The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-12 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, Jan. 11.

Her Majesty, accompanied by her Royal High-
ness Princess Louise, drove out in the grounds
this morning.

His Royal Highness Prince Leopold walked
in the grounds.

MR. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHAM..
(From the Times)
Those who looked forward to Mr. Bright's speech
at Birmingham ought not to feel disappointed.
More remarkable displays of eloquence have often
issued from his lips, but never an address com-
manding heartier approval. It is, indeed, the Mr.
Bright of old times that we hear, but still Mr.
Bright made wiser by a new experience. The
Tribune of the people has become a Minister of the
Crown. It is a change bringing its drawbacks. It
is easy to thunder against the shortcomings of
others, but when we learn for ourselves the diffi-
culties of practical life we must needs adopt a more
moderate language. A homely proverb tells us
that bachelors' wives and maids' children are al-
ways the best trained, and there is nothing so
pleasing as the picture of what a nation might be
when a man who has never had the burden of
moulding its destinies takes upon himself to de-
scribe it. Thus it is with Mr. Bright. Two
short years—nay, a brief twelvemonth since,
he bad declaimed against the governing
classes of the nation for their failure to weld
all parts of the kingdom into one harmonious
whole. What is it we hear from him now ? Ireland,
he confesses, presents a difficult, we may say an ugly
question to the legislator, the uglier the closer we
look upon it. Oftentimes it has happened to him-
self that a task has appeared difficult when seen from
afar, but its difficulties have disappeared as he ap-
proached its solution. In his own language, the hill
has frowned steeply on him till he came to its base,
when the ascent became gradual and the anticipated
difficulty vanished. It has not been so with the
settlement of Ireland. He owns that there the
nearer knowledge of experience has shown him more
to be overcome than he had reckoned upon when
afar off ; and so he speaks with measured language
of the future. Some may be disappointed at this
hesitation. For ourselves, we rejoice at it, and
accept it as the evidence of fuller knowledge and
riper wisdom. It must be impossible, we should
suppose, for the most excitable Irish patriot in
reading Mr. Bright's speech to refrain from
feeling that there are more things to be taken
account of in legislation for the sister island
than are dreamt of in his philosophy. We are
all anxious to do what we can. Every motive of
good will, of sound statesmanship—we go further,
and acknowledge of the lowest self-interest—urges
us to bind Ireland to England with links of family
affection, but not in a moment can we hope to undo
the effects of past years, to soften the hardness of
English judgment, or to dispel the mists of pre-
judice and ignorance through which the Irish people
have been accustomed to scan the efforts of those
who have zealously, if not successfully, endeavoured
to elevate their condition.

Mr. Bright tells his constituents at Birmingham
there are certain things which no Government can
do ; and, again, he expresses another aspect of the
same truth when he says it is not easy to drive six
omnibuses abreast through Temple-bar. "Pull down
the Bar" is the rejoinder that might be expected
from many among the audience, and it is what the
President of the Board of Trade would himself
have said only the other day. He has better learnt
the limits of human action. Let us take into
consideration, or, to use his own pet phrase, let
us "bear in mind" the prime conditions of the
Irish problem. One of them, and as we ven-
ture to suggest, the corner stone of the whole, is
thus stated by himself : --4, Land is in Ireland not
only the great industry, but, with some exceptions
in the North, it is almost the only industry of the
country, and there has been an excessive competi-
tion for it in the struggle for life and the means of
living which has placed the occupier almost at the
mercy of the proprietor of the soil." The sentence
is open to verbal criticism, but its meaning is plain
and, as a matter of fact, indisputable. W hat reflec-
tions does it not immediately suggest? how can
the United Parliament abate this " excessive com-
petition," which Mr. Bright acknowledges? It is
this which gives the sting to the fact that the pro-
prietorship of the land is in comparatively faw
hands. It is this which points the significance
of the division between Protestant landowners
and Catholic cultivators. Had it not been for
this, we should never be reminded that the origin
of Irish titles was confiscation, any more than we
are reminded that the origin of many an English
title was the Conquest by William the Norman.
The potent fact of the present time is that the
competition for land in Ireland is " excessive " The
acreage of the island is strictly limited ; those who
want to live by cultivating it are many, and those
who can live by cultivating it are, by comparison,
few. Ocher modes of occupation may be suggested,
and if it is a question of historical retrospect we
acknowledge that there Is munch in this relation to
look back upon with regret. It is true that the
English Legislature long endeavoured to repress the
competition of Irish industry. It is true that the
manufacturers of Lancashire compelled Mr. Pitt
to postpone the opening of the English markets
to Irish productions. But these are things of the
past. For seventy years the two countries have
heen one. If a thing can be made cheaper in
Ireland than in England, it will be made there.
Unfortunately—and it is a physical fact which no
Parliament can override—the absence of coal in
Ireland is the absence of cheap power, and with-
out cheap power any considerable develop-
ment of manufactures is impossible. We must
start from the truth that the competition for
land in the sister island is excessive, and all
the Legislature can do is to provide that,
excessive though the competition may be, still
the cultivator shall be treated by the landholder
with the same spirit of justice and equity as if
the two stood face to face, at arm's length, and on
equal terms. This is, briefly stated, the sum of
all that has been excogitated on the Irish Land
Question by every thinker, English or Irish, who
has turned his attention to it. There are certain
duties of morality commonly reckoned outside the
domain of law. The social condition of Ireland—
the excessive competition for land—has made it
possible for the owners of its land to override these
duties, and to assume to themselves the fruit of that
nnf. anwn ; and the Legislature has re-
cognised the necessity of intervening and protect-
ing tenants against the consequences of their self-
imposed condition. An independent Irish Mo-
narchy or Republic could, as Mr. Bright says, do
no more; and, even in doing this, it is of the first
importance to remember that such legislation is so
far retrograde that it confesses a lower state of
civilisation in Ireland than that hitherto assumed
to exist, and it should be the object of every
statesman to inspire Irishmen with the virtues that
will lift them out of that state of dependence upon
others now acknowledged to be the lot of the ma-
jority of the population.
Mr. Bright spoke of other subjects than the
condition of Ireland, but the Commercial Treaty,
and even Education itself, are trifles compared with
the one topic engrossing the attention of the nation.
We are, in truth, somewhat impatient of the Iteci-
proci'y mongers, and the space they have been per-
mitted to occupy before the world. They have
been very noisy, but they are very insignificant ;
though we confess that, if we were not thus as,ured
of the hollow character of their agitation,
we should
not be satisfied with Mr. Bright's method of re-
futing them. Of what use is it to talk of seventy
workmen in Birmingham who have been kept in
constant employ by the increase of our commerce
with France to those who, by a similar examina-
tion of special instances, have persußded them-