358 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



The actual strength of the military forces, 

 on January 1, 1881, was as follows : 



Regular army 153,963 



Reserves 41 ,7116 



Militia 187,971 



Volunteers 20t>,58T 



Total .' 675,262 



The navy, in October, 1881, consisted of 75 

 ironclads, inclusive of those in the course of 

 construction, about 860 steamers, and 120 sail- 

 ing-vessels. Of this number 249 were in com- 

 mission, 123 being at home, and 126 abroad. 

 The navy is manned by 45,100 seamen, 13,000 

 marines, 18,400 men belonging to the Royal 

 Navy reserve, and 2,750 volunteers ; in all, 

 79,250 men. 



For further statistics, see "Annual Cyclo- 

 paedia" for 1880, article GREAT BKITAIN. 



The subject of Irish land-reform and the 

 new Liberal scheme for the settlement of the 

 perennial Irish question, overshadowed all 

 other public questions of the year in Great 

 Britain. The Government bill was carried 

 through Parliament without serious alterations. 

 On account of it all other parliamentary busi- 

 ness was postponed to the next session. 



The Government not only occupied the al- 

 ways difficult and ungrateful position of the 

 responsible authorities in times of civil conten- 

 tion, when the nation is divided into opposite 

 camps, but were in the humiliating plight of 

 having appealed to Irish discontent when elec- 

 tioneering for office, and of having acknowl- 

 edged the justice of Ireland's claims, when 

 these involved nothing less than a social revo- 

 lution. Lord Beaoonsfield had announced his 

 plan for dealing with the Irish movement. He 

 would have stamped it out with an iron heel, 

 without any concessions or compromises. The 

 mass of the Liberal voters, the great body of 

 the English people, though still separated by 

 interests and feelings as far from the Irish as 

 from any foreign nation, no longer look upon 

 them as wild barbarians, and can not again be 

 brought to exult in their butchery, as they may 

 in the destruction of Zooloos and Afghans. 

 They were almost indifferent to the result of 

 the settlement as it affected the property rights 

 of either landlords or tenants, and were satis- 

 fied to leave everything to the Liberal ministry, 

 confident that while they were at the helm no 

 more massacres would occur in Ireland. The 

 coercive acts passed by Parliament were acqui- 

 esced in, the orders to disperse rioters in Ire- 

 land with buckshot called forth no protest, 

 and the arbitrary imprisonment of Gladstone's 

 Irish political antagonists was even applauded 

 by the ranks of the party which first inscribed 

 on its banners the maxims of personal liberty 

 and freedom of speech ; but no one hoped or 

 feared that this Government would re-enact 

 the sanguinary scenes the memory of which 

 fills the hearts of Irishmen with hatred and 

 excites in nearly every English breast a feeling 

 of remorse. Only among the party of aristo- 

 cratic sympathies did a trace of the old savage 



animosity show, itself. The Tories made no 

 political stand in opposition to the land bill. 

 They were conscious that the cause of the land- 

 lord class is scarcely less popular in England 

 than in Ireland, and feared to precipitate a 

 crisis in which the constitution of the House 

 of Lords might be swept away and the fires of 

 a land revolution be kindled in England. 'They 

 therefore contented themselves with an empty 

 parade of the legislative functions of the Peers, 

 and with protests against the principles of the 

 measure which merely echoed the doctrines of 

 property ingrafted upon British thought long 

 before by the philosophers of the opposite 

 party. But, unable though they were to apply 

 the means by which Irish agitation, had been 

 put down in the past, the Ministerial party 

 were in a not less helpless position. The Irish 

 party and the Conservatives had no difficulty 

 in showing, in spite of Gladstone's brilliant 

 dialectics, that the ministerial measure lacked 

 in itself the essence of finality. It was a com- 

 promise containing a concession of principle. 

 Its success depended upon its being accepted 

 as a final settlement by the Irish people, and 

 their leaders took care that its benefits should 

 be accepted, not as a final nor even a tempo- 

 rary settlement, but as an earnest of the trans- 

 formation of the whole social fabric. The 

 Liberal leaders would not and dared not kill 

 the fomenters of revolution, with whom they 

 were at one in their condemnation of the land 

 laws. They raised a cry of treason when the 

 land agitators more in obedience to wishes 

 of the Irish citizens of the United States, who 

 paid by their contributions the whole expenses 

 of the agitation, than from the immediate ur- 

 gency and timeliness of the question put 

 forth the less momentous demand of separa- 

 tion from the Union ; but the claims of Irish 

 self-government have been urged too often to 

 be considered anything worse than tiresome by 

 the British public. The Irish leaders sounded 

 the note of revolution as soon as the land bill 

 was passed, and, pointing to that sweeping 

 measure as a sign of deliverance, urged the 

 Irish peasantry to keep their "grip on the 

 land " and recognize no claims or rights of the 

 landlords in the soil. To defeat and defy the 

 laws of property was declared to be a patri- 

 otic virtue. By "passive resistance " of this 

 simple kind the Irish revolution would be 

 finally accomplished, the landlords and the 

 whole " English garrison " chased out of Ire- 

 land, and Irish independence, tempered only 

 by the fictitious tie of a crown stripped of its 

 prerogative, would be won after a brief and 

 bloodless struggle. They felt secure of finally 

 winning the sluggish sympathies of the demo- 

 cratic masses of Great Britain, with whom in 

 the last resort rests the arbitrament of polit- 

 ical questions. The Government sought to 

 prevent the agitators from spreading discon- 

 tent and checking the gratitude of the people 

 for the land act by the imperfect device of 

 throwing them all in prison. But they im- 



