X.

A FRESH DEPARTURE.

THE extraordinary legislation known as 'Irish remedial measures' has brought no healing on its wings; on the contrary, the last state of that unhappy country is worse than the first. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who see only with the eyes of common sense should begin to realise the fact that we have been on the wrong tack, and that if we hope ever to reach port again we must take a fresh departure. The position of affairs is, indeed, critical. We are told by the Prime Minister that we are in the midst of a social revolution; will any one tell us how suddenly unforeseen influences and opportunities may convert it into a military one? The Government apparently either cannot, or dare not, look a foot before their noses; they are content with a 'from-hand-to-mouth' policy, alternately petting and punishing, feeling their way like a blind man with a stick. Our present captain has thrown overboard the compass by which the vessel of the State has been hitherto steered; and she is headed in every direction according to his fancy or temper. Apparently our present legislation has no finality; there is no firm footing anywhere. The Tov σT is knocked from under our feet; there is a universal slide, and we are going down, down, down to a depth which no one pretends to fathom. 'We must stop somewhere,' is the Job's comfort we hear on all sides. No doubt we shall, but it promises to be where the man stopped who fell over the cliff-at the bottom! In the midst of our perplexity, our alarm, our danger, the only comfort we get is a cloud of words, and phrases, and sophisms, an 'exuberance of verbosity,' apology, prevarication, a hair-splitting of words, and, indeed, many of us think, of morality that is sickening, heart-breaking. We would hold our noses and swallow even this nauseous draught if we felt it would do us any

good, but we know it will not. As Carlyle tells us, 'Perorating members and windbags of parliamentary eloquence are poor saviours! '

Mr. Gladstone, in plaintive accents, expresses himself 'heart-broken' at Mr. Dillon's blunt explanation of the Land League policy; but has not the country, may I ask, has not every man of common sense amongst us, still more reason to be heart-broken at learning that the Minister to whose hands are absolutely committed the honour and actual existence of his country has only just now, at the eleventh hour, found it convenient to understand the plain meaning of words that every other man in the country understood two years ago?

The condition of public opinion on Irish legislation is amazing. English and Scotch landowners, and householders and property holders of all kinds, look on complacently and approvingly, whilst the rights of property, of free contract, &c., of everything, in fact, that gives security to possession in Ireland are cast to the winds. Poor blind mice! What reason have they for supposing that a like fate, if not a worse one, will not be theirs? The flatterers of Canute told him he could arrest the flow of the tide, but he was a sensible man, and laughed at them; and in order to prove to them what fools they were, went to the inconvenience of wetting his feet. The flatterers of Mr. Gladstone tell us that he, and he alone, can arrest the flow of revolution, 'block' it, as easily as Mr. Biggar blocks bills, and apparently he believes them. In the great cities of England and Scotland is a population as large as that of Ireland rack-rented to a degree unknown in that more fortunate country; men who pay as much for one wretched room as an Irishman pays for a hovel and three acres of land. There are in England hundreds of thousands of labourers whose lives are as hopeless, as squalid as any in Mayo or Connemara. There are thousands of estates in England and Scotland so mortgaged, so charged, that the owners cannot spare a

shilling to help the tenants to improve them or keep them from ruin.

The seasons have been worse for the farmers in England and Scotland than in Ireland; there are thousands of farmers in arrears of rent to their landlords—not farmers who, like the Irish farmers, live from hand to mouth, but men who once had capital, who have for years been paying their rent out of that capital, and now their capital is gone and their arrears remain. Do we suppose these classes do not look with envy at the peculiar nature of the remedial legislation for Ireland? that fixity of tenure, reduction of rents, payment of their arrears by the State, 'the live-and-thrive doctrine,' are not as attractive to the farmers, the cotters, the labourers, the mechanics in England and Scotland as they are in Ireland? As yet, certainly, the Prime Minister has not described evictions in England and Scotland as tantamount to a sentence of death;' he has not described the transfer of 25 per cent. of the landlord's income to the tenant as simple justice.' He has not excused Boycotting' as a mere synonym for 'exclusive dealing;' he has not directly suggested to English and Scotch tenants to 'ring the chapel bell,' neither has he yet taken the taxpayers' money to pay their arrears of rent. But does any one in his senses doubt that when the requirements of party become sufficiently urgent, when the spoliation of the landlord class in England and Scotland is necessary to the Radical vote, it will be done, and that it will be supported and defended by exactly the same arguments as justify the spoliation of Irish landlords now? And what, I should like to know, will then be the position of those English and Scotch landowners and householders who have supported the Minister in his spoliation of Irish landlords? They have applied the thin end of the wedge to loosen the foundation of their neighbour's house: what can they say, when it is driven home, if their own house comes tumbling down with it?

43

XI.

CORRUPT PRACTICES.

WHO is most deserving of punishment—Fagan, in his back parlour planning a house-breaking' job, or the professional gentleman he pays to do it? Mr.

in the office of the Patronage Secretary, planning a 'consciencebreaking' job, or the agents he pays to do it? Each avowedly pays others to break the law for his particular profit. If the house-breaking job comes off all right Mr. Fagan collars the swag,' and pays his agents what he likes. If the conscience-breaking' job is successful Mr. becomes a member of Parliament, an official, a right honourable—perhaps even a peer—and he in his turn pays his agents more or less liberally. When the burglary is detected there is generally an unavoidable miscarriage of justice, because the principal is not known to the police, and his agents are made to suffer for him; but when a bribery case is detected there is no excuse for this miscarriage of justice, because the principal is as well known as the agents. Fagan leaves his agents to their fate because he belongs to the criminal class; but I do not see how gentlemen can leave their agents to bear the punishment of acts for which they themselves have hired them and paid them to do. When the Patronage Secretary of the Government tells a candidate that if he wishes to be returned for such and such a place he must stand 2,000l. or 3,000l., and if he agrees to do this, and sends the money to the electioneering agent to be employed in securing his return, is it not absolutely certain that he knows that this money will be spent in buying votes, and that it is for that purpose, and for that alone, that he sends the money down? Is he not the principal who pays another to do his work? and does not the law of England say, 'Qui facit per alium facit per se?'

Really this sudden awakening of the parliamentary

conscience to the frightful wickedness of corrupt practices at elections is rather amusing. For generations the House of Commons, individually, has winked at bribery, condoned bribery, practised bribery. In no single case that I can recall has successful bribery been visited with any social or moral pains and penalties. Both parties, Radicals and Tories, openly subscribe to rival electioneering funds; and when we read that the duke of this has given 10,000l. and the earl of that 20,000l. to one fund or the other, do we not know that all this means bribery, and that, moreover, it means a strong conviction that those who bribe best will win the game?

A general election costs ten times, fifteen times, twenty times more than the most liberal estimate can allow to legitimate electioneering expenses; and all the world knows that this excessive expenditure means corrupt practices in a greater or less degree in nearly all the constituencies in the kingdom. Even in sacred Midlothian itself, the very Hedjaz of all true Radicals, it was reported and credited that many thousands of pounds were spent in excess of the official returns! There is no mystery about the matter; bribery is against the law, and so is drunkenness (and fifty times more injurious to the community); but should we not be rather surprised if a man, highly respected and of irreproachable character, was suddenly sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour for getting drunk? The purity of the House of Commons as regards corrupt practices is very much a matter of opinion. Of course it contains members who are free even from the suspicion of corrupt practices, direct or indirect; but it also contains a number who are not. Peradventure there be fifty righteous; peradventure there lack five of the fifty; peradventure there be forty, or thirty, or twenty, or only ten. Quien sabe? At any rate, I have an idea that to many members the mere thought of an electioneering agent conjures up a spectre as horrible as was even that of Banquo to Macbeth-'Don't shake