Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1886 — ERIN’S GREAT CHAMPION. [ARTICLE]

ERIN’S GREAT CHAMPION.

William Ewart Gladstone Issues a Stirring Pamphlet on the Irish Question. He Tells of His Conversion to Home Bole, and Criticises the Politi* cal Sitnation. The Grand Old Man Defends His Course and Drops the* Land Purchase Scheme. [Cable dispatch from London.} Mr. Gladstone’s brochure on the Irish question has been given to the public. It contains fifty-eight pages, and is similar to his pamphlet on the Bulgarian atrocities. At the outset Mr. Gladstone compares it with the apology he wrote on his change of attitude regarding the Irish church. “But,” he continues, “in the present case I have no such change to indicate, but have only to point out the mode in which my language and conduct were governed by uniformity of principle. I have simply followed the various stages by which the great question of autonomy for Ireland has been brought to the stage of ripeness for practical legislation.” The brochure is under two heads. The first is the history of an idea in which Mr. Gladstone summarizes the following conditions under which alone, in his view, it would become possible: First, the abandonment of the hope that Parliament could serve as a passable legislative instrument for Ireland; second, the unequivocal and constitutional demand of the Irish members; third, the possibility of dealing with Scotland in a similar way in circumstances of equal and equally clear desire. Replying to the charge of Hartington and Chamberlain that he had conceived the homerule idea precipitately and had concealed it unduly, he denies that it is the duty of a minister to make known, even to his colleagues, every’ idea forming in his mind, which would tend to confuse and ret .rd, instead of aid business. He continues: “What is true is that I had not publicly and in principle condemned it, and also that I had mentally considered it; but I had neither adopted nor rejected it, and for the very simple reason that it was not prepared for adoption or rejection.” Mr. Gladstone then goes on to point out that during all the many years of his public life the alternatives were repeal on the one hand, and on the other the relief of Ireland from grievances. It was not possible, he says, at that time to prognosticate how, in a short time, Parliament would stumble and almost writhe under its constantly accumulating burdens, or to pronounce that it would eventually {rove incapable of meeting the wants of reland. Evidently there was a period when Irish patrio.ism, as represented by O’Connell, looked favorable upon this alternative policy and had no fixed conclusion as to the absolute necessity for home government, and seemed to allow that measures founded in justice to Ireland might possibly suffice to meet the necessity of the case.

It was as early as 1871, Mr. Gladstone says, that he took the first step toward placing the controversy on its true basis. He opposed Mr. Butt’s scheme because the alternative described in the last paragraph had not been exhausted, but even at that time he did not close the door against a recognition of the question in a different state of things; for, instead of denouncing the idea of home rule as one in its essence destructive of the unity of the empire, in the following words he accepted the assurance given to the contrary: “Let me do the promoters of this movement the fullest justice. always speaking under the conviction, as they most emphatically declare, and as I fully believe them, that the union of these kingdoms under her Majesty is to be maintained, but that Parliament is to be broken up.” Similarly in 1874 Mr. Gladstone accepted without qualification the principle that home rule had no necessary connection with separation. When Mr. Shaw succeeded to the home rule leadership in 1880 Mr. Gladstone hailed his speech as showing an evident disposition to respect the functions of the House of Commons and the spirit of the constitution. In 1881, at the GuiMhall, he announced that he would kail with satisfaction and delight any measure of local government for Ireland. Coming to the electoral campaign of 1885, Mr. Gladstone s ivs his great object was to do nothing to hinder the prosecution of the question by the Tories, but to use his best efforts to impress the public mind with the importance and urgency of the questian. It was in this spirit that his Midlothian address was written. The Irish question was severed from the general subject of local government, and it was pointed out that it would probably throw into the shade all o her important measures which were ripe. Once ripe, the time for action had come. Just as if it had been a cornfield, we were not to wait until it was overripe. The healing of inveterate sores would only become more difficult; the growth of budding hopes more liable to be checked and paralyzed by the frosts of politics. For England in her soft arm-chair, all security, consideration, with adjournments interposed, as it had been usual, so also would it have been comfortable. But for Ireland, in her leaky cabin, it was of consequence to stop out the weather. In the second portion of the pamphlet, the lessons of the elections. Mr. Gladstone begins drawing certain lessons from the elections as they affect the Liberal party. In the course of some full calculations he estimates the loss to the Liberal party from the Unionist schism at two-sevenths of the whole, but this fraction is distributed, he points out very unequally among the classes. It has commanded five-s xths of the Liberal peers, but not more than one-twentieth of the Liberal workingmen. Mr. Gladstone points out that even now the Tories have failed to secure an absolute majority, and draws the final conclusion that at the first moment Liberalism is again united it must again become predominant in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone sees further ground for hope in the abatement that has already taken place in the Tory opposition. “We hear no more pot-valiant language,” he says, “no more of the Hottentots, and no more of the famous twenty years during which Parliament was to grant spec al powers for firm government in Ireland, and at the end of which time, in a larger or less degree, the coercive laws might be repealed

and measures of local self-government entertained.” Mr. Gladstone then goes on to point out that the unionists are already pledged to an immediate and large concession, many of them on such a scale that they give to their idea the name of home rule, declaring themselves favorable to its principle and only opposed to the “awkward and perverse manner in which it was handled by the late administration. ” All the currents of the political atmosphere between the two countries have been cleansed and sweetened. For Ireland now knows what she never has known before, that even under her defeat a deep rift of division runs all through the English nation in her favor; that there is not throughout the land a parish or village where there are not hearts beating in unison with her heart; where there are not minds earnestly bent on the acknowledgment and permanent establishment of her claims to national existence. Under these happy circumstances, what is there, Mr. Gladstone goes on to ask, in separation that would tend to make it advantageous to Ireland? As an island with many hundreds of miles of coast, with a weak marine and a people far more military than nautical in its habits, of small population, and limited in her present resources, why should she expose herself to the risks of invasion and to the certainty of an enormous cost in the creation and maintenance of a navy for defense, rather than remain under the shield of the greatest maritime power in the world, bound by every consideration of honor and intent to gua.d her? Why should she be supposed desirous to forego the advantage of absolute community of trade with the greatest of all commercial countries, to become an alien to the market which consumes, say, ninetenths of her produce, and instead of using the broad and universal paths of enterprise now open to her to carve out for herself new and narrow ways as a third-rate state? Mr. Gladstone next deals with the purchase and sale of land in Ireland, and at the outset acknowledges that the most powerful agent in bringing about the defeat of the Government was the aversion to the land bill. The Siamese-twinship of the two bills, put to scorn by those for whose benefit it was in a great part designed, having been deadly to both, he thinks it his duty explicitly to acknowledge that the sentence which has gone forth for the severance of the two measures is irresistiable, and that the twinship, which has been for the time disastrous to the hopes of Ireland, exists no longer. At the same time he hopes the partnership between the enemies of home rule and the land bill, which brought about this result, mav now be dissolved. The enemies of home rule have ever been the keenest promoters of land purchase in the interest of Irish landlords, and the enemies of the land-purchase bill, instead of standing at their ease, will now have to use their vigilance for the purpose of preventing the adoption of schemes of land purchase founded on principles very different from and indeed opposite to the bill lately consigned to limbo. In conclusion Mr. Gladstone says: “If I am np‘ egregiously wrong in all that has been said, Ireland has now lying before her a broad and even way in which to walk to the consummation of her wishes. Before her eyes is opened that same path of constitutional and peaceful action, of steady, free, and full discussiop, which has led England and Scotland to the achievemen* of all their pacific triumphs.”