Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question — The ''Unionist'' Position by Canon MacColl, pt 1

BY CANON MACCOLL

Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define their position?

They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the rest of the United Kingdom.

This certainly was the policy propounded by the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last year.

In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland, should also be extended to Ireland."

But this extension of local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government.

"I would not shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and substantial form of Home Rule.

His Lordship's words are: "I submit with some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in Ireland must proceed.

First, you must have some adequate guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the protection of the minority in Ireland.

And, secondly, you must also admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day.

It must be the work of continuous and careful effort."

Elsewhere in the same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament."

"Complete control over her own affairs," "the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament."

Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most important member of the Liberal party at that time was undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's Irish policy was proclaimed in the _Radical Programme, which was published before the General Election as the Radical leader's manifesto to the constituencies.

This scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had submitted as a responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to control a series of local bodies and govern the whole of Ireland.

"His National Council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers.

The National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster was not to have a separate Council.

As the Council was to be charged with the supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning question between Catholics and Protestants, it is clear that Mr. Chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for Ulster."

[15] Moreover, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published in the _Daily News_ of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain declared that he "had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public declaration on Irish policy in 1874. "I then said that I was in favour of the principles of Home Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would do nothing which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I did not agree with all the details of his plan....

Mr. Butt's proposals were in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from Mr. Gladstone's, which are on the lines of Colonial independence.

Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster."

It is true that Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to retain it.

Mr. Butt's words, in the debate to which Mr. Chamberlain refers, are, "that the House should meet _without Irish members_ for the discussion of English and Scotch business; and when there was any question affecting the Empire at large, Irish members might be summoned to attend.

He saw no difficulty in the matter."

[16] There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885, and previously.

He has been accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed Home Rule in the beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion of Lord Hartington.

In a speech delivered at the Eighty Club in March, 1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows: "I am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against Mr. Gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question.

I think no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government for Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations....

When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr. Gladstone has recently made upon this subject."

So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885, to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan for the first session of the new Parliament.

What about the Conservative party?

Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was avowedly the programme of his Cabinet.

It was the Conservative answer to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto.

He dealt with the Irish question in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great Britain had wrought in Irish policy.

His keen eye saw at once the important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own locality....

To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation had so strongly emphasized.

The only result of your doing it would have been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been renewed, would possibly have been able to check."

Lord Salisbury went on to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which legislation has very great difficulty in reaching."

"Boycotting does not operate through outrage.

Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."

Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill.

On the 3rd of January, 1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy.

The following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship....

All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no policy."

Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer and from the policy of coercion in general.

Lord Randolph Churchill, as the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that "the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law.

Lord Carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the question of Home Rule.

In his own explanation of this interview Lord Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."

It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be faced in the new Parliament.

All parties were committed to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the control of a reformed Dublin Castle.

There was a general agreement that the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary.

The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried.

Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.

Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in 1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we behold?

They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an uncertain future.

In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept.

29), Mr. Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it.

That means the postponement of the reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends.

What justification can be made for this change of front?

No valid justification has been offered.

So far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease.

When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many years past.

Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of conciliation.

The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and outrages were much more numerous.

Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the public.

They defeated Mr. Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own.

Where is their Bill?

We hear nothing of it.

They have made a complete change of front.

They now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing law.

England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient season.

A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.

Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some form of self-government to Ireland.

For party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists."

Lord Salisbury, Lord Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a public recantation of previous professions.

Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."

Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan;

either of which would give the National Council control over education and the maintenance of law and order.

Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster.

But the first act of an Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of that Province with the rest of Ireland.

Ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament.

To exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense.

In any case, Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr. Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that "complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings."

But this "growth from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous policy.

The establishment of self-government in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide area.

That is one of the weaknesses of local authorities.

In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one.

In a local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of any such local authority to Ireland."

This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland.

A multitude of local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of the emissaries of disorder and sedition.

And, even apart from any such sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.

Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.

It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by constitutional means simply impossible.

The policy of the Liberal Unionists is thus much too large or much too small.

It is too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety.

All these proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude.

Mill

has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost always carried on.

That these should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence.

But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented ignorance....

It is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."

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