The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1910. THE IRISH NATIONALISTS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 790, 13 April 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1910. THE IRISH NATIONALISTS.

For all that it has been complicated and changeful, the movement of events in the British political crisis has generally been as easy to follow as political movements at our own doors. In one important particular, however, people at, this end of the world are generally very much in the ( dark—a condition, indeed, in which the English public must also find itself. We refor to the split in the ranks of the Irish Nationalists, who .are divided into rival factions under Mr. Redmond on the one side and Mr. William O'Brien on the other. These factions are at one in their dislike for the- opponents of Home Rule, but they have for each other that specially bitter hatred which makes civil war so much more passionate -and dreadful than war between strangers. Although Mr. O'Brien, in his speeches and writings since his dramatic re-entry into politics, has dealt very extensively with the causes of his difference with Mr. Redmond, there areistill left in obscurity so many points that it is difficult to sum up in a sentenco ,the_ character of the Nationalist split. Perhaps it 'is an accurate enough summary to say that. Mr. O'Brien aims at Home Rule through the encouragement of goodwill and sympathy betwedn all Irishmen, and between them and Englishmen, while Mr., Redmond's policy is to ignore the v possibilities of peaceful negotiation, preferring rather to fight to the end a campaign of vengeance and "no compromise." Devolution and tho destruction of Dublin "bossism" are Mr. O'Brien's objectives. He occupies much the same position in the Home Rule movement as is occupied in the Labour movement by moderate workingmen who are loyal to Labour's interests in a country in which the central Labour organisation is dominated by Socialistic "bosses." Mr. O'Brien discusses the whole question in an historical article in the March Nineteenth Century, which he opens the statement that "a transformation of unique interest in the relations, between the races which divide Ireland"'has been going on: "For the first time in a history of, many: centuries of spoliation and oppression on the one side and unconquerable resistance on the other, a,means has been found of making the substantial interests of the warring races and creeds identical, and at the same time making their fusion an : event of no less happy augury for. the neighbouring island, whose ' interest, or at least State-craft, onco lay in preventing it."'

This method was "discovered," says Me. O'Bkien, in 1902, when tho question of land purchase was investigated_ in a happy day of realisation that in the uplifting of Ireland the two traditional parties might honourably co-operate. ,' Aa the result of the Land Conference report the Unionist Government enacted the Land Act of 1903, which, although constantly attacked by some of the friends as well as some of tho enemies of Home Rule, was accepted in a good_ spirit by landlords" and tenants. Within five years this beneficent measure turned 300,000 tenants into landowners, but some of the Nationalist leaders made war upon the scheme, and for seven years, controlling the Parliamentary party, the United Irish League and the national press, they have been "cheating this benign revolution of half its efficacy, and turning its blessings into curses, without any knowledge of the English public, and, a more tragical thing still, without any real understanding of what was going on by the masses of the Irish people themselves." It is to Mr. Redmond that Mr. O'Bkien ascribes the present unfortunate position of the Home Rule movement, for, so he argues, the narrowness and bitter irreconcileablcness of tho League as at present governed has "frozen up the growing confidence and liberal-mindedness of the Protestant minority" and alienated the sympathy of Englishmen. That if every man spoke his real thoughts there would" be a happy Ireland is Mr. O'Brien's firm belief. England, he thinks, is ready to stretch forth the hand of friendship: the British parties arc "watching each other to see which will-first have the courage to shake off their ignoble party trammels to do by Ireland what the inmost conscience of both of them already consents to" ; in Ireland, he is' certain, there is a now spirit of generosity and conciliation, and a growing dislike of the old sectarian divisions and of those who would foster them. Evidences of this .ttdrit he. Koa-:iu tha.JMculfa^whjoli

tho Redmondites experience in obtaining the financial support from the Irish people that formerly was given so freely and so generously. The immediate quarrel between the two factions arises from Mr. O'Brien's anxiety to save Ireland from the Budget. He says, and Mr. Redmond does not attempt to dispute a fact so notorious, that tho Budget is more distasteful to Irishmen than to the most bigoted Duke who ever.called forth the execrations of the Eadical press. He goes further, and declares that the Budget is "a coercion Budget," "wrongful and hateful," and that it "would make Home Rule a curse instead of a blessing to Ireland.'' Mr. Redmond, he understands, is willing to back the Budget in return for a veto resolution which would be only "a sort of post obit for Home Rule on the death of the House of Lords." The- Redmondites, that is to say, have simply made Home Rule "an asset in the party stock-in-trade of a band _of English Socialists and Radicals" who havo no more chance of carrying England than they have of kicking the Kino's crown into the Thames." Mr. O'Brien's bitterness is due only in part to the character of the Budget and to. Mr. Redmond's readiness to impose it upon Ireland in the hope that the House of Lords will be abolished. He cannot forgive the Government for putting an end to the process of land purchase by means of Mr. Birrell's Land Act.. In the meantime he realises that the House of Lords will not be abolished, and that to accept the Budget in the hope that that impossibility can be achieved will be to' inflict a grievous injury upon Ireland. (He bases /his hopes of Home Rule "upon the two peoples rather than upon the two parties— on the combination of the best men of these two parties,_ and upon the reconciliation of their own Protestant fellow-countrymen in Ireland." In his judgment, he Raid in -the House of Commons on February 22; "Home Rule was a question which would have peacefully worked itself out, no matter under what name, or under what guarantees, if the combination of all classes and creeds in Ireland which produced the great measure in 1903 for the abolition of landlordism had been suffered to complete its work."