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Show The Irish Agitation. If Daniel O'Connell had ever been in America, his course in Ireland would have been followed with that kind of interest which springs from personal familiarity with a leader in great public affairs. The successor of O'Connell as Irish agitator in chief is undoubtedly Mr. Parnell, and whom ? all who wished saw and heard in this country during his visit last winter. No two men could be more different in temperament than the great Repealer and his successor. The slim, almost spare figure, serious mien, and dry manner of Mr. Parnell are absolutely contrasted with the burly form and jovial, ready witted eloquence of the shrewd Irishman who liked to play with fire forty and fifty years ago. Mr. Parnell shows plainly his part American origin. There was a quiet gentlemanliness of impression produced by his public appearance in this country, but there was none of the characteristic Irish geniality. He did not seem like a man who had ever made a joke or taken one - a reformer rather of the [unreadable] Cassius type than of the order of St. Patrick. Upon the delivery of his first speech in New York there was not what can be called enthusiasm among the audience; at least the impression was that the feeling of the audience impatiently sought an occasion in his speech to manifest itself rather than that it was resistlessly evoked by the speech. He was cool, measured, prudent, and without the least trace of pandering to the passions of his audience. These also are qualities of a leader who knows his men and pursues his own ends. Within a few months the Irish agitations has been again very active, and enormous demonstrations have taken place in honor of Mr. Parnell, while the murder of a landlord-nobleman and the tone of the speeches of Mr. Parnell and his associates have aroused very deep feeling and much apprehension. Mr. Fronde has contributed one of his characteristic articles to the literature of the contest, his remedy for the situation being a firm and uncompromising assertion of British power. His doctrine is that the islands cannot be severed, and that humanity, reason, and every interest require that fact to be conceded, and that the imperial authority be imperially maintained, justly, but inexorably. The article is vigorous, but no policy which Mr. Fronde could propose for Ireland would be acceptable to the Irish. Looking over the ocean it seems to be clear that the real object of the present agitation is the old object - the practical independence of the country. Perhaps Mr. Parnell would say that he aims at peaceful revolution. His purpose seems to be to produce a state of feeling which will cause the Irish tenant to refuse to pay rent for land except upon its own terms. This would be practically reconfiscation by revolution. If the refusal were really general and national, it could be met only by arms, and anarchy would ensue. The terrible famine of the last year is a powerful ally of Mr. Parnell. War and anarchy may be bad, but are they worse than starvation? This would be the unconscious or open argument of the tenant and the agitator. This is the situation which confronts the Gladstone administration. Any government might be perplexed by the problem of Ireland. It is the result of prolonged and ingenious and outrageous misgovernment, and the feeling in England as shown by the action of the House of Lords, which holds a veto upon legislation, only increases the difficulty. From the American point of view the true policy of the friends of Ireland would have been to make a cordial [unreadable] ..ment, in confidence that a statesman so able and so sincere, who had shown himself to be a faithful friend of justice in Ireland as elsewhere, would do everything that could be done if not everything that Irish agitating ardor might desire. But to perplex his administration by demands whose concession would involve the overthrow of the most cherished and fundamental British principles and traditions seems at this distance to be the deliberate preference of an enemy to a friend. The Irish agitation has a very simple choice of alternatives, unless it has decided to invoke war. It must choose between the most liberal of possible Liberal governments, which is that of Mr. Gladstone, and a Tory administration such as the vote in the House of Lords indicates. But the unreason of the agitator, like the old misgovernment, and the bitter race and religious prejudice, is one of the chief elements of trouble for an administration of the best intentions. The Irish agitation has evidently decided that Mr. Gladstone's inheritance of trouble is an opportunity. Here in America, where there is strong sympathy with the suffering of any people, there is also a profound faith in the sure and permanent, even if gradual, remedy of law. Although a republic and the burning questions to consider; we do not take to revolutionary shortcuts. It seems to us here that it will be long before Ireland is likely to have so powerful a friend among British statesmen as Mr. Gladstone, and that co-operation, not distrust and opposition, is the balm for the present ill. The domain of the Easy Chair, indeed is not the realm of politics, in any local or partisan sense. But a tranquil spectator looking out upon current events at home and abroad, and chatting of them without acrimony, cannot but hear, as the whole world has heard during the year, the cry of Irish suffering, and look with sympathy and friendly interest upon the methods proposed not only for feeding the starving, but for preventing starvation. (Editor's Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine.) |