THE

PENN MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1881.

THE MONTH.

HE progress of the bill for the Protection of Life and Prop

THE

the

House of Commons, to the great disgust of the English people generally. From the English point of view, which is shared by many of our American newspapers, the obstruction offered by the Irish members is nothing but a wanton and useless abuse of the rights secured to minorities by the old rules of the House of Commons, and a needless insult to statesmen who have cared more honestly for Ireland than any of their predecessors. We do not see how Englishmen can take any other view of the proceedings of Messrs. Parnell, Biggar and other associates of the Land League. Nor do we fail to see that the Irish people do not and cannot look at the matter in this light, and that the conduct of their representatives, instead of diminishing their popularity, will simply add to it. It must be remembered, in the first place, that the Irish people want no representatives in the British Parliament. They want to see their representatives meeting in their own Parliament at Dublin. They hate the law which forbids that and which commands their presence at Westminster, and forbids any legislation for Ireland except in London, as a badge of their national subjugation. If Messrs. Parnell and Biggar could but wreck the whole machine

of imperial legislation, they would do just what their constituents want of them. As they cannot do that, they will best comply with their tacit instructions by making themselves as ugly and as hateful as possible, and by making every Englishman wish the Act of Union were repealed, so that the Irish members might no longer sit in Parliament.

IRELAND is in the position of a nation independent in aspirations and in feelings, with a minority representation in the Parliament of a country which thoroughly dislikes her, and which she as thoroughly dislikes. She has never consented to be England's yokefellow, as Scotland and Wales have consented. She never will consent. Her own views of her public policy are in fundamental antagonism to those of England. Her views of foreign policy are equally antagonistic. On all large questions, her people, with the exception of a minority small in numbers but powerful in wealth and intelligence, vote against the wishes and the preferences of the English nation. She does not and cannot acquiesce in any legislation adopted by the British Government on Irish questions. She is fully justified in her refusal by the attitude of the English mind towards such legislation. Anything done for Ireland is always a "concession," not an admission of her rights. Catholic Emancipation was " conceded;" the abolition of the Irish. Establishment was conceded;" the Irish Land Law of 1870 was a "concession." This is English phraseology, and it confesses the unpalatable truth that Ireland is a hostile power, whose good will is to be purchased by "concessions,"-not really an integral part of the Empire. And then the English grow angry that the Irish are not grateful for "concessions." The only "concession" which one nation should thank another for, is the full withdrawal of interference, and permission to manage their own affairs in their own way. And that is where all these concessions must end.

THE policy pursued by Mr. Parnell and his friends was not unprovoked. These gentlemen have never had their rights on the floor of the House. Mr. Parnell's appearances there are not those of an agitator. He is a singularly calm and unexcitable speaker, with but little of the Irish temperament. Yet, in the times before he adopted the obstruction policy, he was never heard without inter

ruption, both noisy and prolonged. He has had to stand for fifteen minutes after his "Mr. Speaker," while the young bloods of the Tory and Liberal benches filled the House with a Babel of noise. Sometimes his repetition of those words was followed by a repetition of the din. The hearing was of the same sort. Everything was done to break him down, and to prevent his getting a chance to state his case. The reporters and the newspapers took the hint. They condensed his speeches into one line for each quarter of an hour he occupied. The Home Rule case was ostentatiously excluded from their reports of Parliament. It was Mr. Biggar who discovered a way of retaliation for this treatment, and repeatedly moved to adjourn the debate, forcing his enemies, time after time, to leave their comfortable seats and tramp out into the lobbies. Mr. Parnell made a careful study of the rules of the House before taking up this policy. He found that each party had had recourse to this weapon to prevent obnoxious legislation. The Whigs wasted three months in 1843 in opposing Sir Robert Peel's Coercion Bill. Mr. Parnell took it up to hinder the course of general legislation, and thus force some attention to Ireland's needs. He was met by the charge that he was not fighting according to the rules. It was said, "nobody ever used obstruction to stop the general course of legislation. It is merely employed to prevent the passage of some definite measure." The Speaker, himself, endorsed this doctrine, when the restrictive rules proposed by Sir Stafford Northcote were under consideration. He did not believe that the House could put down obstruction to a single measure, except by wearing out the obstructionists. Mr. Parnell and his friends took the Speaker at his word. He used obstruction against a single offensive measure. The Coercion Bill puts every Irishman's person and liberty at the disposal of a Ministry which sent Michael Davitt back to prison for being politically troublesome. If ever a legislator were justified in fighting a bill with all weapons, surely it is this. It suspends the British Constitution in Ireland, not because Ireland is in a state of revolt, but because the people have united in passive resistance to an unjust land system. Its apologists say: "Surely, it is time to do something vigorous, when the Land League shows itself stronger than the Government." They are but repeating Jezebel's cry: "Dost thou now govern the kingdom. of Israel?" Parnell is the Elijah who stands in the way, because,

like the old prophet, he stands, to the people's thinking, for justice and protection to Naboth in his vineyard.

In this particular case, it is to be remembered that the Land Leaguers are using obstruction in self-defence. The men who sent Michael Davitt to jail are asking for authority to send Charles Parnell after him. They ask immunity for so doing. They ask that their act be, for years to come, without legal redress. And while they specify a date in 1883 at which the prison doors will open upon prisoners for whose detention they can show no just cause, they give no pledges that they will not at the next session of Parliament repeal that date and leave the term of imprisonment indefinite. It is true that they and their apologists appeal to the good intentions and general benevolence of Mr. Foster as a guarantee against the abuse of this power. But Irishmen interpret their intentions by the light of Michael Davitt's arrest, by the refusal to grant any immunity to the representatives of the Irish people, and by the extension of the bill to all "offences" committed since last September. There is not a single prominent Land Leaguer who does not expect to be arrested and imprisoned for years under this ex post facto law, and there is not one in whose case the expectation is not well founded. The trouble taken about the investment of their funds in Paris shows the sincerity of their expectation. How men should fight against such a law under such circumstances, we learn from the diatribes against the bad manners of the Land Leaguers in the columns of American newspapers, such as The Advertiser of Boston, The Times and The Tribune of New York, and The Commercial of Cincinnati. How Americans can join in applauding ex post facto laws, after the American nation had affixed its perpetual stigma to such laws in the Constitutional prohibition against them, we have learned from those papers. The time will come when they will wish it forgotten that they joined in the British applause as the doors of an English prison closed once more upon Michael Davitt.

THE actual situation of the Irish people under the existing land system, is coming into clearer light as the debate goes on. The best and the worst landlords are equally condemned by the revolt of the people against them. The best landlords of the Englis': type are men like Mr. Bence Jones, who went over to Ireland with

money and English experience, and expected to create an English estate on Irish soil. They expect Irishmen to become Englishmen in compliance with their own tastes. They treat them as they would English peasants. They look for the deference which exists in England between the lower and the upper classes. And they are sorely disappointed when they find they reap only dislike, which some offensive act of theirs deepens into hate. They are, as the Spectator says, very square pegs trying to fill very ragged holes, in an unimaginative, English way, which keeps them from real sympathy with the Celtic people. They carry into their relations with their tenants a meddlesomeness to which English peasants submit, but which gives mortal offence in Ireland. For the Irishman is in such matters as sensitive as an English gentleman, and has nothing of the cringing spirit, although for policy he will seem to yield. Mr. Jones's recent book is meant as an indictment of the people and their character. It is, in truth, a full explanation of the reasons for his being "Boycotted" by his neighbors. Another well-meaning English landlord is described by a Times correspondent, who was sent over to see what was the matter on his estate. He had built the people nice houses, and did not charge them excessive rents, and yet they were in a thoroughly irritated state. It appeared that he thrust himself into their houses to lecture them on any want of tidiness, to brush down cobwebs and the like. He watched then with a spy-glass in the mornings; and if any one went to his work later than the others, he sent him a night-cap as a present. And they were ungrateful.

MOST valuable is the little book recently made up of letters written for the Telegraph by Mr. Charles Russell, an Ulster lawyer whose practice lies in England, and is chiefly in land cases. The estates he describes are those in Kerry, whose management has been portrayed by the agent, Mr. Trench, in his Realities of Irish Life. Mr. Russell gives the other side of the picture, and convicts Mr. Trench of systematic and interested misrepresentation of facts. He declares the management to be most tyrannical and unjust, and the condition of the people wretched in the extreme. One point is worth mentioning. Under the law, no tenant can be evicted for being behind with but one year's rent. So Mr. Trench and his predecessors as agents adopted the practice of making every tenant.