If the British people are ever reckless enough to establish a Parliament in Ireland, they will not be able to say afterwards that they have not been warned of the dangers it involves. Since the time O'Connell introduced his Repeal movement down to the present day there is scarcely an important leader of public opinion in Great Britain who has not pointed out the evils which are bound to follow from Home Rule. Up to the date of Mr. Gladstone's surrender to Parnell the Liberals were as strong in their denunciations of Home Rule as the Conservatives. Although political exigencies forced Mr. Gladstone to incur the very dangers against which he had been warning the public for years, those dangers are as real now as when the warnings were issued. Nothing has happened since then to weaken the old arguments against Home Rule, and the younger generation which has arisen since the struggles over the last two Home Rule Bills would do well to seriously consider the following weighty statements:
Mr. Gladstone, on receiving the freedom of the city of Aberdeen on September 26th, 1871, 93 94
‘We are told that it is necessary for Ireland to close her relations with the Parliament of this country, and to have a Parliament of her own. Why is Parliament to be broken up? Has Ireland any great grievances? What is it that Ireland has demanded from the Imperial Parliament, and that the Imperial Parliament has refused? (Cheers.) It will not do to deal with this matter in vague and shadowy assertions. I have looked in vain for the setting forth of any practical scheme of policy which the Imperial Parliament is not equal to deal with, or which it refuses to deal with, and which is to be brought about by Home Rule.’
‘What are the inequalities of England and Ireland? I declare that I know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining which are levied over Englishmen and Scotchmen, and which are not levied over Irishmen, and likewise that there are certain purposes for which public money is freely and largely given in
‘Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose at this time of the day —in this condition of the world — we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?’
‘There is one limit, and one only, to the extension of local government: it is this — nothing can be done by any wise statesman, or right-minded Briton, to weaken or compromise the authority of the Imperial Parliament. The Imperial Parliament must be supreme in these three kingdoms, and nothing that creates a doubt upon that supremacy can be tolerated by any intelligent or patriotic mind. (Cheers.)’
‘I will consent to give to Ireland no privilege, nothing that is not to be given on equal terms to Scotland and to different parts of the kingdom.’ (Cheers.)
Earl Spencer, speaking at Bristol, November 14th, 1881:
‘What we have to do is this — We have to tell the Irish that their just grievances always will be redressed, that we will extend to them every privilege and liberty that we Englishmen possess; but we must tell them plainly at the same time that no party in
At Belfast, June 18th, 1884:
‘The deeds of those men to whom I referred will, however, be as futile as they are dastardly. They will not terrify the English nation. The statesmen of the nation, and the nation itself, will face their enemy with a determination not to be beaten, and they will not give up one point or one idea which they consider necessary to maintain the United Parliament of England — (cheers) — and the sovereignty of the Queen. (Cheers.) I say this not only to the English and Scottish nation, but I say it to the Irish nation.’
Mr. John Bright:
‘In the year 1872 I wrote a letter to an Irish gentleman, from which I extract a short sentence: ‘To have two legislative assemblies in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief, and I think no sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations entirely separate from each other.’ To
At Birmingham, July 1st, 1886:
‘We are asked to consent to what is really a revolution in Ireland at the bidding of one-twelfth of the population of the United Kingdom.
For 40 years I have been the friend of Ireland. Long before any member of the Irish party now in Parliament, or any member of the present Government opened his lips to expose and condemn the wrongs of Ireland, I spoke for her people in the House of Commons and on public platforms in this country. It is because I am still the friend of Ireland that I refuse to give her up to those to whom the recently defeated Bill would have subjected her.’ — Address to Birmingham Electors, June 24th, 1886.
‘You are asked to thrust out from the shelter and the justice of the United Parliament the 2,000,000 who would remain with us, who cling to us, who passionately resent the attempt to drive them from the protection of the Parliament of their ancestors. I may express the hope that this stupendous injustice and blunder will fail.’ — Ibid.
Letter to Sir Henry James:
‘A policy which would set up in Ireland an ascendancy a hundred times more baneful, a hundred times more harmful than any ascendancy I had fought against in all my long career.’
Earl Grey, the great statesman who carried Reform, speaking on this question of Home Rule in the House of Lords in the session of 1834, said:
‘Connected as were these two great Branches of the United Empire (Great Britain and Ireland) by the Legislative Union, the severance of that Union would imply not merely a separation of the Government, but of the people of both countries — the dissevering of that link which could only be destroyed by the agency of the people themselves — the dissolving of all those ties which now connected the two countries. Suppose this to be effected, what would be the consequence? It would be to expose both kingdoms thus weakened to the attacks of foreign enemies; it would be to introduce a state of things which must weaken and lead to the ruin of both countries, but which would more especially be felt by that part of the United Kingdom which it was sought to delude by specious declarations on this question.’
Lord Macaulay:
‘The repeal of the Union we regard as fatal to the Empire, and we never will consent to it — never, though the country should be surrounded by dangers as great as those which threatened her when her American colonies and France and Spain and Holland were leagued against her, and when the armed neutrality of the Baltic disputed her maritime rights; never, though another Bonaparte should pitch his camp in sight of Dover Castle; never, till all has been staked
Mr. Disraeli:
Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, in closing the debate in 1874, on Mr. Butt's motion, showed the utter impracticability of an Irish Parliament. He concluded his speech as follows:
‘I am opposed to this motion because I think there are involved in it the highest and nearest interests of our country. I am opposed to it for the sake of the Irish people as much as for the sake of the English and the Scotch. I am opposed to it because I wish to see united at an important crisis of the world — a crisis that perhaps is nearer arriving than some of us suppose — because I wish to see a united people welded in one great nationality, and because I feel that if we sanction this policy, if we do not cleanse the Parliamentary bosom of all this ‘perilous stuff,’ we shall bring about the disintegration of the kingdom and the destruction of the Empire.’
Professor Goldwin Smith, who was well known as a strong Radical, wrote from Toronto to the Daily News in 1886 protesting emphatically against a separate Legislature for Ireland. He said:
‘You can hardly doubt that an Irish Parliament means separation, the avowed aim of Mr. Parnell, who
In another letter he wrote:
‘The repeal of the Legislative Union and its inevitable sequel, the carving of a hostile Irish Republic out of the flank of the United Kingdom, would, as we believe, be fatal to the power and greatness which are the common heritage of our whole race. We shall bow our heads in shame unutterable, and be unable again to look a foreigner in the face if Mr. Gladstone or anyone else succeed in persuading the nation to commit so foul, so dastardly, and, at the same time, so suicidal a crime as the abandonment of the Loyalists of Ireland’ (1886).
Mr. John Stuart Mill:
‘It is my conviction that the separation of Ireland from Great Britain would be most undesirable for both, and that the attempt to hold them together by any form of federal union would be unsatisfactory while it lasted, and would end either in reconquest or in complete separation. For generations it is to be feared that the two nations would be either at war or in a
Mr. Matthew Arnold:
In an article entitled The Nadir of Liberalism, in the Nineteenth Century for May, 1886, Mr. Matthew Arnold says of Mr. Gladstone's Irish schemes:
‘The project of giving a separate Parliament to Ireland has every fault which a project of State can have. It takes one's breath away to find an English statesman propounding it. With islands so closely and inextricably connected together by nature as these islands of ours, to go back in the at least formal political connection attained, to make the political tie not closer but much laxer, almost to undo it — what statesmanship! And when, estranged from us in feeling as Celtic Ireland unhappily is, we had yet in Ulster a bit of Great Britain, we had a friend there, you propose to merge Ulster in Celtic Ireland! You
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
‘We all desire to extend to Ireland the full benefit of any system of local government which we enjoy ourselves, and give them the control of their own affairs to the same extent as we have of ours. But when we come to the question of giving them a separate Parliament and a separate Government, then, he confessed, he saw great difficulties, and he did not think that was likely to be consented to by any Government whether Whig or Tory, because it would not be consistent with the maintenance of the integrity of the Empire and their duty to the Crown.’ — ( Scotsman, Nov. 13th, 1885.)
Rev. C. H. Spurgeon (1886):
Alderman Cory, of Cardiff, a Radical opponent of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals, received the following letter from Mr. Spurgeon:
‘I am altogether at one with you. Especially I feel the wrong proposed to be done to our Ulster brethren. What have they done to be thus cast off? The whole scheme is as full of dangers and absurdities as if it came from a madman, and yet I am sure that Mr. Gladstone believes that he is only doing justice and acting for the good of all. I consider him to be making one of those mistakes which can only be made by great and well-meaning men.’
Karl Blind, the Exile Revolutionist, then resident in England (1886):
‘If you wish to break down the strength, to cut the very heart root of your Parliamentary power, which has been gained in so many hard popular struggles, and to open the way for the possibility of intrigues of some future despotically minded ruler or statesman, then by all means establish two legislatures —one for an ‘Irish nation’, so that constant friction shall arise, which may be made use of by an ambitious schemer. If you wish to render an alliance defensive and offensive possible between some foreign Powers, or combination of Powers, hostile to England, and an organised enemy in Ireland, then set up Home Rule for those whose real aim is secession, and as soon as you are in a great difficulty, or a series of difficulties, abroad the enemy will have a splendid opportunity for ‘destroying the last link,’ as Mr. Parnell has fairly warned you beforehand. If you want to get rid of ‘retrenchment’ for ever and to be compelled to militarise your institutions out and out so as to be constantly on your guard against a never-ceasing danger in your closest neighbourhood then let a Parliament come together in College Green, which at the first propitious moment could seize sovereign power and call upon all soldiers of Irish birth to flock to its standards in order to carry out the often-avowed final aims of Mr. Parnell.’
Count Beust, the eminent statesman, who established Dualism in Austria-Hungary (1886):
Lord Hartington (the late Duke of Devonshire), 1887:
‘If we look at the speeches and declarations of the leaders of the Separatist party in Ireland before the proposals which were ever made by Mr. Gladstone, if we look at the speeches which even now are made by members of Mr. Parnell's party in America, if we look at the declarations and the opinions of the Irish party in America, which exercise so great an influence on the counsels of the Home Rule party in Ireland, we shall come, I think, to the conclusion that the real object for which they have been striving, the real object for which they are striving now, is not for any limited
Mr. J. A. Froude (1893):
‘Such respect for law and order as exists in Ireland is entirely due to English authority. Remove it, and the old anarchy will and must return. The Union has enabled Ireland to prosper better than it ever did before. If it has prospered no better it is because we have made Ireland the battle-ground of our own political factions. Mr. Gladstone's proposal of Home Rule is only the latest and worst instance of this. Separation will not result from the passing of Mr. Gladstone's measure, because England cannot and will not allow an independent or hostile power to establish itself so close to us. But if that measure is passed there will be a dangerous and desperate war, in which other countries may take part who would gladly see our power broken.’
Captain Mahan, the great American naval expert, writes: