itself

and the local veteran in whom German unity sees incarnate against the first soldier of Italy,' the martyr of Queretaro, the Italian prince who strove so gallantly to re-establish constitutional monarchy in Spain, and the heir of her Catholic kings who is now labouring with equal gallantry and better auspices at the same noble task-read like schoolboy themes or recitation prepared for a local demonstration on the glorious Fourth.' Even their own

have inspired little that rises to the higher level of patriotic poetry. Despite American ignorance of American history, a false ring, a note of conscious suppression or reserve, is audible in the poems which celebrate trophies wrested from a foe so feeble as Mexico; the dubious victories and final triumph wrung by no single enemy, but by the coalition of revolted colonies and European rivals, from England. However great, noble, and just the cause of the strongest, its victory can never command complete and unmixed sympathy, universal and ungrudging admiration. In poetry, at least, it can never assume the heroic aspect, the tragic grandeur, the sublime character of martyrdom, the profound and solemn pathos that attach to a resolute, devoted, hopeless struggle against overwhelming odds. The few fine lyrics of the Civil War belong, like its military honours, chiefly to the vanquished. One of the best exceptions glorifies the cheap patriotism of a crone who securely flaunted the stars and stripes in the face of a triumphant Confederate soldiery: an incident, if true, at least as honourable to Southern chivalry and forbearance as to female petulance. Farragut's personal skill and daring called forth one spirited lyric; but the hero of Mobile would have been the first to declare that far higher praise was deserved by the little Southern flotilla which maintained so long an utterly unequal and hopeless contest. My Maryland,' with its ring of passionate resolve and patriotic hope doomed to bitter disappointment—

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza, she spurns the Northern scum!

She breathes, she burns; she'll come, she'll come!

Maryland! my Maryland!

has the true fire of a national war-song; and in The Conquered Banner' we hear the wail of a vanquished nation, the dirge of lost hopes and vanished aspirations for which the best blood of a whole generation had been lavished in vain.

For though conquered we adore it,
Love the cold dead hands that bore it,
Weep for those that fell before it,
Pardon those who trailed and tore it,
But, oh wildly we deplore it,
While we fold and furl it so!

Furl that banner! True, 'tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,
And 'twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust.
For its fame in brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages,
Furl its folds though now we must.

The splendid courage of the Southern soldiery, the heroic endurance of the women who, suffering and starving-expecting every day to see their homes fired over their heads, to be driven with their children foodless and shelterless to the woods-sent every father, son, and brother who could bear arms to the front, may have been equalled, but never surpassed. The dignified patience of their submission under defeat and humiliation, under ten years of insult, exaction, vexation, and misrule of every kind-a patience of which the noblest examples were set by the heroes of the war, and above all by General Lee; but, more than all, the generous frankness with which the defeated people unanimously allow that the removal of slavery, with its radical injustice and inevitable abuses, is worth all that it has cost'-afford a spectacle which no other conquered nation has ever shown, and which those whose leaders must have perforce abandoned the hope of restoration would do wisely and well to follow.

PERCY GREG.

325

ART. V.-Lord Spencer's Irish Administration the Conservative Government.

and

(1) The Times' Report of the Speeches at the Spencer Banquet, July, 1885.

(2) Speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir M. Hicks Beach on Mr. Parnell's motion for an inquiry into the Maamtrasna and other trials. Hansard, 1885.

LAST July an interesting scene was witnessed while the national estates were sitting at Westminster. An assembly of members of the Lords and Commons, fully representing the Liberal Party, met to do honour to a distinguished statesman, who, during three years of trial and danger, had governed the most distracted part of the Empire with the heartfelt approval of all true Englishmen. Mr. Gladstone was absent against his will; but Lord Hartington and the veteran Bright, each in his own way, paid a deserved tribute to the great public services of their eminent guest, and fully described the high sense of duty, the calm firmness, and the discerning judgment he had exhibited at his most arduous post. Lord Spencer, as became him, did not enlarge in returning thanks on what he had done himself; but in a clear, able, and thoughtful speech, he described what the state of Ireland was when the reins of power were confided to him, and how he had left the land in comparative peace; while, at the same time, he did not conceal his opinion, that if reform in Ireland was still needed, a strong, firm, and impartial rule, to punish treason and to put down lawlessness, was the chief requirement of that ill-ordered country. Almost simultaneously, a very different policy for Ireland was being boldly announced by the heads of the party which, by a mischance, has become responsible for the affairs of England; and this has ever since been steadily carried out with an audacity, which, if not surprising, seeing who its authors are, must be deemed shameless. Just as Lord Spencer's warnings were being uttered, his successor declared that the Conservative Government would not attempt to renew the Crimes Act, that is, would dispense with a guarantee required to preserve property and life in Ireland, as a long and dismal experience has proved; and this, too, against the well-known protest of the tried and capable men charged with the task of upholding order and law in the still disaffected provinces of the South. At the same moment, the daring lordling who has educated' his party into a course of conduct far beyond the teaching

of 1867 was glibly proclaiming that he had no confidence' in Lord Spencer's régime in Ireland; and the nominal leader, whom he has placed in office, was not only damning with faint praise the official acts of that eminent man, but was expressing his consent to grant an inquiry into the proceedings of certain trials in Ireland, and, as was well remarked, was thus casting a slur on judges and juries who had held those inquests, and had bravely and firmly vindicated the law, sometimes at the imminent risk of their lives. The Government has consistently maintained this attitude of covert hostility to Lord Spencer, and of cowardly and thoughtless concession in Ireland, during the whole period that it has been in office. It has either reversed, or lessened the effects of, parts of the late Lord Lieutenant's policy; it has openly fawned on what Bright has called in his uncompromising way, the rebel party;' it has attempted to conciliate where it ought to have known that conciliation could do no good, and it has endeavoured to rule by poor expedients of sops and bribes when it ought to have been strict, firm, and just, to the nation at large.

Political profligacy such as this scarcely deserves even a contemptuous remark. For five years the Conservative party had been clamouring for coercion' in Ireland, and had not only condemned every Irish reform, but had invented the lie of the Kilmainham treaty, and had described Liberal sympathy with Irish wrongs as trafficking with sedition and treason. Lord Randolph Churchill had, in particular, proclaimed that no concession should be made to Mr. Parnell; ' and he had hinted, not obscurely, that the Gordian knot of the Irish difficulty should be cut by the sword. More than this, Lord Spencer's success in restoring the authority of law was a general topic of the Conservatives' praise since 1882; and, in their eyes, his firmness' was the one exception to the vacillating policy' of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. Yet a Conservative Government is not a month in office before it stultifies its most public acts, and proclaims its late creed a long tale of falsehood: it drops coercion,' and 'can do without it; it receives and welcomes the treacherous support of the Irish party long denounced by it; and Lord Randolph Churchill goes out of his way to bid for and win the Parnellite vote, consenting, too, to measures which have a direct tendency to impair the British connection in Ireland. Worse than all, these truly honourable men' throw Lord Spencer over to his malignant enemies on the first occasion which suits their purpose: and while their eulogies on him are still

on their lips, they do not scruple indirectly to traduce his character in order to obtain the evil support of an antiBritish and traitorous faction. The country, we doubt not, will judge this conduct; and if Englishmen are true to themselves, and know what in politics the value of principle is, nay, are unwilling to place their national interests at the mercy of a band of mere conspirators, pledged to do their best to break up the Empire, they will make short work at the next election of this ambidextrous and most worthless Government. One fact, however, is to be seen clearly in this spectacle of intrigue and duplicity—a spectacle which proves how some men in office, when conscious that they are weak in Parliament, and have not the real support of the nation, will resort to expedients of any kind, and how unconstitutional it is to attempt to govern with a feeble minority; and to this we invite our reader's attention. Had Ireland been in the state of anarchy in which she was in 1881-2, even our present rulers would not have ventured to embark on their actual course of conduct; for they would have known well that an indignant country would not tolerate a surrender to the Land League leaders during the terrible time of their evil ascendency, or acquiesce in underhand paltering with treason and crime when they seemed triumphant. It is because Lord Spencer's energetic hand has restored, to a certain extent, order, and in some measure has repressed lawlessness, that the Conservative leaders find an occasion, if not an excuse, for their Irish policy, discreditable as that policy is to themselves, pernicious as it must prove at last, and personally offensive as it naturally is to the statesman whom it impliedly censures. We are thus led briefly to review the conduct and administration of the late Lord Lieutenant; to point out what was the condition of Ireland before he took the helm of power; to estimate the results of his noble services; and to indicate what will probably be the consequences of the conservative régime should it be, unhappily, of long duration.

Lord Spencer entered upon his office as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the second time on the 6th May, 1882. That day is infamous even among the blood-stained annals of Irish crime-it was that of the horrible tragedy in the Phoenix Park. Yet that execrable deed was but the climax of a series of deeds of a similar kind done in Ireland during the two preceding years, and was only a frightful instance of the reign of terror which had been prevalent since 1880. In the summer of 1879 the Land League conspiracy had been organized by Michael Davitt, aided by Irish-American rebels; Mr. Parnell