The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-05-08 00:00:00

THE IRISH PROBLEM.

MIPORTANT MANIFESTO BY MR.
GLADSTONE.

Mr. Gladstone has addressed the following Mani-
festo to the Electors of Midlothian:
" Gentlemen,—l could have wished to take a part
in the active operations of the Easter Recess, parti-
cularly as they have been pushed within the limits of
your country. You have given me, from your local
meetings, good reason to believe that I should have
found the echoes of those walls within which I have
so often had the honour to address you much the
same as they have been on former occasions. But
age grows upon me, and I am obliged to reserve my
limited power of voice for any effort which may be
required in the House of Commons. I therefore use
my pen to revert to the subject which I opened in my
address to you last September. I then said that any
concession of local self-government to Ireland which
was duly adjusted to the paramount conditions of
Imperial unity would, in my tiew, be a source not of
danger, but of increased security and strength of the
Empire.
"Since that time a bill Las been introduced by the
existing Cabinet, on some important provisions of
which, as was to be expected, differences of opinion
prevail among its friends, but which could not have
met, as I conceive that it has met;with such wide and
warm approval in the country unless it had been felt
—first, that the principle of local autonomy, or Home
Rule for Ireland, is reasonable; and, secondly, that
the demands of Imperial unity have at least been
carefully studied in the provisions of the bill. I have
never known an occasion when a Parliamentary event
so rang throughout the world as the introduction of
this bill under the auspices of a British Government.
In extending our view beyond our shores we some-
times obtain valuable aid towards the conduct of our
affairs from opinions formed in other countries upon
great International questions of our own' which
they often view with a frank goodwill, lifted
entirely above the level of any sectional or
local prejudice. Naturally, we look with the
greatest interest to the sentiments of that vast British
and Irish public, which has already passed beyond
one hundred millions, and which spreads with a
rapidity unabated from year to year over some of the
widest spaces of the globe. From publii meetings
and fitom the highest authorities in the Colonies and
America, from capitals such as Washington, Boston,
and Quebec, and from remote districts lying beyond
the reach of all ordinary political excitement, I re-
ceive conclusive assurances that the kindred people
regard with warm and fraternal sympathy our present
effort to settle on an adequate scale, and once for all,
the long-vexed and troubled relations between Great
Britain and Ireland, which exhibits to us the one
and only conspicuous failure of the political genius of
our race to confront and master difficulty, and to
obtain, in a reasonable degree, the main ends of civi-
lised life.

"We must not be discouraged if at home, and par-
ticularly in the upper ranks of society, we hear a
variety of discordant notes, notes alike discordant
from our policy, and from one another. Gentlemen,
you have before you a Cabinet determined in its pur-
pose and with an intelligible plan. I own I see very
little else in the political arena that is determined or
that is intelligible.
"I will now proceed to speak to you on the state of
things in Parliament and beyond its walls, and also
upon the nature and import of the next great step to
be taken in the progress of the measure. I speak at
present of the Irish Government Bill, and I leave the
Irish Land Purchase Bill to stand cn the declaration
we have already made, adding only an expression of
the regret with which I find that, while the sands are
running in the hour-glass, the Irish landlords have
yet given no indication of a desire to accept a pro-
posal framed in a spirit of the utmost allowable regard
to their apprehensions and their interests. I heartily
concur with Lord Hartington, whose absolute integ-
rity and manly courage in this controversy, like Mr.
Bright, I find it, a pleasure to acknowledge, in holding
that on a great question of supreme rank, like that of
the Irish policy, party, if need be, muA give way, and
sound argument, at all hazards and all costs, must
rule.

"I do not under-estimate the grave importance of
the differences of opinion on this great subject which
have been exhibited within the circle of the Liberal
party. Some are inclined to rule the whole question
against us by authority, and to say, Surely such a
number of persons, all of them declared, many of
them able and consistent, some of them even extreme
Liberals, would not have parted from their friends
except in obedience to the imperative dictates of truth
and reason.'
"I will say nothing of the motives which have
determined us to confront the risk of such a parting.
But I earnestly recommend on all the parts, and at
all the stages of this controversy, a reference to the
lessons which history supplies. It is not the first
time in the history of Liberalism when sections,
under chiefs of high distinction, character, and ability,
have dissented from the general view of the party, to
the great joy, and no doubt, at the moment, the
great advantage of the Tories. In 173, a
great, indeed an illustrious secession of this
kind brought on the tremendous war finally
closed in 1815. It left the party thinned
and impoverished. But the party lived, while
the secession died; and what is more, we know now
that the party was right, and the secession wrong.
We have a second instance in 1835. Lord Derby and
Sir James Graham seceded from their party to main-
tain the Irish Church Establishment. The judgment
of the country has again shown that in principle the
party were right and the secession wrong. In com-
paring the present secession with the examples I have
cited (and I am aware of no examples the other way),
it is impossible not to be struck by one great, nay;
vital difference. Each of the two former secessions
was agreed within itself upon an active and substan-
tial policy. It was war in the first case; it was the
sacredness of Church property and of the principles
of a Church Establishment in the second. It is not
so with the present secession. Some are for coercion
without limit.; others for the moderated doses of it,
which we have had without effect (but with a
tendency to increase) during 80 years; a few are
against it altogether. On the other side,
some are for giving no local government; some
will give it to counties, some to provinces; some
would give an administrative centre to Ireland, but
not a legislative; some a legislative organ, but not an
executive; some go beyond the Government, and
actually recommend federation; some agree with
themselves no more than with one another, and their
proposals alter in every speech they make—a proof
not of weakness in the men, but of helplessness in
heir cause. We, gentlemen, have at least the advan-
tage as to aim and principle of speaking with one
voice. The Secession, however respectable and
estimable in other ways, is as to positive policy for
Ireland a perfect Babel. It is admitted on all hands
that social order is the first of all political aims, and
that its basis are dangerously sapped in Ireland. To
meet this state of things the Secession offer us either
a hundred conflicting remedies, or ro remedy at all.
I speak of what is notorious, and I content myself
with general statement now—the proof in details for
another Waco,
"These remarks, gentlemen, are not less applicable
to Tory than to Liberal opponents. In the speeches
of both alike I find one remarkable omission.
Whether they suggest, or whether they only criticise,
one thing they almost unanimously fail to do; they
fail to express confidence in the permanent success of
their opposition. To live from band to mouth
appears to be the height of their ambition; they
seem to suspect, what we well know, that the strife
which they are stirring for can only end one way, can
only end in the concession to self-government to Ire-
land. And if this be so, than the real question before
us is not the triumph of Irish autonomy, but the length
and character of the struggle by which it is to be pre-
ceded. We say, let it be short; they seek to make it
long. We say let us give freely; they say by their
acts, if not in words, let U 3 only give them what we
can no longer withhold. We say, let us give now,
when the position of our country in the affairs of the
world is free and strong; they seem to prefer waiting
for some period of national difficulty, thatwe may yield
to Irish demand in terror, as we did to the fear of
foreign war in 1778, to the demands of the volunteers
in 1782, to the growing terrors of the conflict with
France in 1793, to the alternative of civil war in 1829,
We say, let us act now, when molleration of thought
and language rules in Irish counsels, and when, by
willing concurrence on all sides, every arrangement
for the reservation of Imperial prerogative can be
made complete and absolute. They would postpone
the settlement until a day when demands may be
larger, and nfeans of resistance less. We say, deal
with this matter as a matter between brothers—a
matter of justice and of reason. They renew the tale,
alas! too often told, which has for its prologue denial
with exasperation and resentment, and for its
r epilogue surrender without conditions and without
thanks.

"Now, however, a new terror is brought upon the
stage, the terror of Home Rule for Scotland, and some
add for Wales; but this suggestion, gentlemen, brings
no alarm to me. Give us a little time, only that
we may look at each question in its order, and
on its [merits. I am not sorry they are
named, for all serious naming of them—all naming of
them, except in ca-icature—will serve to help our
movement on behalf of Ireland. I can draw no vital
distinction of right between the case of Ireland and
other cases. There are many distinctions of circum-
stance. For many years I have hoped that it might be
found practicable to apply decentralising pro-
cesses, even perhaps to portions of the dif-
ferent conditions of each case, which will
naturally require for it differences of treat-
ment subject to primary Imperial obligations. I be-
lieve that a standard measure of good government
for Scotland and for Wales will be eventually deter-
mined by the public opinion of Scotland and of
Wales, and this without the painful and disparaging
circumstances of controversy with which we are
threatened in the case of Ireland, whose woeful
history for centuries emboldens some of us to treat
her as if she had but a limited share in the great
inheritance of human right, and none at all in the
ordinary privilege or immunity from gross and whole-
sale insult—emboldens, I say, some of use, but only
some of us, and not, I rejoin to think, the nations of
Scotland or England.
"Watching from day to day the movements of the
currents of opinion during the present conflict, snore
and more I find it vital to observe the point at which

the dividing lines are drawn. On the side adverse to
the Governim at are found, as I sorrowfully admit,
in profuse abundance the wealth, social influence,
station, title, professions, or the large majority of
them--in a word, the spirit and power of class;
these are the main body of the opposing host. Nor
is this all. As knights of old had squires, so in the
great army of class each enrolled soldier has, as a
rule, dependants. The adverse host, then, consists
of class, and the dependants of class. But this
formidable army is, in the bulk of its constituent
parts the same, though now enriched at our cost with
a valuable contingent of recruits that has fought in
every one of the great political battles of the last
GO years, and has been defeated. We have had
great controversies before this great contro.
versy—on Free Trade, free navigation, public educa-
tion, religious equality in civil matters, extension of
the suffrage to its present basis; on these and many
other great issues the classes have fought uniformly
on the wrong side and have uniformly been beaten by
a power more difficult to marshal, but resistless when
marshalled—by the upright sense of the nation. Lord
Hartington has reminded us, and I cordially agree
with him, that this question, which may be turned
over in a thousand ways, and placed in a thousand
partial lights, can only be settled and sot at rest by
the nation. From the first I have stated—and I think
may speak for the Government at large—that here is
my main and capital reliance. I rely on my col-
leagues; I rely on an upright and enlightened House
of Commons; I rely on the effect of free discussion;
but the heart and root, the beginning and ending of
ray trust, is in the wise and generous justice of the
nation.

"I have still to say a few words on the issue which
is more immediately before us at this moment. I
know, gentlemen, from a happy experience during the
List seven years that you, when you have a great aim
before you, are not apt to be drawn away from it by
the artful raising of side issues. We have a great aim
before us now. It is to restore your Parliament to
efficiency, by dividing and by removing obstacles to
its work, to treat the Irish question with a due regard
to its specialities, but with the same thoroughness of
method by which we have solved Colonial problems
that fifty years back were hardly, if at all, less for-
midable, to give heed to the voice of a people speak-
ing in tones of moderation by the mouth of a vast
majority of those who we ourselves have made its con-
stitutional representatives, and thus to strengthen
and consolidate the Empire on the basis of mutual
benefit and hearty loyalty. Such is the end. For the
means, we take the establishment in Dublin of a legis-
lative body, empowered to make laws for the Irish as
contra-distinguished from Imperial affairs. It is
with this that we are now busied, and not with details
and particulars. Their time will come. They are
now employed with art before their season to bewilder
unwary souls. So it has been before. You remem-
ber well how the campaign against the recent exten-
sion of the Suffrage was carried on by setting in the
front of the battle the pretended difficulties and
dangers of the redistribution of seats. We are not
now debating the amount of Irish contributions to
the Empire, or the composition of the legislative body,
or the maintenance of a representative connection
with Westminster. On these questions, and many
more, we may or may not be at odds; but what we
are at this moment debating is the large and far
larger question which includes and, I think, absorbs
them all, the question whether you will or will not
have regard to the prayer of Ireland for the manage-
ment by herself of the affairs specifically and ex-
clusively her own.
"This, and no other, is the matter which the ITouse
of Commons has at once to decide. If, on this mat-
ter, it speaks with a clear and intelligible voice, I feel
the strongest assurance that the others, difficult as
some of them are, will, nevertheless, with the aid of
full discussion, with the aid of a-wise and eonciliatory
spirit, be found capable of a rational and tolerable
settlement.

"It is little, gentlemen, which I can do in this
most crave matter. It is no more than to devote with
cheerfulness to the cause the small available residue
of my active life; but let me, in these closing words,
extend my views beyond my own honoured constitu-
ency, and in one sentence say, You, my countrymen
of Scotland and England, can do much. With you
essentially, and sot with any person, or class, or sec-
tion among you, it rests to deliver the great Aye or
No, on your choice between which depend all the beet
hopes of Ireland,and much that touches in its honour
and high interest Great Britain and all the mighty
Empire of our Queen.'
"I remain, Electors of Midlothian, your
dutiful and grateful servant,
"W. E. GLADSTONE.
"Ilawarden, May 1, 1886."