IRISH HOME RULE AGITATION:

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.

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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 southwest 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 southwest 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

He had dises

to earn the gratitude and confidence of Ireland. tablished 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 warcry 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, cool

ness, an 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.

It

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. 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