New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-02-15
EARL PUSsELDS LATEST MANIFESTO.

Earl Russell has taken lately to the puDllca-
ton of little manifestoes on the policy which
ought to be pursued by the English Govern
ment in dealing with Ireland. These utterances
assume the form of letters addressed to Mr..
Chichester Fortescue, Secretary for Ireland.
Earl Russell is not, as letter-writer, quite
equal TO Pascal, or Swift, or Junius, or even
Goblet, and the policy he recommends has
very little in it that could startle the most
timid nerves. Indeed, many people think that
the veteran Wing only sends out these effuslons
for the same reason that Freedom, in Moore's
song, occasionally gives forth sound-to
show that still he lives. Yet Earl Russell Is,
by family right, by political position and by
the memories of past which at one time was
almost illustrious, sort of influence and
power, even still, in English politics; and
when he chooses to write, the public he
addresses cannot choose but read, were it only
ont of mere pOliteness. He has just written
third letter to Mr.. FOrtescue, in which he
proposes to show how to settle the whole irish
question between this date and the list OF
March, 1870. Let us see what are the heroic
remedies proposed for the disease of the
Irish system by the aged chief of what was
once the great Wing party.
Earl Russell still clngs to the shreds of his
former notion about the equal endowment of
all the sects and denominations in Ireland.
He would extinguish at once the Irish Church
as a State Establishment. He would leave TO
the disestablished church such cathedrals and
parish churches, &c. Gas may have been chiefly
"built by voluntary Protestant contributions"
Quite right Everybody from Mr.. Mail, the
Nonconformist leader, to the O'Donohue, the
brilliant young Romanist Chief, would assent
to that proposition. But then Earl Russell
would take the rest Of the Church property,
and out of certain portion OF 1t he would
create a fund, to be called the Irish fund, and
administered by the Board of Charitable Be-
quests, and to be divided-we suppose equally
among the three Churches, that is, the Epls-
copalan, the Roman Catholic, and the Presby-
terrain. The remainder of the property he
would have applied by Parliament, from time
to time, solely for Irish purposes. Now the
endowment portion of Earl Russelrs scheme is
simply an anachronism and an absurdty. 1t
has the happy popularity that it could not
please anybody. 1t cannot satisfy the Irish
Church people, who will look on it simply as
the freakish generosity of q robber who having
forcibly stripped and plundered traveller,
hands him back shirt and few
dollars. 1t is ridiculous to suppose that the
Roman Catholics could accept it as just di-
vision, seeing that Earl Russell proposes to
give as much to one Protestant as to seven
Catholics. 1t is, in fact, sort of rcafirmatlon
of the inherent superiority and supremacy OF
the AnglO-P Protestant race over the Romanlst
Irish. Earl Russell does not mean this,
but this is, nevertheless, the practical meaning
of the proposition-its "intentiOn" in the old
legal sense Moreover, it would offend. if not
estrange, the whole body of the English Dis
senters, without whose cordial cooperation it
would be impossible for the Government to
carry any measure The Non CoRtormiSt is
the organ of the most active section of En-
glish Dissenters. Writing on the subject OF the
Irish Church, fortnight back, and before the
publication of Earl RusselPs letter, it warned
Mr.. Gladstone earnestly that "every inch of
departure from the principle of disendow-
"ment save for the satisfaction OF personal
"rights, will be SO far an advance into a region
"of perilr The Nom COnformiSt declares that
"any gratuitous generosity to the IIish Church
"requiring, in order to perfect religious equal
atty, compensation in some form or other to
"the Roman Catholic body, will assuredly
throw an apple of discord among his own
supporters, and imperl the success of his
Forthcoming measure" This is exactly what
all English Dissenters would say. The time
has come for bold and complete policy. Earl
Russell's proposal is poor, higglng and utterly
out of date. 1t is an advance upon his idea OF
twelve years ago; but public opinion has
accomplished ten-years' march in the same
time. Relatively, Earl Russell is further behind
the age now than he was III February last
There must be religious equality in Ireland !;
and simple, naked disendowment (allowng, of
course, for all personal and genuine rights is
the only possible equality.
On the land question, Earl Russell has some
harmless suggestions TO make. Let all tenan-
cies for less than year be made yearly
tenancics, and let Quarter Sessions have power
to award compensation for improvements.
Well, there would be no harm in tkat-aud
not much good. The great thing for states
manship to aim at-and we doubt whether it
is worth taking much trouble to aim ut any
thing else--is to break down gradually the
system which now divorces the hish peasant
from the ownership of the land he cultiyates,
or would cultivate if he had any interest IN
doing so-the creation of n peasant proprle-
tary or territorial democracy. MIR. Mill
had sweeping and heroic" way OF
doing this Mr.. Bright n cautions commercil
way. But this was what Bright and Mlil-the
only eminent English statesmen whose opinion
on the condition of ireland is worth three
straws-aliko propose, in their widely different
ways, to accomplish. 1t is waste OF time 10
discuss ANYTHING which tends to Il less decided