The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-01-17
HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.
The Present Burning Question Before
the Parliament of Great Britain.
4 Savage Arrangement of Mr.. Gladstone and
His Policy-COnservative Claim of Polit-
ical Dilletanteism-Literary Notes.
Correspondence of the Indian apolis Journal

Correspondence of the Indian apolis Journal
LONDON, Jan. Home rule for Ireland is the
topic of the time. The question is marching on
to a crisis. 1t will gradually develop into the
real issue that underles it. One morning the
murder will out" Then will come the tug of
war; 1t is hardly likely Mr., Gladstone will be
in it. He has encouraged the Parnellites to
hope for decree of separation. If they act on
that hope the end will be, if not civil war;
military organization OF Ireland Their strength
at the moment is their danger. Once the OBJ
ject of their ambition is declared, they will
unite waverers of all classes, and the English
Democracy will stand shoulder to shoulder
with the Irish Loyalists, and the union
will be maintained at any cost. Those who
really love Ireland all wish to see her happy and
prosperous. Every English-speaking man and
woman who long to see that "green isle of the
sea blossom as the rose" will pray the great
Architect of the Universe to endow Parnel with
discretion. He is brave, clever man, skillful
ruler, and he has more power to-day than any of
the Irish chiefs that have championed their
country in this Victorian era. But if he does
not draw the line of his demands with judg-
ment and with moderation, he will lose more
than he has gained, and live to see the
union of the empire maintained at the point of the
sword. do not express these views as my own
ideas; they represent the judgment of London
public opinion.
Gladstone is the chief mischief maker," said
a member of the Reform Club to me last night
He is in his dotage, and his son is fool. They
chopped tree down together this week. TNare
say the Hawarden woodman had made it easy
for them The bid of home rule and an Irish
Parliament has strengthened the Tory govern
ment. I am Liberal and don't thank him for
that; but it has settled him as an honorable man
and a statesman forever 1t has nearly settled
the Bank of Ireland ALSO and half ruined hun
dredS of it's neediest stockholders; it has stinu-
lated Ireland to the very verge of rebeon it
has released more dynamite letters, made pre-
cautionary measures against explosives and am
muntion necessity. and unless Mr.. Parnell is
a much greater statesman than Mr. Gladstone.
it will lead to the ruin of his hopes and the dis
persion of his party"
what of the influence of the Irish in Amer
lea, their money and their revolutionary threats?"
THAT" he said, swapping his fingers. Amer
lea made too tremendous a sacrifice OF blood
and treasure to keep the Union intact not to
sympathize with US when our turn comes with
Ireland"
II thought you were Liberall" said, inter
negatively.
81 am, and always shall be- but I am an En-
gishman. also. and you will find that the Liberal
party will show itself above PARTY when the time
comes. We have never tired in helping Ireland;
we have initiated and carried out all the great
measures of Irish relief and reforms we are
ready to go on; we are willing even to sacrifice
some prestige and no little pride to settle or to
assist in settling the socalled Irish problem; but
we have never wavered as to the maintenance of
the Union and never shall"
N6nca loo Of afa 'I,1h aud
represent Mr.. Gladstone's plea to the dsatfected
Irish. COLLINS your friend, not Short" But
unfortunately for Mr.. Gladstone. he put his Irish
church and his land bills forward as 'fnality"
measures, and his party now feel that nothing is
final with him if he is out of Office. Home rule
and an. Irish Parliament would come easy to him
if they kept him in power. The wreck of the en-
pire would not be Objectionable if he were al
lowed to SIT aloft in the midst of the ruin, vary
ing his postcard patitudes with occasional
squirt at choppng down trees and reading the
lessons in Hawarden church. Moreover, he
will probably live another hundred years; he
is as 1.-THE and brisk and capable of mis-
chief AS ever he was in spite of his great age.
The sentiments of moderate men some
thing in this direction, ard the general mud
die is not improved by these exaggerated
views. Those who know Gladstone intimately
tell me that the Grand Old Man" talks of moth
ing except the Irish question. writes Of little
else, except once in a while, when he throws off
some frightfully learned essay on some reconcile
subject as pretense that his mind is not always
running in the same groove. His birthday boom
was great success COngratulatory letters
came to him from all parts, and his promising
son Herbert presented him with a bust of Bea-
consield. Nobody seems to know what the
"Grand Old Man" did with it; but a new Ameri
sent to him on Christmas day has been
found blunted, not with hacking trees, but with
pounding plaster of Paris and cement. The tim
Der nutilator of Hawarden must be astonished
at the tone with which his home rule 'feeler,,
has been received by the Radical press, to say
nothing of the opposition it has aroused
among many of the new Liberal members
of Parliament The scholarly Radical Specta-
tor. for instance, must have struck him dumb
when it pointed out that there is no danger in
the unanimlty of the Parneite party to com
pare for moment with the unanimty of the
Southern States in their wish for secession The
trial was severe, and the conflict was long, but
the tenacity of the Democracy triumphed at
last. 1t will be so with u.s. Difficult as the prob
lem is to treat the Irish crisis at temperate
ly and firmly. it is not by any means so difficult
as that which the Northern States succeeded in
solving in the great decade between 1860 and
1870" But the ingratitude of the Spectator to-
wards the the Liberal chief whom it has so often
overpraised finds its climax in the remark that,
if Mr.. Gladstone ever made mistake in his life,
it was when in the midst of the American strug
gle, he surprised the world with the declaration
that 1.-THE South has established its independence"
His whilom friend. the Spectator, hopes he will
not make similar mistake in regard to Ireland.
But Mr.. Gladstone gets one of his hardest hits
from the Duke of Argyll, member of his own
Ministry. 1t is the fashion just now to contrast
the home rule which is desired for Ireland with
the home rule of the different States of the
American Union In America, however, the
Duke points out that the sympathies of the
Americans are in accord on the one vital point
of forming strong and cohesive whole. In the
latter, the sympathies Of the Home Rulers are in
an opposite direction '"The initial force is not
towards, but away from union: it is centrifugal,
not centripetaln The Duke is very hard on the
flppant "Grand Old Man" when he wishes it to
be clearly understood that the immediate de-
mand made upon US is that we should
frame new Constitution for these king
doms. Moreover, this demand is made on
pain of death to a Cons titution which has been
growing for a thousand years Those, he says,
who would undertake this work with light
heart are just the men who know least about it,