ably granted. But no reasonable man can fail to see how lamentably these essential conditions are now wanting, and it would be difficult to conceive a worse fate that could befall a nation than to be governed by the kind of men who form the present majority of the Irish representatives. That such men, supported by the votes of an ignorant and priest-driven peasantry, could govern the great Protestant population of the North is, to me at least, absolutely incredible. The experiment would only lead to prolonged and acute anarchy; probably to civil war; possibly even to massacre, certainly to a fierce revival of those religious passions which have of late years been happily subsiding. Those passions, indeed, are already reviving, and they are likely in the near future to become again a dominant influence in Irish politics. In the meantime industrial ruin is rapidly advancing. If you crown Anarchy for your king, whatever else you may have you will certainly not have industrial prosperity under his sceptre. If the ruling power in Ireland is given to men whose policy has been described by Mr. Gladstone himself as a policy of public plunder,' and whose whole political action has consisted of a series of attacks upon property and upon the principles on which property is based, capital will most certainly not visit the country. The expropriation of landlords may perhaps settle on a permanent basis the Land Question; but it is a strange comment on the character of the proposed legislature, that it is believed, probably with excellent reason, that such a measure is necessary to prevent that legislature from beginning its career by a course of wholesale plunder. But the contagion of anarchy is no longer confined to land. We have seen the attacks upon the Bank of Ireland; the attacks upon an Irish Steam Company because it performed services which it was not only authorised, but bound by law to perform; the constant interference between employers and labourers; the constant boycotting of shopkeepers who have for any reason incurred the animosity of the League. The House League for breaking contracts between houseowners and lodgers is rapidly spreading, and the conflict between farmers and landlords will probably soon be reproduced in the conflict between labourers and farmers. The result of all this is inevitable. Every banker knows that capital is steadily passing out of the country. Who would found a manufacture in Ireland? Who would invest money in the improvement of land? Who would engage in any industrial enterprise which depended for its success on the fulfilment of contracts in a distant future? Insurance offices no longer lend on Irish property. Wholesale dealers restrict their Irish orders. At the first intimation of Mr. Gladstone's probable conversion to Home Rule there was a great fall in Irish investments. In Ulster the elements of order are so strong that the evil may be arrested, but in the other provinces this impoverishment is steadily continuing. Shopkeepers on the verge of ruin, labourers unemployed, industrial enterprises withering rapidly away are the natural and evident results of lawless agitation and of feeble and vacillating government. One inestimable advantage it is true Ireland still has. She shares, and largely shares, in the credit of the empire-the best credit in the world. With a Land League Parliament her credit is likely soon to be on a level with that of Mexico and Honduras. And what advantage can Home Rule offer to counteract these evils? It is supposed by some that it would check absenteeism. A larger proportion of wealthy Irish gentlemen are said to have lived in Ireland in the days of the old Parliament when the whole government of the country was in their hands than at present. Is it likely that a larger proportion will live there when they are expropriated from their properties, driven out of every form of public life, and placed under a government which they detest? One form of absenteeism may indeed be diminished, for a flight of Irish American conspirators are likely speedily to come over to share the spoils. I know that the notion has been long and deeply rooted in the Irish mind that a native legislature might foster native industries by protective laws. It is probable that if Home Rule were established, the first conflict with England would be on this ground. But whatever justice there may be in the doctrine that in the early stage of manufactures protective laws are of real advantage, a war of tariffs with England in the existing circumstances of Ireland seems to me the most suicidal of policies. A poor country, with very little capital, and that capital rapidly disappearing, permeated with agitations and subversive principles utterly incompatible with industrial prosperity, Ireland is placed by nature in such a geographical position that England is her only market. America will take nothing from her but men. With the continent of Europe her commercial relations are wholly insignificant. England could at any moment reduce her agriculture to absolute ruin by simply excluding Irish cattle from her market. There was a time when such a measure would have been impossible, for England depended very largely on Ireland for her supply of meat. But the extension of pasture in England, and the immense importation of cattle from America and Australia, have now made it perfectly easy for England to dispense with the Irish supply. With separate and hostile legislatures, and with a desire for protection rising among the British farmers, such a measure would be not only possible but probable. I have spoken of the force and intelligence of the elements in Ireland that are opposed to Home Rule. That a genuine element of enthusiasm does exist in its favour, I should be the last to deny ; but I believe that most of those who know Ireland best will admit that much of it is of the nature of an instinctive, passionate, unreasoning hatred of England formed in the national character by influences which have been in operation for centuries, and are much too strong to be effaced by any mere constitutional changes. There is a spirit in Ireland, as there is a spirit among the American Fenians, that would never be satisfied without separation, and which after separation would inevitably lead to hostility. Much of the movement however is of a different and more superficial character, and without extreme timidity and vacillation on the part of successive governments it could never have reached its present height. Professional agitation, which American subsidies have made peculiarly lucrative; the longing for change which grows up in periods of poverty and depression; simple intimidation savagely and unscrupulously exercised; the constant preaching of incendiary newspapers; class animosities and jealousies, and many petty questions of patronage and place have all borne a great part in swelling the torrent. With the farmers the land has always been the real question, and if that question were finally settled they would probably become very passive. Already the larger and more prosperous farmers look on Home Rule with alarm, and the great grass farmers have been made the objects of more than one significant menace. With the priests there is the hope of extinguishing Protestantism in great districts, and of placing the whole education of Ireland under sacerdotal influence. Lord Robert Montague has lately supplied some curiously significant evidence of their designs, and the attitude of the Irish priests towards England since every vestige of religious ascendency has been abolished is an instructive lesson to those who imagine that concessions will turn disloyalty into loyalty. But, above all, the present agitation owes its power to its constant and unexpected success; to the encouragement of, Irish disloyalty by English politicians; to the abandonment of great districts of Ireland to anarchy; to the manifest bargaining on both sides for the Irish vote; to such speeches as that in which Mr. Gladstone attributed the disestablishment of the Irish Church to the Clerkenwell outrage; to such political transformation scenes as we have recently witnessed. In the very instructive memorial which Sir Robert Peel sent to the Duke of Wellington in 1829 for the purpose of putting on record the grounds of his great change on the Catholic Question, there is a passage which curiously illustrates the slow and deliberate process by which in past generations great organic changes were carried in England. Five distinct parliaments, he says, had reviewed, and 'four distinct Houses of Commons had come to decisions in favour of a consideration of the Catholic Question.' In our more enlightened days such delay would be impossible. Legislation grows rather with the speed of the mushroom than of the oak, and it is considered quite right and proper that a question like that which is discussed in the present paper, vitally affecting the whole future destiny of the British empire and involving incalculable issues of human happiness or misery, should be pushed through from its inception to its completion in a few months. At the last election it was carefully withdrawn from the consideration of the English constituencies, and no reason was given for believing that any prominent statesman had abandoned the uniform tradition and conviction of English statesmanship. When the nearly balanced result of the election was known, a new policy was suddenly sprung upon the country, and it is now maintained in many quarters that a single hurried and successful election is all that is needed to carry it into effect. The influence and ambition of a single statesman, whose past Irish policy has proved probably the most stupendous legislative failure of the nineteenth century; a cry against the House of Lords; a little dexterous party manoeuvring; a few skilful appeals to class passions, animosities, or interests wholly unconnected with the great question at issue, and a majority may be obtained, fully competent, it is assumed, to force a measure for the disintegration of the empire through all its stages and undo the work of seven hundred years. It would be difficult to conceive a policy more opposed to the best tendencies of the time. In the lifetime of those who have attained middle age three great works have been accomplished in the world which far transcend all others in importance, and of which it is probably no exaggeration to say that the memory can never pass while the human race remains upon this planet. One of them, which is connected with the great name of Cavour, was the movement of unification by which the old and illustrious, but weak because divided, States of Italy were drawn together and fused into one great and prosperous kingdom. Another, which is chiefly connected with the name of Bismarck, was that movement of unification which has made Germany the most powerful nation upon the Continent. The third, which may I believe one day be thought the most important of the three, was due much less to the genius of any statesman than to the patriotism and courage of a great democracy. It was the contest of America with the spirit of secession which had arisen within its border; and although that spirit was spread over a far larger area than Ireland; although it existed over that area in a far larger proportion of the population than in Ireland, and was supported by an immeasurably greater amount of earnestness and self-sacrifice, it has now disappeared, and the present generation of Americans have in all human probability secured for centuries the unity of the great Republic of the West. These have been the contributions of other nations to the history of the nineteenth century. Shall it be said of English statesmen that their most prolific and most characteristic work has been to introduce the principle of dissolution into the very heart of their empire? W. E. H. LECKY. The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake |