THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 29, 7 November 1884, Page 21

THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION.

We (Nation,) have to hand this week the second of the very interest* ing series of letters on the Irish qnestion which Mr. Justin M'Cartby, M.P., is contributing to the New York Tribune. The first of the seiiiß we gave in our last issue. In the letter at present before us, Mr. M-Carthy begins by treating as ridiculous the constant reports which Knglish newspapers circulate that the Irish Parliamentary paity is breaking up. Mr. Parnell'a influence, he says, is probably greater now than ever it was before. Passing to the question of obstiuction, he denies that the Irish party ever practised obstruction for the mere pleasure of seeing Parliamentary business hampeied and delayed. He significantly points out what might be done in the way of delaying legislation if the Irish members turned their attention to private bills and delivered speeches on each of them. Writing of the result of Mr. Parnell's policy, Mr. M'Carthy says : " By the course of action which he initiated, Mr. Parnell accomplished two objects ; he proved to the House of Commons that Ireland was at last determined to be heard, and he proved to the Irish people that there was at last a party of men in Parliament who were rebolved that Ireland should be heard. Beginning with a party of four or five be is now at the head of a party of forty ; he will soon be at the head of a party of seventy or eighty. There is not the slightetfc occasion now to call attention to the case of Ireland by the rough process of stopping all movement of Parliamentary business. We must be listened to now. Our vote on a critical divi<-iou may decide the fate of an administration. After the nest eleotion we shall in a 1 human probability hold the fate of any and every Ministry in the hollow of our hands. Suppose we have only seventy men— and no one expects that our number after the elections will be only seventy — seventy votes count as one hundred and forty on a division ; seventy withdrawn from the Ministry, seventy added to the Opposition, or vice vena. In plain words, the Irish Parliamentary party will be able to decide beforehand the fate of any measure or motiou brought before the House of Commons which has the support of one of the two great English parties and is opposed by th 6 oilier. This is the policy of Mr. Parnell — this is and this was his policy— to create a thoroughly independent Irish party in the House of Commons which should be strong enough to hold the balance of power in its hands. He has even already accomplished mnch of his pur-

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pose. I wish I could convey to your readers an adequate idea of the anxiety, the alarm, the excitement which prevail on both sides of the House concerning the probable vote of the Irish party when some critical division is coming on. We ara beset, each and every one of us, by official, or at least, semi-official, delegates from this side or that, eager to explain to us wherein, according to their ideas; are to be foand the true interests of Ireland. We act as our own view of Irish interests tells us that we ought to act. Where there seems to us no public principle involved we hold ourselvea free to act with a sole regard for the efEecfc which our vote may have on the interests of Ireland. But lam bound to say that we never yet gave a vote to the side of what we believed to be in itself a wrong cause. There never was a question involving the interests of humauity anywhere which had not the Irish vote given on the right side. The cause of the poor, the cause of the working people, has always the support of the Irish vote. Every oppressed foreign population, under English rale or other rule, has the sympathy and the help when help can be given in the English Parliament— of the members who follow Mr. Parnell. But there are occasions when a critical division is to be taken on some mere question of English party— of Ministry and Opposition — and then we are free to act. Is it for the interests of Ireland at the present moment that we should strengthen or weaken, sustain or damage the Ministry 1 We discuss th« question among ourselves and come to a conclusion, and act accordingly. By such a course of policy, by stand ng together and watching our opportunity, we overthrew Mr. Fi.i-dter and shall overthrow Lord Spencer. In the next Parliament it will be a question not of Viceroys and Chief Secretaries, but of wiiole administrations. With such existing conditions and such a prospect, what do we want of obstruction ? "What do we care about delaying the general movement of business in the House of Commons 1 The Conservatives do enough in that way ; and, indeed, under the most favourable circumstances, the movement of business in the House of Commons is so slow, cumbrous, and clumsy that a future generation will find it hard to believe that any assembly of sane men could have endured a system which sacrifices the needs of an empire to the pelting, petty work of a parish vestry."

With the House of Lords obstructing and destroying useful measures, Mr. M'Carthy believes that the best-intentioned Government could do but little for Ireland. He then proceeds :— " This is the conviction which underlies and inspires the policy of Mr. Parnell. He assumes as a matter of certainty that the English Parliament cannot do for Ireland what Ireland wants to have done— what Ireland could do for herself. Therefore he bends all his energies to the task of getting Ireland extricated from the cruel coils of her Parliamentary connection with England, and he sees but one way of accomplishing this task, and that is by the strength of a powerful Parliamentary party which shall have the Irish people behind it. Mr. Parnell is essentially a Parliamentary politician. He is not a theorist or a dreamer. Airy speculations do not captivate him, do not even interest him. He treads the firm earth of present and practical politics. For this very reason he is fully pos.-esaed of the knowledge that no Irish Parliamentary party, however numerous, able, and resolute, would be of any real use if it had not the Irish people at its back. To put it metaphorically, the Irish people are the shaft of the spear. The Parliamentary party are the spear-head ; Mr. Pamell's is the hand that propels and guides spearj shaft, and epear-head to the mark. Mr. Parnell's purpose is so clear and certain that he does not think it necessary to talk much about it. He does not much care for the formal and long debates on Home Rtfe which were a ceremonial of every session during Mr. Butt's leadership. The English Press and puolic seemed to be greatly amazed and alarmed when, two or three years ago, Mr. Parnell said he would not have ' taken off his coat ' merely to pass a measure of land reform. The fact that any surprise was felt only showed how little the English Press and public understood of the real Irish question. With Mr. Parnell it is simply an article of faith that a thoroughly satisfactory measure of land reform cannot be got from an English Parliament as at present constituted, and that no measure of land reform, however complete, would satisfy the Irish people in such a way as to extinguish their desire for self-government. Anyone who does not kndersiand that fact, who has not got it fully into his head, who uoes not assume it as an elementary condition of the controversy between England and Ireland, will only waste his time and puzzlj his brains to no purpose if he troubles himself to think about the Irish question. '• Ihe end is a great one ; and a man or a party cannot steadily seek a great end without accomplishing in the pursuit of it some other good objects as well. His policy is purifying the constituencies. The authority oE the public spirit he has evoked sets corruption and undue influence of all kinds at absolute defiance. The representation has been purified as well as the constituencies. I remember John Bright telling me some years ago of a saying once familiar in the House of Commons, that an Irish member could always be known in the street by reason of his invariable movement towards the offices of the Treasury. Even the wildest spirit of burlesque, of extravagant sarcasm, would hardly apply such a saying to the Irish Nationalist members oE Parliament to-day. They beg for no places ; they ask for no favours. The man who votes for an Irish National member knows that he is voting for one who is pledged not to seek for or accept any favour from any Ministiy for himself or for any of his constituents. Charles Lever's 'Kenny Dodd' describes some Irish constituent writing to his representative, and replying to the representative's account of his own public services by the words, "Git my son Tom a place in the Custom House and I don't care if New Zealand never had a constitution." No constituent ever applies to us to gpt his son Tom a place in the Custom House. I cannot but feel my faith in the future of Ireland much strengthened, if it needed strengthening, when I see the change that has taken place, and see how even very ordinary and commonplace persons, from whom one might not expect over-much in the way of self-sacrifice, have been willing to forego so many chances of personal advantage for the mere sake of helping the national movement. I may say,

too, that the Irish members of Parliament stand aloof from the social influences of London, which used at one time to have such a softening and enervating effect on their political character. This isolation, for so I may call it, was distinctly the work of Mr. Parnell. It was not the way of O'Counell ; it was not the way of Mr. Butt! O'Connell's relations of friendship with some of the Whigs of his' day were often injurious to his influence over political movements • and similar relationships with English public men made Mr. Butt far too anxious to please, or at least not to displease the House of Commons. Five years ago I wrote an article in a London periodical in which I told my readers that a new chapter was opening ia Irish political history when the Irish Parliamentary party had goc a leader who did not care ®ne straw for the friendship of a duke, and who would not go to dine at the house of a Cabinet Minister. This may seem to some of your readers a small matter ; to those who know the history of Irish Parliamentary movements it is a greater matter • it is a part of that policy of independence which Mr. Parnell has come to carry out, and whicn is now tiied in action, for the first time."