Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question — How We Became Home Rulers by James Bryce, M.P., pt 1

BY JAMES BRYCE, M.

P.

In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view.

"You were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887, and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and revenge at your own exclusion from office."

Reproaches of this kind are now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men, and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display.

It is noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry.

Perhaps, with their belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories deem a sin more or less to be of small account.

Perhaps a recollection of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the better for everybody.

Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own.

It is not large and elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion.

I have not changed; I was right then, and I am right now."

Such an argument not only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters the satisfaction of the person who employs it.

Consistency is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather of folly and conceit.

Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues.

But there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither, who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in 1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in their opinions.

It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the influence and weight of those who had changed.

This must be so.

A man who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed on his _ipse dixit_.

He must set forth the grounds of his conviction.

He must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly satisfied him satisfy him no longer.

It may be that the Liberal party have omitted to do this as they ought.

Occupied by warm and incessant discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty, few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886. Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.

Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country.

It will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed.

And, if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future will attempt to understand our present conflict.

The causes which underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till it already belongs to the past.

The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large.

We were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed) inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and in attachment to the Constitution.

I admit frankly that when we entered Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them.

But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.

It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their opinions.

If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it.

The change I have to describe was slow and gradual.

It was reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our own minds.

Each session marked a further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress session by session.

Session of 1880. --The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government.

Few Liberal candidates said much about Ireland.

Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions, they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was approaching.

They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for going further.

Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that "parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then propounded by those electors as a sort of test question.

We (_i.

e. _ the Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice to Ireland.

Little was said about Coercion.

Hopes were expressed that it would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves against it.

When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted.

We knew him to be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted.

We believed him to be penetrating and judicious.

We applauded his conduct in not renewing the Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster from severe censure on the part of the Tories.

The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to pay their rents.

This Bill was pressed through the House of Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit into September.

The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the tranquillity of the country.

Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly trenched on.

When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage.

What was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed.

Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the will of the people.

But nothing of the kind happened.

It was only an Irish measure.

We relieved ourselves by a few strong words, and the matter dropped.

It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members.

There had been obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it.

Now that a Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals.

At first it incensed us.

Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies.

Presently we came to understand how matters stood.

The Irish members made little difference between the two great English parties.

Both represented to them a hostile domination.

Both were ignorant of the condition of their country.

Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could secure their attention.

Concessions had to be extorted from both by the same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both.

Hence the Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions.

To us new members this was an alarming revelation.

We found that the House of Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which, though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body, which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release.

When we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.

We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the stage!

We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans fell on deaf ears.

I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting beside me, said, "See how things come round.

They keep us out of bed till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six centuries."

And we saw that the natural relations of an Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of strife.

Whose fault it was we were unable to decide.

Perhaps the Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious.

Anyhow, this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged, and the executive authorities of Scotland.

Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords;

thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation.

We did not yet draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw.

But the facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.

SESSION OF 1881.

--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.

The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had ignored.

Outrages were numerous and serious.

The cry in England for repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet.

Several Liberal members (of whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes how things stood.

We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated.

The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by the Government, outrages would increase.

When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law.

Unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.

When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals were inclined to resist it.

The great majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly repented their votes.

Our motives, which I mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these.

The Executive Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary law.

If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably use them worse.

We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate.

The violence with which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.

Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.

When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.

Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr. Forster, as their foe.

They resented what they deemed the insult put upon their country.

They saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison and kept there without trial.

They anticipated (not without reason) the same fortune for themselves.

Hence the friendliness which the Liberal party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was worried with undiminished vehemence.

In the discussions on the Bill we found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from Irish members.

When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories with the steady Ministerialists.

Subsequent events have proved that many were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip.

This happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the Ministry refused.

And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers.

Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was evidently hopeless.

At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.

It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those which were wholly inadmissible.

Several times it seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.