No. 304.
Mr Lowell
to Mr Evarts.
London, February 26, 1881. (Received March 10.)
Sir: Referring to my No. 115, of the 7th ultimo, I have the honor to report that the coercion bill, so called, passed its third reading in the House of Commons yesterday by a majority of 281 to 36. On the first introduction, and during the early stages of the bill, a minority of the Irish members attempted their usual policy of obstruction by dilatory motions and speeches, but were at last rendered powerless by what has been not unfitly called a coup d’état of the Speaker. I think that there was much to be said for their view of the question, but that they chose neither the wisest words nor the fittest time for saying it. The result has been that they have weakened themselves both here and in Ireland; here, by angering all parties, with rare individual exceptions, and there by letting it be seen that they do not possess the power at least to postpone indefinitely measures which they cannot directly defeat.
Mr. Parnell’s imprudent coquetting with some of the communist leaders in Paris has irretrievably injured the cause he has at heart in the minds of the higher clergy and moderate persons generally in Ireland, and the report to-day that he is to have an interview with the Archbishop of Paris, with President Grévy, and with Marshal MacMahon, shows that he is already aware of his blunder.
The wild and whirling words of some Irishmen and others from America have done harm to something more than the cause of Irish peasantry, by becoming associated in the public mind with the country whose citizenship they put off or put on as may be most convenient. In connection with this, I beg leave to call your attention to an extraordinary passage in the letter of Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated Paris, February 13, 1881, in which he makes a distinction between “the American people” and the “Irish nation in America.” This double nationality is likely to be of great practical inconvenience whenever the coercion bill becomes law. The same actor takes alternately the characters of a pair of twins who are never on the stage simultaneously. I see no reason to change the opinions expressed in a former dispatch on this subject. I still think it would have been wise, had it been possible, to let remedial precede coercive measures, but it should be borne in mind when estimating the security and representative value of the clamor raised by a fraction of the Irish members, that many of those members do not reside, or intend ever to reside, in Ireland, and that some of them have scarcely ever set foot on its soil.
I have, &c.,