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THE NEW DEPARTURE IN IRELAND.

NOTHER month has passed. We are within a short five weeks of the Whitsuntide Recess, and the business of the country has not advanced. Legislation is at a standstill, and the great measures of practical reform for which the country has been taught to look are no nearer maturity than they were at the General Election.

The cause
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of this Parliamentary deadlock is not difficult to discover. requires no unusual skill or insight to diagnose it. On all hands it is admitted that the Government, both collectively and individually, are most anxious to carry through important measures of reform, and that their majority in the House of Commons are ready and willing to co-operate with them, and further, that the country which sent the majority to Parliament is awaiting with earnest expectation the completion of the work which they were sent to perform. What, then, is the cause of the delay? It is not want of will on part of the Government, and it is not want of will on part of their followers in Parliament. It is something outside the Ministry and the Ministerial majority. The forces of Conservatism alone could not produce this state of paralysis. Whenever a Liberal Government have been in power and active in good works, the forces of Conservatism have been arrayed against them; but though they have obstructed, they have never produced a total stoppage of the Parliamentary machine. The malignant obstinacy and pertinacity of the Irish malcontents alone could not produce it. In the last Parliament they did their worst, but their own unaided worst was not equal to cope with the Ministerial forces, and they received but scant support from even the free lances of the Opposition. Neither the Conservative opposition alone, then, nor the Irish opposition alone, could paralyse the energies of Parliament. But when those two forces are united and unscrupulous they can do so.

In the last number of this magazine we showed how the coalition between the Conservative party and the Irish malcontents in the House of Commons was sealed and ratified, and how the combined policy had been formulated. Since then the official sanction of the leader of the entire Conservative party has been formally and publicly given to this combined policy, and this sanction has been approved by the great quarterly organ of Conservative opinion. In his speech at Liverpool Lord Salisbury accepted the declaration of policy made by Mr. O'Donnell in the autumn, after his interview with Mr. Parnell at Kilmainham. That policy was the expropriation of Irish landlords at the expense of the ratepayers of England and Scotland; and this

dealing with Ireland. He accepted Mr. O'Donnell's proposals unreservedly, and by so doing he formally admitted that the main proposal of the 'new departure' of the American Fenians was the main proposal of the new departure of the Conservative party.

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Three years ago, according to Mr. Gibson in his recent speech at Manchester, Mr. Devoy, an American Fenian, wrote to Michael Davitt stating that the extreme Irish party must start upon a new departure. The methods by which this new departure was to be carried out were: 1. That a class of men with strong opinions and habits of organization should enter on, and no longer abjure, political life in Ireland. 2. That a common platform of self-government' should be formed which was not to be defined until the country itself should speak, and so command general allegiance. 3. That the land should be owned by the tillers of the soil; and 4. That a steady and organised effort should be made to get possession of municipalities, boards of guardians, and other local bodies, throughout Ireland. These are the four points of the Charter of Irish Independence as formulated by John Devoy. The third (which we have put in italics) is clearly the practical one to which Irish attention is mainly directed at the present time. It is another and perhaps a more delicate way of expressing expropriation of landlords. And this point is now the proposal of the leader of the great Conservative party in England, as the Conservative method of dealing with Ireland. We do not say that the expropriation of Irish landlords by means of English money and in favour of existing tenants might not possibly be a solution, or at least a temporary solution, of the Irish difficulty, though we see very many and very serious obstacles in the way of carrying it out. But we do say that there is something passing strange in the coalition of the old Tory party of England with the Irish Irreconcilables to carry out the programme of John Devoy and Michael Davitt. Nothing shows more clearly the ability with which the leaders of the Irish rebellion have gauged the necessities of the rival political parties in Englandnothing perhaps exhibits more strongly the enormous difficulty, if not the impossibility, of ruling Ireland by means of English party government. The exact form in which the new Conservative departure is to be carried out has not yet transpired. But it is to be presumed that Mr. Smith has got a plan in view which will please the Irish landlords, the Irish farmers, and the Irish labourers, and also the Fenians, Land Leaguers, and Ribbonmen, who are now swaying the destinies of Ireland. It is further to be presumed that Mr. Smith's plan will satisfy the rank and file of his own party and the great body of taxpayers in England and Scotland. It must be a most attractive bait which will allure all these fish into the same net. Nothing short of a miracle could draw them all ashore.

Already it seems doubtful whether the loyalty of the Tory party in this country will be strong enough to meet this call upon it. There are rumours of refusals. Some of the steadiest of the old

Salisbury's conclusion that through expropriation alone can Ireland be saved.

It is admitted that there is a demand for this policy on part of the Irish landlords, who consider it as the one method of saving anything out of the fire which, not unnaturally, is creating such widespread and wholesale panic. Twenty years' purchase at the rent fixed by the court, paid up or guaranteed by the State, is at least something saved from the wreck which seems impending. Considering the state of suspense and anxiety in which the ordinary Irish landowner has been held during the last two years, it is easy to understand his desire to kick the dust from his feet and turn his back for ever on his country.

We are all cosmopolitan now-a-days. The whole world is our country, and the sentimental attachment to a particular bit of land which used to be so attractive to the ordinary Englishman or Irishman of family is now, thanks to our powers of locomotion, coming to be regarded by the modern citizen of the world as hardly worth cherishing. Twenty years' purchase guaranteed by the State will put the most insolvent Irish landlord in pocket for a time at least. All the pleasures and privileges of landlordism have disappeared in Ireland, or at best are in abeyance. If he should still desire to be an owner of acres, there is plenty of land in the market in England and in the colonies, and he has his money in his pocket wherewith to purchase. But if he should prefer the easier life of a rentier or annuitant, it is open to him to choose that life without any anxiety about the receipt of his rents, or any danger of life or limb in the gathering of them.

It is easy enough to see that this policy will be approved by very many among the more needy of the Irish landowners. It is not so easy to see how it can be accepted by the great body of English landowners, or how it can be even contemplated by an English Chancellor of the Exchequer. No doubt the pill will be gilded in the case of the former by the certainty that the value of land in this country will be enhanced by the rush of purchasers from Ireland with State money in their pockets. But, on the other hand, the familiar proverb of the goose and the gander must arise in warning. If the State is going to enable the tenants in Ireland to buy out their landlords, might it not do so in England also, and still more in Scotland, where the tenants are many and the landlords few? Thoughts of these kinds must inevitably occur to very many among the most respected followers of the Tory party both in Parliament and in the country.

In these reflections we have put aside altogether the effect of such a wholesale social revolution in the country most concerned. It will be for the loyal men among the Irish members of Parliament to inform the House of Commons and the country how, in their opinion, the departure from Ireland of the great middle and upper classes will affect the general condition of the country, and how far

The Tories have

otherwise than disastrous to Irish civilisation. always acted on the principle that Irish disaffection can be overcome by money bribes, just as the Liberals have trusted to legislative bribes. But a money bribe extending to the dimensions of hundreds of millions has never heretofore suggested itself even to the most imaginative among Tory schemers. There never was a larger premium paid to successful rebellion.

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The extreme party in the House of Commons cannot be expected to take a judicial view of the prospective exodus of that class of their fellow-citizens against whom they have been waging war. success of their policy will be assured, and it is only too probable that their eyes will be closed to the effect of it upon their native country. But it will be interesting to hear what men like Mr. Shaw, Mr. Blennerhassett, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, and Mr. Mitchell Henry will have to say as to the prospects of the shopkeepers and the better class of labouring men and artisans throughout the whole country when the only people who had any money to spend have disappeared from the middle and south and west of Ireland. On this view of the question it is better not to dilate. But in the coming debate it must be thoroughly considered. In the meantime it may be enough to watch the solution of the problem, and to see whether the natural anxiety of Lord Salisbury to dish the Ministry by outbidding the ministerial proposals will carry with it the faithful support of his adherents. We cannot believe that it will do so. It will commend itself to the extreme Irish party because it is their policy, and it will be not unfavourably received by a section of the English Radicals who sit below the gangway on the ministerial side, and who, in the wreck of even so frail a bark as Irish landlordism, may think they see some signs of the progress of their principles. But we cannot think it will be accepted by the steadier section of either the Conservative or the Liberal party.

The Government ought not to be seriously embarrassed by Mr. Smith's resolution, which embodies this new policy. It is, after all, little more than a burlesque exaggeration of the Bright clauses. These clauses undoubtedly contemplate an extension of a peasant proprietary. But they do not contemplate the immediate creation. of such a class. The growth must be natural and progressive. It must not be produced like a transformation scene in a pantomime, by a stroke of a harlequin's sword, even if the owner of the sword should be so good a harlequin as Lord Salisbury. If Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, can see his way to meet the financial position of the project, the political consequences may possibly be faced. But the financial questions which must arise in carrying out a scheme which, at a modest estimate, will swallow up some two hundred million pounds sterling of public money, are vaster and more tangled than any financial questions of this generation. If the scheme is favourably received-and, in the present state of the public mind with regard to Ireland, it is impossible to say what may not be favourably

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received-there is one thing certain, and that is that it will involve the necessity of giving up all the rest of the Parliamentary Session to it. But under any circumstances it seems certain that Ireland will absorb the rest of the session. A stronger and bolder policy,' as Mr. Shaw said the other day in the scratch debate upon the Clare Circular, 'a stronger and bolder policy than any yet attempted was required, and if the Government were not prepared to take another course, the state of Ireland would go from bad to worse.' It is full time to try a stronger policy. The condition of Ireland is such that the whole energies of the Executive and of Parliament must be devoted to it. England and Scotland must again be sacrificed, and the country must be content to wait till Ireland has had her fill of agitation.

What the character of the policy to be adopted may be, it is not for us to say. A great measure of conciliation taking the form of pouring two hundred millions, or more, of English gold into the pockets of the Irish landlords, to enable them to leave their country, may be the right policy. It would probably keep the Irish nation quiet for a few years to come, until those who had not participated in the State largesses had formed an organisation of agitation against those who had. An extensive scheme of emigration, costing a great many millions, to enable a considerable number of the Irish people to leave Ireland, and seek a less cruel and more fertile fatherland in Manitoba, or in the States, has also been suggested as a remedy for the ills of Ireland. This, possibly, may be a more hopeful solution of the problem. We have, at the least, some experience to draw on here, and are not altogether taking a leap in the dark. At the end of the last century, and at the beginning of this, the whole of the West and North Highlands of Scotland were peopled by small tenants, or crofters, living in squalor and penury and chronic discontent, just as the small tenants are now living in many parts of Ireland. In 'the wild days before the '45,' these men formed the clansmen of the Highland chieftains, and their numbers were kept within limits by perpetual forays and battles. But after the Disarming Acts,' when the Highlands became somewhat civilised and regulated by law, there was no longer any artificial means of keeping this population within reasonable limits. They increased and multiplied, as the Irish do, like rabbits in a warren. They built themselves hovels in which they herded, and they scratched the sterile soil till it produced some miserable potatoes, and still more miserable oats, on which they reared their broods of hungry children. They did nothing for the land or for the country. They existed, multiplied, and grumbled. At the beginning of the century, what are called the Highland clearances took place, and many thousands of these crofters, with their wives and families, were successfully transferred to Canada and New Zealand. Since then the country where these clearances were effected has been profitable, and has become valuable to the nation, and the descendants of those who went are now among the