On two occasions advances have been made by the Board of Trinity College to the heads of the Catholic hierarchy, asking them what would be their attitude if Trinity were to allow Catholic students in the College the same facilities for religious teaching by the members of their own Church as are at present provided for undergraduate members of the Episcopalian Protestant Church. On the first occasion Cardinal Cullen, shortly after the passing of the University Tests Act, replied that he could be no party to such a proposal. When the process of sounding the Catholic bishops was repeated in November, 1903, the Provost and Senior Fellows expressed their willingness to consent to the erection of a Catholic chapel in the College grounds provided a sufficient sum of money was forthcoming for its erection. A similar advance was made to the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and the reply in each case was the same—that the parties concerned could not accept the offers made by the College Board. The failure on the part of Presbyterians to make use of the College has been attributed by the Commissioners to the ancient alienation of the Presbyterians from Trinity, as well as to the existence of the useful work done for that body by the Queen's College, Belfast. That this ancient alienation exists in the case of Catholics far more than in that of the Presbyterians is but natural, seeing that the College was founded by Elizabeth to undermine the Catholicism of the people. For all that, however, the taunt is raised with some superficial measure of plausibility that in refusing the offer the Catholics and their bishops lay themselves open to a charge of narrowmindedness, seeing that they have not a College suitable to their needs as have the Presbyterians in Belfast. That the genius loci is Episcopalian Protestant no one will deny. At an inaugural meeting of the College Historical Society a few years ago Judge Webb declared—"Their University was founded by Protestants, for Protestants, and in the Protestant interest. A Protestant spirit had from the first animated every member of its body corporate. At the present moment, with all its toleration, all its liberality, all its comprehensiveness, and all its scrupulous honour, the genius loci, the guardian spirit of the place, was Protestant. And as a Protestant he said, and said it boldly, Protestant might it evermore remain." To this exposition of the spirit of the College two of its most distinguished members—Lord Justice FitzGibbon and Professor Mahaffy—gave their assent.

In the light of this frank admission the attitude of the Catholics takes a new complexion. No suggestion, it will be noted, is made in the overtures to the bishops to give Catholics any—not to speak of a proportionate—representation on the Councils of the College. As at present constituted, the Board, owing to the abolition of celibacy as a condition of Fellowship and the extinction of the advowsons belonging to the College by the Irish Church Act of 1869, has become a body of men, the average age of whom is over seventy and the average time since the graduation of whom is a little more than half a century. There is at present one Catholic Junior Fellow in the College, and from the above facts it will be seen that he may get on the governing board, if he survives, in about forty years from now.

The government in a college by men whose undergraduate days were fifty years ago is not calculated to inspire hope for a liberality of treatment with which a more modern generation might be imbued. The suggestion that Catholics show narrowmindedness in refusing to throng the halls of a College admittedly envious of its Protestantism and maintaining automatically its purely Protestant government for three-quarters of a century more is very disingenuous.

That if they were to comply, Protestantism would have by some special means to maintain its supremacy is obvious, for the Episcopalian Protestants are only thirteen per cent. of the population of Ireland, and if Catholics were to swamp Trinity and to succeed in obtaining a share in its councils proportionate to their numbers in the country, the body for which Trinity was founded would find themselves unable to obtain any dominant voice in its government.

"Trinity College is quite free from clerical control," said the Vice-Provost in his statement to the Commissioners, regardless apparently of the fact that of the seven Senior Fellows who, together with the Provost, form the College Board, no less than four are clergymen. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from the statement submitted by the Committee on Higher Education of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for the information of the last Royal Commission:—

"So long as Trinity College remains practically as it is there is a real grievance for all denominations except the Protestant Episcopalian, and the members of those denominations will still be able to say that the best education in the country—and whether it is the best academically or simply possesses a greater social acceptance and prestige it is needless here to discuss—is withheld from them, except on conditions that tempt their sons to abandon the faith of their fathers or to become weakened in their attachment to it."

No one—least of all an Irishman—can deny the greatness of a College on the boards of which are such names as Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, Flood, and Burke, but it will be admitted by all that as far as the fame of her alumni is concerned—and there is no other test for a collegiate foundation—Trinity reached the zenith of her greatness during the years in which a free Parliament served to break down the barriers of religion in the island. With the passing of that phase of political history she relapsed into her place as the "silent sister" in the country, but not of it, taking no part in national life other than to offer opposition to the legislative changes, which even she is now constrained to admit were reforms.

As owner of some 200,000 acres, Trinity College has proved herself one of the worst landlords in Ireland. An estate belonging to the College in County Kerry gave rise to one of the bitterest struggles of the land war. In view of the cry which is being raised in England to-day as to the broad tolerance which is alleged to hold the field in the College to-day, the bitterly anti-Catholic spirit of the present Provost and of his predecessors deserves mention; but I must further call the reader's notice to a recent event which attracted much attention in Ireland, but was passed unnoticed in Great Britain. In a sonnet, written by a leading Fellow of the College in "T.C.D.," the College magazine, the writer spoke of the Catholic churches in Ireland as "grim monuments of cold observance, the incestuous mate of superstition," of which "to seeing eyes each tall steeple lifts its tall head and lies." Sentiments of this kind, expressed in such taste, are not calculated to encourage Catholic parents to send their sons to a college where they may come under influences of which the writer is an example.

The idea of putting into practice the proposed expedient of swamping Trinity by the encouragement of all Catholics to send their sons to that College is to a member of an old university as attractive as on paper it appears easy, but there are drawbacks to its practical application other than the presence in the College of such a spirit as I have exemplified.

In England, where there are public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge colleges, many of which have behind them a career of three or four hundred years, one is inclined to overestimate the value of tradition in a country where educational endowments are rare and ancient endowments are the exception. The traditions, moreover, of the origin and of the mission of Trinity are not such as to foster for her the same feelings as Oxford and Cambridge have the power of provoking in England. The part which Trinity has played in Irish history is in no sense analogous to that played by the English Universities in the history of that country. English Catholics make use of Oxford and Cambridge for the education of their sons because in view of their numbers the notion of a separate university or even a separate college would be ridiculous. In England Catholics are a small sect. In Ireland they form the great bulk of the nation. In Montreal, where Catholics form only forty per cent. of the population, a Catholic University was established by Royal Charter, and the same principle has been applied in the establishment of Catholic Universities in Nova Scotia, in Malta, in New South Wales, and in the founding of the Mahommedan Gordon College at Khartoum.

As long as Trinity maintained tests, so long did the Catholics demand as of right a purely Catholic University on the grounds of civic equity, but in these days of open doors they have again and again expressed their demand for a college or university open to men of all creeds—Catholic in the sense that Oxford and Cambridge are Protestant, and are in consequence thronged with young Englishmen; Catholic in the way that the Scottish Universities are Presbyterian and that Trinity, Dublin, is Episcopalian. Not a rich man's college, but one to which all may go as they do to those in Scotland and like those racy of the soil, and for the rest, in Cardinal Newman's words—"Not a seminary, not a convent, but a place where men of the world may be fitted for the world."

Everyone recognises to-day the grievance of the Dissenters in England and Wales in single school areas under the Education Act of 1902. Ireland may not unjustly be said to be a single university area, for to call an examining Board a university is a misnomer. It is surely not too much to assert that the conscientious scruples of the Irish Catholics to forms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as the feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational—nay, more, the Jesuit—University College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The Irish Catholic bishops in 1897 declared they are prepared to accept a university without tests in which the majority of the governing body are laymen, with a provision that no State funds should be employed for the promotion of religious education. It is idle, in view of this, to protest that the demand is urged only on behalf of rampant clericalism, and that the only form of university which Catholics will accept is of such a kind as would serve to strengthen the hand of the priests, whose sole aim in this demand is to secure that increase of power. The shifts of intolerance are many, but I cannot believe that it will long continue to masquerade in this manner as the statesmanlike buffer between a priest-ridden country and an aggressive clergy. Granting, for the sake of argument, that this was the case, one would have thought that a well-educated laity was better able than one without education to withstand the encroaches of clericalism. We do not ask for a denominational college, but remember that the only colleges, Keble and Selwyn, founded in Oxford and Cambridge in the last eighty years are purely denominational. In the last forty years six new universities have been founded in England, and the number of university students has risen from 2,300 to 13,000. In Ireland, on the other hand, for three-fourths of the population knowledge must still remain a fountain sealed; it is as though one were applying literally to that country the text—"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

In connection with what one may call the Bryce scheme it may be well to point out that as long ago as 1871 the hierarchy proposed a solution on the same lines. In a Pastoral letter of that year, after insisting on the principle of equality, the following passage occurred—"All this can, we believe, be attained by modifying the constitution of the University of Dublin, so as to admit the establishment of a second College within it, in every respect equal to Trinity College, and conducted on purely Catholic principles."

On the motion to go into Committee on the Bill for the abolition of tests in 1873 an Irish member moved a motion to the effect that a Catholic College should be founded in the University of Dublin, in addition to Trinity College. Two years later Mr. Isaac Butt, the Protestant leader of the Irish Nationalists (himself a Trinity man), and The O'Conor Don, a Catholic Unionist, brought in a Bill on the same lines, but both motion and Bill were defeated. The advantages of this mode of dealing with the question are seen from its acceptance by the hierarchy and the general mass of the Catholic laity. The Senate of the Royal University have since its promulgation readily recognised its soundness and have given it their support, as have the Professors of University College, Dublin. It will serve to make an end of the underhand manner by which, as we have seen, that College, though not merely a denominational, but, moreover, a Jesuit institution, is subsidised by public money, though we are always told that State endowment of religious education is alien to all modern principles of government.

One would have thought that the authorities of Trinity would have felt themselves estopped from refusing to accept this solution. The offer of facilities inside Trinity itself—if it is the generous concession it professes to be—must be made with a full recognition that, if accepted, the process of "capturing" the College would be effected before long, thus modifying the Protestantism which is its proudest boast. If, on the other hand, the expense of life in Trinity College would prove prohibitive to any but a small section of the four thousand matriculated students in the Royal University, the much-vaunted liberality of Trinity is seen to be very greatly restricted, since the results of acceptance of the offer would only touch the mere fringe of the educational demand.

Last year, of the 1,114 students on the books of the College only 261 were resident within the College—there being accommodation for only 275. Of the 853 returned as residing outside the College, more than a hundred do not attend lectures or classes, and are entitled to call themselves members of the College though their only connection with it is in the examination hall—an evil system which the Commission has condemned, and which one must suppose was borrowed from the Royal University.

Everyone is agreed that a university to be worth the name should, if possible, be residential. The absence of disciplinary control in Trinity on those residing out of College, the omission on the part of the authorities to enact rules which would allow terms to be kept only in licensed lodging-houses, subject to inspection and to a rigid "lock-up rule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, but at the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to be due to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Not only, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but also because of the close association of men with each other which residence ensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heart out of a university education.

This being the case, if Trinity were to receive a new accession of numbers its accommodation would have to be largely increased, so that the line of least resistance, which leaves the very largely autonomous constitution of Trinity unimpaired, will be seen to lie in the direction of the establishment of a new college, in which, moreover, it will be possible to make expenses more economical than they are in Trinity.

"It is not for us," said Mr. Balfour at Partick in December, 1889, "to consider how far the undoubtedly conscientious objections of the Roman Catholic population to use the means at their disposal are wise or unwise. That is not our business. What we have to do is to consider what we can do consistently with our conscience to meet their wants."

The proposals of the Government, as outlined by Mr. Bryce and recommended by the Royal Commission, offend against no one's conscience. They assail no vested interest unless one so calls that of which Matthew Arnold spoke as one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy; they tend to establish something approaching equality between creeds; they make an end of the mischievous system by which the Royal University has encouraged a false ideal of success by making examination the end-all and the be-all of a so-called university education, and which, moreover, according to the final report of the Robertson Commission, "fails to exhibit the one virtue which is associated with a university of this kind—that of inspiring public confidence in its examination results." The advantages of the present proposal over a reorganised Royal University are that the size and poverty of the country are strong reasons against the creation of two universities when one would be equally efficient. The scheme will be readily accepted by the Presbyterians as well as by the Catholics, which would not be the case with a reconstituted Royal University, and it is the only solution of the question which will bring the young men of different creeds in the country together at an impressionable age when friendships are formed which may serve to break down the barrier between creeds.

The objection of Trinity College to the inclusion on the roll of the University under the new conditions of the present M.A.s of the Royal University is scarcely consistent with its recent action in admitting to ad eundem degrees women who have passed the final degree examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, and if the objection to the proposal is based on the change in political complexion which the electoral roll of the University would undergo, the answer is that University representation is an anomaly which in any circumstances is not likely to continue for many years more in the case, not merely of Dublin, but of the other universities of the three kingdoms.

* * * * *

Since the foregoing chapter was written the Provost of Trinity has announced to a meeting of Graduates of the College that he has received assurances from the Chief Secretary that in the forthcoming Bill the University of Dublin will be left untouched. I have said enough to show that Irish Nationalist opinion has not been committed to the Bryce scheme to the exclusion of every other solution, but it is to be regretted, in the interests of education, that the proposal which the majority of Irishmen regarded as the solution nearest approaching the ideal should have been launched by the Government merely as a ballon d'essai, to be withdrawn at the first breath of opposition, and to be replaced by what, at the best, can only prove to be a less hopeful compromise. One guarantee of a speedy solution the country at any rate holds—namely, that the Government is pledged to introduce legislation next session, and that the Chief Secretary has bound himself to stand or fall by the fate of the Bill.



CHAPTER VII

UNIONISM IN IRELAND

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. There are always a set of worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires ... I admit that to a certain extent the Government will lose the affections of the Orangemen ... but you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend."

—SYDNEY SMITH, Letters of Peter Plymley, 1807.

From the outcry which arose in the last years of the late Government at the revelations which came to be known as the MacDonnell mystery one would have thought that Conservatives could look back to a record unstained by any traffic with the unclean thing for which they express such horror. I will try to show how small is the measure of truth in this belief, and in what manner it has proved impossible to maintain the status quo in the teeth of democratic feeling without pourparlers behind the scenes, even when in the open such dealings have had perforce to be denounced as impossible.

Twenty-five years ago the rigid application of the Crimes Act by Lord Spencer, the Viceroy, after the Phoenix Park murders had put an end to the "Kilmainham Treaty," and the failure on the part of the Government to amend the Land Act of 1881, together with the sympathetic attitude of Lord Randolph Churchill, then conducting his guerilla tactics as leader of the Fourth Party, all served to make opposition on the part of the Irish members to the Liberal Government increase, and it was by their aid that in June, 1885, it was thrown out of office on a defeat by twelve votes on the Budget. Lord Salisbury then took office with his "ministry of care-takers," with a minority in the House of Commons, for a general election could not take place until the provisions of the new Franchise Act had come into force.

Colour was lent to the general impression which was abroad that the Conservatives were flirting with Home Rule by the appointment to the Lord Lieutenancy with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord Carnarvon, the statesman who had established federation in Canada and had attempted to bring it about in South Africa, who was familiar with the machinery of subordinate legislatures and Colonial parliaments, and whose sympathies with the Irish people were to be inferred from the fact that he had voted for Disestablishment in 1869, and for the Land Bill of the following year, in a speech on which measure he had urged the House of Lords not to delay concession till it could no longer have the charm of free consent, nor be regulated by the counsels of prudent statesmanship.

The defeat of the Liberals had been primarily due to the revolt on the part of the radical section over the question of whether a new Coercion Bill should be introduced. In the light of this fact special importance was attached to the declaration, made in the House of Lords, as to the Irish policy of the Government, the more so because in an unprecedented manner not the Premier but the Viceroy was the spokesman. He began by a repudiation of coercion, with which he declared the recent enfranchisement of the Irish people would not be consistent. "My Lords," he went on to say, speaking of the general question, "I do not believe that with honesty and singlemindedness of purpose on the one side, and with the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to look for some satisfactory solution of this terrible question. My Lords, these I believe to be the opinions and views of my colleagues."

A further step in securing Irish support occurred at the end of July, and perhaps of all the strange events which have occurred in the government of Ireland it is the strangest. Lord Carnarvon solicited through one of his colleagues, and obtained, an interview with Mr. Parnell, and the circumstances under which this occurred between the Queen's Lord Lieutenant and the leader to whom men attributed treason and condoning assassinations is perhaps the most curious part of the whole story.

The meeting took place at the very end of the London season, not in the Houses of Parliament nor in a club of which one or other of the parties was a member, but in an empty house in Grosvenor Square, from which all the servants had gone away. It is a piquant feature of the event, shrouded as it was with all these circumstances of mystery, that the gentleman who was in the secret and offered his house for the meeting was no other than that rigid Imperialist, Col. Sir Howard Vincent, who had only the year before retired from the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. When the occurrence of this interview became known, nearly a year later, Mr. Parnell declared—and the fact was never denied by Lord Carnarvon—that the latter had pronounced himself in favour of an Irish Parliament with the power of protecting Irish industries. The insistence by the Viceroy that he spoke only for himself appeared to the Irish leader to be mere formality, but in truth the Cabinet knew nothing of the interview. Lord Salisbury was informed that it was going to take place, raised no objection to its occurrence, and on receiving afterwards, both verbatim and in writing, accounts of what had occurred, praised the discretion of his Viceroy.

In view of what had happened it was not surprising that in the month of August Mr. Parnell made an explicit demand for the restoration of Grattan's Parliament, with the right of taxing foreign and even English imports for the benefit of the Irish home trade—a proposal not so revolutionary as it would now appear, seeing that less than forty years had elapsed since the Irish Custom House had for the first time begun to admit all English goods duty free.

Mr. Parnell's manifesto was followed by Lord Salisbury's speech at Newport, from which quotation has already been made, in which he expressed himself of opinion that Home Rule would be safer than popular local government, and further enhanced the impression that he was moving in the direction of the safer policy, by proceeding to frame what has been described as the nearest approach to an apologia for boycotting which has ever been made by an English statesman. The election address of Lord Randolph Churchill—the most popular and influential minister in the country—contained no allusion to the threatened "dismemberment of the Empire," and in his campaign his only allusion to Ireland was comprised in boasts of the success of the anti-coercion policy of Carnarvon; while Sir John Gorst, who had been Solicitor-General, referred in his election address in disparaging terms to "the reactionary Ulster members." All the symptoms pointed in the one direction of an alliance between Salisbury and Parnell on the basis of a scheme for self-government, and an additional point was given to the indications in that direction by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington, at variance on most points of policy, were united in opposition to Mr. Parnell's demand.

The statesmanlike manner in which at this juncture Mr. Gladstone endeavoured, as he himself put it, to keep the strife of nations from forming the dividing line between parties, has become very apparent with the recent publication of documents of the period. Two years before, he had told the Queen that the Irish question could only be settled by a conjunction of parties, and on December 20th, 1885, he wrote to the Conservative leader on the urgency of the Irish question, and declared that it would be a public calamity if this great subject should fall into lines of party conflict. If Salisbury would bring forward a proposal for settling the whole question of future government in Ireland he would treat it in the same spirit as that which he had shown in the matters of Afghanistan and the Balkans, and he illustrated the advantages which such a spirit of concession could produce by the conferences on the Reform Bill, and the fact that the existing Conservative ministry had been maintained in office by Liberal forbearance. "His hypocrisy," wrote a minister to whom this letter had been shown, "makes me sick." In this connection a letter from Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, written on the following day, is of interest:—

"Labouchere came to see me this morning.... He proceeded to tell me that, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon had met Justin MacCarthy and had confided to him that he was in favour of Home Rule in some shape, but that his colleagues and his party were not ready, and asked whether Justin MacCarthy's party would agree to an inquiry which he thought there was a chance of the Government agreeing to, and which would educate his colleagues and his party if granted and carried through. I was consternated, but replied that such a statement was an obvious lie, but, between ourselves, I fear it is not, perhaps not even an exaggeration or a misrepresentation. Justin MacCarthy is on the staff of the Daily News, Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannot imagine any motive for his inventing such a statement. If it is true Lord Carnarvon has played the devil."[21]

With regard to the overtures which Mr. Gladstone had made, for which precedents in plenty were supplied by the repeal of the Test Act in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1848, and the extension of the franchise in 1867, Lord Salisbury saw in it only anxiety to take office on the part of his great opponent, and prophesied that if his hunger were not prematurely gratified he would be forced into some line of conduct which would be discreditable to him and disastrous, and when the Liberal leader on the 23rd again pressed for a definite answer to his approaches he was refused a communication of views.

"Thus idly," says Mr. Winston Churchill, "drifted away what was perhaps the best hope of the settlement of Ireland which that generation was to see."

The view which Mr. Gladstone took of the events of the winter of 1885-6 is illustrated by a memorandum which he wrote in 1897, in which he says:—

"I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon and the other favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much evidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish with a view to their support at the election."[22]

The attitude of the Tories and the rankling memory of the bitter debates on the Liberal Coercion Bill of 1882, coupled with the attitude of the Tories and the deception which they practised, resulted, not unnaturally, in the fact that Parnell threw his weight in favour of the Conservatives at the general election which ensued, and by this means, it is estimated, lost at least twenty seats to the Liberals. Immediately after the election the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary retired, but though their successors were appointed in the third week in December, it was not till the middle of January that the resignations were made public. The first act of the new Chief Secretary was to announce that, in spite of the emphatic disclaimers of the previous June, a Coercion Bill was to be introduced, and as a result of the Irish voting with the Liberals the Tories were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone took office. The Home Rule Bill which was introduced was thrown out in the month of June, the Government being in a minority of thirty. Had it not been for Parnell's manifesto, urging Irishmen in Great Britain to vote for Conservatives, the Government would have had a majority of between ten and twenty, and, moreover, if a general election had followed, the morale of the Liberals would have been much greater if they had been fighting for the second time within a few months shoulder to shoulder with the Irishmen, and not been in the position in which in fact they were—of enjoying the support in June of those who had opposed them in November.

Let us now turn to the MacDonnell incident. One of the first acts of Mr. Balfour, on becoming Prime Minister in July, 1902, on the retirement of Lord Salisbury was to give Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, a seat in the Cabinet. In September Mr. Wyndham appointed as Under Secretary Sir Antony MacDonnell, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant and Member of the Indian Council, who had been in turn head of the Government of Burma, the Central Provinces, and the North-West Provinces, and who had with conspicuous ability carried on financial and agrarian reforms in the East. Lord Lansdowne, during his tenure of the Viceroyalty, formed a high estimate of his knowledge and ability, and it was on his recommendation that Mr. Wyndham appointed this official to the post. The correspondence between the two, which Mr. Redmond elicited from the Government two and a half years later, shows that it was with some reluctance that the Under Secretary yielded to the pressure brought to bear on him to accept the office.

"I am an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a Liberal in politics," he wrote. "I have strong Irish sympathies. I do not see eye to eye with you in all matters of Irish administration, and I think that there is no likelihood of good coming from such a regime of coercion as the Times has recently outlined." For all that, being anxious to do some service to Ireland, he declared his willingness to take office provided there was some chance of his succeeding, which he thought there would be, "on this condition, that I should have adequate opportunities of influencing the policy and acts of the Irish administration, and subject, of course, to your control, freedom of action in Executive matters. For many years in India I directed administration on the largest scale, and I know that if you send me to Ireland the opportunity of mere secretarial criticism would fall short of the requirements of my position. If I were installed in office in Ireland my aims, broadly stated, would be:—(1) The maintenance of order; (2) the solution of the land question on the basis of voluntary sale; (3) where sale does not operate the fixation of rent on some self-acting principle whereby local inquiries would be obviated; (4) the co-ordination, control, and direction of boards and other administrative bodies; (5) the settlement of the education question in the general spirit of Mr. Balfour's views, and generally the promotion of general administrative improvement and conciliation."

Mr. Wyndham's acceptance of these terms was explicit, and it was understood, as the Chief Secretary put it in the House of Commons when the whole subject came up for review, that Sir Antony was appointed rather as a colleague than as a mere Under Secretary to register Mr. Wyndham's will, and although in the House of Commons Mr. Balfour said that Sir Antony was bound by the rules applying to all Civil Servants, in the House of Lords Lord Lansdowne declared that, "it had been recognised that the Under Secretary would have greater freedom of action, greater opportunities of initiative, than if he had been a candidate in the ordinary way."

One of the first results of the new departure was the withdrawal of the application of the Coercion Act, which had been in force since April, 1902, an action which roused angry protests from the Orangemen, as did also the words used, in what was almost his first speech, by Lord Dudley, the new Viceroy, who had succeeded Lord Cadogan, and who announced that, "the opinion of the Government was, and it was his own opinion, that the only way to govern Ireland properly was to govern it according to Irish ideas instead of according to British ideas."

During 1903 interest was largely engrossed in the fate of the Land Act, and it was not till the autumn of 1904 that it became known that before drafting in its final form the programme of the Irish Reform Association Lord Dunraven had secured the assistance of the Under Secretary with the knowledge of the Chief Secretary and the Viceroy, the latter of whom, according to Lord Lansdowne's declaration in the House of Lords, "did not think that Sir Antony was exceeding his functions"—a fact to which colour was given by the circumstance that on several occasions the Under Secretary discussed the reforms with the Lord Lieutenant.

Mr. Wyndham, on behalf of the Government, had taken the unusual course of repudiating the Dunraven scheme in a letter to the Times, but in spite of this, Irish Unionists wrote to the Times to express their suspicions "whether in short the devolution scheme is not the price secretly arranged to be paid for the Nationalist acquiescence in a settlement of the land question on generous terms."

Then it was that the Times expressed its opinion that when a Unionist Lord Lieutenant and a Unionist Under Secretary are discussing reforms which the Cabinet condemn as Home Rule in a thin disguise, it is obviously time that they quitted their posts. Three weeks later Mr. Wyndham resigned, but Sir Antony, who had had the refusal of the Governorship of Bombay—the third greatest Governorship in the British Empire—retained his position, though his presence at Dublin Castle had been described by some fervent Orangemen as a menace to the loyal and law-abiding inhabitants of Ireland, and by the Irish Attorney-General as a gross betrayal of the Unionist position and an injury to the Unionist cause. Mr. Long, however, very rapidly won the hearts of those who had succeeded in securing the resignation of Mr. Wyndham by his description of devolution as "a cowardly surrender to the forces of disorder," and in the same strain the Earl of Westmeath spoke of "truckling to disloyalty and trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated."

At the opening of the session of 1905 the whole question was ventilated. The official explanations proving unsatisfactory, the Orangemen decided to withdraw their support from the Government on all questions affecting Ireland, and the leader of the party went so far as to utter the threat that "Ulster might have to draw upon her reserves," which was taken to mean that the Orangemen who were members of the Government would resign en masse—an action which, in the moribund condition of the Ministry, would have meant an instant dissolution. At the very beginning of the session Mr. Wyndham had announced that the matter of Sir Antony's dealings with Lord Dunraven had been considered by the Cabinet, and "the Government expressed through me their view that the action of Sir Antony MacDonnell was indefensible. But they authorised me to add that they were thoroughly satisfied that his conduct was not open to the imputation of disloyalty."

The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placed themselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on the impossibility of governing a country against its will. The Tories tried once again, in the historic phrase, to catch the Whigs bathing and steal their clothes, but this time they failed. When the Orangemen held a pistol at the Government's head and bade its members stand and deliver, Mr. Wyndham had perforce to resign, but the mystery, which has not yet been cleared up, is the reason why the Viceroy and the Under Secretary, who were tarred with the same brush, retained their posts.

It should in frankness be stated, however, that when during the session of 1907 the Prime Minister remarked on a certain occasion that he always thought Mr. Wyndham resigned the Chief Secretaryship in consequence of criticisms from the Orangemen below the gangway on his own side, Mr. Balfour interrupted with the remark—"That is a complete mis-statement, and I think the right honourable gentleman must know it."

One may well ask, in view of this, what was meant by Mr. Wyndham when, speaking on the reasons for his retirement, on May 9th, 1905, he accounted for it by the fact that "the situation in Ireland was complicated by personal misunderstandings," producing "an atmosphere of suspicion," which was an obvious reference, as most people supposed, to such denunciations as that of Mr. William Moore of the Chief Secretary's "wretched, rotten, sickening policy of conciliation." The disingenuousness marking the whole proceeding is well shown by the fact that although on announcing Mr. Wyndham's resignation Mr. Balfour said:—"The ground of his resignation is not ill-health,"[23] less than a year later, when asked during the election at Manchester by a heckler to state the reason why Mr. Wyndham retired, the reply of Mr. Balfour was—"He retired chiefly on account of health."[24]

From the correspondence which passed in March, 1906, between Lord Dudley and Sir Edward Carson, and which was published in the Press, we have the express statement from the ex-Lord Lieutenant that Mr. Balfour "never conveyed to me any intimation that he or the Government disapproved strongly or otherwise of my conduct."

The correspondence arose over a remark made by Sir Edward Carson, to the effect that Lord Dudley had made statements both ways as to the desirability of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas. Challenged to make good the assertion, which he declared was based on a private conversation, Sir Edward Carson went on to assert that the Viceroy had on another occasion expressed the opinion to him that Ireland should be governed through the agency of the Catholic priesthood. This Lord Dudley denied as vehemently as he did the imputation of facing both ways, and in reply went on to write:—

"That you should have formed an impression of that kind from any conversation with me confirms my belief that the violence of your opinions on Irish political questions make it quite impossible for you to estimate justly the standpoint of anyone whose views on such questions may be more moderate and tolerant than your own. It is not, however, by violence and intolerance that the cause of union is best served, and my experience in Ireland has shown me very clearly that the present system of government constantly receives from its most clamorous advocates blows as heavy and as effective as any that could be dealt to it by its avowed enemies."

The Government tried to ride two horses abreast—to rule Ireland otherwise than by force, and to maintain itself in power with the help of Orange votes—two courses, each irreconcilable with the other. Their position reminds me of Alphonse Daudet's immortal creation, Tartarin de Tarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly of Sancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next held back by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting in Africa—"Couvre toi de gloire," dit Tartarin Quichotte, "Couvre toi de flanelle dit Tartarin Sancho."

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a government which does not recognise democratic principles to make any headway in the work of amelioration in Ireland. The moral is that those responsible for the administration of the country have found themselves by the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to apply popular principles of government in order that they may secure fairness and efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by the two incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservatives escaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to a policy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies.

The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent. The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after the Unionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and the Conservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the "irritating centralising system of administration which is known as Dublin Castle." At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference, which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himself to the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority in Dublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise the form of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and Sir West Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behests of the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by means of Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance. All these facts serve to show the injustice—in view of acknowledged facts—of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland of the Wyndham proposals as "mean and cruel desertion."

There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has been said which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster. I have already explained what a misnomer this is. In the Counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are more Catholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down the numbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided. What is known as the question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, for it is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Down that the religious question is most acute.

The social conditions of the country, which have always been to some extent, though not to that existing in recent years, agricultural, lead one to seek a cause in the conditions of Land Tenure for the different degrees of prosperity pervading the North-East corner of Ulster and the rest of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right had an immense effect on the economic status of the province. Under it the system of tenure which held the field in the other three provinces was replaced by one in which the tenants had security against arbitrary eviction so long as they paid their rents, and, in addition, were entitled to sell their interest in the property to the incoming tenant, and this Tenant Right sold often for as much as half, and sometimes for as much as the full, fee-simple of the holding. The sum could be obtained on the tenant voluntarily vacating the holding or on his being unable to pay the rent, the landlord being entitled to be consulted with a view to approval by him of the incoming tenant.

The importance of the custom can be recognised in the light of the fact that in England, where improvements are effected in nearly every case not by the tenant but by the landlord, it has been found necessary, nevertheless, to give legislative sanction to Tenant Right.

This has been effected by the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875, 1883, and 1900, under which tenants are entitled to statutory compensation for improvements, whether permanent, as, for example, buildings; for drainage purposes; or, as in the case of manure, for the improvement of the soil.

The result of the Ulster Custom on the industry of the Northern tenant-farmer, who enjoyed a freedom of sale and a fixity of tenure, and, further, a compensation for improvements long before the tenants of the South and West secured these advantages, are impossible to over-estimate. Again, in considering the relative economic positions of the members of the two religions, it is impossible to blink the fact that little more than a century has passed since the Irish Catholics were treated as helots under a penal code, and that, if they have been behind hand in the industrial race, account must be taken of the lead in the saddle to which in that way they were subjected. The resulting preponderance of Protestants among the landed gentry led to a further factor in the ostracism which in the past they exercised as employers of labour, whether agricultural or industrial, which, besides its direct effect of breeding and perpetuating sectarian hate, served in an economic sense to unfit Catholics for employment, and to persuade those who in fact were least unfitted and retained their perceptive faculties, that the scope for their energies was to be found only abroad, and so tended to leave behind a residue of labourers rendered unfit for employment as against the time when the prejudice of the richer classes was removed. The non-application in the more purely Protestant parts of Ulster of the principles which held the field in other parts of Ireland made for prosperity in that province by tending towards an economic condition of the labour market, unimpeded by artificial restrictions, arising from religious differences and imposed at the hands of employers of labour. Another factor in the contentment of the Ulster Presbyterians under the varying vicissitudes of Irish government is to be found in the history of the Regium Donum. The Scottish settlers in 1610 having brought with them their ministers, the latter were put in possession of the tithes of the parishes in which they were planted. These they enjoyed till the death of Charles I., but payments were stopped on their refusal to recognise the Commonwealth. Henry Cromwell, however, allowed the body L100, which Charles II. increased to L600, per annum, but towards the end of his reign, and during that of James II., it was discontinued. William III. renewed the grant, increasing it to L1,200, and it was still further augmented in 1785 and 1792. After the Union Castlereagh largely increased the amount of the Regium Donum, and completely altered its mode of distribution, making it in fact contingent on the loyalty of the parson to the Union. The spirit in which it was granted is well shown in a letter in Castlereagh's memoirs, in which the writer, addressing the Chief Secretary just after the votes had been passed by Parliament, declared—"Never before was Ulster under the dominion of the British Crown. It had a distinct moral existence before, and now the Presbyterian ministry will be a subordinate ecclesiastical aristocracy, whose feeling will be that of zealous loyalty, and whose influence on those people will be as purely sedative when it should be, and exciting when it should be, as it was the reverse before." Those who blame Pitt for not having carried through his schemes of concurrent endowment, and who see in his failure to do so, one reason for the ill success of his policy of Union, must admit the importance of the fact that the Presbyterian clergy were pensioners of the State. A notion of the extent to which they were subsidised may be inferred from the fact that by the Commutation Clauses of the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, the Dissenters secured as compensation for the loss of the Regium Donum and other payments a sum of L770,000, while the equivalent amount paid in lieu of the Maynooth grant to the Catholics—numbering at least eight times as many—amounted to only L372,000.

It was Froude who declared that if the woollen and linen industries had not been hampered there would now be four Ulsters instead of one. Even in the days before restrictions were placed on the production of Irish linen for the better encouragement of the English trade, the North of Ireland was far ahead of the rest of the country in the matter of flax-spinning, and this pre-eminence was mainly due to the fact that the climate there is more suited to that plant than in other parts of Ireland.

Starting with this advantage, linen was able in that province to survive the impositions placed on its production, while in places less favoured by a suitable climate the industry went to the wall. To assume off-hand, without going into the innumerable causes which effect such movements of commerce, that innate thrift was responsible, apart from all other causes, for the progress of Belfast is an attitude similar to that of one who should hold that nothing but the stupidity of the East Anglian yokel has prevented that country from becoming as much a centre of industry as is Lancashire, for such a sweeping generalisation would take no account of other forces at work in the development of the great commercial centres of the North as, for example, the fact that the peculiar conditions of the Lancashire climate are such that the processes of cotton-spinning can be best effected in an atmosphere containing the amount of moisture which there prevails.

In Belfast the interdependence of the linen and the ship-building trades—in one of which the men, while in the other the women, of many families are employed—is one of the most powerful instruments of social progress. The narrow sea which separates it from Scotland and the geographical conformation of Belfast Lough have, moreover, a great bearing on its prosperity. Independence of Irish railways with their excessive freights, crippling by their incidence all export trade, in a town like Belfast, nine-tenths of the industrial output of which goes across the sea, and the advantage which it has over all other Irish towns in its proximity, again independently of Irish railways, to the Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, and Cumberland coalfields, are very important considerations in view of the obstacle which the scarcity of coal is to all commercial enterprises in the island.

Finally, it must not be forgotten, in reference to the greatest of the industries of the North of Ireland, that a very exceptional impetus was given to the development of the commercial enterprise of Belfast at a time which might otherwise have proved a critical period in her industrial career, by the fact that the American Civil War caused a slump in cotton which resulted in the failure of a very large number of Lancashire cotton mills, the place of which was taken by the linen mills of Belfast, which have profited ever since from the advantage gained in that crisis and the growth of their trade which it effected.

I have said enough, I think, to show that the attempt to foist the blame for the backwardness—in an industrial sense—of the rest of the country as compared with the North-East corner, on the difference of religion, is to close one's eyes to half a dozen other factors which must in truth also be appreciated in order that one may arrive at a proper estimate of the real reason for the disparity which undoubtedly exists. The facts which I have mentioned serve to show the unwarrantable nature of the assumption which accounts for the prosperity of North-East Ulster by considerations of race and religion alone. That several generations of progress in the industrial field have had a great effect on the character of the people of Belfast in respect of thrift, energy, and industry I am not concerned to deny, but on what ground in this light is to be explained the decrease in population of Antrim and Down which has gone on concurrently with the enormous increase in that of Belfast? That extrinsic factors such as those of geographical situation have much to do with increase of prosperity is well illustrated by the industrial growth of Wexford, with its manufactories of agricultural implements and dairy machinery, which is largely attributable to the close proximity of that town to the coalfields and iron of South Wales.

As to the argument that political preoccupation is responsible for national backwardness, in the case of Finland the convulsions of a bitter political agitation have not been found incompatible with an increase of wealth and of population.

In this connection it is germane to ask what the Protestant people of Ulster have done for the rest of the country, and to inquire if, with all their commercial success, they have been in the van of progress. That they have never produced a great leader of men or framer of policy is a remarkable fact, and to every demand of their fellow-countrymen they have answered with a reiterated non possumus, backed by threats of their intentions in case they are ignored, which, in point of fact, they have never carried into effect.

The Orangemen in turn opposed Emancipation, Tithe Reform, Land Reform, Church Disestablishment, the Ballot, Local Government, and the settlement of the University question. Their attitude to the Land Conference we have seen elsewhere, and in view of this record one may ask whether or not they deserve Mr. Morley's condemnation as "an irreconcilable junto, always unteachable, always wrong."

That their loyalty is contingent on the maintenance of their ascendancy and the enforcement of their views, their reception of the Church Act of 1869 well shows, as does also the manner in which in 1886 they threatened armed resistance if the Bill to which they were opposed was carried. That they submitted to the Church Act without carrying out their threats is a matter of history, and there is at least a strong probability that in the latter event a similar effect would have been witnessed.

The removal of religious tests in the public life of Great Britain has been accomplished so completely that it is difficult for Englishmen to realise the extent to which the spirit, if not the letter, of tests at this day persists in Ireland.

We have recently seen the adjournment of the House of Commons moved by the Orangemen because a rate collector in Ballinasloe did not receive the appointment to a post for which he applied, and the demands of Catholics for a due share of position and of influence is denounced as a claim for monopoly.

To show how much evidence there is to sustain the charge I will quote a Protestant writer on this question of preferment—"Three-quarters of the Irish people," she writes, "are Catholics. Of 23 Lords Lieutenant since 1832 not one has been a Catholic, nor ever by law can be a Catholic, and only 3 have been Irishmen, tame Irish, as the word goes in Ireland of the denationalised Irishman who has shaken off allegiance to his own people. Of 30 Chief Secretaries, almost all English, not one has been a Catholic. It is not necessary that the Chief Secretary or the Commander of the Forces should be Protestant, but no Catholic has ever yet been allowed to fill either of these exalted offices. Of the 173 Irish peers only 14 (including Viscount Taafe of Austria) are Catholics, and the 28 representative peers in the House of Lords are all free from the taint of the religion of the Irish people, and powerful to drive opinion against it. Out of 60 Privy Councillors in Ireland 4 only are Catholics, and 3 out of 17 judges. Eleven out of the 60 Sub-Commissioners are Catholics; 7 out of the 21 County Court Judges. The head of the police is a Protestant. One only of the 36 County Inspectors is a Catholic. Of 170 District Inspectors only 10 are of that faith, and of 65 Resident Magistrates only 15 are Catholics. If we take the Valuation Offices, the Registration Offices, the Inspectorship of Factories, the Board of Works, the Woods and Forests, the Ordnance Survey, and any and every public department, Protestants hold three places out of four, though they are but one-quarter of the whole population. The extreme party, as we have seen, have secured no less than seven offices in the Government, and their followers and friends hold about 90 per cent. of the higher salaried posts under the Crown in Ireland."[25]

The same writer attributes the glaring discrepancy between the figures which have just been quoted and the ratio of Catholics and Protestants in the population of Ireland to "a union of Protestant fanaticism and place-hunting greed." That it is due to any lack of ability among Irish Catholics I scarcely think anyone will urge, and in this connection an amazing article, which I remember reading in an English paper, is of interest. The writer, a Unionist from Ulster, strove to show the manner in which the influence of the Vatican was making itself felt in English politics by pointing to the number of Catholics—mostly Irishmen—who held high posts in the British Diplomatic, Civil, Military, and Naval Services, the presence of whom, which he tried to indicate as a menace, but which most Englishmen view with equanimity, shows by contrast the extent to which a taboo is placed in Ireland on officials who adhere to the creed of the majority of their countrymen.

Enough has been said as to the preference shown to one caste, religious and political, to explain the reason for the fact that in Ireland the soi-disant loyalist has become synonymous with place-hunter. If Unionism in Ireland pervades the richer classes, it does so also in Great Britain, but in Ireland the inherent weakness of an established Church, by which its prestige and the cachet which it gives, make it a harbour of refuge for those who wish for advancement, and who think that if they creep and intrude and climb into the fold they will secure it, all these are factors, which are present in Dublin, where the Establishment is Unionism with Dublin Castle as its cathedral. Social ambition, anxiety for preferment or for an entree into society, are all at work to bring it to pass that a large amount of wealth and influence are ranged on the side of the Union. It is a damaging indictment which has been drawn up against the Irish landlords by Mr. T.W. Russell in his recent book, where he declares of this class, with which he fought side by side against the two Home Rule Bills, that he has come to the conclusion, slowly but surely, "that in pretending to fight for the Union these men were simply fighting for their own interests, that Rent and not Patriotism was their guiding motive,"[26] and the same charge was formulated a few years ago by Lord Rossmore, a former Grand Master of the Orange Society, when he made a public declaration that the so-called Loyalist minority in Ireland were blindly following the lead of a few professional politicians, who felt that their salaries and positions depended on the divisions and antipathies of those who should be working together for the good of their common country.

There is no aspect of the Irish question in regard to which more dust is thrown in Englishmen's eyes than that which is summed up in the one word disloyalty. The prestige of the Crown in Great Britain, where its functions are atrophied to a greater extent than in any other country in Europe, is one of the most striking features in contemporary English life. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to associations formed by events in its history. The extreme unpopularity of Queen Victoria in Great Britain in the earlier years of her reign, which arose from her retirement as far as possible from public life on the death of the Prince Consort, completely disappeared with the passage of years, when her age, her sex, and her private virtues overcame the antipathy which a very natural reticence on the part of a grief-stricken widow had aroused throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with the Crown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beat English James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper, no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. visited the country in 1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that time was that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royal favourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be asked. Curran thundered against the Irish pension list as "containing every variety of person, from the excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to the base situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted." In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case, since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the fact that the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II. to George II., drew their incomes from the Irish establishment free from the inquisitive prying of the English House of Commons. Although George III. had no need to conceal any palace scandals in this way, we have seen how the bigotry of "an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king" postponed Emancipation for more than a generation, and one of the "princes, the dregs of their dull race," of whom Shelley went on to speak, the Duke of York, declared in the House of Lords in 1825—"I will oppose the Catholic claims whatever may be my situation in life. So help me God."

The respectful reception accorded to Queen Victoria—whose dislike of Ireland was notorious—on the very rare occasions on which she visited the country serves to show the absence of hostility to the Crown on the part of the great mass of the people, but the small number of these visits during the course of the longest reign in English history lends point to a question asked by Mr. James Bryce in a book published more than twenty years ago—Why has the most obvious service a monarch can render been so strangely neglected? When the present King visited the South of Ireland as Prince of Wales in 1885, at a time when Mr. Charles Parnell's prestige was at its zenith, he was greeted with the half humorous sally—"We will have no Prince but Charley," which at any rate contrasts favourably with the shouts of "Popish Ned," which his alleged sympathy with the popular side evoked on his visit a few years later to Londonderry.

The trivial fact that the English National Anthem was drowned at the degree day of the Royal University a few years ago by the fact that the students insisted on singing "God Save Ireland" at the end of a ceremony which even in the decorous surroundings of the Sheldonian and the Senate House is marked by a large amount of disrespectful licence, nevertheless provided the Times and the Unionist Press in general, for several days with a text upon which they hung their leading articles in the exploitation of their favourite theme, but no attention has been drawn in these quarters to the periodical threat of Orange exponents of a contingent loyalty to "throw the Crown into the Boyne" as a protest against the various assaults which have been made upon their prerogative by Parliament, and no mention was made in the English Press of the fact that on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to the illness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"—the Freeman's Journal—ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King," which were a mere expression of the feelings of the bulk of its readers.

Loyalty, said Swift, is the foible of the Irish people, and it is a remarkable fact, in spite of the detestable insult to their religious views which the law exacts from the Sovereign at his accession, that the popular welcome accorded to his Majesty, on the part of individuals, should remove any ground for the suggestion that the Crown, which Grattan always declared was an Imperial Crown, is viewed with any animus in Ireland.

That public bodies as such refuse to offer addresses of welcome is due to a conviction that to do so would be interpreted as an abdication of the popular position, an acquiescence in the status quo, a recognition of the system of government of which the Sovereign is head; and it must not be forgotten in this connection that, if the Sovereign is neutral, his representative in Ireland is a strong party man, and that the tendency which his Majesty has so strongly deprecated in England on more than one occasion, of employing emblems of royalty as symbols of party, has been ineradicably established by the ascendancy faction in Ireland, where the Union Jack is a party badge and God Save the King has been monopolised as a party song.



CHAPTER VIII

IRELAND AND DEMOCRACY

"A majority of Irish members turned the balance in favour of the great Reform Bill of 1832, and from that day there has been scarcely a democratic measure which they have not powerfully assisted. When, indeed, we consider the votes which they have given, the principles they have been the means of introducing into English legislation, and the influence they have exercised upon the tone and character of the House of Commons, it is probably not too much to say that their presence in the British Parliament has proved the most powerful of all agents in accelerating the democratic transformation of English politics."

—W.E.H. LECKY, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. VIII., p. 483.

In Ireland perhaps more than in most countries history repeats itself. The lament of Lord Anglesea, the Lord Lieutenant, in 1831, who, finding himself a roi faineant, declared that "Things are now come to that pass that the question is whether O'Connell or I shall govern Ireland," found its echo just fifty years later when Parnell enjoyed so powerful a position that writers were fain to draw a contrast between the coroneted impotence of the head of the Executive and the uncrowned power of the Irish leader.

The history of Irish representation at Westminster is one of the most curious chapters in Parliamentary annals. It is only in the last thirty years that it has reached the importance which it now possesses, although of all Liberal Governments since the great Reform Bill, that of 1880 and that which is in power to-day are the only two which have had a majority independently of the Irish vote, and it is worth remembering that the Ministry of 1880 ended its career amid the pitfalls of an Irish Coercion Bill. The maxim to beware when all men speak well of you, there has been no need to impress on Irish members since the days of Parnell, as there was at the time when under Butt's leadership a punctilious observance of Parliamentary procedure earned for the Irish representatives a contumelious respect which laughed their demands out of court.

If Parnell had not set out with the deliberate intention of making Ireland stink in the nostrils of the respectable English gentlemen who thronged the benches of the finest club in London, the protest against misgovernment would have taken the form of violence in Ireland and not of obstruction in the House of Commons. The orderly debates of Butt's time were as unproductive in showing the Irish representatives to be in earnest as were the wholesale suspensions of the later regime profitable, and if proof of this be needed it is to be found in the fact that in 1877 there were but eight English Home Rulers in the House of Commons, and that to attempt to secure reforms was to knock one's head against a stone wall. Speaking of the Irish representation in 1880 Mr. Gladstone made this solemn declaration:—"I believe a greater calumny, a more gross and injurious statement, could not possibly be made against the Irish nation. We believe we are at issue with an organised attempt to override the free will and judgment of the Irish nation." That bubble was pricked after the Franchise Act of 1885, when Parnell returned to the House of Commons with nearly twenty more followers than he had had before.

There is a quotation of Blackstone's from Lord Burghley to the effect that England could never be ruined but by a Parliament, and Englishmen must admit that they have paid a price, though by no means as we think too dearly, for insisting on the maintenance in their chamber, under existing conditions of a foreign body against its will and admittedly hostile to the traditions of which they are so proud. The closure, which Lord Randolph Churchill used to pronounce with elaborate emphasis as cloture, the curtailment of the rights of private members, the growth in the power of the Cabinet, and pari passu the loss in power on the part of the House, all these are instances of the way in which the sand in the bearings has been able to thwart the Parliamentary machine. "If we cannot rule ourselves," said Parnell in 1884, "we can, at least, cause them to be ruled as we choose."

In spite of the odium which it entailed, Parnell, once he had "taken his coat off," maintained this attitude regardless of the feelings it evoked, which are perhaps as well expressed as anywhere in a letter of Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill when he declared "the instinctive feeling of an Englishman is to wish to get rid of an Irishman," to which one may reply—"What! did the hand then of the Potter shake?"

Though abuse of the plaintiff's attorney has been indulged in so often, neither English party has scorned, as from its expressions one would have expected, to make use of the Irish vote when its own career has been in danger. The appeals which in spite of this one sees addressed at intervals to the Irish leaders to abandon their attitude of Nolo episcopari and take Ministerial office, for which some, at any rate, of their number have by their ability been conspicuously fitted, is to ignore the fundamental protest on which this self-denying ordnance depends. The protest against the status quo has been traditionally made in this manner; to waive it would be tantamount to an abdication of the claims which have been so consistently made. To accept office might be to curry favour with one party or the other, but its refusal—especially as compared with its acceptance by the Irish Unionists—does much to deprive the enemy of the occasion to suggest sordid motives as reasons for the continuance of the Parliamentary agitation.

In urging his great reform, Lord Durham was wont to lay great stress on the evil effect of the English party system on Canadian politics. The party system in Great Britain acts as a corrective and an adjusting mechanism to a degree which is never known in Ireland, where the principle of government with consent of the governed has only been applied to one corner of the island.

The supreme example of so many, in which concessions have been made to Ireland in times of public danger, which had been obstinately refused in times of public security is that of Emancipation, concerning which Peel in June, 1828, reaffirmed his determination never to surrender, but in January, 1829, on the ground that five-sixths of the infantry force of the three kingdoms was engaged in police work in Ireland, introduced the Bill which obtained the Royal consent in circumstances such as to rob it of its grace and to make gratitude impossible. I am not, however, here concerned with emancipation as such, but with the set-off for its concession, under which on the principle of taking away with one hand, while giving with the other, the forty shilling freeholders, who had returned O'Connell at the Clare election, were disfranchised to the number of 200,000, and in this way was gilded the pill for the purpose of placating the English governing classes. The same principle was followed in 1841, when the Corporations of Ireland were thrown open to Catholics, for out of some sixty-five all except ten or eleven were abolished. The results of the disfranchising clauses of the Act of 1829 are to be seen in the fact that in 1850, while in England the electors were twenty-eight per cent. of the adult male population, in Ireland they were only two per cent. A Bill introduced in that year would, if it had passed into law, have raised the percentage in Ireland to fifteen. The Lords amendments altered the percentage to eight, and in its final form it was left at about ten. Instead of imposing an L8 rental qualification one of L12 was imposed, and by this means were excluded 900,000 voters who would have secured the suffrage under the lower qualification. Speaking of the Franchise, Mr. Lecky, in "Democracy and Liberty," declared that—"The elements of good government must be sought for in Ireland, on a higher electoral plane than in England." This is a matter of opinion, and I find it interesting to reflect that the ablest Conservative of my acquaintance—a Tory of the school of Lord Eldon—has on several occasions expressed to me a deliberate opinion in exact contradiction of this, to the effect that owing to the relative mental calibres of the races there is need of a higher franchise qualification in England than in either Ireland or Scotland. Speculations of this kind, however, are unprofitable, seeing that the competency of the Irish peasants as citizens has been acknowledged by the grant of a wide household suffrage safeguarded by a careful system of ballot.

When the last great extension of the franchise to householders in the country was made in 1884 there were those who asserted that its application to Ireland would be folly. Mr. W.H. Smith, the leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons, declared that any extension of the suffrage in Ireland would lead to "confiscation of property, ruin of industry, withdrawal of capital, misery, wretchedness, and war"; the leading Whig statesman said the concession to Ireland of equal electoral privileges with those of England would be folly, but in spite of these gloomy prognostications the omission of Ireland from the scope of the Act was not proposed by Conservative statesmen, and Lord Hartington himself undertook the duty of moving the second reading of a Bill containing provisions which a few weeks before he had described as most unwise. By this Act the enfranchised inhabitants of Ireland were multiplied more than threefold, and the share of Ireland of the "two million intelligent voters" who were added to the electorate was 200,000. In the redistribution of seats which accompanied the Franchise Act of 1884 the representation of Ireland was, by an arrangement between parties, left unimpaired, and this leads me to a matter which serves, I think, to show with what speed events move and how true was that remark of Disraeli's to Lord Lytton that "in politics two years are an eternity." It is little more than two years since the burning political question was the redistribution of seats on the lines proposed by Mr. Gerald Balfour. The Unionist Press has for some years been endeavouring to rouse public opinion on this question of the alleged over-representation of Ireland in the House of Commons, and in view of the share of attention which the matter received in the closing days of the last Parliament it is as well to devote some attention to the topic.

By the Act of Union, which our opponents hold so sacred, Ireland was given 100 members in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords 28 representative Peers, together with Bishops of the then Established Church, and it was further enacted that this should be her representation "for ever." On the population basis, which to-day is urged by Unionists as the only fair mode of apportioning representatives, Ireland was entitled at the date of the Union to many more members than in fact she obtained. Her population at that time was nearly five and a half millions, that of Great Britain was less than ten and a half millions, and so, though she could claim more than a third of the inhabitants of the three kingdoms, her representation was less than one-sixth.

By the Reform Bill of 1832 the Irish members were increased to 105. Two seats have since been disfranchised, and we thus arrive at 103—the figure at which the representation of the country stands to-day. The disproportion from which Ireland suffered at the time of the Union had become still more acute by the time of the great Reform Bill, and no one can seriously suggest that the addition of five seats redressed the inequality. According to the Census of 1831 the population of Great Britain was little over sixteen millions, and that of Ireland was seven and three-quarter millions. If these figures had formed the basis of a proportionate representation, Ireland would have had a little more than 200 members—just about double the number which she actually returned.

By an agreement between parties, as I have said, in the last Redistribution of Seats Bill—that of 1885—the number of representatives of Ireland was left unchanged, and it is only since the Conservative Party has definitely thrown in its lot as an opponent of Irish demands as formulated to-day that this method of reducing the force of their political opponents has begun to find favour amongst its members: Under the Bill of Mr. Gerald Balfour, by an ingenious arrangement of raising the limits of population under which boroughs and counties should no longer have separate representation, the scheme secured the transfer of twenty-two seats from Ireland to Great Britain.

The limit of population above which boroughs would have had to reach to maintain their separate existence was fixed at 18,500, and under this arrangement three boroughs in Ireland and six in Great Britain would have lost their seats. If the limit had been fixed at 25,000 a total of 19 seats in Great Britain and still only 3 in Ireland would have lost their member, while a minimum population of 35,000 would have disfranchised 25 boroughs in Great Britain and only 4 in Ireland.

The actual proposal was elaborately calculated so as to produce the least possible disturbance to the small boroughs in Great Britain, while securing the maximum of disfranchisement in Ireland.

At the same time the standard of population per member, which in the case of counties was fixed at 65,000, secured the disfranchisement of one Scottish county, the net disfranchisement of two English counties, and the deprivation of no less than 20 Irish counties of their member.

The grant of a new member to Belfast would have made the net loss to Ireland 22 seats, and these were to be redistributed as between England, Scotland and Wales in the proportion of 17:4:1.

These, then, are the data upon which we have to reckon. The Conservative Government, it should be added, greeted by a howl of disapproval even from its own supporters at the anomalies which it proposed to leave unredressed, appointed a Special Committee, the report of which was a posthumous child of the ministry which created it.

It is true that according to the terms of this report the borough limit of population was raised to 25,000, and the rotten boroughs which for "historical reasons" Mr. Balfour had been loth to disfranchise, were to be swept away, but so far as we are concerned the results would have been much the same, for under its provisions Ireland would have suffered a net loss of 23 seats.

O'Connell pointed out to the Corporation of Dublin in 1843 far greater inconsistencies than can be indicated to-day. The population of Wales at that day was 800,000, that of County of Cork was more than 700,000, but the former was represented by 28 members and the latter by two; and further, he was able to point to five English counties with a total population of less than a million having 20 members to represent them, while five Irish counties with a population of over two millions returned only ten members.

If it is the mere passion for a representation proportionate to population which is evinced, it is remarkable that it has only arisen since the time at which it began to tell against Ireland, that when the boot was on the other leg there was no suggestion of redistribution on the part of Conservatives. The truth is that for Unionists the idea of paring the claws of the Irish Party offers a tempting prospect. Our position in the matter is quite plain: so long as Great Britain insists on maintaining the Act of Union she must do so consistently in the sense that it is a contract, albeit secured by chicanery, to the breach of any term of which the consent of the party which it trammelled at least is necessary. It will be answered that the Disestablishment of the Irish Church made a breach in a clause of as binding a solemnity as that which guaranteed 100 members in the Imperial Parliament "for ever." The difference is that in that case the consent of the two parties was given by their representatives in the House of Commons, and the consent and the sanction which it entails will never be secured—even possibly from Ulster Orangemen—to a proposal for the curtailment of representation in the Imperial Parliament under the present system of government.

We do not pretend for one moment that according to the rule of three we are not represented in the House of Commons by a number of members greater than that to which our population at the present moment would, taking the three kingdoms as whole, entitle us, but one must point out that the system of electing representative peers robs us of even that modicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able to secure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance of Dublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House of Commons to Irish opinion is to a slight extent redressed by the small excess—calculated on lines of proportion—which Irish representation secures at Westminster.

At any rate one has the satisfaction of knowing where one stands in the matter, and one is aware that one part of the Conservative programme to be applied whenever that party returns to power is that of which someone has spoken as the detestable principle that to keep Ireland weak is the most convenient way of governing her. And here let me in parenthesis remark on one fact in the conditions of Irish representation—namely, its solidarity. It is one of the commonplaces of politics that office is the best adhesive which a party can enjoy, and the cold shades of opposition are apt too often to dissolve a unity which in office appeared secure. We have seen it of late years in the demoralisation of the Liberals, who, after the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, fell to pieces as a party only on their resignation of office in 1895; we are seeing it now in the disintegration of the Unionists ever since the debacle of the general election.

There is a term which the Unionist Press is never tired of using in connection with the Irish Party, the "fissiparous tendency" of which it is passionately fond of dinning into English ears, regardless of the many cleavages which have occurred in English parties in the last fifty or even twenty years.

Those divisions which there have been in the Nationalist ranks have been for the most part concerned, not with measures, but with men, and even so it cannot be urged that they have been more than temporary in duration. The strength of wrist which has been displayed during the last eight years by Mr. John Redmond in leading the United Irish Party has been a source of admiration to all. "You need greater qualities," said Cardinal de Retz, "to be a party leader than to be Emperor of the Universe." Much wisdom is demanded of an Irish leader in deciding the tactical questions arising from the vicissitudes of British parties. That Irish Nationalists and British Liberals do not see eye to eye on several points of policy is well known. It may well be urged that no better proof of the unnatural form of the polity which holds the field can be adduced than is to be found in the political allies of the two parties in Ireland; for the Catholics, democratic though they may be, are not associated with the party to which the traditions of a Church, the most Conservative force in Europe, one might think would ally them, and the Orange Presbyterians, who are at heart Radicals, are divorced from their dissenting kinsmen in Great Britain and form the tail of the Conservative Party. Hence it is that we have fallen between two stools, and University reform, to the principle of which Lord Salisbury, Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Wyndham have been pledged, was shelved over and over again at the bidding of the Ulster Unionists, while the Conservative House of Lords thwarted the application of the principles of self-government to which a Liberal majority in the House of Commons gave its consent. Can anyone, in view of these facts, feel surprised that "a plague on both your Houses" expresses the feelings of the Irish people.

Those nice people, to whom political barter is abhorrent, who at the time of the general election deprecated the "sale for a price" of the Nationalist vote, for so they were pleased to call what occurred, closed their eyes to the very obvious price of the Orange vote in the last Parliament, which took the form of the retirement from office of Mr. Wyndham, on failure to secure which, as the Orange leader declared—"Ulster would have to call upon her reserves," meaning, one must suppose, that the Irish Unionist office holders who were members of the Ministry in numbers altogether disproportionate to their strength would be called upon by the Orange Lodges to hand in their seals.

English Catholics are apt to say that if the Irish people in England had been directed by the Nationalist Party to vote for Conservative candidates the safety of Catholic schools would thereby have been safeguarded, but they forget that to put a Conservative Party in power would be to give a blank cheque to a party pledged to cut down the Irish, and pari passu the Catholic, representation in the House of Commons. That the fate of the Catholic voluntary schools in England is a direct concern of the Irish members is admitted by all who are aware how vast a majority of the Catholic poor in Great Britain are Irish, if not by birth, at any rate by origin.

That the efforts in this connection of the Irish Party were appreciated by the head of the Catholic Church in England is seen by the very gracious letter which Archbishop Bourne addressed to Mr. Redmond at the end of the session of 1906, and it is significant that the letter of protest against the Archbishop's action in regard to the moderate counsels to secure a compromise on the part of the Irish, which was sent by certain English Catholic Peers to the Catholic bishops of Great Britain, was treated by the latter, with only two exceptions, with the contumelious neglect which its disloyalty, the outcome of Tory intransigeance, deserved.

English Catholics, among whom knights harbingers and banneret bearers of the Primrose League are numerous, who have leant all their weight in the scale to maintain the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, have been ever ready when occasion arose to appeal to the religious loyalty of the Irish members to support their interests. Their position has not been very dignified, and its fruits will perhaps be seen if the reduction of the Irish representation enters the sphere of practical politics. Party loyalty will claim their support, but at the same time they will realise that if they give it they will be taking a step to reduce the only body in the House of Commons which can ever hope to represent Catholic principles and uphold Catholic interests.

I do not know whether it struck many people in the course of the general election that the country in which the elections made the least difference was the one of the three kingdoms in which politics claim most public attention. There was a monotony in the unopposed returns, and, in the result, in the place of 80 Nationalists, 1 Liberal, and 22 Unionists, there appeared 83 Nationalists, 3 Liberals, and 18 Unionists, To appreciate the full force of these numbers one must realise, moreover, that of the Unionists in both cases, two out of the total represent University seats, the Conservative nature of which, whether in England, Ireland, or Scotland, is one of the features of political life which is, it appears, immutable. A study of the results shows that Unionism is in a minority in Ulster. There are in the present Parliament 15 Unionists as against 15 Nationalists, who, with 3 Liberals, go to make up the 33 members sitting at Westminster for that province.

These figures relieve me from the necessity of entering a caveat against the use of the word Ulster as though the whole province were Unionist. Virtually, all that is Unionist in Ireland is in Ulster, but it is very far from the truth to say that all Ulster is Unionist. Not one of the Counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, or Cavan, out of the whole nine of which the province consists, returns a Unionist. In the three Counties of Down, Armagh, and Fermanagh, the representation is divided, and as for the two Counties of Londonderry and Antrim, which are ordinarily the sole strongholds of the Orangemen, even in them a breach was effected in West Belfast, where the Labour vote returned a Nationalist for the first time since Mr. Sexton sat for it from 1886-1892.

The obviousness and permanence of the Irish representation in Parliament is apt to cause its significance to be forgotten. "It doesn't matter what we say, but for God's sake let us be consistent," Lord Palmerston is reported to have said concerning some question of policy at a Cabinet Council. The Irish people, its worst enemies must admit, have been consistent for the last thirty years in the demands which their representatives have made ever since Isaac Butt crystallised the Irish antagonism to the status quo in the "Home Government Association," which he formed and on the programme of which he returned, after the general election of 1874, with 59 followers in the House of Commons, pledged to support the demand for Irish self-government. If we exclude the fact that the extension of the franchise in 1884 increased the number of the popular representatives to more than 80, it is true to say that since then there has been no change in the position of Irish representation, just as there has been none in Irish demands. The Liberalism of Non-conformist Wales, and to a lesser degree of Presbyterian Scotland, are traditional, but their adherence to one side or the other in politics appears vacillating if one studies the election figures, compared with the unwavering permanence of the Irish returns. When Lord Dudley declared that his aim as Viceroy would be to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas a shout of protest arose from the Times and the Irish Unionists, whose organ the Times has constituted itself. Let us clear our minds of cant on the matter, and ask in view of this open disclaimer of the democratic principles which are so much vaunted in England, for what reason is maintained the travesty of representative government, the decrees of which it is frankly avowed are to be ignored? Every English Liberal must be impressed by the fact that the party which has tried to arrogate to itself the sole claim to be thought Imperialist has scouted Home Rule resolutions passed again and again by the legislatures of every one of the self-governing colonies. It was at Montreal that Parnell was first hailed as the uncrowned king of Ireland, and what is more, that great apostle of Imperialism, Cecil Rhodes, so far from seeing in Home Rule the first step towards the dismemberment of the Empire, signified his sympathy with the movement in that direction by giving Mr. Parnell a cheque for L10,000 for the Irish Party funds on the one condition that he would support the retention of some of the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament, as tending in the direction of Imperial federation.