FOOTNOTES:

[4] For the constitution of Austria-Hungary see Ulbrich's Oesterreich-Ungarn in Marquardsen's Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts; Francis Deak, with preface by M.E. Grant Duff; Home Rule in Austria-Hungary, by David King, in the Nineteenth Century, January 1886, p. 35.

[5] Ulbrich, pp. 15, 76, 77.

[6] See Marquardsen, 28-30.

[7] This is, in my judgment, true even of such federations as the United States or the Swiss confederacy.

[8] Froude's 'English in Ireland,' vol. 3, pp. 581, 582.

[9] See especially on this subject 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' Partie Historique, pp. 15-207.

[10] "On ne saurait considerer attentivement l'Irlande, etudier son histoire et ses revolutions, observer ses moeurs et analyser ses lois, sans reconnaitre que ses malheurs, auxquels ont concouru tant d'accidents funestes, ont eu et ont encore de nos jours, pour cause principale, une cause premiere, radicale, permanente; et qui domine toutes les autres; cette cause, c'est une mauvaise aristocratie." 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande,' deuxieme partie, p. 228. The only objection which may be fairly taken to De Beaumont's language, though not to his essential meaning, is, that the words he uses occasionally suggest the idea that he attributes some special vice of nature, so to speak, to the landed classes in Ireland, whilst there is, of course, no reason to suppose that the original Norman invaders of Ireland were a whit worse than the Normans they left behind them in England, or that the Cromwellian settlers did not possess the virtues which distinguished Puritan soldiers. What De Beaumont really means is that the aristocracy, or landed gentry, have been from first to last placed in a false position, which has led to their exhibiting the vices, with few of the virtues, of aristocratic government.

[11] Compare 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., pp. 253-256.

[12] See Dicey, 'Law of the Constitution' (Second Edition), pp. 181-210; and compare 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., pp. 253-299.

[13] Cromwell's reputation as a statesman suffers even more than that of most great men from the indiscriminating eulogy of admirers. The merit of his Irish policy was not his severity to Catholics, but his equity to Protestants. If he did not acknowledge the equality of man, he at any rate acknowledged what English statesmanship before and after his time refused to admit—the equality of Englishmen, at least when Protestants. His policy handed down to us a legacy of justifiable hatred on the part of Irish Catholics. But it is the fault not of the Protector, but of his successors, that his policy did not ensure to England the loyalty of every Protestant in Ireland.

[14] The penal laws against the Catholics in England were as severe as those in Ireland. Their practical effect and working was however very different in the two countries. See 1 Lecky,'History of England,' pp. 268-310.

[15] See Walpole, 'Short History of the Kingdom of Ireland,' p. 176.

[16] See a speech of Lord Clare made in defence of the Bill for Establishing the Union with England, and republished by the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union.

[17] 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' p. 251. It is of primary consequence that Englishmen should realise the undoubted fact, that agrarian conspiracies and agrarian outrages, such as those which baffle the English Government in Ireland, are known to foreign countries. For centuries the question of tenant-right, in a form very like that in which it arises in Ireland, has been known in the parts of France near Saint-Quentin under the name of the droit de marche. In France, as in Ireland, tenants have claimed a right unknown to the law, and have enforced the right by outrage, by boycotting, by murder. The Depointeur is the land grabber, and is treated by French peasants precisely as the Irish land grabber is treated by Irish peasants. See Calonne, 'La Vie Agricole, sous l'Ancien Regime,' pp. 66-69. Precisely the same phenomena have appeared in parts of Belgium, where for centuries there has been, in respect of land, the conflict to which we are accustomed in Ireland, between the law of the Courts and the law of the people. "From the commencement of the year 1836 to the end of 1842 there had been" [in consequence of this conflict] "forty-three acts of incendiarism, eleven assassinations, and seven agrarian outrages entailing capital punishment," all within a limited part of Belgium. See Parliamentary Reports on Tenure of Land in Countries of Europe, 1869, p. 118-123. In Belgium decisive measures of punishment at last put an end to agrarian outrages. What should be specially noted is that in France and Belgium crimes in character exactly resembling the agrarian outrages which take place in Ireland had, it is admitted, no connection whatever with national, or even it would seem with general political feeling.

[18] See 1 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale,' &c., p. 251.

[19] 2 De Beaumont, 'L'Irlande Sociale, Politique et Religeuse.' Septieme edition, pp. 135 and 137.

[20] A Home Ruler may in this matter take up one position which is consistent. He may say that England can allow to be carried out through the agency of an Irish Parliament a policy which no English Parliament could itself adopt. To put the matter plainly, an English Parliament which cannot for very shame rob Irish landlords of their property may, it is suggested, create an Irish Parliament with authority to rob them. This position is consistent, but it is disgraceful. To ascribe it to a fair opponent would be gross controversial unfairness.

[21] A reader who wishes to see the American view put in its best and strongest form should read Mr. E.L. Godkin's article on "American Home Rule," Nineteenth Century, June, 1886, p. 793. I entirely disagree with the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead, but I am anxious to acknowledge the importance of the information and the arguments which it contains.

[22] See pp. 87-89, ante.

[23] See 'American Home Rule,' Nineteenth Century, June, 1886, pp. 793, 803, 804.

[24] Nineteenth Century, June, 1886, p. 801.

[25] Contrast the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882 respectively. For list of Coercion Acts see "Federal Union with Ireland," by R.B. O'Brian, Nineteenth Century, No. 107, p. 35.

[26] In England the Courts can change the venue for the trial of a criminal. In Scotland the Lord Advocate can always (I am told) bring any case he chooses to trial before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and the same thing could be done by the Court on the application of the prisoner. In Scotland, again, any Sheriff or Chief Magistrate of a Burgh could prohibit a meeting, however lawful, which he thought likely to endanger the peace. The provisions of the last Irish Coercion Act, Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, 45 & 46 Vict. c. 25, s. 16, giving power to a magistrate where an offence had been committed to summon and examine witnesses, even though no person is charged with the offence, formed, I believe, part of the draft criminal code for England.

[27] See for an admirable statement of this argument, "Alternative Policies in Ireland," in the Nineteenth Century for February, 1886.



CHAPTER V.

THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION.

[Sidenote: The failure of the Union; its nature.]

Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness; and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more wide-spread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be the source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has therefore not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union. It is, however, of importance to notice that the main charges to which the Act of Union is liable are negative. It has not removed (its foes, say that it has not mitigated) great evils; but the mass of ills for which the Union is constantly made chargeable were in existence before the days of Pitt or Cornwallis. Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. That enactment introduced a purely political change. It could not, except very indirectly, either increase or remove evils which it did not affect to touch. To two charges its authors are indeed, with more or less of justice, liable; they committed the intellectual error of supposing that a change or improvement in the form of the Constitution would remove evils due to social and economical causes; they committed the moral error of thinking that a beneficial enactment might allowably be passed by means which outraged all the best moral feeling of Ireland. Their mistakes are worth notice. England is again told that a Constitutional change is the remedy for Irish misery. Ethical considerations (in this case the moral rights of a loyal minority and the legal rights of Irish landlords) are, it is again intimated, to be held of slight account compared with the benefit to Ireland and to England which is to be expected from an experiment in Constitution-making. To impartial observers it may appear that the proposed policy of 1886 threatens to reproduce in its essence the errors and the vices of the policy of 1800. Be this as it may, the reflection that the ill results of the Act of Union are mainly negative suggests the conclusion that the good results (if any) of its repeal would probably be negative also, and clears the way for the question with which we are immediately concerned, namely, What are the actual and undoubted evils to England of maintaining a legislative union with Ireland?

[Sidenote: The evils of maintaining the Union]

The nature and extent of these evils has been considered in criticising the arguments in favour of Home Rule. A bare enumeration of them therefore may here suffice.

[Sidenote: 1. Complication of English policy.]

First.—The Union hampers and complicates English policy, and this even independently of the existing agitation for Home Rule. The tenacity of England during the war with America, her triumphant energy during the revolutionary struggle, were due to a unity of feeling on the part, at any rate, of her governing classes, which even under the most favourable circumstances can hardly exist in a Parliament containing, as the Parliament of the United Kingdom always must contain, a large body of Irish Roman Catholics. If it be urged that the presence of Roman Catholics is due to the Catholic Emancipation Act, and not to the Act of Union, the remark is true but irrelevant. No maintainer or assailant of the Union is insane enough to propose the repeal of the Emancipation Act.

[Sidenote: 2. Obstruction]

Secondly.—The refusal of Home Rule involves a long, tedious, and demoralising contest with opponents will use, and from their own point of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of party government, and, it is possible, even the forms of the Constitution.

[Sidenote: 3. Strict government in Ireland.]

Thirdly.—If the Union is to be maintained with advantage to any part of the United Kingdom, the people of the United Kingdom must make the most strenuous, firm, and continuous effort, lasting, it may well be, for twenty years or more, to enforce throughout every part of the United Kingdom obedience to the law of the land. This effort can only be justified by the equally strenuous determination (which must involve an infinity of trouble) to give ear to every Irish complaint, and to see that the laws which the Irish people obey are laws of justice, and (what is much the same thing) laws which in the long run the people of Ireland will feel to be just. To carry out this course of action is difficult for all governments, is perhaps specially difficult for a democratic government. To maintain the Union is no easy task, though it has yet to be proved that any form of Home Rule will give more ease to the people of England; nor can the difficulty be got rid of, though it may be somewhat changed, by abolishing the Irish representation in Parliament, or by treating Ireland as a Crown colony. Such steps, which could hardly be termed maintenance of the Union, might, as expedients for carrying through safely a course of reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the benevolent despot would suffer demoralisation.

[Sidenote: Good results of the Union.]

The Act of Union has been the aim of so much random invective that its good fruits (for it has borne good no less than evil fruits) are in danger of being forgotten. It ended once and for all an intolerable condition of affairs, and its scope will never be understood unless its enactments are read in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion of 1798. The hateful means used to obtain an apparently good end have cast a slur on the reputation of more than one high-toned statesman. Humanity, in the case of Cornwallis at least, had far more share than ambition in his determination to abolish the Irish Parliament. His anxiety in 1798 to save Catholics and rebels from oppression was as keen and as noble as the anxiety of Canning in 1858 to protect the natives of India from the resentments excited by the Mutiny. Every reason which in our own day after the Gordon riots made it necessary to abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica told in 1800 in favour of abolishing the still more ancient Parliament of Ireland. If statesmen, bent on restoring at least the rule of law and peace in a distracted country, fancied that the corruption of the legislature might be counted a low price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and the lesson which it teaches—that you cannot base a just policy upon a foundation of iniquity—is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well lay to heart. However this may be, the transactions which discredited the passing of the Act of Union give no ground for repealing it, and, except to a rhetorician in want of an argumentum ad hominem, it will never appear that the philosophic historian who maintains that the Treaty of Union was ill-conceived and premature, contradicts the political philosopher who contends that to repeal the Union would be not to cancel but to aggravate the evils of an historical error. The considerations which recommend or require the maintenance of the Union are often forgotten, but are obvious.

[Sidenote: Reasons for maintaining the Union.]

The support of the Union is, after all, let controversialists say what they like, the policy which in fact holds the field, and it is (strange though the assertion may appear) on the advocates of innovation, not on the supporters of things as they are, that lies the burden of making out their case. A fundamental alteration in the constitution of the realm is in itself no light matter, and any man who has eyes to see or ears to hear may easily convince himself that the creation of an Irish Parliament must be the beginning, not the end, of a revolution. Dublin is not the only city in the United Kingdom which has contained an Assembly which not only occasionally denied, but during the whole of its existence never admitted, the sovereignty of the Parliament at Westminster; and in the present state of the world it is inconceivable that Irish autonomy—if such be the proper term—should not excite or justify claims for local independence which would unloose the ties which bind together the huge fabric of the British Empire.

[Sidenote: Strengthens the English Crown.]

The Union again of England and Ireland has increased, as its relaxation would of necessity diminish, the power of the central government. That the Treaty of Union has, disappointing and even harmful as some of its results have been, formed a guarantee against successful rebellion, hardly admits of question. The difference between the abortive revolt of 1848 or the Fenian disturbances of 1866, and the desperate insurrection of 1798, affords some measure of the strength which the legislative unity of the kingdom has added to the English Crown. If it be suggested that the disloyalty which has prompted sedition during this century was less deep than the animosities which armed the insurgents of '98, the suggestion may be true, but it incidentally shows that under the Union some progress, however slight, has been made towards national harmony, and recalls the important fact that at the present day the wealth and the energy of Protestant Ireland firmly support the legislative unity of the kingdom. Consider again what are the facilities possessed, say, by the State of New York, by the kingdom of Bavaria, or by the Cape Colony for interfering with or arresting the action of the central power to which the State, kingdom, or dependency is subject, and you perceive at once how ample must, from the very necessity of the case, be the opportunities possessed by a semi-independent Irish executive representing a semi-independent Irish Parliament for embarrassing the action of the Government in London. This will appear more clearly from a detailed examination of the different forms which may be assumed by Home Rule. One remark, however, may with advantage be made at this point of our argument, since it holds good of every possible scheme for repealing or modifying the Union. Powers conferred upon an executive and a Parliament at Dublin must from the nature of things be a deduction from the powers which can be exercised by the Parliament and Ministry at Westminster. This is a principle the truth of which is independent of the wishes or fancies either of Englishmen or of Irishmen. "The more you have of the more," runs a quaint Spanish proverb, "the less you have of the less." The saying is of mathematical certainty, but the depth and variety of its application are constantly forgotten in the excitement of controversy.

[Sidenote: Enables it to maintain freedom.]

To the existence of the Union and to the power which it confers upon the executive, is due the possibility of curbing the violence of religious and political zealots by the interposition of an authority endowed at once with overpowering strength and obvious impartiality. In Belfast even a Nationalist must, if he is a peaceable citizen, feel that the withdrawal of the Queen's troops would not conduce to his comfort. Under a system of Home Rule, it will perhaps be said, one body of fanatics or the other would, with or without the aid of the army, gain the upper hand and restore order. Grant the truth, which may perhaps be a little doubtful of this suggestion, it is at best a plea not for Home Rule but for separation, since no civilised government could, whilst England and Ireland formed under any terms whatever parts of the same political community, suffer Belfast to become the scene of a free fight which should decide by the ordeal of battle whether Protestants should tyrannise over Catholics, or Catholics coerce Protestants by a reign of terror. A reign of order moreover is not equivalent to the reign of justice. Still less is it equivalent to the establishment of that personal freedom which can only exist under the equal rule of equal law, and is the blessing which every government worthy the name is bound to confer upon its subjects.

An impartial foreigner again would probably hold, as indeed De Beaumont (unless I misunderstand his teaching) did to the end of his life actually hold, that the existing connection between England and Ireland is dictated by the state of the world, by the circumstances of the times, by the very nature of things. We are living in 1886, not in 1782: the nineteenth century is not the age for small States or for weak States. Such an observer, however, would also see much that is hidden by the dust of battle from the combatants in a desperate political conflict What is really needed to meet the real wants of which the cry for Home Rule is a more or less factitious expression is, he would note, much more a change in the spirit of Englishmen than an alteration in the constitution of England. If Englishmen could learn to speak and think of Irishmen with the respect and consideration due to fellow-citizens, if they could cease to jeer at Irishmen now as not much more than a century ago they used to jeer at Scotchmen, the Union would soon become something more than a mere work of legal ingenuity. A change of feeling would make it easy for English politicians and English voters to perceive that the local affairs of Ireland ought to be managed in the Parliament of the United Kingdom in accordance with the opinion of the Parliamentary representatives of Ireland, just as Scotch affairs are managed at Westminster in accordance with the opinions of Parliamentary representatives of Scotland. Towards this reform in the practice which need not change anything in the law of our constitution, Mr. Bright has already pointed the way, and Mr. Bright's moral intuitions have more than once given him a power denied to our other statesmen of prophetic insight into the future of English policy. Meanwhile those who urge the maintenance of the Union have a right to insist upon the possibilities which it contains of reconciling the strength of the Empire with due regard to the local interests and local sentiment of Ireland.

[Sidenote: And carry out just reforms.]

The Union, lastly, whilst it increases the power of the whole United Kingdom, provides the means of carrying out, and of carrying out with due regard to justice, any reform, innovation, or if you please revolution, required for the prosperity of the Irish people. The duty, it has been laid down, of an English Minister is to effect by his policy all those changes in Ireland which a revolution would effect by force. The maxim comes from a strange quarter, but the doctrine of Disraeli sums up on this matter the teaching of Mill and De Beaumont, and it is absolutely sound if you add to it the implied condition that an English Minister, whilst aiming at the ends of a wise revolutionist, must pay a respect to the demands of justice not always evinced by the revolutionary spirit. But to put in force a policy of just revolution, nothing is so necessary as the combination of resistless power with infinite wealth. This is exactly what the government of the United Kingdom can, and no Irish government could, supply. Mr. Gladstone and his followers fully admit this, and the Land Purchase Bill was the sign of their conviction that the policy of Home Rule itself needs for its success and justification the power to draw upon the wealth of the United Kingdom. Let the United Kingdom, it is said in effect, pay fifty millions, that without any injustice to Irish landlords Irish tenants may be turned into landowners, and may then enjoy the blessings of Home Rule, freed from all temptation to use legislative power for purposes of confiscation. The advice may in one sense be sound, but prudence suggests that if the fifty millions are to be expended, it were best first to settle the agrarian feud, and then to see whether the demand for Home Rule would not die a natural death. French peasants were Jacobins until the revolution secured to them the soil of France. The same men when transformed into landed proprietors became the staunch opponents of Jacobinism. It is in any case the interest of England to see whether, say in a generation, the existing or further changes in the tenure of land may not avert all necessity or demand for changes in the constitution. Interest here coincides with duty. No scheme whether of Home Rule or of Irish independence has been proposed, nor, it may be said with confidence, ever can be proposed, which, disguise the matter as you will, does not savour of treachery to thousands of Irishmen who have performed the duties and claim to retain the rights of citizens of the United Kingdom. The worst delusion of the revolutionary spirit is the notion that justice to the people may be based upon injustice to individuals. Protestants have not more, but neither have they less, claim to protection from the State than Catholics. Even landowners are not of necessity wrong-doers. Rent is a debt, and it may occasionally be the duty, even of a tenant, to pay his creditor. An insolvent debtor has, however excusable or pitiable his position, no absolute moral right to improve his own position by torturing or murdering any solvent neighbour who may be inclined to pay his own debts. To maintain the Union is to maintain the effort to perform the obligations of the country, and to compel all citizens of the country to perform the duties imposed by law. The effort is an arduous one, the more so since it must be combined with the equally strenuous endeavour to see that in Ireland, as in every part of the United Kingdom, the demands of the law be made to coincide with the demands of morality and of humanity. Still pactum serva is a good maxim for nations no less than for individuals: there may be a higher law than the rule of keeping one's promise, but before a man or a government incurs even the appearance of bad faith, it were well to see whether the so-called higher law of conscience may not in reality be the lower dictates of indolence or cowardice. Neither nations nor individuals are bound in duty to do impossibilities. The limit of power is the limit of responsibility, but if England can no longer enforce justice in Ireland, there will still be the grave question whether this fearful result of past misdoing or error does not suggest and justify Separation rather than Home Rule.



CHAPTER VI.

SEPARATION.

[Sidenote: Evils of Separation]

Englishmen are so firmly and with such good reason convinced that the independence of Ireland would be fatal to the greatness and security of Great Britain, that they rarely attempt to weigh accurately the grounds of reason which may be adduced in support of a conviction which has acquired the character of a political instinct. The evils, however, to England which may be reasonably anticipated from the political separation of the two countries may be summed up under three heads.

First.—The acquiescence by England in Irish independence would be a deliberate and complete surrender of the objects at which English statesmanship has, under one form or another, aimed for centuries. Such a surrender would, in addition to its material effects, inflict an amount of moral discredit on England which would itself be the cause of serious dangers. That a powerful nation should (except under the force of crushing defeat) assent to an arrangement which would decrease its resources and authority must inevitably appear to all the world to be, and probably would be in reality, such a sign either of declining strength or of declining spirit as would in a short time provoke the aggression of rivals and enemies. Abdication of royal or imperial authority is with States no less than with individuals the precursor of death. Loss of territory, indeed, in consequence of defeat, is in itself only in so far damaging as defeat may imply a want of capacity to resist attack, or as the diminution of territory may involve loss of resources. Thus the surrender of Lombardy by Austria, of Alsace by France, of Schleswig-Holstein by Denmark, the acquiescence of Holland in the independence of Belgium; or, to come nearer home, the treaty by which England acknowledged that the struggle to retain her American colonies had ended in failure, each and all of them brought only such discredit upon the defeated country as is the direct consequence of want of success. None, of these transactions had anything like the disastrous results which the concession of Irish independence would entail on England. The Austrians, the French, the Danes, and the Dutch had, as the whole world admitted, struggled manfully to maintain their power. They were beaten as one party or other to a fight must be beaten, but they did not betray any of those failings which encourage further attack. The close of the conflict with our colonies assuredly did not leave England disgraced before the world. The obstinacy of George III., the splendid resistance made by a nation assailed at once by a combination of enemies, any one of whom alone would have seemed a formidable foe, the victories of Rodney, the defence of Gibraltar, not only saved but increased the renown of England, and were warnings which no foreigner could disregard, that the loss of the American colonies, though it might diminish the Empire, had not quenched the spirit or undermined the strength of Great Britain. No one can suppose that a peaceful retreat from the difficulties and responsibility of providing for the Government of Ireland would leave to England that reputation for courage and endurance which, even in the midst of defeat, was retained by the generation who acknowledged the independence of America. Peaceable surrender may avert material loss; it cannot maintain moral character. One thing only would render the concession of Irish independence compatible with Englishmen's respect for themselves, or with the respect of other nations for England. This condition would be the obvious, and, so to speak, patent conviction on the part of the whole English people, that the grant of independence to Ireland was the fulfilment of a duty demanded by justice. No such conviction exists, nor is it ever likely to come into existence. Even were so great a change of English sentiment to take place that a majority of the people became ready, on grounds of expediency, to break up the connection between Great Britain and the neighbouring island, it would still be hard to persuade the nation that there was not vile treachery in refusing to stand by and support that part of the Irish people which wished to retain the connection with England. The treachery would approach to infamy if it should appear that England, for the sake of her own comfort, left English subjects who had always obeyed the law and relied on the honourable protection of the United Kingdom at the mercy of conspirators whose lawlessness had taken the form of cruelty and tyranny, and whose vindictiveness was certain to punish as criminality former acts of loyalty or obedience to English sovereignty. High-toned self-sacrifice which results in breach of faith to associates is considered by the world at large as a particularly odious form of hypocrisy. Nothing in the treaty between England and the American Colonies involved more just bitterness of feeling than the partial, and probably inevitable, desertion of the Loyalists. The national conscience would condemn rather than approve the prudential considerations which might, under certain circumstances, induce Englishmen to consent to see Ireland an independent nation; such consent would imply the adoption of views of national interest fundamentally inconsistent with the maintenance of Imperial power; the damage resulting from loss of character is difficult to estimate, but is none the less real because it does not admit of computation in the terms of the multiplication table.

Secondly, the independence of Ireland means loss to Great Britain both in money and in men. The pecuniary loss is, indeed, not quite so serious as might at first sight be looked for.[28] The provisions of the rejected Government of Ireland Bill imply, it would seem, that the pecuniary gain of the United Kingdom from Ireland in the way of taxation may, in Mr. Gladstone's judgment, be estimated at about three and a half millions per annum, and this may presumably be taken as a not unfair estimate. The sacrifice of a seventh part of the population of the United Kingdom is no slight matter. Its importance is enhanced by the circumstance, never to be forgotten, that Great Britain is the centre of an Empire. The brutal and stupid jests by which respectable Englishmen often hint that the bravery, the capacity, and the genius of Irishmen are of little service to the Empire, and that their value is more than counterbalanced by the ill results of Irish discontent and sedition, conceal from unreflecting minds the extent to which every part of the United Kingdom has severally contributed to the fortune and power of the country. Irish labourers, Irish soldiers, Irish generals, and Irish statesmen have assuredly rendered no trifling services to the British Crown. There is, however, one valid ground for rating the loss in men to England, which would result from separation from Ireland somewhat lower than one would on first thoughts be inclined to place it. Even were Ireland an independent country there is nothing to prevent England from leaving all the advantages of English citizenship open to the inhabitants of the Irish State. In this matter much is to be learnt from Germany. Neither Stein, nor Niebuhr, nor Moltke, were by birth subjects of Prussia, yet Prussia did not lose the inestimable gains to be derived from their talents. A generous, a liberal, and a just extension of the privileges of citizenship might fill the English army and the English civil service with men drawn from a State independent of Great Britain. If the independence of Ireland were proclaimed to-morrow, there would not be a hundred Irish labourers the fewer in Liverpool or in London. Connections and relations depending upon community of language, community of interest, community of feeling, the ties of kindred, of business, of friendship, or of affection cannot, happily, be dissolved, or to any great extent affected, by political revolutions. In any case, it would depend on the wisdom of Great Britain whether separation from Ireland should or should not mean the estrangement of Irishmen.

Thirdly, the independence of Ireland would give England a foreign, and possibly a hostile, neighbour along the western coast of Great Britain. We should, for the first time since the accession of the Stuarts, occupy a position something like that of a Continental nation, and know what it was to have a foe, or at best a very cold friend, upon our borders. In time of war Ireland would be the abettor or the open ally of, say, the United States, or of France; Dublin would, unless reconquered, be the outpost of the French Republic or of the American Union. In times of peace things would not stand much better; our diplomacy would be constantly occupied with the intrigues carried on in Dublin; the possibility of attack from Ireland would necessitate the increase of our forces; increased taxation would be drawn from a diminished population; we should be compelled to double our army when we had lost that part of the kingdom which used to form our best recruiting-ground. Sooner or later England would be driven, like every Continental State, to accept the burden of conscription, and with conscription would come essential changes in the whole habits of English life. Nor can we count upon this being the end of our calamities. The burden of conscription would deprive us of our one great advantage over competitors in the struggle for trade; an overtaxed and overburdened people could not long maintain their mercantile pre-eminence. This is the picture which is constantly drawn, in one shape or another, of the ruinous results to England of the free development of Irish nationality. No one can undertake to say that its main features are false. Still, it must be admitted that the prophets of evil neglect to notice several facts which ought not to be overlooked. Ireland is a poor country of about the population of Belgium; it is occupied by a people far less wealthy than the inhabitants of England; and, moreover, by a people divided among themselves by marked differences of race, religion, and historical tradition. Is it really to be feared that such a neighbour could, even if both independent and hostile, be half the peril to England that Germany is to France, or France to Italy? Money constitutes now more truly than ever the sinews of war, and it will be a long time before Ireland is a country abounding in money. There is, to say the least, something ignominious in the dread that Englishmen could not hold their own in the face of an Irish Republic, which would certainly be poor, and would probably be a prey to violent factions. Grant again—and this is granting a good deal—that Ireland might become a province of France, there is still some difficulty in seeing why Englishmen can live without fear within sight of Boulogne, and yet must tremble at the thought of French regiments assembling in Dublin. The command of the sea moreover would, whether Ireland were or were not aided by foreign allies, be a complete protection for England against invasion. If England's naval supremacy were lost, the power of the British Empire would in any case be gone. The vital matter for us is to retain command of the seas. Our capacity for doing this would not be greatly affected by Irish independence. America, further, and France are the only allies to whom Ireland could look for aid. The notion that the United States would consent to receive Ireland under any terms into the Union must appear to any one who has studied American politics the wildest of dreams. It supposes that the Americans would, without any gain to themselves, disarrange the whole balance of their constitution, and by involving themselves in all the complexities of European politics depart from the path which they have continuously pursued, and which is marked out to them by the plainest rules of common sense, and, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, by the laws of nature. A people who decline to annex Cuba, and are fully willing to wait till circumstances bring Canada into the Union and give America possession of Mexico, are not likely to incorporate Ireland. The alliance of France is a different matter. Reflection, however, mitigates the dread of its occurrence. Active alliance with Ireland would mean war with England, and now for seventy years France and England have been at peace. This state of things is the more remarkable because there have during that period arisen occasions for discord, and because no feeling of sentimental friendship forbids warfare. The true guarantee for peace between nations which were long deemed hereditary foes is the immense interest which each has in abstaining from war. Could the state of things which existed at the beginning of the century be revived, thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen would be ruined. The security for peace depending upon national interest would not be diminished were Ireland to-morrow proclaimed an independent republic. That this independence would facilitate French attack is undeniable, but attack would not be the more likely to occur. Add to all this that Irish discontent or sedition would, during a war, help France as much as Irish independence. Ireland is no doubt the weak point in the defences of Great Britain. This no one denies. The only question is whether and to what extent the independence of that country would widen the breach in England's defensive system.

[Sidenote: Possible advantages of Separation]

Any one who attempts to forecast the probable evils to England of Irish independence should keep one recollection constantly before his mind. The wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were apparently solid grounds for this belief; experience has proved it to be without foundation.

A calm observer can even now see that the complete dissolution of the connection between Great Britain and Ireland, disastrous as in many respects such an event would undoubtedly be, holds out to the larger country the possibility of two advantages.

Loss of territory might be equivalent in some aspects to increase of power.

There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the Parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half-factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the inter-action of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union has failed to secure moral unity; these arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, far more available to a Nationalist than to an advocate of Federalism. English authority in Ireland would be increased by the possession of that freedom of action which every powerful State exercises in its dealings with a weaker though an independent nation. There is something so repulsive to the best feelings of citizenship in even the hypothetical contemplation of the advantages (such as they are) which would accrue to Great Britain from the transformation of thousands of our fellow-countrymen into aliens, that it is painful to trace out in clear language the strength of the position which England would occupy towards the Irish Republic. But in argument the strict following out of the conclusions flowing from facts is a form of honesty, and however repulsive these conclusions may be, their statement is a matter of duty. Were Ireland independent, England would possess three means far more effective for enforcing her will upon her weaker neighbour than are coercion acts, courts, or constables. England could deal not with individuals, but with the State, and she could compel respect for treaties or due regard to English interests by invasion, by a pacific blockade, or by a hostile tariff. There is a special reason for dwelling on the facility with which England could compel the observance of engagements. Morally the most serious of all the objections to England's conceding Irish independence is the indelible disgrace which would rightly fall upon any country which did not provide for the protection of men who had been loyal and faithful citizens. Now the point to be noted is that England's authority, resulting not from law but from power in an independent Ireland, would greatly enhance her capacity for ensuring the fair treatment of Irish Protestants. The treaty of independence would provide guarantees for their rights, and any breach of these guarantees would be a casus belli. The mere threat of a hostile tariff would of itself be a stronger sanction than the most strenuous provisions of an Act of Parliament backed only by the very hypothetical power of compelling a half-independent executive to obey the judgments of, say, the Privy Council The guarantees of a treaty are, it may be said, often worthless. This is so; but their worthlessness arises from the weakness of the country in whose favour they are made. In any event they may be worth a good deal more than provisions of an Act of Parliament. The deriders of a paper Union which has lasted for a century have no right to count on the validity of a paper Federation which still awaits creation.

It is, again, possible that the severance of all political connection might open the way to friendship or alliance.

This assertion is no unmeaning paradox. If one could anticipate with any confidence that the acknowledgment of Irish nationality would bring to Ireland happiness and prosperity, it would not be a very bold conjecture that as Ireland flourished and prospered, ill-will to England might rapidly decrease. With nations, as with individuals, to remove all causes of mutual irritation is much the same thing as removing the disposition to quarrel. Not twelve years have passed since the last Austrian soldier marched out of Italy, yet Austria is at this moment less unpopular with the Italians than France, and Garibaldi's death evoked tributes of respect at Vienna. For fifteen years the whole force of European law was employed to keep Belgium united to Holland; the obvious interests, moreover, of all the inhabitants of the kingdom of the Netherlands told in favour of union. Yet year by year the two divisions of one country became more and more hostile to each other. Fifty years of separation have, as far as appearances go, restored, or for the first time created, feelings of friendliness between the Belgians and the Dutch. There are to be found Belgian statesmen who regret the proclamation of Belgian independence. When in 1881 the Americans celebrated at Yorktown the centenary of British defeat, they went out of their way to display their goodwill towards Great Britain. Plaudits and toasts, it may be said, prove nothing except the existence of a sentiment which, even if it be genuine, is certain to be evanescent. This is true; but the matter for consideration is not whether the feeling of friendliness towards Great Britain which found expression daring the festivities at Yorktown would survive a conflict of interest between England and America, but whether a condition of feeling which allows the two nations to look calmly after their own interests, unblinded by passion or animosity, could possibly have been produced by the continuance of that connection between England and America which was terminated by the surrender of Cornwallis. There is at least no absurdity in the supposition that this question ought to be answered in the negative, and that Americans and Englishmen are at any rate not enemies just because a hundred years ago they ceased to be fellow-citizens.

Let not, however, the gist of my argument be misunderstood. The possible increase of English power, and the possible growth of goodwill between England and Ireland, are not used as anything like reasons in favour of Separation. They are set down simply as deductions from the immense evils of a policy which no Englishman can regard as other than most injurious to the whole United Kingdom. The reason why it is wise to dwell on this kind of set-off against the ill effects of Separation is that Home Rule, while involving almost all the evils of Separation, will be found on examination not to hold out anything like the same hopes of compensating advantages.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] See 'Economic Value of Ireland to Great Britain,' by Robert Giffen, The Nineteenth Century, March, 1886, p. 229.



CHAPTER VII.

HOME RULE—ITS FORMS.

[Sidenote: Forms of Home Rule.]

The proposals for giving Ireland Home Rule, in so far as they have taken any definite shape whatever, have assumed four forms:—

I. Home Rule as Federalism.

II. Home Rule as Colonial Independence.

III. Home Rule as the revival of Grattan's Constitution.

IV. Home Rule under the proposed Gladstonian Constitution.

[Sidenote: Conditions to be satisfied by plan of Home Rule.]

How far Home Rule under these forms, or any one of them, is compatible with the interests of the English people must be determined by considering what are the conditions which an acceptable plan of Home Rule must fulfil, and by then examining how far any given form of Home Rule satisfies them.

Any scheme of Home Rule which can conceivably be accepted by England must, it is admitted, satisfy the following conditions.[29]

It must in the first place be consistent with the ultimate supremacy of the British Parliament.[30]

It must in the second place be just; it must provide that each part of the United Kingdom take a fair share of Imperial burdens; that the citizens of each part have equality of rights; that the rights both of individuals and of minorities be safely guarded.[31]

It must in the third place promise finality; it must be in the nature of a final settlement of the demands made on behalf of Ireland, and not be a mere provocation to the revival of fresh demands.

It must, in short, to sum up the whole matter, be, as already insisted upon, a scheme which promises to England at least not greater evils than the maintenance of the Union or than Irish independence.

These conditions constitute the touchstone by which any given plan of Home Rule must be tested. No scheme, however ingenious, can be accepted which lacks any of these characteristics, namely, the maintenance of Parliamentary sovereignty—justice—finality.

[Sidenote: General character of Federalism.]

I. Home Rule as Federalism.—Federal government is the latest invention of constitutional science. Several circumstances confer upon it at the present moment extraordinary prestige. It is a piece of political mechanism which has been found to work with success in three notorious instances. In its favour is engaged the pride—may we not say vanity?—of one of the leading nations of the earth. Americans regard Federalism with pardonable partiality. They are the original inventors of the best Federal system in the world, and Federalism has made them the greatest of all free communities. A polity under which the United States has grown up and flourished, and fought the biggest war which has been fought during the century, and come out of it victorious, and with renewed strength, must, it is felt, be a constitution suited for all nations who aspire to freedom. There is nothing therefore surprising in the fact that Federalism is supposed to be the panacea for all social evils, and all political perplexities, or that it should be thrust upon our attention as the device for bringing England and her colonies into closer connection, and (not perhaps quite consistently) for relaxing the connection and terminating the feud between England and Ireland. We should do well, therefore, to recollect what is the true nature of Federalism. Federal government, whatever be its merits, is a mere arrangement for the distribution of political power. It is an arrangement which requires for its application certain well-defined conditions.[32]

There must, in the first place, exist a body of countries; such, for example, as the cantons of Switzerland, or the colonies of America, or the provinces of Canada, so closely connected by locality, by history, by race, or the like, as to be capable of bearing in the eyes of their inhabitants an impress of common nationality. There must, in the second place, be found among the people of the countries which it is proposed to unite in Federal union, a very peculiar state of sentiment. They must desire union; they must not desire unity. Federalism, in short, is in its nature a scheme for bringing together into closer connection a set of states, each of which desires, whilst retaining its individuality, to form together with its neighbours one nation. It is not, at any rate as it has hitherto been applied, a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state. It may possibly be capable of this application; experience, however, gives no guidance on this point,[33] and loyalty to the central government is to the working of a Federal system as necessary as loyalty on the part of individual citizens to their own separate State. When, therefore, it is suggested that Federalism may establish a satisfactory relation between England and Ireland, a doubt naturally suggests itself whether the United Kingdom presents the conditions necessary for the success of the Federal experiment. Whether in the case of two countries, of which the one has no desire for State rights and the other has no desire for union, the bases of a Federal scheme are not wanting, is an inquiry which deserves consideration. Politicians, however, may reject references to abstract theory, and the best way of testing the application of Federalism to the relations between England and Ireland, is to make clear to ourselves what are the aims proposed to himself by a genuine Home Ruler, and then trace in outline the characteristics of Federalism, and consider how the Federal system would work in reference to the interests of England.

[Sidenote: Aim of Home Rule.]

"My plan of Home Rule for Ireland," writes an eminent Home Ruler, "would establish between Ireland and the Imperial Parliament the same relations in principle that exist between a State of the American Union and the Federal Government, or between any State of the Dominion of Canada and that Central Canadian Parliament which meets in Ottawa."

This statement exhibits both laxity of language and laxity of thought, but it gives a definition of the objects proposed to himself by a genuine Home Ruler which is sufficiently definite, for the ends of my argument. Home Rule is, for our present purpose, Federalism. We may therefore, assume that it involves the adoption throughout the present United Kingdom of a constitution in principle, though not in detail, like that of the United States. The United Kingdom would, if Mr. McCarthy's proposals were adopted, be transformed into a confederacy; the different States, say Great Britain and Ireland, or England, Scotland, and Ireland, would bear to the whole union the same relation which Virginia and New York bear to the United States; they would bear towards each other the same relation which Virginia bears to New York, or which they both bear towards Massachusetts. Such a constitution has, it must be at once admitted, no necessary connection with Republicanism. The King or Queen of England for the time being would occupy the position of a hereditary president; this arrangement would, as Mr. Butt seems to have perceived, increase rather than diminish the authority of the Crown. It must, on the other hand, be noted that Federalism necessarily involves the formation of a new constitution, not for Ireland only, but for the whole of the United Kingdom. It is necessary to insist upon this point. For half the fallacies of the arguments for Home Rule rest upon the idea that Home Rule is a matter affecting Ireland alone. 'Irish Federalism,' the title of a pamphlet by Mr. Butt, is a term involving something like self-contradiction. The misnomer is curious and full of instruction.

Whoever wishes to understand the relation of Federalism to the English Constitution and to English interests must give some attention to the nature of a Federal Union.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Federalism.]

A Federal constitution must, from its very nature, be marked by the following characteristics.

It must, at any rate in modern days, be a written constitution, for its very foundation is the "Federal pact" or contract; the constitution must define with more or less precision the respective powers of the central government, and of the State governments of the central legislature and of the local legislatures; it must provide some means (e.g., reference to a popular vote) for bringing into play that ultimate sovereign power which is able to modify or reform the constitution itself; it must provide some arbiter, be it Council, Court, or Crown, with authority to decide whether the Federal pact has been observed; it must institute some means by which the principles of the constitution may be upheld, and the decrees of the arbiter or Court be enforced against the resistance (if need be) of one or more of the separate States. These are not the accidents but the essential features of any Federal constitution; and are found under the constitution of the Canadian Dominion and of the Swiss Confederacy, no less than under the constitution of the United States. They all depend on the simple, but often neglected fact, that a Federal constitution implies an elaborate distribution and definition of political powers; that it is from its very nature a compromise between the claims of rival authorities, the Confederacy and the States, and that behind all the mechanism and artifices of the constitution there lies, however artfully concealed, some sovereign power which must have the means both to support the principles of the constitution and, when occasion requires, to modify its terms. Hence almost of necessity flow some further results. Under a federation the law of the land must be divided into constitutional laws (or, in other words, articles of the constitution), which can be changed, if at all, only with special difficulty, say by an appeal to the popular vote or by a constituent assembly, and ordinary laws which may be changed by the central Congress or by the separate assemblies of the States. The powers both of the central Parliament and of the local parliaments, depending as they do upon the constitutional compact, must be limited. Neither the National Assembly of Switzerland nor the Congress of the United States have anything like the sovereign power of the British Parliament: the same thing is obviously true of the Cantonal or State Assemblies. Such are, under one form or another, the essential characteristics of a Federal Government. A confederation of which England and Ireland formed a part would further of necessity exhibit a feature not to be found in the United States. The authority of the Confederacy would in reality mean the power of one State—namely, Great Britain. No artificial distribution of the whole country into separate States would get rid of a fact depending upon laws or facts of nature beyond the reach of constitutional arrangements.

[Sidenote: Advantages of Federalism to England.]

It is now possible to perceive pretty clearly the relation of Federalism to British or English interests. It would, as compared with the independence of Ireland, present three advantages. There would not be the same obvious and patent failure in the efforts of British statesmanship to unite all the British isles into one country; the continuity of English history would be to a certain extent preserved; the break with the past would be lessened. The Federal Union might, in the eyes of foreign powers, be simply the United Kingdom under another form. The loss, again, to England in material resources would be somewhat less than that involved in separation. Ireland might possibly continue to contribute her share to the Federal Exchequer, though a critic who reflects upon the expectations expressed by Home Rulers of benefit to Ireland from the expenditure of Irish taxes on Irish objects, will wonder how, unless the taxation of a poverty-stricken country is to be greatly increased, the Irish people could support the expense both of the central and of the local governments. American experience hardly justifies the notion that Federalism is an economical form of Government. It would, and this is no small advantage, make it possible to guarantee, at any-rate in appearance, that the executive and legislative authority of the Irish Government should be exercised with due regard to justice. The Federal compact might, and probably would, contain articles which forbade any State Government or legislature to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, to bestow political privileges upon any church, to pass laws which infringe the obligation of contracts, to deprive any man of his property without due compensation. The Ten Commandments, in short, and the obvious applications thereof, might be embodied in the fundamental law of the land. Federalism would at lowest preserve a formal respect for justice, and if the system worked efficiently, would protect individuals and minorities from gross oppression at the hands of the Irish State Government.

These are the benefits of Home Rule to Great Britain. Let us now examine what are the evils to Great Britain of the proposed constitutional revolution. For whoever either will meditate for a short time on the nature of Federalism, or will examine the mode in which the constitution of the United States—the most successful federation which the world has seen—actually works, will soon perceive that what is miscalled "Irish Federalism" is in reality "British Federalism," and amounts, as I am forced to reiterate again and again, to a proposal for changing the whole constitution of the United Kingdom It is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal, if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to an English Parliament, the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the monarchy, might leave the English constitution far less essentially changed than would the adoption of Federalism even in that apparently moderate form in which it was presented by Mr. Butt to the consideration of the English public.

[Sidenote: Disadvantages of Federalism to England.]

The definite disadvantages to England of the proposed revolution may be summed up under three heads:—First, the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament would be destroyed and all English constitutional arrangements would be dislocated; secondly, the power of Great Britain would be diminished; thirdly, the chance of further disagreement with Ireland would certainly not be diminished, and would probably be increased.

First.—Under all the formality, the antiquarianism, the shams of the British constitution, there lies latent an element of power which has been the true source of its life and growth. This secret source of strength is the absolute omnipotence,[34] the sovereignty, of Parliament. As to the mode in which King, Lords, and Commons were to divide the sovereign power between themselves there have been at different times disputes leading to civil war; but that Parliament—that is, the Crown, the Peers, and the Commons acting together—is absolutely supreme, has never been doubted. Here constitutional theory and constitutional practice are for once at one. Hence, it has been well said by the acutest of foreign critics that the merit of the English constitution is that it is no constitution at all. The distinction between fundamental articles of the constitution and laws, between statutes which can only be touched (if at all) by a constituent assembly, and statutes which can be repealed by an ordinary Parliament—the whole apparatus, in short, of artificial constitutionalism—is utterly unknown to Englishmen. Thus freedom has in England been found compatible at crises of danger with an energy of action generally supposed to be peculiar to despotism. The source of strength is, in fact, in each case the same. The sovereignty of Parliament is like the sovereignty of the Czar. It is like all sovereignty at bottom, nothing else but unlimited power; and, unlike some other forms of sovereignty, can be at once put in force by the ordinary means of law. This is the one great advantage of our constitution over that of the United States. In America, every ordinary authority throughout the Union is hampered by constitutional restrictions; legislation must be slow, because the change of any constitutional rule is impeded by endless difficulties. The vigour which is wanting to Congress, is indeed to a certain extent to be found in the extensive executive power left in the hands of the President; but it takes little acuteness to perceive that in point of pliability, power of development, freedom of action, English constitutionalism far excels the Federalism of the United States. Nor is it less obvious that the very qualities in which the English constitution excels that of the United States are essential to the maintenance by England of the British Empire. Home Rulers, whether they know it or not, touch the mainspring of the British constitution. For from the moment that Great Britain becomes part of a federation, the omnipotence of Parliament is gone. The Federal Congress might be called by the name of the Imperial Parliament. It might possibly be made up of the same elements, be elected by the same electors, and even in the main consist of the very same persons as the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom; but its nature would be changed, and its power would be limited on all sides. It might deal with Imperial expenditure, with foreign affairs, with peace and war, with other matters placed within its competence; on every other point the British Congress would, like the American Congress, be powerless. Nor would all the powers taken from the Congress be necessarily given to the local assemblies. Every analogy points the other way. If the example of the United States is to be followed, articles of the constitution would limit the power both of the Imperial Congress and of the local representative assemblies. This limitation of authority could not be measured by what appears on the face of the constitution. Some council, tribunal, or other arbiter—let us, for the sake of simplicity, call it the Federal Court—would have authority to determine whether a law was or was not constitutional, or, in other words, whether it was or was not a law. Let no one fancy that the restraint placed on the power of ordinary legislation by the authority of a Federal Court; which alone can interpret the constitution, is a mere form which has no practical effect. The history of the United States is on this point decisive. De Tocqueville, Story, and Kent are far safer and better instructed guides than authors who "cannot conceive how any conflict of authority could arise which could not be easily settled by argument, by conference, by gradual experience;" and who seem to hold that to deny the existence of a difficulty is the same thing as providing for its removal The following are a few of the instances in which the American judiciary have in fact determined the limits which bound the powers, either of Congress or of the State legislatures. The judiciary have ruled that a State is liable to be sued in the Federal Courts; that Congress has authority to incorporate a bank; that a tax imposed by Congress was an indirect tax, and therefore valid; that the control of the militia really and truly belongs to Congress, and not, as in effect contended by Connecticut and Massachusetts, to the governors of the separate States. The Federal judiciary have determined the limits to their own jurisdiction and to that of the State Courts. The judiciary have pronounced one law after another invalid, as contrary to some article of the constitution—e.g., either by being tainted with the vice of ex post facto legislation, or by impairing the obligation of contracts. These are a few samples of the mode in which a Federal Court limits all legislative authority. If any one wishes to see the extent to which the power of such a Court has gone in fact, he should study the decisions on the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or anything like that constitution, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870 and the Land Act of 1881 would, whether passed by the central or by any local legislature under such a constitution, be at once treated as void, as impairing the obligation of contracts. If I am told that we might adopt Federalism without adopting the details of the American constitution, my reply is, not only that the remark comes awkwardly from innovators who wish to place Ireland in the position of Massachusetts, but that the very gist of my argument is that the existence of some arbiter (whether it be named Crown, Council, or Court), who may decide whether the constitution has or has not been violated, is of the essence of Federalism, while the existence of such an arbiter absolutely destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. Nor do the inferences to be drawn from the action of the Federal Court, and a study of the American constitution as it actually exists, end here. In the decisions of the Court we may trace the rise of question after question—that is, of conflict after conflict—as to the respective rights of the Federation and the individual States. From the history and from the immobility of the constitution, we may perceive the extent to which the existence of a Federal pact checks change, or, in other words, reform. Every institution which can lay claim to be based upon an organic law acquires a sort of sacredness. Under a system of Federalism, the Crown, the House of Peers, the Imperial Parliament itself, when transformed into a Federal Assembly, would be almost beyond the reach of change, reform, or abolition. Nor is it the Legislature of Great Britain alone which would suffer a fundamental change. The relations between the Executive and the country would undergo immense modification. The authority of the Crown might be enhanced by the establishment of a Federal Union. The King would become, in a very special sense, the representative of national or Imperial unity, and the weakening of Parliament might lead to the strengthening of the monarch. However this might be, it has, it is submitted, been now shown that Federalism would dislocate every English constitutional arrangement.

Secondly.—The changes necessitated by Federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain. That this is so has been already to a great degree established, in considering the mode in which Federalism destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. But a system of Federalism would assuredly weaken the Government quite as much as the Legislature. The Executive, as the organ of the Federal Union, would be hampered by new conditions utterly unknown to an English Ministry. The language of Federalists exhibits a curious and ominous silence or ambiguity as to the disposal of the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own? This, again—and every specific criticism is open to the same retort—may be called a detail, but it is a detail which touches the root of the whole matter. If the Federal, that is in effect the English, Government is to retain the same control over the whole army as at present—if Ireland is not to have a local force under the control of local authorities—then the language as to Irish independence used by Irish Nationalists is singularly misleading. If, on the other hand, order is to be maintained, or not maintained, by a native army under the guidance of Irish commanders, then it passes the wit of man to see by what means the rights of the central government are to be enforced in any case of disagreement between the Imperial and the Irish Parliament. With the memory of the Irish volunteers before his mind, an historian, such, for example, as Mr. McCarthy, will hardly assert that the difficulty raised is one of which he cannot conceive the existence. For my part, I heartily join in the admiration he, no doubt, feels for the patriots of 1782, but no man in his senses will maintain that the moral of that year is that a local Irish army can, under no circumstances, prove an embarrassment to the central Government. The general tone, even more than the precise language of Irish Federalists, all but forbids the supposition that they are prepared to secure the supremacy of the Federal Government by giving it the sole control of the only armed force which is to exist in any part of the Union. They probably hope that some sort of compromise may be found with regard to a matter in which, as theory and experience alike prove, compromise is all but impossible. Under certain circumstances, and in certain cases, and subject to certain conditions, the use of the armed force throughout Great Britain and Ireland is, we may suppose, to be left in the hands of the Federal Executive; under other circumstances, and under other conditions, the local forces are probably to be controlled by the local or State Government. Whether such an arrangement would continue in working order for a year, is more than doubtful. Assume, however, that somehow it could be got to work, the fact still remains that a scheme, intended to secure local liberty, would certainly ensure Imperial weakness. The need, moreover, for bestowing some element of strength on a Federal Executive as a counterpoise to its many elements of weakness leads almost of necessity to a result which has scarcely received due notice. The executive authority must be placed beyond the control of a representative assembly. Neither in the United States, nor in Switzerland, nor in the German Empire, can the Federal administration be displaced by the vote of an assembly. Federalism is in effect incompatible with Parliamentary government as practised in England. The Canadian Ministry, it may be urged, can be changed at the will of the Dominion Parliament, and the common Ministry of Austria-Hungary is responsible to the Delegations. This is true; but these exceptions are precisely of the class which prove the rule which they are cited to invalidate. The Cabinet system of the Dominion is a defect in the Canadian Constitution, and could not work were not Canada, by its position as a dependency, under the guidance of a power beyond the reach of the Dominion Parliament. What may be the real responsibility to the Delegations of the common ministry of Austria-Hungary, admits of a good deal of doubt. No one, who will not be deceived by words, believes the responsibility to be at all like the liability of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to be dismissed from office by a vote of the House of Commons. The Emperor-King is, as regards the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the permanent and unchangeable head of the State. Turn the United Kingdom into a Federal State, and Parliamentary Government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end. This may or may not be an evil, but it is a revolution which ought to give pause to innovators who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the procedure of the House of Commons.

The central Government would again, merely from that division of powers which is of the essence of Federalism, be as feeble against foreign aggression as against local resistance. Home Rule, it is constantly said, has at least this advantage, as compared with Irish independence, that it prevents any alliance between Ireland and a foreign enemy. This gain might turn out rather nominal than real. Neither the United States nor France could, of course, send an Embassy to any State comprised within the British Union; but, if war impended, they might and would attempt to gain the favour of the Irish Ministry, or the Irish party who controlled the Irish Parliament, or exercised the authority of the local Government of Ireland. Suppose that when war was about to be proclaimed between the British Federation and France, the Irish Parliament objected to hostilities with the French Republic. Can it be denied that the local Parliament and the local executive could, by protests, by action, or even by inaction, give aid or comfort to the foreign enemy? The local legislature would, in the supposed case, be aided by a minority of the central Parliament or Congress. Obstruction would go hand in hand with sedition. Loyalty to the Union was strong throughout the Northern States during the War of Secession; but the tale used certainly to be told that had Meade been defeated at Gettysburg, the leaders of the New York democracy would have attempted "to carry the State out of the Union." Moreover, Great Britain would perhaps find it easier to control the action of an independent than of a confederated Ireland. Blockades and embargoes are, as already pointed out, modes of persuasion applicable to foreigners, but inapplicable to citizens; the Government of the Union found it harder to check the latent disloyalty of South Carolina than it would have found it to deal with the open enmity of Canada. This topic is too odious and too far removed from the realm of practical politics, to need more than the allusion required for the completeness of my argument.

Federalism, in short, would mean the weakness of Great Britain, both at home and abroad. As the head of a Confederacy, England, as the head also of the British Empire, would meet undiminished responsibilities with greatly diminished power.

Thirdly.—Federalism is at least as likely to stereotype and increase the causes of division between England and Ireland as to remove them.

A Federal Government is, of all constitutions, the most artificial. If such a government is to be worked with anything like success, there must exist among the citizens of the confederacy a spirit of genuine loyalty to the Union. The "Unitarian" feeling of the people must distinctly predominate over the sentiment in favour of "State rights." To require this is to require a good deal more than the mere general submission to the Government which is requisite for the prosperity of every State, whatever be the nature of its polity. In a Federation every citizen is influenced by a double allegiance. He owes fealty to the central Government; he owes fealty also to his Canton or State. National allegiance and local allegiance divide and perplex the feelings even of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominate, the Federation will go to pieces at any of those crises when the interest or wishes of any of the States conflict with the interest or wishes of the Union. So keen an observer and profound a critic as De Tocqueville believed that both the American and the Swiss Federations would make shipwreck on this rock. He was mistaken; he did not allow for the rapid development of national sentiment. But his error was pardonable. The leaders of the Sonderbund did prefer the interest of Lucerne to the unity of Switzerland. Lee and Jackson were disloyal to the Union, because they were loyal to Virginia. Leading officers of the United States army, soldiers educated at Westpoint, trained the armies of the Confederates. They were men of unblemished honour; they were, some of them, not originally zealous in the cause of secession, but they believed that their duty to their State—to Virginia, to South Carolina, or to Georgia—was paramount over their duty to the Government at Washington. If Virginia had stood by the Union, General Lee might, in all probability, have been the conqueror of the Confederate States, of which he was the hero. Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. Irish officers and Irish soldiers, members of the Irish State—paid by and to a certain extent under the command of the Irish Government—can hardly be blamed if in times of civil differences, leading it may be to civil war, they should feel more loyalty to their State than to the Union. This Union, be it remembered, would in such a case be nothing but Great Britain under a new and less impressive title.

The existence and nature of the Federal bond is calculated to supply both the causes and occasions of such differences.

Home Rulers, it is clear, form already most exaggerated hopes of the benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Home Rule; and, further, in their own minds (naturally enough) confound Federalism with national independence.

"Give Ireland," writes Mr. Finch,[35] "the management of her own affairs, and you will see called into her service the ablest and most capable of her sons; while, as things now stand, the intellect of Ireland is shut out from all share in the administration. With careers at home worthy of the best and ablest of the people, much of the wealth which is now drained off from Ireland without any return, will be expended in developing the industrial resources of the country; industry will revive, and with the revival of industry will come employment for the people. 'It is the difficulty of living by wages in Ireland,' says Sir G.C. Lewis, 'which makes every man look to the land for maintenance.' With employment for the people, half the difficulty of the land question will be solved. If, then, we wish to promote the moral and material welfare of the Irish people, let us make them masters of their own affairs."

"I have indicated what I believe," writes Mr. O'Neill Daunt,[36] "to be the radical disease of Ireland: the want of a domestic legislature racy of the soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom.'

"If Ireland had been left the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position—if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive haemorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding the development of her industries, and resisting all aggression on her commercial and political rights—in a word, if the Irish Constitution had not been treacherously undermined and overthrown, we should now have been the best support of the Empire, instead of being its scandal and its weakness."

Politicians who write thus expect far more from national independence than nationality itself can give. More than fifty years have elapsed since Spain expelled the foreign invader; but Spain has not yet succeeded in expelling ignorance, prejudice, superstition, or oppression. But whatever be the miracles of nationality, Ireland would not, under Federalism, be a nation. Rhode Island has all the freedom demanded for his country by an eminent Home Ruler, whose expressions I have cited. He surely does not consider the inhabitants of Rhode Island to be a nation.

Whatever else Home Rule might give to Ireland, one gift it assuredly would not bring with it. It would not endow the country with wealth. To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable. In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable. Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country. Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment. Commerce has no partiality for the masses. Credit cherishes no trust towards the people. The one prediction which we may make with confidence is that a measure of Home Rule would not increase Irish capital, and would shake Irish credit. The rumour of Home Rule has already, it is said, disturbed the course of business in Ireland. From the nature of things, then, the establishment of Federalism would lead to bitter disappointment. The country would not enjoy the dignity of independence; it would not enjoy the comfort of wealth. Every Irishman would feel that he had been cheated of his hopes, and this not because he is an Irishman, but because he is a man. It is human to expect far more from even the most beneficial of revolutions than any political change can bring. The unity of Italy was well worth all the price it cost. The unity of Germany gave intense gratification to natural feelings of national pride. Yet there are probably many even in the Italian Kingdom who sigh for the light taxes of the Bourbon or Papal rule, and Germans who glory in the greatness of the Empire flee by thousands to the United States that they may escape the burden of conscription. The disappointment which naturally attends a great change would in the case of Ireland be specially bitter. To what cause would the disappointment be attributed? The answer is easy to find. If taxation increased—as it probably would; if wealth did not increase—as it certainly would not; if the sense of semi-independence did not produce the hope, the energy, the new life, the regeneration which enthusiasts consider to be the natural result of nationality—if anything, in short, failed to go according to the hopes of men who had formed hopes which a miracle itself could hardly satisfy—the blame for the non-fulfilment of groundless anticipations would rest upon the Confederacy—that is in other words, upon England. To suppose this, is not to attribute special unreasonableness to Irishmen. If Italy had been forced to accept, instead of her longed-for independence, the local self-government which might be conceded to the State of an Austrian Federation, we may be quite sure that the Grist Tax, the Sicilian Banditti, the intrigues of France in Tunis, the perversity of the Pope, the poverty of Italian workmen, the factiousness of Italian politicians, every evil, in short, real or imaginary, under which Italy now suffers, or has suffered since 1870—would have been attributed to her connection with a Union presided over by the Austrian Emperor. National independence, like every other form of independence, has at least this merit, that it compels men to take their fate into their own hands, and to feel that they themselves or the circumstances of the world are the causes of their misfortunes. Semi-independence makes it easy for men to attribute every mishap to the absence of absolute freedom.

If the existence of a Federal constitution would of itself supply the cause for discontent, it is of the very nature of such a constitution to supply the occasions of dispute. Nothing can prevent the rise of burning questions about Federal and State rights. Is nullification or secession, or the refusal to pay Federal taxes a State right? If these questions arise, by whom are they to be settled? Suppose they are referred to a Federal Court, say the Privy Council, is it reasonable to fancy that Irishmen or Englishmen, for that matter, will acquiesce in the decision of grave political issues (say the right of the Federal Government to proclaim martial law at Dublin, or the validity of the Land Act) by any tribunal? For when political issues are referred to the decision of a Court the difficulty is great of enlisting public opinion in favour of its decrees. The theory of the constitution and the expectation of the people is that references to the judges will be events of rare occurrence, and that the Bench, when it acts at all, will act only as interpreter of the constitutional pact. Things are certain to turn out far otherwise. The intervention of the tribunals will in one form or another be constantly evoked, and will be evoked to determine the most burning questions of the day. The Constitution of the United States would be unintelligible without reference to a long line of determined cases; its principles are to be found quite as much in the decisions of the Supreme Court as in its Articles. Swiss Constitutionalists have greatly increased as years have gone on the originally limited powers of the Federal tribunal. The statesmen who drafted the Act constituting the Canadian Dominion fancied they could in effect avoid the necessity for judicial interpretation, but a long series of reports proves the futility of their expectation. Each day increases the mass, and it must be added the importance, of the judgments by which the Privy Council determines questions of constitutional law for the Colonies. Moreover, even laymen soon perceive that interpretation means legislation. It is technically correct to say that the Supreme Court of the United States acts only as interpreter of the Constitution, but we must not be deceived by fictions. The Supreme Court has legislated as truly, and perhaps more effectively than Congress. It has achieved, and from the nature of things was compelled to achieve, a feat forbidden to Congress; it has added to or enlarged the Articles of the Constitution. The good fortune of the United States gave to them in Judge Marshall a profound and statesmanlike lawyer, and the judgments of the great Chief Justice have built up the existing Constitution. He may be counted, if not among its founders, at any rate as its main architect. In this instance judicial authority was combined with political wisdom, and Marshall's opinion was, it is said, rejected by the Court in but two cases, and had it in these instances been followed, would have improved the Constitution. Unfortunately, while one may often secure the fairness one cannot ensure the wisdom of the Bench. Judges err; a final Court of Appeal must often give decisions which are or are supposed to be erroneous, i.e., not a just deduction from the facts and principles which the Court is called upon to consider. No historian will, it is likely, now defend the doctrine of the House of Lords about marriage laid down in Reg. v. Millis. Competent authorities question some of the most important ecclesiastical judgments given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The decision in the Dred Scott Case, whether right or wrong, did not approve itself to eminent lawyers in the United States. One of the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Legal Tender Cases must have been wrong; whether the last was sound is open to debate. It is when a Court gives what is thought to be an erroneous decision on matters exciting the feelings of large classes that the difficulty of obtaining acquiescence in its judgments is palpable. The judges decided, and it is quite possible decided rightly, that Ship Money was a legal exaction, and that the Crown's dispensing power was authorized by law. Popular opinion branded the judges as sycophants and traitors. Chief Justice Taney and his colleagues decided in effect, and from a legal point of view may have been right in deciding, that slavery was recognised by the Constitution of the United States. Their decision was denounced by the best men in the Union as infamous. The Privy Council have laid down doctrines on matters of ritual which are held to be erroneous by a large body of the clergy, and Ritualists have gone to prison rather than treat the judgment of the Privy Council as of moral validity. Clergymen are not perhaps the most reasonable of mankind, but they are not more unreasonable than political enthusiasts. How then is it possible to expect that a Federal tribunal would command an obedience not yielded willingly to the laws of the Imperial Parliament? Englishmen, indeed, might, it is possible, acquiesce in the ruling of Federal judges, and this for two reasons: they are a legally-minded nation; and (what is of far more consequence) a Federal Court must represent in the main the opinions of the Federal Government—that is, of Great Britain. But it is idle to suppose that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Parnell's followers would find it easier to respect an Imperial or Federal tribunal than to bow to the will of the Imperial Parliament.