these assemblies and their business. The flower of the political talent of Ireland would find its place in the Imperial Parliament.

6

Mr. Reginald Brett says that no other Irish policy is possible than Mr. Gladstone's, which was right in principle, but faulty in vital details.' This is in the sacred language of the practical politicians, to which a plain outsider has not the key. But let us hope that the plan of two assemblies may be sufficiently like Mr. Gladstone's to pass with Mr. Brett as Gladstonian in principle, possible, and desirable.

The reason of the country judged Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule dangerous. It perceives, however, the need of local government for Ireland, and leaves the plan of it to the Government; only let us insist that what is done shall be effectual. Happily we have in Mr. Goschen a statesman as fit for planning local government as Lord Hartington is for combating Gladstonian Home Rule.

Finally, there is the land question. Mr. Gladstone's missionaries are sent out to cry that all the Conservative Government wants is to enable the landlords to extort their unjust rents. Of course some danger there is that the Conservative party may not be stringent enough in dealing with landlords. But evidently something has to be done. It is confessed that the Bill for admitting leaseholders to the benefit of the Act of 1881, and for preventing harsh evictions, is a measure of temporary relief only. The Act of 1881 has failed, as it was likely to fail. I may say so, for I said so in 1881, provoking somewhat, I may add, my friend Mr. John Morley by my want of faith. By that Act, I said, 'ownership and tenure will be made quite a different thing in Ireland from that which they are in England, and in countries of our sort of civilisation generally, and this is surely a disadvantage.' An adumbration of dual ownership there was in Irish land-tenure already; such an ownership, with such parties to it, had elements of trouble; the thing was to get rid of it. Instead of getting rid of it, the Act of 1881 developed and strengthened it. What we all now see to be desirable, is to have one owner, and that owner, as far as possible, the cultivator.

1

The reason of the country supports the Government in quelling revolutionary anarchy in Ireland, and in restoring the rule of law and order there. Here it is as conservative as the Conservative party. But it has no landlord bias, and in its judgment on Irish landlords it is disposed to be severe. Mere land-merchants,' too many of them, says their own friend Croker; 'from their neglect of their duties springs their difficulty with their rents, and the general misery and distraction.' Often insolent' besides; an offence which the Irish peasant resents more even than oppression. It is a terrible indictment; and there are landlords still against whom it might justly be brought. The Land Purchase Commissioner of the government has

Irish Essays, p. 29.

known rack-renting prevail to an extent simply shocking;' Sir Redvers Buller desires a court with a very strong coercive power on a bad landlord.'

Landlordism, as we know it in these islands, has disappeared from most countries. It depends on the consent of the community. In England, as I have often said, it has kept this consent partly through the moderation of the people, but above all through that of the landlords themselves. It has become impossible to maintain by the force of England the system of landlordism where it has not, as in England itself, the consent of the community; and this the reason and conscience of England begin to feel more and more. Mr. Chamberlain, I believe, is the statesman who might be proctor for the real mind of the country on this matter, as Lord Hartington might be proctor for it on the matter of Home Rule, and Mr. Goschen on that of local government. It seems admitted, however, that if we organise local government in Ireland, we yet cannot leave, as would be natural, the community itself to deal with the landlords there the Government of the Catholic South with the landlords of the South, that of the Protestant North with those of the North. England and its Government are partly accountable for the faults of the landlords and for their present position. The Imperial Parliament must therefore help in solving the land question. But Mr. Gladstone's twenty years' purchase all round is as little pleasing to the mind of the country as his Home Rule. No solution will satisfy the mind and conscience of the country which does not regard equity, discriminate between the good landlord and the bad, and lance the deep imposthume of moral grievance.

:

Sir George Trevelyan adheres to his passionate love for the Liberal party, his passionate grief at its not being in power. I am too old for these romantic attachments. Sir George Trevelyan. himself confesses that it is impossible for young politicians to have any idea of the half-heartedness of the Liberal politics of the past.' I confess that I am not sanguine about those of the near future. Why then should we be so very eager to take up again with the tabernacle of Moloch,' Mr. Gladstone's old umbrella, or 'the star of our god Remphan,' the genial countenance of Sir William Harcourt, merely in order to pass forty years in the wilderness of the Deceased Wife's Sister? If the Conservative Government will quell anarchy in Ireland, give us a sound plan of local government there, and deal effectually with the land question, we may be well satisfied to allow them the lease of power requisite for this, and I believe the country will let them have it.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

MR. BALFOUR has recently described the condition of Ireland thus:

At this moment there are under special police protection 498 persons in Munster, 221 in Leinster, 175 in Connaught, and 23 in Ulster, and the total cost for the extra police required is 55,000l. a year; over a large portion of Ireland the ordinary law is not in force, and the vacuum is filled up by a law which is not that of the Crown or Parliament. The courts of law are paralysed, witnesses refuse to give evidence, and the jury system has become unworkable.

I assume the accuracy of this statement. According to Ministers there are, in fact, two Governments in Ireland, the Government of the Queen, and the government of the National League; and of these the government of the League is the stronger. What a commentary upon the Act of Union! Eighty-seven years have passed since Mr. Pitt's great measure, which was practically to convert Ireland into an English county, became law, and, after this lengthened trial of an incorporate Union,' the story which the Irish Secretary of 1887 has to tell is that there now exists in Ireland a rebellious organisation which overrides the law and paralyses the Executive. It is said that no civilised Government ought to tolerate such a state of things. Certainly. But the fact is notorious, whatever conclusion may be drawn from it, that successive English Governments have been obliged, over and over again, to tolerate such a state of things in Ireland.

The Catholic Association was stronger than the Government of the King. Self-elected-self-constituted-self-assembled self-adjourned-acknowledging no superior, tolerating no equal, interfering in all stages with the administration of justice, levying contributions,' and discharging all the functions of regular government, it obtained a 'complete mastery and control over the masses of the Irish people.' So said Mr. Canning. But the power of the Catholic Association was not diminished, much less destroyed, by repressive legislation. It held the field in defiance of Parliament until its work was done.

Two years after Catholic Emancipation, Lord Anglesey, then Lord-Lieutenant, wrote, "Things are now come to that pass that the question is whether O'Connell or I shall govern Ireland.'

The Government de jure put forth all its strength to destroy the Government de facto. Parliament used all the means at its disposal

to support the Viceroy in his struggle with the agitator. Stanley's Arms Act was passed in 1831, and Grey's Coercion Act in 1833. The right of public meeting was taken away, the Habeas Corpus Act practically suspended, martial law established, and-what was the result? Who in the end governed' Ireland? Did the authority of the King's representative or the authority of the popular leader finally prevail?

In 1833 Lord Anglesey left Ireland baffled and defeated. In 1834 O'Connell drove the Grey Ministry from power; and in 1835 he became master of the situation. The struggle between the King's Government and the Irish chief, which had begun in 1830, ended in 1835 in the signal triumph of the latter. So completely had Lord Anglesey failed to uphold the authority of the English Executive that his successor Lord Wellesley wrote in 1834, while Grey's Coercion Act was yet in force, it is more safe to violate the law than obey it.'

In 1841 the long duel between Peel and O'Connell on the question of Repeal commenced. How did it end? In 1844 Peel packed a jury and flung O'Connell into gaol. But the triumph of the agitator came, before he had been four months in prison, when the House of Lords quashed the conviction, and Lord Denman declared that the practices used by the Minister in securing a verdict for the Crown, were calculated to make trial by jury a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.' Two years after Peel had succeeded in incarcerating O'Connell, by means which men of all parties now regard as foul, Peel's Ministry was smashed in an attempt to pass an Irish Coercion. Act; and the victory of the agitator over the Minister was complete. The duel between the rival statesmen ended only with the death of O'Connell. Famine supervened and did what coercion could not do: it reduced Ireland to a state of tranquillity, the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and despair.''

The greatest political leader Ireland has had since O'Connell is Mr. Parnell; and the lesson which the public life of each man teaches is the same you cannot govern a hostile population by constitutional means. You cannot deny the demands of such people if you allow them an atom of liberty; you must make up your mind to do either of two things to yield, or to abolish every form of parliamentary government. Oppression under parliamentary government only exasperates, it cannot destroy; and oppression which does not destroy is dangerous not to the oppressed but to the oppressor. Cromwell understood this. His successors in the government of Ireland do not, and never did understand it. Cromwell made up his mind to settle the Irish question by exterminating the Irish race. It was a

The story of the protracted struggle between Peel and O'Connell has recently been told with fairness and ability by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, in his interesting and valuable work, Peel and O'Connell (Kegan Paul & Co.).

VOL. XXI.-No. 123.

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possible policy. His successors have preserved the race, conferred popular institutions upon them, admitted their representatives to Parliament, based the franchise on household suffrage, and striven to govern the country not in accordance with Irish but English opinion. This is the policy of a man who sows an acorn and expects that it will spring up a mushroom.

What would Cromwell have done with O'Connell? To use the language of Carlyle, he would have 'hanged him up,' and the whole Catholic Association with him, quam primum, and this would certainly have been an effectual way of suppressing the Catholic agitation.

What did the Liverpools and Peels, the Wellingtons, Eldons, Bathursts, and Sidmouths, do with O'Connell? They left him at large in Ireland, allowed him to call meetings, make speeches, form associations, use the press, petition Parliament, attack Ministers, and hoped all the time to keep the Catholics quiet. Cromwell's policy may be stigmatised as cruel, but there is only one word in the English language to describe this policy, and that word is 'tomfoolery." When the Catholic Association became most formidable the Government suppressed it, but O'Connell started a second Association before the ink was dry on the statute which destroyed the first; and that second Association brought Ireland to the verge of rebellion, and emancipated the Papists. The existence of popular institutions was fatal to the policy of Ministers; representative government secured the final triumph of the Irish agitator. And looking at the Irish question now purely from a Unionist point of view, who shall say that the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 was a wise measure?

Between 1830 and 1835 there were three Lords-Lieutenant and four Chief-Secretaries in Ireland. The policy of those men-and they were well armed with Coercion Acts-was to put down O'Connell. But they all failed. One by one they disappeared from his path, leaving him popular and powerful. Anglesey, Wellesley, Hoddington, Hardinge, Stanley, Hobhouse, Littleton, all measured swords with the agitator, and all were worsted in the combat. Why? Because you cannot put down a constitutional agitator, who is supported by public opinion, while you leave him a rag of the Constitution to stand upon. To suspend the Constitution in Ireland while leaving O'Connell a member of the Imperial Parliament, there to use his power in obstructing public business, embarrassing Ministers, and taking advantage of party conflicts to destroy cabinets and perplex administrators, was an act of insensate folly. It gave the agitator a grievance, and left him free to use it, as he did use it, for compassing the destruction of the Government.

From 1841 to 1846 Peel and O'Connell were engaged in a handto-hand struggle for the government of Ireland. In 1843 the Minister passed an Arms Act to put down the agitator. The Act