The Home Rule movement has passed through many phases since O'Connell's Repeal agitation, but in one essential it has never differed, and that is in the proposal to establish a Parliament in Dublin, which, while called subordinate, would assuredly become insubordinate, and at an opportune moment cut the connection with Great Britain. O'Connell was too moderate in his views for the Young Irelanders, just as the Federalism of Butt and Shaw was not strong enough for Parnell, who publicly declared he would never rest satisfied until the last link that joined Ireland to England was severed. The object of the Home Rule movement was, by the use of force, to coerce England to break up the Union. It was only when Home Rule was linked to the land agitation that it got a real hold on the bulk of the Roman Catholic people. They wanted to be rid of landlords, and the professional agitators told them that the only way to achieve this end was to support the Home Rule movement. Parnell was a capable leader, and he knew how to utilise the votes of the farmers to drag along
On December 24th, 1885, he wrote: ‘I used every effort to obtain a clear majority at the election, and failed. I am therefore at present a man in chains.’’’
(Morley's Life of Gladstone. )
The chains soon began to tighten round him, and they are being drawn still closer to-day round Mr. Asquith and his party. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone brought in his first Home Rule Bill, the main outlines of which were as follows:
LEGISLATURE.— An Irish Parliament composed of two orders, to sit in Dublin, for the conduct of legislation and the administration of Irish affairs. Irish members to cease to sit at Westminster.
Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan resigned their seats in the Cabinet as soon as they became aware of the terms of the Bill. Lord Hartington, Mr. Goschen, Lord Northbrook, and Mr. John Bright had previously refused to join the Cabinet because they had knowledge of Mr. Gladstone's intentions. In a letter to Mr. Gladstone (May 13th, 1886) Mr. Bright wrote, in regard to the Home Rule Bill:
‘I cannot consent to a measure which is so offensive to the whole Protestant population of Ireland and to the whole of the province of Ulster as far as its loyal and Protestant people are concerned. I cannot agree to exclude them from the protection of the Imperial Parliament.’
Mr. Bright went on to point out that Mr. Gladstone's surrender to the Nationalists ‘will only place more power in their hands to war in greater effect against the unity of the three kingdoms with no increase of good to the Irish people.’
A great many of Mr. Gladstone's political friends, amongst whom were numbered some of the most intellectual men of the period, left him. In Ulster, before his surrender to Mr. Parnell, he had a strong following, but almost to a man they left him the moment he deserted Liberalism and accepted the Home Rule policy. Their attitude in the succeeding years has been the same as Mr. Gladstone's was prior to his surrender after the 1885 election.
Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 1886 was rejected in the House of Commons by 343 to 313 — majority, 30. Ninety-three Liberals voted in the majority. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country, with the result that the Unionist party was returned with a majority of 110.
In 1892 Mr. Gladstone was returned again to office. In the meantime the Parnellite split had occurred, and Lord Morley thinks it did a great deal of harm to the Liberal party. In his Life of Gladstone he deals at some length with this episode, but for some unexplained reason he does not mention that Parnell was defeated by the power of the priests. Parnell had attained to greater influence over the Irish people than any other leader the country has ever produced, and yet the moment the priests gave the word the men who were formerly his worshippers promptly hounded him to death. In Ireland the Roman Church is still able to dictate whatever terms it pleases to Nationalist leaders.
On February 13th, 1893, Mr. Gladstone laid his second Home Rule Bill before the House of Commons, and its principal features were:
PREAMBLE. — ‘Without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament.’ These were mere words, for the Bill reduced the authority of the Imperial Parliament to a nullity.
LEGISLATURE. — Irish Legislature to deal with matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some
The Bill was carried through the House of Commons by a purely Irish majority, but on September 1st, 1893, it was thrown out by the House of Lords on second reading, 41 peers voting for and 419 against — majority, 378. As on the former occasion the country, when appealed to, approved of the rejection of the Home Rule Bill.
Mr. Birrell, the Irish Chief Secretary, has advised the public to study Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1893, which has been taken as a hint that Mr. Asquith is determined to proceed on the same lines as Mr. Gladstone's second effort. Indeed, if Mr. Asquith wished to offer less than Mr. Gladstone Mr. Redmond would not allow him. It is quite true that Mr. Redmond when addressing audiences in England is addicted to the use of mild language, but he has to alter his tone when speaking in Ireland or in the United States. There he has to consider Mr. Patrick Ford and the leaders of the Fenian organisation, and the other extreme men who are behind him; and even if Mr. Redmond was willing, these men would not permit him to accept as a beginning less than Parnell accepted.
It is safe, therefore, to assume that the new Home Rule Bill will be on the lines laid down by Mr. Gladstone. As a new generation has arisen in the meantime, it is necessary to examine some of
Home Rule will weaken the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and this is bound to lead sooner or later to the disintegration of the British Empire. One might, in regard to the proposal to split up the United Kingdom, use the words of Cromwell on the subject, and say:
‘And if so, what do you think the consequences of that would be? Would it not be confusion? Would it not be utter confusion?
[...]
If so, what would that produce but an absolute desolation — an absolute desolation to the nation?’
Home Rule by creating lasting confusion at home must impair and ultimately destroy the national strength and the national safety on which the stability of the Empire rests. The colonies, as we have recently seen, do not desire an Imperial Federal Parliament, and why then should a system of federalism be set up in the United Kingdom to please a mere handful of the population. Federalism has not been such a success in the countries where it has been tried to justify its introduction here. Had the circumstances been the same in the United States and Canada as they are in the United Kingdom we may rest assured that the men who drafted the constitutions for those countries would never have introduced Federal Parliaments. Indeed, in the case of Canada, which is so often
It was because of the different systems of law that had grown up in the different provinces that he agreed to a Federal Government for Canada instead of one Parliament for all the Provinces.
An Empire cannot be strengthened by splitting it up at the centre and reducing the power which the Imperial Parliament now wields in the United Kingdom. At the present time the power of the Imperial Parliament in the United Kingdom is supreme in reality as well as in name. The supremacy which it exercises at home is very different from the supremacy it is supposed to possess in the colonies. Every question of government in the United Kingdom is under the control of the Imperial Parliament, and it is just because of this undivided supremacy that the present sense of security prevails. No local majority is allowed
Mr. Asquith, like Mr. Gladstone, may use fine words about the ‘unimpaired supremacy’ of the Imperial Parliament, but in daily practice these will afford no protection to the minority in Ireland against oppression. In Quebec the Protestants are being oppressed, but the Imperial Parliament has not got the power to relieve their grievances unless by resorting to the extreme step of abolishing the Canadian Constitution. Home Rule, therefore,
It cannot be made too clear that Parliament if it surrenders its control in Ireland surrenders its supremacy at the same time. Mr. Gladstone's pretended supremacy would have proved a frightful source of trouble between the two Parliaments from the very beginning. The moment the Irish Parliament had commenced a course either of legislation or administration hurtful to the interests of the
Mr. Gladstone found how difficult it was to take a Constitution to pieces when he attempted to frame his Home Rule Bills. The obstruction of the Nationalist members in the House of Commons made him anxious to get rid of them, and so in his Bill of 1886 he decided to exclude them altogether from Westminster. In the 1893 Bill he reversed his former policy and decided to retain them in reduced numbers at Westminster for specified purposes, but he admitted during the discussions on the Bill that the wit of man could not devise a satisfactory scheme for defining their powers in the Imperial Parliament.
With regard to their exclusion from Westminster, Mr. (now Lord) Morley argued in 1886 that the Irish Legislature would require all the brains Ireland had got for doing Irish work, and he proceeded:
‘But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament, and I think the effect of such an arrangement — and I cannot help thinking so till I hear of better arrangements — upon our own Parliament would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in others, but it would be very difficult when you come to draw the line in theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may depend upon it — I predict — that there is no power on earth that can prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are in the present — the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralised the Legislature at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I beg you to mark attentively
Mr. Morley's arguments against the retention of the Irish members at Westminster in 1886 remain as cogent to-day as when they were uttered, and yet we find that in 1893 Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues threw over their former arguments and agreed to accept the evils which they formerly warned the public against. Lapse of time has not produced a solution of the difficulty. We find Lord Morley writing in his Life of Gladstone: ‘The crucial difficulty was the Irish representation at Westminster. In the first Bill of 1886 the Irish members were to come no more to the Imperial Parliament, except for one or two special purposes. The two alternatives to the policy of exclusion were either inclusion of the Irish members for all purposes, or else their inclusion for Imperial purposes only. In his speech at Swansea in 1887, Mr. Gladstone favoured provisional inclusion, without prejudice to a return to the earlier plan of exclusion if that should be recommended by subsequent experience. In the Bill now introduced (February 13th, 1893) eighty representatives from Ireland were to have seats at Westminster, but they were not to vote upon motions or Bills expressly confined to England or Scotland, and there were other limitations. This plan was soon found to be wholly intolerable to the House of Commons. Exclusion having failed, and inclusion of reduced members for
One can hardly wonder that such a staunch supporter of the Liberal Government as Sir W. Robertson Nicoll wrote in the British Weekly in 1906:
‘If sentiment could have carried anything it would have carried Home Rule, and at first it seemed as if it might. But by and by arguments were brought out. They were very ably and fully presented when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill, and they were not added to in substance. The trouble was that they were not answered. It is very easy to state them briefly. After
Under Mr. Gladstone's first scheme of exclusion Irishmen would have been taxed without any right of representation; while under his second scheme Irishmen would have had a controlling voice in British affairs, but Englishmen would have had no control whatever over the Acts of the Irish Parliament. Proposals so absurd could not stand the test of criticism, and so it may be said of Mr. Gladstone's two Home Rule Bills that they were self-destructive.
Any scheme of Home Rule acceptable to the Nationalists must reserve the real power in Ireland to the Irish Executive, which must have the sole right of administering the law, and in case it refused to give due protection to the minority, as is most probable, there would be no redress. Even under Mr. Birrell's administration minorities in different parts of the country have found their position a very difficult one, but under a Home Rule Government it is probable that the position of these people would become unbearable. It may be that Mr. Birrell out of the kindness of his heart has been gradually training them to bear the greater evils which will assuredly flow from Home Rule.
The men who at present resort to boycotting and moonlighting and other cruel forms of outrage in order to terrorise their opponents would have a much freer hand for mischief under the rule of an Irish Parliament. It requires no stretch of imagination to think of the new Parliament following the example of the Parliament of James II., and by inequitable taxation practically confiscating the property of the minority. The force that would control and direct the policy of a Parliament in Dublin to-day is as intolerant as the force that controlled the Irish Parliament in King James' time.
In order to maintain the authority of the Imperial Parliament under Home Rule it would be necessary to have two Executives operating in Ireland, and nothing is more certain than that they would be continually at war with each other.
In spite of any restrictions that might be embodied in a new Constitution the Irish Parliament would have ample scope for dangerous and oppressive legislation. The whole system of trial by jury could be rearranged in such a way that the people of Ulster would be at the mercy of the people of the South. If the lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bills are followed the new Parliament would have power to pass a law making it a serious offence to criticise the action of the Roman Catholic Church, or even to criticise the action of Parliament itself. Without infringing the written Constitution it would be possible to reduce personal liberty to the merest sham.
In regard to elections, the law could be so changed as to admit clerical influence in its worst form. Electoral districts could be so arranged that Protestant representation would be reduced to a bare minimum. Mr. Redmond's promise that Unionists would be fairly treated under the Local Government Act has not been kept. What reason then have we to suppose that his promises of toleration under a Home Rule Parliament would meet with any different fate. If Mr. Redmond has failed to get his followers to display toleration in regard to local government, it is not too much to assume that there would be no toleration shown towards Unionists once an Irish Parliament was established.
Mr. Dillon, in a speech at Castlerea, County Roscommon, warned those whom he described as ‘the enemies of the people’ that ‘in the time of our power we will remember them.’ In Ireland everyone knows what a threat like this means. The minority do not expect and would not receive fair play under a Home Rule Parliament. Irish Unionists know from experience that paper safeguards would be worthless. There are a thousand ways in which the Nationalists could help their own friends at the expense of the minority. The Home Rule Constitution might require that the Irish Parliament was not to impose discriminating duties, but that would not prevent it from giving grants to convents and monasteries engaged in trade.
The Ulster linen trade could be ruined by a scheme for supporting and developing industries ecclesiastically controlled. Private property would be at the mercy of men who have never shown much respect for the property of others. There was no provision in Mr. Gladstone's last Bill that would have prevented an Irish Parliament from drilling an armed force to be used at some critical juncture for compelling England to grant complete independence. The Veto of the Lord Lieutenant would have been a sham, for in case of his refusal to give his consent to a Bill the Government would have resigned, and he would have been left without means for carrying on the administration of the affairs of the country.
An appeal by aggrieved individuals to the English Privy Council would have been cumbersome and out of the reach of an ordinary citizen. Supposing Mr. Asquith makes provision for an appeal to the Privy Council how is he going to get its decisions respected in Ireland when those decisions run counter to the opinions of the Irish Government, who will have control of the judiciary and the police force? The decisions of any Court must prove worthless unless that Court has at its command the means of giving effect to them.
The Nationalists would look upon the English Privy Council as an alien body, and they would take a special delight in rendering its decisions
Home Rule has not even the advantage that it would be final. It must sooner or later lead to separation. Without the unity of the United Kingdom it is impossible to maintain the stability of the Empire. Most of the arguments for Home Rule are based on fallacies. It is stated, for example, that English government has failed in Ireland, and that the present discontent can only be removed by the establishment of a Parliament in Dublin. It is untrue to say that English government has failed. The remedial policy which has been applied by the Unionists during the last quarter of a century has worked a wonderful change in Ireland. Where would an Irish Parliament have found the large sums of money necessary in order to carry out the different schemes inaugurated during these years? As to the discontent which is supposed to prevail, it is largely the work of professional agitators, who get most of their funds from America. The Imperial Parliament has shown itself not only willing, but also able to remove every legitimate grievance in Ireland.
One of Mr. Gladstone's favourite arguments was that Home Rule had proved a success in other countries. He frequently pointed to Norway and Sweden as a case in point, but since then Norway
There is no true analogy whatever between the position of Ireland and that of the Colonies. Ireland lies close to the British shores, and Dublin is as easy of access from London as is Edinburgh. The Colonies are thousands of miles away, and it is absurd to say that they can be treated in the same way as Ireland.
As to Federalism in the United States, it was I adopted for the purpose of bringing together under one Government separate communities. The relations between the State Legislatures and the Federal Government are not so satisfactory as to justify the introduction of federalism into the British Constitution. There are many instances in which the separate States have successfully defied the Federal Power.
Unionist Irishmen are asked to trust the Nationalist leaders. This is impossible. We who know their history and who have experienced their intolerance may be pardoned for our lack of confidence.
It is sometimes urged that power brings responsibility, and that the Nationalists would act differently under Home Rule. This is nothing more than prophecy, and this prophecy finds no encouragement in the experience of the American States.
Mr. James Bryce, the British Ambassador to the
The rancour and the bitterness which the Nationalists display towards one another provide Unionists with a sufficient warning as to what they may expect under an Irish Parliament. The recent election petitions in North Louth and East Cork show the methods that Nationalists are prepared to adopt in order to crush out their opponents. Corruption and intimidation are two of the commonest weapons used by the Nationalist politicians to secure their ends. Their methods at present may not be as well known to the British public as in Parnell's day, but, as they now operate through a secret society, they are still more subversive of ordinary liberty.
The Unionist minority (if indeed the opponents to Home Rule in Ireland are in a minority) has in all these circumstances an undoubted right to protest against the establishment of a Home Rule Parliament. No nation is justified in legislating