THE

PENN MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1881.

THE MONTH.

HE Queen's speech at the opening of the Imperial Parliament

THE

was sufficient evidence that the Ministry had not as yet come to any final decision as regards their Irish policy. It foreshadowed Coercion on the one hand and Land Reform on the other; but it gave no indication as to the relative strength of either measure. But the fact that Coercion is to precede Reform shows that Mr. Forster and the Whigs, rather than Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain, have controlled the Cabinet in its deliberations. This may be the best order of procedure for ordinary cases. But where a whole people have risen against wrongs which have oppressed them for centuries, and which thus far have received no attention in spite of their prolonged agitation and outcries, Reform should precede measures for the restoration of order. The latter should be aimed only at those who persist in agitation in spite of the just concessions made to terminate agitation. Those concessions should serve as a dividing and sifting agency, to sunder honest discontent from factious turbulence; and the weight of the law should fall only upon the latter. Mr. Gladstone makes it fall equally upon all. His new legislation, so far as it succeeds, will restore the process-server and the evictionist to all their baleful energy, while it will impart an additional motive to their activity, in view of the threat of legisla

tion which may put an end to their power forever. But it will not succeed. As Burke said, you cannot draw a bill of indictment against a whole people; and neither can the Irish people, at this stage of their agitation, be cowed into submission and passivity by any law which can be passed at St. Stephen's, or any display of force used to carry it into effect. Had Mr. Gladstone looked into English history for precedents, he would have found that his mode of procedure was a vicious one. He would have seen that the great and successful rulers were those who, like Elizabeth, swept away the popular grievances before trying to dictate terms to their subjects, while the king who tried coercion first and reform afterward, came to his end on the scaffold at Whitehall. But English statesmen do not regard English precedents as applying to Ireland; that country is, in their view, a conquered and dependent province, with which its rulers may deal as they please, and from which they have nothing to fear except annoyance,

ness.

ANNOYANCE enough from Ireland Mr. Gladstone is likely to have before this session of Parliament is over. The Parnell party are now so strong in numbers that the old rules to guard the House against their encroachments on its time are no longer of any avail. Each of them may confine himself to the legal number of motions per fortnight, and yet put a stop to the progress of busiHow they mean to proceed has been shown during the ten days spent in debating the reply to the Queen's speech, which usually occupies less than a day. If the ministry resolve to introduce more stringent rules for the prevention of obstruction, the Parnellites, with the help of Lord Churchhill and the discontented Tories, will contest the passage of those rules at such length that they will probably be withdrawn, as causing loss of time. When it comes to the Coercion Bill the same tactics will be followed, and here the Leaguers will have the aid of Mr. Cowan and the other English radicals. It will be well on in the year before the Land Reform Bill will be brought in; and when it will pass, or when room will be found for other business, no one can foresee.

This obstruction policy does not find as much sympathy in America, as do the other parts of the Land League's programme. But we think this is because many of the essential points in the case are not known to Americans, and others are overlooked. The

first is that obstruction was begun because of the systematic neglect of Irish business by the House of Commons. Gross abuses,

long ago removed in England and Scotland, still linger in Ireland, because it was thought unadvisable to make the law for their reform applicable to Ireland, and because no ministry or parliament has found the time to adopt any supplementary legislation for the purpose. In English and Scotch boroughs, for instance, every householder has had the suffrage since 1868, and the mem bers chosen actually represent the people of the boroughs. In Ireland there is still a large property qualification required, which throws the choice of members into the hands of a small minority, chiefly Protestant Tories, and prevents any real representation of of the people. And although the present struggle over Irish policy may lead to a dissolution of Parliament, yet the ministry refuse to promise that any measure for the redress of this inequality will be introduced this year. A second excuse for obstruction is found in the fact that the wishes of Irish representatives are constantly ignored in the preparation of Irish measures. When a bill relating specially to Scotland is on hand, the Scotch members as such have their wishes consulted. They are not voted down by the brute force of majorities. Scotch public opinion is ostentatiously courted and quoted by both parties in support of Scotch bills. But Ireland, although so much larger a country, is treated with no such deference. She is governed according to English ideas, not her own. To make her over again after some English pattern, instead of enabling her people to work out their destiny in their own way, has been the constant rule with English statesmen. Is it, then, to be wondered that her representatives meet the brute force of majorities with the brute force of obstruction?

In the present instance they are offering obstruction to prevent the abolition in Ireland of such guarantees for personal liberty as the Constitution gives them. Throughout the greater part of the time since the Union, those guarantees have been in a state of suspense through coercion laws, although the Irish people are confessedly, as regards ordinary offences against law, the most orderly people in Europe. And when these are suspended, the control of matters passes into the hands, not of English officials, nor indifferent administrators, but of the Irish landlords and Orange partisans,

who make up the commission of the peace. Is it to be wondered that the Irish representatives in Parliament mean to resist by every means in their power the establishment of martial law under such administrators? No English ministry, whatever the local disorder, would dare to establish such a rule in Lancashire or Yorkshire, or in Ayrshire. But Ireland is the step-child, for whom any treatment is good enough.

WHAT Mr. Gladstone means to do in the way of Land Reform is indicated but dimly in the Queen's speech. It was natural that he should speak of the new bill as an extension and reinforcement of the Land Law of 1870. It is both English and Gladstonish to insist that the boldest "new departure" is but the logical outcome of previous action. It is no doubt to the Bright clauses of that law that he has especial reference, and we think it likely that every Irish landlord who can be induced to sell his estates will find a purchaser in the Government, which will recoup itself by some such system of repayment by instalments as was used in creating freehold tenements out of the Irish Church's glebe lands. This plan of procedure falls in with English ideas. It is in the line of what has already been tried successfully. It interferes in no way with the sanctities of contract. But it remains to be seen, how he will extend the law of 1870 for the tenants of those landlords who do not choose to sell. English Liberals, of the advanced type, pronounce for the three F's proposed by the late Councillor Butt, of which we spoke last month. To this there are objections drawn from the probable practical effect of such legislation, and others from the principles of English Political Economy. The three F's are so many legislative interferences with freedom of contract between the landlord and his tenant, and Englishmen who have abandoned all other sanctities still insist that the general interests of society should be sacrificed to this. And this policy has not the support of the Land League. They want to give every Irish tenant the right to purchase his holding with Government assistance, whether the landlord is willing to sell or not. And they want the Government to effect large removals of people from overcrowded districts of the western coast, to lands in Leinster and Munster, which are now laid out in grazing farms.

WE are surprised to learn that our reference to the Anti-Jewish crusade in Germany last month has been very generally misinterpreted, as though we occupied an attitude of indifference toward the shameful wrongs which have been inflicted during the past few months upon that much enduring race. It is the purpose of these paragraphs, not merely to express our judgment of the events of the month, but to enable our readers to form their own judgment. by putting them en rapport with the actors. Thus, a few months ago, we took the pains to state the case of the Turks against the concession of Dulcigno, not because we have any liking for the Turk, but because we think it helpful to an understanding of the case to look at it through other men's eyes. Especially is this needful where a whole theory of life and duty, not shared by either ourselves or our readers, underlies public action, as is the case with Chaplain Stoecker's Christian Socialist movement. We had taken the pains to learn exactly what that gentleman has to say for himself, and we found that the motive to his unwise and lamentable agitation was not personal hatred of the Jewish race, as is charged in both German and American newspapers, but wrong-headed theories of the sphere and duties of the Government in the correction of social evils,-which evils he assails with just as much emphasis when represented by Gentiles. And this we thought it fair to say, although our own disagreement with him was made only the greater by a closer familiarity with his theories. We join most heartily in reprobating the Judenhetze and all its ways, but we mean to exercise toward its author the fairness proverbially due to the devil himself.

Our statement that certain newspapers in Berlin, which are owned, controlled and generally edited by Jews, had published articles which gave just offence to Christians, has been challenged. We spoke by the book, for we had seen and read those articles. We do not say that they furnished any adequate justification of the acts of Chaplain Stoecker, much less of the outrages perpetrated by those who carried the agitation to a point he had never contemplated, but ought to have foreseen as a possible and even a probable result of his speeches and pamphlets. But in view of these articles, and of the part taken by Jewish journalists and representatives in the Kulturkampf, we cannot say that this agitation, although utterly absurd and unjust in itself, was entirely unprovoked.