Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question — The ''Unionist'' Position by Canon MacColl, pt 2

Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control of a central authority in harmony with public opinion.

When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr. Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill.

And the ablest men among the "Unionists" are beginning to perceive this.

The _Spectator_ has in a recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr. Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice.

Another very able and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they are."

Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary for local self-government."

His own view, therefore, is "that in Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the real wants of the people."

"The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen;

but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English good sense."

[18] Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare: "The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every abuse."

What hope is there of this?

Our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland?

In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts.

Yet what has been the result?

_Si monumenlum requiris circumspice_.

Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the Union.

Do the annals of any constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"?

Therein lies the pathos of it.

Not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of Ireland come.

If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago.

But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem.

The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland.

The next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified.

Then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous."

Another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet.

It rejected every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right was landlord-wrong."

Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland.

Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested, namely, the destruction of the system.

It is probable that there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than Lord Salisbury.

Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done during their term of office.

The fault is not in the men, but in the system which they have to administer.

I see no reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances;

but, unfortunately, bad is the best.

In a conversation which I had with Dr. Döllinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in the Papal system.

"No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.

Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has been forced to succumb.

His _entourage_ has been too much for him.

He has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him, wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing."

This criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle.

It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing its decrees.

There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly incompetent year by year.

In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two.

Five out of the twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business.

That leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private members.

Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions, enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle.

The consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the mass of business which comes before it.

Each year contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase.

The large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament, as well as presenting old ones from new points of view.

Plans of devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil.

To overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management severally of their own local affairs.

I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible) as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving "things as they are."

A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled the Irish question, land and all, long ago.

But imagine India governed on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of his Government changing with every change of Administration at Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their race.

How long could the Government of India be carried on under such conditions?

Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently formidable one.

Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland," "strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they expect from--what?

From "things as they are!"

As well expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles.

While the tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth different fruit.

Mr. Dicey, among others, has demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit" reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer homoeopathic doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient.

But a continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy for the ills of Ireland.

Is it not time to try some new treatment--one which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success?

One only policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule.

Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever.

"If the sky fall, we shall catch larks."

But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency.

And not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all.

_Sedet æternumque sedebit_.

A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time.

Human affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning.

You cannot demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.

"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics.

You cannot confute a prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him.

The advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents.

In truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule.

I have not a doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _à priori_ grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd, mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human brains or from the evolution of events.

By their method of reasoning the Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long ago.

Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution, which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after lawful trial by his peers.

[20] Consider also the magazines of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of an ingenious theorist.

The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to "the Constitution of this country."

[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."

[22] The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute.

The prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land loose upon society.

[22] But criticism which proves too much in effect proves nothing.

In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials;

indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied with things as they were.

[23] It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to tell us plainly where they stand.

They claim a mandate from the country for their policy.

They neither asked nor received a mandate to support the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have substituted for that system.

Do they mean to go back or forward?

They cannot stand still.

They have already discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government in Ireland.

Men may talk lightly of the ease with which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament.

They forget that the Irish people are behind the Irish members.

How is Ireland to be governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded?

Could even Yorkshire or Lancashire be governed permanently in that way?

Let it be observed that we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand.

No candidate at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency as "a supporter of things as they are."

Yet that is practically the attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and Liberal Unionists.

It is an attitude of which the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have shown.

But the "Unionists," it must be admitted, are in a sore dilemma.

Their strength, such as it is, lies in doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government.

Their bond of union consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy.

They dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go to pieces in the process.

Their hope and speculation is that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political arena before the next dissolution.

But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not create the Irish difficulty.

It preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his departure.

And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with every year of delay.

Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland.

The Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical, problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as Conservative interests.

It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence, which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to restore it.

Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of William of Deloraine over his fallen foe-- "I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again."

The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase.

It is the old story of the Sibyl's books.

No British Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone.

On the other hand, Home Rule is inevitable.

Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year?

Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution.

If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question of who shall control the police will arise.

In Great Britain the police, of course, will be under local control.

To refuse this to Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it.

The Irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country.

Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for Ireland.

The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was submitted.

] [Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715. ] [Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281. ] [Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887. ] [Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr. W.

H.

Smith, Mr. J.

Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A.

Balfour.

A

fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!

] [Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic Empire,_ p. 155. ] [Footnote 21: May's _Const.

Hist.

_, i. 313. ] [Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii.

491, 492, 497, 507. ] [Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations.

A few samples will suffice.

"It was natural," says Mill (_Rep.

Gov. _, p. 311), "to feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would consent peaceably to its decision.

The discussions on the American Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal and State Governments."

The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation.

The opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date.

Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain.

There were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be without foundation."

The various changes in our own Constitution, and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading" at the time to portend national ruin.

All the judges in the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief.

The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed" that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security."

"My Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet."

Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807, declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State."

(_Croker Papers_, i. 12. ) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions."

"There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to separation."

Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain Miss Guelph."

Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown."

And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister.

"I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present struggle.

The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government.

Aristocracy and Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course."

And he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day."

(_Ibid.

_, ii.

113, 140, 176, 181, 356. ) Free Trade created a similar panic.

"Good God!"

Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an _average_ duty of 8_s.

_ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s.

_, the fact being that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!"

(_Ibid.

_, iii.

13. ) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?

] A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.