The examiner., 1881-11-26
English Liberals and Irish Coercion.

English Liberals and Irish Coercion.
 It looks now as if the land agitation in Ireland would be taken up, in part at least, by the friends of woman suffrage, both in Ireland and England, owing to apparent unwillingness of the Government to inter- fere with the meetings of the female branch of the Land League. Miss Helen Taylor, the step daughter and literary exc cutor of John Stuart Mill. has gone over to Ireland and joined Miss Fanny Parnell in keeping up the work of the League, but seems to be mainly interested in the mat ter of the arbitrary arrests, which is un- doubtedly trying the souls of good many of the English Liberals good deal. It is not improbable, indeed, that 1t is going to lead to considerable Liberal losses in coming elections. MT. Gladstone will proba- bly, suffer from that very condition of Eng fish opinion about Ireland which gives the cause of Home Rule all the strength 1t has, The moral condition of the ordinary mid dle-class English mind about Ireland is one of almost complete ignorance, coupled with extreme dislike of the Irish, as, to use MT. Walters words, ''a fractious and turbulent people," As far back as the ordinary Englishman can remember there has been trouble in Ireland, and his father member the same state of things existed. Moreover, he can recall no time when the necessity of governing Ireland by martial law did not every now and then seem plain enough in English counting houses and clubs; and the excuse made by the Irish amusing. That people should be discon- tented on account of what they say hap pened fifty or one hundred years ago-not one-quarter of which he believes-he thinks very absurd indeed, and he &C., counts for it by the theory, which he firmly holds, that the Irish mind is so constituted that it can comfortably contain two con- tradictory propositions lying side by side. When, therefore, Irish disorder reaches 8 certain point he becomes very angry, and in his rage thinks the proper remedy is ''troops," and abuse the Ministry for not
 
 apply it, however, and the arrests are made, and the agitators are lying silent in jail, and the meetings have been dispersed, Russian fashion, by the police, there comes to him period of cool reflection the re- suits of which are apt to be painful. He re- members that the Irish are his fellow sub jects, that they live under the same Con- stitution with himself, and that he has been for many years preaching to the King of Naples, and the Czar, and the Emperor of Austria the doctrine that there is no such thing as causeless popular discontent that when there is discontent, it is best that it's manifestations should be open, and that anyhow force is no remedy. Then he feels little ashamed of his course in. the Irish affair. The criticisms of foreigners trouble him. He looks about for some- body to bear the blame of his folly, and easily works himself into the belief that it was the Ministers who did it; that they ought to have been more calm and patient. and not have minded what he said. And then he appears once more as friend of freedom, and, like MT. Cowen, who sym pathized warmly with the Turks against the Russians after the Batak Massacres, he turns around and asks himself, when such things are permitted in Dublin, how long it will be before he sees them in London.
 Neither Miss HelenTaylor nor any other English Liberal, however, seems as yet to have fully got at the root of the Irish diff culty. Force is nota remedy, but an appli- cation of force is often necessary as palli- ative in order to give the remedy time to work. Moreover. no people in the world probably have less natural objection to the use of force at @ crisis than the Irish. But they, like every other people in the world, cannot bear to see force, even when they admit it's necessity, applied by for eign hand. Now, MT. Gladstones hand. however benign, is a foreign one, and so is Fosters, and the majority, which passed the Coercion Bill was foreign majority, and it is this which makes its working un- bearable. So that really what the Irish crisis calls for is not so much freedom of speech as the exercise of the powers of government by persons whom the bulk of the population do not look upon as aliens in feeling and tradition.
 The Irish question is full of anomalies. but the most striking of them all is the ex- tent to which the part of the population which has national feelings and national aspiration is bereft of leaders of education and social position. This accounts in large degree for the spirit of childish mischief which seems to characterize Irish agitation.