, would find it difficult to refuse assent to. He has told us that his policy is to be 'thorough.' A separate Irish nationality or reconquest must be the ultimate consequence of any substitution of local institutions in Ireland for the Parliament at Westminster, unless so far as the proposed substitution were part of a scheme common to all four components of the kingdom. Most people will agree with the old Duke of Wellington, that 'the repeal of the Union must be the dissolution of the connection between the two countries.'
To withdraw the English flag from Ireland as we did from the Ionian Isles, to have a Convention called at Dublin to determine the future government of the Island, such a plan would have the advantage that it recognizes the one political opinion, which we can trace in Irish popular expression—the desire to be done with England. It is true, that the policy of Irish ideas declared at Southport was a means to an end—the better union of the two countries—but pledged to two antagonistic principles, Mr. Gladstone must some time choose which he will abandon.
On the other hand, in accepting Irish independence we shrink from responsibility for the acts of England. We know that the disorder now ruling in Ireland is, to some extent, the result of English misgovernment in past generations, and instead of attempting by firmness and patience to remedy the mischief our fathers have done, we leave the future to Providence. In this aspect of the question, we would remind our readers of the words used in our article on 'Disintegration' not three years ago:—
'The highest interests of the Empire, as well as the most sacred obligations of honour, forbid us to solve this question by conceding any species of independence to Ireland; or, in other words, any licence to the majority in that country to govern the rest of Irishmen as they please. To the minority, to those who have trusted us, and on the faith of our protection have done our work, it would be a sentence of exile or of ruin. All that is Protestant—nay, all that is loyal—all who have land or money to lose, all by whose enterprize and capital industry and commerce are still sustained, would be at the mercy of the adventurers who have led the Land League, if not of the darker counsellors by whom the Invincibles have been inspired. If we have failed after centuries of effort to make Ireland peaceable and civilized, we have no moral right to abandon our post and leave all the penalty of our failure to those whom we have persuaded to trust in our power. It would be an act of political bankruptcy, an avowal that we were unable to satisfy even the most sacred obligations, and that all claims to protect or govern any one beyond our own narrow island were at an end.'—'Quarterly Review,' October, 1883, pp. 593, 594.