Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question — The Past and Future of the Irish Question by James Bryce, M.P., pt 2

Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people.

They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length.

Their momentum is such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given.

They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition.

Timid they are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they come to a decision regarding it.

It is one of the qualities which make them a great people.

As has been observed, this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that their knowledge was insufficient to determine.

Accordingly, a certain section of the Liberal party refused to accept it.

A great number, probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting.

Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove irrevocable.

It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government Bill.

I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence, who condemned its principles.

This was true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the rank and file.

And it was only what might have been expected.

The proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether.

It might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith in the curative tendency of local self-government.

But this was by no means axiomatic.

Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining the existing Parliamentary system.

Similarly, there was nothing in Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory from approving the Home Rule scheme.

It was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold.

The question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers, Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule.

But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable feature, of the English party system.

As the object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a ruling Ministry.

Cases sometimes occur where these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by the nation, that the Opposition accepts them.

But in general it scans them with a hostile eye.

Human nature is human nature; and when the defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible.

Now, the Tory party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself.

Accordingly, that division of opinion in the Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did not occur.

Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally divide them.

Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength against the Bill.

I am far from suggesting that they did so against their consciences.

Whatever may be said as to two or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's measure.

But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands.

They went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their opponents.

When all these difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate.

Those who, in England, now look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that it should come so near succeeding.

To have been rejected by a majority of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent.

of the total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.

That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final decision goes without saying.

It was not regarded as final, even in the first weeks after it was given.

This was not because the majority was comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive.

It is because the country had not time enough for full consideration and deliberate judgment.

The Bill was brought in on April 14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off.

And the decision is without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for the coercive method which has since been adopted.

One particular solution of the Irish problem was refused.

The problem still stands confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected, the country may come back to this mode.

We may now turn from the past to the future.

Yet the account which has been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not wholly belong to the past.

They are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the English.

In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament, will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question remains unsettled.

What are the prospects of its settlement?

What is the position which it now occupies?

How has it affected the current politics of England?

It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament.

The vast numerical majority of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr. Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government.

But the dissentient minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between parties.

For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to that Ministry.

But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to resign, or dissolve Parliament.

Now, to maintain an alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter.

Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs.

When these and other grave questions come up in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty of both is fettered.

One party may wish to resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate it.

Each is obliged to forego something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility.

There is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were still revered by the other.

But, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained and cumbrous.

Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to soften.

On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable.

Either the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the larger.

In England, as in America, third parties rarely last.

The attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great standing armies of politics.

If the dissentient, or anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the regular Tories.

The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence.

It has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations with the mass of English Liberals.

When the Home Rule party was founded by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the Liberal than with the Tory party.

But as it demanded what both English parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the Nationalists sought.

Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for Ireland from the weakness of either English party.

This position they still retain.

If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help the Tory party.

However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate future.

On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the policy they have proclaimed.

The Nationalists have, therefore, for the first time since the days immediately following the Union of A. D.

1800 (a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate for it by purely constitutional methods.

For such an alliance the English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain.

They are accused of disloyalty to England.

The past acts and words of the Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in supporting the Irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such words.

They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the Nationalists in the House of Commons.

The student of history will, however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any _tu quoque_.

Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a vacation tour.

If a man has abused your brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the Yellowstone Park.

But his social offences do not prevent you from siding with him in a political convention.

So, in politics itself, one must distinguish between characters and opinions.

If a man has shown himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him into office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you think these faults of his dangerous to the country.

But if the cause he pleads be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who argues a case.

There were moderate men in America, who, in the days of the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of many abolitionists.

There were aristocrats in England, who, during the struggle for the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide.

But the sound sense of both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held those two causes to be in their essence righteous.

In all revolutionary movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial merits of an issue.

The revolutionist of one generation is, like Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion.

Doubly is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement, purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate constitutional struggle.

This is what Mr. Gladstone has done.

If his policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the people of our islands, let it be condemned.

But if it be the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the country what their conscience approves.

However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh proposals are expected.

They will, of course, continue to speak, write, and agitate on behalf of the views they hold.

But practical attempt to deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it.

Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government burn its fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers before?

Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much neglected matters need?

Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature.

But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly.

They stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all other business.

Letting alone has been tried, and it has succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession followed by coercion.

There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan for dealing with them.

I will take them in succession.

The first is the Parliamentary difficulty.

In the British House of Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly ninety Irish Nationalists.

They are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand.

They have no interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims.

They are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body, indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they accuse it.

Several modes of doing this are open to them.

They may, as some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of 1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory motions, and all those devices which in America are called filibustering.

The House of Commons may, no doubt, try to check these tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already made in this direction have had but slight success, and every restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as a whole.

They may disgust the British people with the House of Commons by keeping it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with Irish business as to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.

They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one or other British party, according to the amount of concession it will make to them, or, by always voting against the Ministry of the day, they may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government.

This plan also they have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable, because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a majority in the House of Commons.

But at any moment the alliance of those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn the scale.

Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it controls.

He will therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve, but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency.

In vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that the interests of their own country require them to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly.

Now that the demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the systematic obstruction of past years.

But they will be able, without alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.