ne point for him is the
statutory Parliament, so that Ireland may civilly govern herself; and
standing before the world as representative of his country, he addresses
an applausive audience when he cites the total failure of England to do
that business of government, as at least a logical reason for the claim.
England has confessedly failed; the world says it, the country admits it.
We have failed, and not because the so-called Saxon is incapable of
understanding the Celt, but owing to our system, suitable enough to us,
of rule by Party, which puts perpetually a shifting hand upon the reins,
and invites the clamour it has to allay. The Irish--the English too in
some degree--have been taught that roaring; in its various forms, is the
trick to open the ears of Ministers. We have encouraged by irritating
them to practise it, until it has become a habit, an hereditary
profession with them. Ministers in turn have defensively adopted the arts
of beguilement, varied by an exercise of the police. We grew accustomed
to periods of Irish fever. The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity,
and hoped that it would bear fruit. But we did not plant. The Party in
office directed its attention to what was uppermost and urgent--to that
which kicked them. Although we were living, by common consent; with a
disease in the frame, eruptive at intervals, a national disfigurement
always a danger, the Ministerial idea of arresting it for the purpose of
healing was confined, before the passing of Mr. Gladstone's well-meant
Land Bill, to the occasional despatch of commissions; and, in fine, we
behold through History the Irish malady treated as a form of British
constitutional gout. Parliament touched on the Irish only when the Irish
were active as a virus. Our later alternations of cajolery and repression
bear painful resemblance to the nervous fit of rickety riders compounding
with their destinations that they may keep their seats. The cajolery was
foolish, if an end was in view; the repression inefficient. To repress
efficiently we have to stifle a conscience accusing us of old injustice,
and forget that we are sworn to freedom. The cries that we have been
hearing for Cromwell or for Bismarck prove the existence of an impatient
faction in our midst fitter to wear the collars of those masters whom
they invoke than to drop a vote into the ballot-box. As for the prominent
politicians who have displaced their rivals partly on the strength of an
impli