Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:

"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]

Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says—

"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial right."[41]

The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:

"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42]

Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:

"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy, or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence, were probably committed from the same motive.

"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45]

These extracts are taken from Irish History and Irish Character, which was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of letters to the Daily News, which were republished in 1868 under the title of The Irish Question; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on the Irish difficulty.

In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:

"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46]

The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish people.

Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November, 1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. He says—

"There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation, extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.

"England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of Austria in Italy—a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect, that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder. Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England, the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day be patriotic to have dissuaded.

" ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection.

"The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47]

Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a religious one.

"When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his life."[48]

Neither was it a question of the land.

"The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter, and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not believe that even this is fundamental."

He then states what is "fundamental."[49]

"The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.

"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence, even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling and affection more than ourselves."[50]

And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.

Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.

"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne, has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed. What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the future."[51]

Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought about. Here it is.

"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.

"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.

"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate (subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also, much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business, together with such other matters as the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]

Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on the road to an Irish Parliament.

* * * * *

MR. DICEY.

A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union," than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.

How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these pithy sentences—"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 widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be a 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."[53]

What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the Imperial Parliament!

"On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are agreed—the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested, produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers, led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart, morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law, when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship—and all statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect—has failed in obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]

No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with such vigour as this.

"Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.

"'Quand vous en etes arroes a ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour retabler l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour reprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez a votre aide toutes les severites du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arreter le cours de revoltantes cruautes; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre delit se rattachant a ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtes entiers en etat de suspicion legale, voilerez le principe de la liberte individuelle, creerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez a l'exces les executions capitales.'"[55]

The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "Union."

"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 interaction 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 union. These arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism."[56]

The words which I have italicised are an expression of opinion; but nothing can alter the damning statement of fact—"legal union has failed to secure moral union." Nevertheless, Mr. Dicey advocates the maintenance of this legal union as it stands.

"On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound because it is just."[57]

I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the eminent writers whose works I have cited. It is enough that they demonstrate the failure of the Union. So convinced was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a federal basis;[58] and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended that the Irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of Provincial Councils, and an occasional session of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey clings to the existing Union while demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the only alternative is separation.

Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's facts, and disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen believe, with Grattan, that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against such a union as was attempted in 1800.[59]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 26: Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of space. In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case; in no place would they weaken it.]

[Footnote 27: Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, new edit. (1871), Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.]

[Footnote 28: Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, new edit. (1871), Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.]

[Footnote 29: Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.]

[Footnote 30: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 33, 34.]

[Footnote 31: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 120-123.]

[Footnote 32: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 125, 126.]

[Footnote 33: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 34-37.]

[Footnote 34: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 134-137.]

[Footnote 35: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 192-195.]

[Footnote 36: Leaders of Public Opinion, pp. 195, 196.]

[Footnote 37: Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen, p. 274.]

[Footnote 38: Irish History and Irish Character, pp. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 194.]

[Footnote 40: Ibid., p. 142.]

[Footnote 41: Irish History and Irish Character, p. 101.]

[Footnote 42: Irish History and Irish Character, pp. 139, 140.]

[Footnote 43: Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Irish Disturbances, p. 97.]

[Footnote 44: Irish History and Irish Character, pp. 153-157.]

[Footnote 45: Ibid., pp. 70, 71]

[Footnote 46: The Irish Question, Preface, pp. iii., iv.]

[Footnote 47: The Irish Question, pp. 3-5.]

[Footnote 48: Ibid., p. 6.]

[Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 7.]

[Footnote 50: The Irish Question, pp. 7-9.]

[Footnote 51: Irish Question, p. 10.]

[Footnote 52: The Irish Question, pp. 16-18.]

[Footnote 53: Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule, p. 128.]

[Footnote 54: Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule, pp. 72-74.]

[Footnote 55: Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule, pp. 92-94.—The foreigner is De Beaumont.]

[Footnote 56: Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule, pp. 151, 152.]

[Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 288.]

[Footnote 58: I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this statement. I rely on the extract quoted from the Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p. xix.]

[Footnote 59: Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.]



IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.

BY LORD THRING.[60]

Ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any particular form of government for that country involves an investigation of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of numerous political communities more or less differing from each other. From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of Home Rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies proposed for the cure of Irish disorders.

The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal composite nations of the world together may be classified as—

1. Confederate unions. 2. Federal unions. 3. Imperial unions.

A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the governments of independent States, which agree to appoint a common superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand contributions of men and money from the confederate States. Such superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through the medium of the governments of the constituent States; or, in other words, in case of disobedience, by armed force.

A federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual subjects of the constituent States through the medium of their respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on the individual citizens.

The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and that the component communities have been brought into association, not by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant community.

The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals, must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible war of modern times.

The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions.

Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of a federal assembly comprising two Chambers—the Upper Chamber composed of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of the republic. There is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions to those of the supreme court of the United States of America, consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal assembly.

The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing from the United States and Switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. It comprises twenty-six States, who have "formed an eternal union for the protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German people."[63] The King of Prussia, under the title of German Emperor, represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a defensive war he must have the assent of the Upper House. The legislative body of the empire consists of two Houses—the Upper, called the Bundesrath, representing the several component States in different proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397 electoral districts, which are distributed amongst the constituent States in unequal numbers, regard being had to the population and circumstances of each State.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing alike in its origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. In the beginning Austria and Hungary were independent countries—Austria a despotism, Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in 895. In the sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries—that is to say, the despotic monarchy in Austria and the constitutional monarchy in Hungary—became vested in the same person; as might have been anticipated, the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's Political System of Europe at intervals selected almost at random, the following notices will be found in relation to Austria and Hungary:—Between 1671 and 1700 "political unity in the Austrian monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country (Hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of affairs."[64] Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period between 1740 and 1786: "Hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which Austria exacted what she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary was incorporated with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated with Great Britain in 1800. Both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the junction which, in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was in Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. Hungary, sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's calamity as her opportunity, and it came after the battle of Sadowa. Austria had just emerged from a fearful conflict, and Count Beust[65] felt that unless some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional party in Hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result. Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of the bonds between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary, to maintain the unity of the empire he dissolved its union and restored to Hungary its ancient constitutional privileges. Austria and Hungary each had its own Parliament for local purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of whom half represent and are chosen by the Legislature of Austria, and the other half by that of Hungary; the Upper House of each country returning twenty members, and the Lower House forty.[66] Ordinarily the delegates sit and vote in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is binding on the whole empire.[67]

The question arises, What is the magnetic influence which induces communities of men to combine together in federal unions? Undoubtedly it is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? Mr. Mill says,[68] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively." He then proceeds to state that the feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections—collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret—connected with the same incidents in the past.

The only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the United States, Switzerland, and the German Empire, produced a closer legal bond of union, in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to produce a federal union of States in place of a single State.

One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the construction of the various States above described: that the stability of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or homogeneity of its component parts. Russia and France, the most compact political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants of which are subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. Above all, no European nation, except Great Britain, can for a moment bear comparison with the United States in respect of the devotion of its people to their Constitution.

An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. Its essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant while all the others are subordinate. In the case of a federal union independent States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a central Government for the sake of securing the common safety. In an imperial union the dominant or imperial State delegates to each constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as the dominant State considers the subordinate member entitled to, consistently with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the world. Her Majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the empire together and connects with each other every constituent member. The Indian Empire and certain military dependencies require no further notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of Home Rule possibly applicable to Ireland.

The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be classified as follows:—

I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown.

2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the control of the executive.

3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no control over any public officer except the Governor.

The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the colony on the mother country.

It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth—nations themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European State—namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists, when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.

Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces.

Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to them—

1. To let matters alone. 2. To pass a Coercion Bill. 3. To change the government of Ireland, and at the same time to pass a Land Bill.

The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be passed without granting Home Rule in Ireland.

Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the State—Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler, Parnellite—thought it possible to leave things alone. That something must be done was universally admitted.

The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial second marriage.

Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? The prima facie case is at all events in favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation—the greater colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an external severance the practical disunion which existed between that member and Great Britain. This member—Ireland—as compared with other parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at Westminster.

On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the assent of the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish representative peers and Irish members.

The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution.

Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of civil war.

The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting. The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly.

In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered: the demands of the English garrison, as it is called—or, in plain words, of the class of Irish landlords—for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law, the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent—that the Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the basis of the gross rental, whilst it would pay to the English Government interest calculated on the basis of the net rental—and that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received by them.

The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant proprietors—apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple. In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things? Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General, assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court. This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.

The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three recommendations:

1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English Exchequer to any appreciable risk.

2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament and the integrity of the Empire.

3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire without any obstructive Irish interference.

To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill.

The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee, and had no bottom or substance.

It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party—or, as it is sometimes called, the English garrison—to the tender mercies of the Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been—and with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied ever can be—offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and anarchy in Ireland.

Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a Crown colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question turns—the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer—could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more closely the Canadian Constitution, and to vest the central or Dominion powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet special local exigencies.

A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on Ireland—either the form in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire—leave the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains, in relation to the form of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.

What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing premises?

1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.

2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule.

3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to Ireland—a member only, and not one of the most important members, of the British Empire—will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire.

4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British Parliament.

5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland.

6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland—e.g. the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada.

7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively immaterial.

8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors.

9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the landlord, and the tenant.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the Contemporary Review, August, 1887.]

[Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" Contemporary Review, March, 1887.]

[Footnote 62: Mill on Representative Government, p. 310.]

[Footnote 63: See Statesman's Year-Book: Switzerland and Germany.]

[Footnote 64: Heeren's Political System of Europe, p. 152.]

[Footnote 65: Memoirs of Count Beust, vol. i., Introduction, p. xliii.]

[Footnote 66: Statesman's Year-Book.]

[Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the title of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a dominant community over Hungary.]

[Footnote 68: Representative Government, p. 295.]



THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69]

BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.

For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in every free country.

The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland, raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was, therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested, as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of the two others.

How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and failed to win approval—all this is too well known to need recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well understood, for it is only now—now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared away from the field—that these causes have begun to stand revealed in their true proportions.

Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it.

The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due—inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used, even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent. (I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men; what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have made a lodgment.

The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible, have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper. The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together, the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the Land agitation—has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by was their own ascendency over the Irish masses—an oppressive ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster) between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression. They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the other to resist injustice by violence.

There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a prima facie title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious party in Ireland, England has now two advantages—an advantage of theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and Government she would strip herself of both these advantages."

I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability. Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it. But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation.

It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria. I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though, of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr. Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party must accept, they were startled and discomposed.