INTERVIEW WITH SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 24, 9 October 1885, Page 21

INTERVIEW WITH SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

(The Nation, August 15.)

The Freeman of Monday contains a report of a very interesting interview with Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in which the present national situation was discussed. Sir Charles, it will be seen from the following passages in the report, does not take a very hopeful view of the future of the Irish Tories in the event of their not listening to reason and proving wise in time :—: —

Do you think the opposition of the liish gentry will be overcome ?

I don't know. If they had one spokesman of sense and courage, whom they were accustomed to follow, I would feel confident that it would. But Conservative gentlemen assure me that the only man gifted with the faculties of a leader whom Heaven has granted to them in this generation is one whom nature has defrauded of the fair proportions essential to dominate in deliberative assemblies. They are sheep without a shepherd. Why do you consider that a wise leader of the gentry would necessarily capitulate 7

The "why and because" are plain enough, I think. If they don't came to an understanding at home, their reliance must be on gome English party. What the Conservatives can and will do for them in Parliament is typified by the Redistribution of Beats Act. They protected their Irish garrison about as effectually as Mr. Gladstone protected their garrisons in the Soudan. But if the Irish gentry made a truce and treaty with their fellow-countrymen the Conservatives could get the pact embodied in an Act of Parliament for iheir perpetual protection. If not, it is not difficult to predict their fate, for their course plainly lies between Scylia and Chary bdis.

1 don't understand the double danger

Here is number one. If the Conservatives are strong enough to maintain themselves in power by the assistance of the Irish party, it is reasonably probable that they will settle the Irish question with as little consideration for the wishes of the sulky minority in Ireland as Wellington or Peel showed half a century ago. Catholic Emancipation, and, since Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, Corporate Kef or m, Free Trade, Disestablishment, tbe land Act of 82, Household Suffrage, and Equal Electoral Districts were adopted in face of their dissent and resistance. And so it may well be again. " Like cast, like rule." Oa the other hand, if the Conservatives are in a minority »fter the general election, or if, past belief, they resolve to sacrifico themselves for the sake of the Orange party with which Peel broke forty years ago they will make the political fortune of Mr. Chamberlain. The great enemy of monopoly will fling the Irish gentry to the peasantry to devour. The most shameful fiscal system that 1 know in any civihs-d country is the one by which three-aud-twenty gentlemen in a graad jury impose taxation, for the improvemcaan I pro'ection ot their own property, upon a rack-iented tenantry. lUit when the destroyer comes it may be replaced by one substantially as unjubt — taxation imposed by an assembly of peasants upnu the thiee-and-twenty giand jurors and their class exclusively. For my part, Ido not love injustice in any shape. I would be glad to see the whole Irish nation raised up together, and Ido not desire the destruction of any native loteiest, but no one can save t ose who won't save themselves. But English Radicals declare that the cost and trouble of misgoverning Ireland have come from the habit of protecting Irish landloids in the t-xeici-e or a feudal tyranny, and that a prodigious saving may be effeced by simply ceasing to protect them. There is no denying the accuracy of the calculation ; and if morality and policy are to be divorced in lush affairs its equity need not be debated.

But suppose Mr. Glulstone ietires, as the newspapers predict, and the timid Whigs, Messrs. Goschen and Forster, Lord Hartington and Lord Granville, for example, join the Government, won't the liish gentry be safe enough under their wing ?

To my thinking, their ruin would then be inevitable. Tnoe petty combinations were possible before household suffrage, but with household suffrage, they would mean a class bafle. m \vh en democracy always wnm in the end T.ie Irish party woul Ibe compelled by the necessities ot the case to support the Radicals ag-un-it the lleactionnaires, and so would the lower middle-claM in England an 1 Scotland, and at the first g.-neral election there would be a ferocious demociatic maioii'y. We might live to see Mr. Arch carrying a bill to make every estate liable for the education, housing, an>i recreation of the agricultural labiurers born on it, and Mr. Bradlaugh dancing on the ruins of the English Church. At any rate, the clients of i olonel Harraan and C'<>loi el Tottenham would infallibly b thrown to tne lions by one party 01 the other. When sacrifices are necessary they always begin with Ireland. The luterviewer then inquired if Sir Charles did not think, seeing that botn political parties in England prop ised to establish an efftcuve system of county government in Ireland, that county b >aii!s would be a good beginning of what hishineu desired. To this question the following ieply was given :—: —

They would neither be beginning, middle, nor en<l of it. They aim in a coutiaty direct on. Their aim is to reconcile us to the Union by substituting popular control in fiscal affairs for the arbitrary will uf the gentry, A btep in the right direction, no doubt, if it be confessedly only one step. But if it were accomplished to-mnrow, Kngland could still exhaust our resources by inordinate tix.iti.in, still draw aw^y the wealth and intellect of the country to London, still deny a career to our young men, siiil leave us provincialised and impoverished. What Nationalists desire 11 to bring back from Rutland, and from the ends of the earth, m<>ri of brains and enteipns-e to serve their own nation, to lift our island into the sunshine mU ot the shade, to give us a home and a career at home. We want tiiu fundamental right of a free people, a native Parliament, and it is idle to offer us any Brummagen substitute. A man skilled to legislate would serve in a pariah vestry as soon as in a big board of guardians, euch as they contemplate. Local councils for local pur-

poses, as part of a system of national government, such as exist in .Belgium, for example, are highly useful. I would like to see every village have its mayor and council for village business, and every county for county business, but they will not perform the functions of a national Parliament any more than a stoker will perform the functions of an engineer.