eive powers of
dealing summarily in trifling cases with Europeans who had previously
had a right to be tried by juries before the High Courts. Fitzjames
accepted the proposal that the power should be entrusted only to
magistrates of European birth. The 'Ilbert Bill,' in 1883, proposed to
remove this restriction, and so to confer a right of imprisoning
Europeans for three months upon native magistrates, of whom there were
now a greater number. Fitzjames, whose name had been mentioned in the
controversy, wrote very earnestly against this proposal.[194] He
asserted the right of Englishmen to be tried by magistrates who could
understand their ways of thought, and approved the remark that if we
were to remove all anomalies from India, our first step should be to
remove ourselves. This, however, was, to his mind, only one example of
the intrusion of an evil principle. A more serious case occurred upon
Mr. Gladstone's introduction of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886.
Fitzjames wrote some elaborate letters upon the 'Irish Question,' when
the measure was anticipated, and wrote again upon the bill when the
debates upon Mr. Gladstone's proposals were in progress.[195] The
letters begin by disavowing any 'party politics'--a phrase which he does
not consider to exclude an emphatic expression of opinion both upon Home
Rule and upon the Land Legislation. It is entirely superfluous to
summarise arguments which have been repeated till nobody can want to
hear more of them. Briefly, I may say that Fitzjames's teaching might be
summarised by saying that Ireland ought to be governed like
India--justly, and in any case firmly. The demands both for Home Rule
and for land legislation are, according to him, simply corollaries from
the general principles of Jacobinism and Socialism. The empire will be
destroyed and the landlords will be plundered. Virtually we are dealing
with a simple attempt at confiscation supported by an organised system
of crime. The argument is put with his usual downright force, and
certainly shows no symptoms of any decline of intellectual vigour. He
speaks, he says, impelled by the 'shame and horror' which an Englishman
must feel at our feebleness, and asks whether we are cowards to be
kicked with impunity? Sometimes he hoped, though his hopes were not
sanguine, that a point would yet be reached at which Englishmen would be
roused and would show their old qualities. But as a rule he turned, as
his letters show, from the