Few things are more remarkable in the Parliamentary history of the movement than the complete absence from the counsels of the English advocates of any definite and settled policy as to the form of self-government to be offered to Ireland, and their consequent oscillation between proposals radically differing from one another. Since the ‘new departure’ initiated by Davitt and Devoy in 1878,12 it has been the deliberate practice of Irish Nationalists to abstain from defining the Nationalist demand and to ask in general terms for ‘self-government,’ doubtless with the object of attracting the support of all who favour any change which could be described by that very elastic term. Such a policy has its advantages. But confusion of thought, however favourable to popular agitation, is a disadvantage when the moment for legislation arrives; and uncertainty as to the aim goes far to explain the vacillation in Home Rule policy.
Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 1886 would have given to Ireland the substance of ‘responsible’ or colonial self-government, subject only to certain reservations and restrictions, the value of which will be considered later in this chapter, and would have excluded the Irish members and representative peers from the Parliament of the United
After the defeat of this second Bill, a ‘cold fit’ appears to have seized the Liberal Party. Lord Rosebery, in 1894, declared that before Home Rule could be carried England, as the predominant partner, must be convinced. Sir Edward Grey in 1905 declared that his party on its return to power would ‘go on with Sir Anthony MacDonnell's policy,’ which he rightly described as a policy of large administrative reforms; and Mr. Asquith ‘associated himself entirely and unreservedly with every word’ of Sir Edward Grey's speech.13 Accordingly the Irish Council Bill proposed by Mr. Asquith's Government in 1907 was purely a measure of devolution, certain administrative functions only being put under the control of an Irish Council, subject to the veto of the Lord Lieutenant, and the whole legislative power remaining in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This proposal, having been condemned by a National Convention at Dublin, was incontinently withdrawn.
In the years succeeding this fiasco the Liberal policy for Ireland appeared to be at the mercy of shifting winds. For some time Liberal speakers contented themselves with vague declarations in favour of Federalism or ‘Home Rule all round’:—phrases which may mean much or little according to the sense in which they are used. More recently an able writer,14 while admitting that ‘there is no public opinion in Ireland as to the form of the Irish Constitution,’ has argued in a work of 350 pages in favour of the grant to Ireland of full legislative, administrative and financial autonomy; while a member of the Government 15 has declared that fiscal autonomy for all practical purposes
Franklin said truly that— those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects.’’
But surely on a question of such vital moment to the Empire as the revision of the constitution of the United Kingdom, the bases, if not the details, of the contemplated change are deserving of prolonged consideration and even of some public and ordered discussion. The British North America Act, 1867, by which the relation of the Dominion of Canada to its provinces is regulated, was the result, not only of years of preliminary debate in the provincial Legislatures and elsewhere, but of a formal conference at Quebec in 1864, followed by the appointment of delegates to confer with the Imperial Government on the matter. In Australia the proposal for union, agitated at intervals since 1846, was canvassed in every detail at inter-colonial Conferences or Conventions in 1883, in 1891, and in 1897–8, as well as in the several colonial Legislatures, before it was embodied inIn the confusion so engendered it may be useful to consider in some detail the different proposals which have been or may be made under the name of Home Rule, their special qualities and dangers, and the results to which they may severally lead.
A proposal to give to Ireland full ‘responsible’ government, without any other limitations than such as are imposed on our self-governing Colonies, would find few supporters in this country. Under such a constitution an Irish Government would have power to forbid or restrict recruiting for the Imperial forces in Ireland, and to raise and train a force of its own. It might establish or subsidise a religion, make education wholly denominational, levy customs duties on imports from Great Britain and give fiscal advantages to a foreign power, confiscate or
In the first place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country. Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by an assertion of complete independence, we may assume that Great Britain would follow the example of Federal America and re-establish the Union by force of arms, but at how great a cost! Those who deny the possibility of a serious movement towards separation would do well to remember Mr. Gladstone's reference20 to the position of Norway and Sweden, then united under one crown:—
Let us fool: to those two countries, neither of them very large, but yet countries which every Englishman and every Scotchman must rejoice to claim his kin—I mean the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway. Immediately after the great war the Norwegians were ready to take sword in hand to prevent their coming under the domination of Sweden. But the Powers of Europe undertook the settlement of that question, and they united those countries upon a footing of strict legislative independence and co-equality.
[...]
And yet with two countries so united, what has been the effect? Not discord, not convulsions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not aversion, but a constantly growing sympathy; and every man who knows their condition knows that I speak the truth when I say that
The tie was broken within twenty years.
It may be that the Nationalist leaders, or some of them, do not desire separation; but it by no means follows that a concession of their demands would not lead to that result. Franklin, in 1774, had an interview with Chatham, in which he says— I assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent (of America) to the other, and kept a great variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, I never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.’’
Quoted in The True History of the American Revolution. , by S.G. Fisher (Lippincott, 1903).
And yet independence came within ten years.
In the case of the United Kingdom there is no need to consider in detail how serious would be the effects—naval, military, and economic—of separation, for the gravity of such a contingency is admitted by all. Admiral Mahan, the American naval expert, writes that—
‘the ambition of the Irish separatists, realised, might be even more threatening to the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Union.
[...]
The instrument for such action in the shape of an independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends.’
Some Home Rulers are able to— ‘rise superior to the philosophy, as fallacious in fact as it is base and cowardly in purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and prosperity of a small one,’ 21 but to less lofty souls it appears that the safety of the nation is paramount, and that upon it depends the prosperity of each of its component parts.
In the next place, in considering whether complete ‘colonial’ self-government can be conceded to Ireland, it must not be forgotten that the island is bi-racial, that the two races differ widely in character, in politics, and in religion, and that the differences are apt to find vent in violent conflict or secret attacks. Further, Ireland has for generations been the scene of a revolt against one particular species of property, the ownership of land; and although under the operation of the Land Purchase Acts this cause of conflict tends to abate, it still breaks out from time to time in the form of cattle drives and attacks on ‘land grabbers’ 22 Hitherto we have, broadly speaking, kept the peace. That we should now forsake this duty, and, washing our hands of Ireland, leave the Protestant and the landowner, great or small, to his fate is unthinkable.
In connection with the question last-mentioned it may be necessary at some time to consider how far it is the constitutional right of this country to impose upon the minority in Ireland the new obligations implied in a grant to whole island of colonial Home Rule. It may be that the Imperial Parliament can disallow the claim of a section of the population of Ireland to remain subject to its own control. But it is one thing to reject the allegiance of a community, it is quite another thing forcibly to transfer that allegiance to a practically independent legislature; and this is especially the case when the transfer may involve the use against a loyal population of coercion in its extreme form.
In every formal proposal for in Home Rule Ireland, weight has been given to the above considerations, and attempts have been made to meet them by qualifying the grant of responsible Government. The qualifications suggested have taken the form of (a) the reservation of certain
The ‘safeguards’ proposed by the Government of Ireland Bill, 1886, were somewhat extended by the Bill of 1893; and the proposals shortly to be submitted to Parliament, so far as they can be gathered from recent speeches of Ministers, will not in this respect differ materially from those contained in the latter Bill. It will therefore be convenient to take as a basis for discussion the provisions of the Bill of 1893, as passed by the House of Commons.
The Bill of 1893, after stating in a preamble that it was ‘expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament an Irish Legislature should be created for such purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned,’ proposed to set up in Ireland a Legislature23 consisting of the Sovereign and two Houses, namely a Legislative Council of 48 members to be returned under a restricted franchise by the Irish counties and the boroughs of Dublin and Belfast, and a Legislative Assembly of 103 members to be returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in Ireland. A Bill introduced into the Irish Legislature was to pass both Houses; but in the event of disagreement the proposals of the Legislative Assembly were to be submitted, after a dissolution or a delay of two years, to a joint Session of the two Houses. The executive power was to remain in the Crown, aided and advised by an Irish Ministry (called an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland), and the assent of the Crown to Irish legislation was to be given or withheld on the advice of this Executive Committee subject to any instructions given by the Sovereign.
The specific reservations and restrictions were contained in clauses 3 and 4 of the Bill, which were as follows:
The power to impose taxation other than duties of custom and excise was to be transferred, subject to a short delay as to existing taxes and to a special provision in respect of taxes for war expenditure, to the Irish Legislature (clause II). Two judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland, to be called ‘Exchequer Judges,’ were to be appointed under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, and to be removable only on an address from the Imperial Parliament; and proceedings relating to the reserved powers or to the customs or excise duties were to be determined by such judges (clause 19). Appeals from the Courts in Ireland were to lie to the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council (clause 21), and any question as to the powers of the Irish Legislature could be referred to the same Committee (clause 22). The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police Force were gradually to disappear, and police matters to be regulated by the Irish Legislature and Executive (clause 29). The Irish Legislature was to be prohibited from passing land legislation for a period of three years (clause 34).
As to these proposals the first observation that occurs is that, in addition to the matters proposed to be reserved, there are others in which legislative uniformity throughout
In the next place, it is to be noted that the checks proposed affect legislation only and not administration. If the Bill of 1893 or any similar Bill should become law, the whole executive power in Ireland will be in an Irish Ministry responsible to an Irish Assembly; and it is obvious that many of the wrongs against which the restrictive clauses of the Bill were directed may be inflicted by administrative act or omission as effectively as by legislation. To quote a work of authority 24—
An independent Irish Executive will possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any restriction to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution. Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from all positions of public trust. It might place the bench, the magistracy, the police, wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might by encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of Catholic, and the disarming of Protestant, Ireland, and at the same time, raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army. But the mere inaction of the executive might in many spheres produce greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country. And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between ‘good’ landlords and ‘bad’
Irish Ministers might even refuse actively to oppose the ‘moral claim’ of the Irish Catholics to the use of the cathedrals and of the accumulated capital of the Irish Church.25
To contemplate the possibility of action or calculated inaction of the character above described is not to attribute to Irishmen any special measure of original sin. In every case where the executive power is divorced from the ultimate legislative authority such divergencies are likely to recur; and more than one instance may be found in our own recent history. In 1859 the Canadian Government warned the Home Government that any attempt to interfere with the customs policy of the Dominion was inadmissible, unless the home authorities were prepared to undertake the responsibility of administering the whole government of Canada. The Home Government gave way.26 In 1878 the Governor of Cape Colony proposed to place the colonial forces under the control of the officer commanding the Imperial forces. The Cape Government resisted, and refused to resign; and eventually the Governor, on the advice of the Home Government, dismissed his ministers. In this case a change of government occurred after the general election, but in the end the claim put forward by the Imperial authorities had to be withdrawn.27 In 1906 the Natal Government proclaimed martial law, and ordered the execution of twelve natives on charges of murder. The Imperial Government intervened, and suggested the suspension of the order pending further consideration. The Natal Ministry immediately resigned; and as there was no chance of the formation of a new Government, the Imperial authorities hastily withdrew.28
Differences have arisen even on so grave a matter as the succession to the throne. The union of England and Scotland in 1707 was preceded and hastened by the so-called Act of Security, by which the Scottish Estates asserted the right to name a successor to the throne of Scotland, who should not (except under certain specified conditions) be the person designated as sovereign by the English law. And during the illness of King George III. in the year 1788, Grattan, in defiance of the views of Pitt and of the majority in both Houses of the Imperial Parliament, carried in the Irish Parliament an address to the Prince of Wales, calling upon him (without waiting for a Regency Bill) to assume the Government of the Irish nation, ‘and to exercise and administer all legal power, jurisdiction and prerogatives to the Crown and Government thereof belonging’ —words borrowed from the address by which in the Revolution of 1688 William of Orange was requested to assume the Crown. Happily, the Viceroy declined to present the address, and a deputation sent from Ireland to present it found on their arrival that the king had recovered, but the incident might have led to a conflict upon a matter so important as the exercise of the royal power.
The fact is that the word ‘supremacy,’ so often used in this controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, Parliament is likewise supreme in New Zealand; but the two supremacies are of widely different kinds. Supremacy consists of two ingredients—authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the latter the former is little more than a legal figment, which may have no more practical importance than the theoretical right of veto which is retained by the Crown. Mr. Balfour, speaking on the second reading debate of the 1893 Bill, referred to this matter as follows:
Legally, of course, the Imperial Parliament would be supreme: no one has doubted it. But what layman takes the slightest interest
Special importance attaches to these considerations owing to the heavy liabilities undertaken by this country in respect of land purchase in Ireland. At the present time many millions of British money are sunk in Irish land, and the amount may increase to a sum approaching two hundred millions. The tenants now pay their annuities because, in the last resort, the Government can turn them out. Under Home Rule the powers of Government would rest with men who have led ‘no rent’ agitations in the past, and who would be dependent upon the votes of those personally interested in repudiating the debt. The British Treasury can hardly run such a risk; and some sort of concurrent control, with all its evils and risks, seems to be necessary. And yet financial independence is the first essential to genuine autonomy.
But, it may be said, if the Irish Government go beyond the law, the Irish Courts may be asked to interfere; and in the event of their refusal, the Bill provides an appeal to the Judicial Committee in London. No doubt it does, but in practice the person aggrieved might have very great difficulty in making the remedy effective. He must obtain a decision in his favour from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at no small cost of money and personal odium; and the decision of that ‘alien’ tribunal (as it would be called) must then be enforced under the jurisdiction of a Government which (on the hypothesis which we are considering) would be unfriendly, by judges and executive officers appointed and perhaps removable by that authority, and in the midst of a population hostile to ‘foreign’ interference. Is it extravagant to suppose that the complainant would not gain much by his appeal to Caesar?
And even if we suppose the Irish Legislature and Executive to confine themselves within the letter of the Act, are the checks of any real value? The Irish Parliament might still interfere with contracts, or might validate contracts now held to be void as contrary to public policy. They might defeat the Mortmain Acts. They might deal as they thought fit with internal trade; and the great industries of Belfast and its neighbourhood might find their views on trade questions of no avail. The Irish Legislature might create new offences and institute new tribunals; and the reference in the Bill to ‘due process of law’ would not necessarily secure trial by jury or by an impartial tribunal.29
It is said that legislation of this character would be subject to the veto of the Crown. But that veto is to be exercised on the advice of the Irish Ministry subject to any instructions given by the Sovereign; and so long as an Irish Legislature is entitled to withhold Irish supply, a veto against the advice of the Irish ministry would surely tend to become impossible.
Again, it is said that an unjust law passed by the Irish Parliament might be repealed by the Imperial Parliament. Doubtless the technical right would exist, as in the case of the Colonies; but no one dreams that, with ‘responsible’ government existing in Ireland and Irish representatives at Westminster, it would in practice be used. The Imperial Government has never been known to interfere with the legislation of a self-governing colony except where Imperial interests are concerned, or where a fraud on the colony can be established;30 and the same rule would obtain in the case of Ireland.
Lastly, it is said that in the last resort there is the British Army. But if the civil power in Ireland does not call in the military force, how can the latter be used to enforce the law? Are the forces to be controlled from England, and what is this but a counter revolution? It
But in fact the so-called ‘safeguards’ would not last. Professor Dicey31 and Professor Morgan,32 writing from opposite sides of the controversy, agree in holding that no colony would tolerate them for a moment; and it is incredible that Ireland, with a Parliament of her own, would submit to them for more than a few years.33 Suppose the majority of the Irish Legislature to grow weary of the ‘safeguards,’ and to demand their repeal. The Imperial ministry might refuse, but the reply of the Irish ministry (if in command of a majority in the Irish House of Commons) would be to resign and to make the government of Ireland impossible except by force. And if Ireland were still represented in the Imperial Parliament, the new ‘sorrows of Ireland’ would find eloquent and insistent expression there. What, then, would England do? What could she do, except, after a futile struggle, to give way? The truth is, that if you part with the executive power, all checks and ‘safeguards’ are futile. Mr. Redmond,34 eagerly ‘accepts every one of them,’ and will accept others if desired; for he knows that they must prove ineffective. ‘If,’ said Lord Derby in 1887, ‘Ireland and England are not to be one, Ireland must be treated like Canada or Australia. All between is delusion or fraud.’
The hybrid form of government proposed in the Bills of 1886 and 1893 gave rise to a further difficulty, and one which went far towards wrecking them both.
The total exclusion clause in the Bill of 1886 was one of the most unpopular parts of an unpopular Bill. It was immediately urged that this arrangement was virtually equivalent to separation, and Mr. Gladstone admitted 35 that the argument had force. Since 1886 public sentiment has advanced in the direction of a closer Imperial unity, and it is unlikely that the country will recur in 1912 to a proposal which in 1886 was admitted to be intolerable. Moreover, if the British Parliament is to retain control of the whole foreign policy of the kingdom, and—what is likely to be of enormous importance in the future—of its whole fiscal policy, it would be manifestly unjust to deny to Ireland a voice and vote in such matters. How would it be possible, for instance, to discuss the effect upon agriculture of a Tariff Reform Budget in the absence of competent representatives of the Irish farmers, or to consider the yearly grant to be made (as it is said) in aid of Irish finance without the assistance of any representatives of Ireland?
A recognition of the difficulties in the way of total exclusion led Mr. Gladstone to propose, in 1893, what was known as the ‘popping-in-and-out clause,’ under which Irish members would have sat at Westminster, but would have voted only on Imperial measures. The best criticism of this attempt to distinguish between local and Imperial matters was supplied on another occasion by Mr. Gladstone himself:— ‘I have thought much, reasoned much, and inquired much with regard to that distinction, but I have arrived at the conclusion that it cannot be drawn. I believe it passes the wit of man.’
To distinguish between matters which might and those which could not affect Ireland was impossible to the ordinary man, and the device of committing all matters of special difficulty to the decision of Mr. Speaker had not then its present vogue. Further, it was obvious that under such a system a British Ministry might have on one day, when English or Scottish affairs were under discussion, a commanding majority; but on the next, when a vote possibly affecting the sister island was in question, might find itself labouring in the trough of the sea; while on the third day, that vote having been disposed of and the Irish members having taken their leave, it might rise once more on the crest of the wave. The proposal was too ludicrous to be long defended. The sense of humour of the House prevailed over Mr. Gladstone's earnestness, and he fell back on inclusion for all purposes.
But inclusion for all purposes had its own difficulties. Under the Gladstonian system the Imperial Parliament would have considered, not only matters affecting the whole kingdom, but also purely English or purely Scottish affairs; and to give to the Irish representatives the control in their own Parliament of purely Irish affairs, and also a voice at Westminster on matters affecting England or Scotland only, was obviously unjust. Such a power would have been used, not for the benefit of England or Scotland, but as an instrument for wresting further concessions for Ireland.
‘I will never be a party,’ said Mr. Gladstone at one time, ‘to allowing the Irish members to manage their own affairs in Dublin, and at the same time to come over here and manage British affairs. Such an arrangement would not be a Bill to grant self-government to Ireland, but one to remove self-government from England; it would create a subordinate Parliament indeed, but it would be the one at Westminster, and not that in Dublin.’ 36
The problem seems insoluble because, under a hybrid (or Gladstonian) system of Home Rule, it is insoluble. If
These considerations bring us face to face with Federalism, or, to use the phrase which to so many perplexed Liberals has seemed to point the way to safety, ‘Home Rule all round.’ The expression covers a wide field, and before any opinion can be pronounced upon the proposal, it is essential to know what its advocates in fact desire.
To some the phrase means nothing less than Gladstonian Home Rule ‘all round,’ in other words that we should meet the objections to dissolving the legislative and executive Union with Ireland by dissolving also the older Union with Scotland, and even (for some do not shrink from the reductio ad absurdum) the yet older unity of England and Wales. Consider what this means. For more than two hundred years the English and Scottish races have been united by a constitutional bond strengthened by mutual respect and good feeling, and Scotsmen, like Englishmen, have taken their part in the government of these islands. If in the division of labour and of honours there has been
But to most advocates of the federal system the word means less than this; and the conception, usually vaguely expressed, is that the relations of England, Scotland, and Ireland, should be something like those of the communities which make up (to quote instances commonly given) the German Empire, the Swiss Federation, the United States of America, or the British self-governing dominions of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. So expressed, the aspiration for a federal union deserves respectful consideration.
In the first place, it must not be forgotten that no proposal of this nature has yet been put forward, even in general terms, by any English or Irish Party. Mr. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalists, has indeed said that he and his friends ‘were only asking what had already been given in twenty-eight different portions of the Empire:’ 37 and a speaker usually more careful in his language 38 lately suggested to his audience that they should ‘ask the twenty-eight Parliaments if the Empire would be split in pieces if there were a twenty-ninth.’
But let us put aside, with the foreign confederacies (which have in most cases been achieved or maintained by armed conflict), the practically independent Parliaments within the British Empire, and confine ourselves to the Federations of Canada and Australia, and to the Union (sometimes incorrectly called a Federation) of South Africa.
In the first place, it is not immaterial to observe that each of the Legislatures here referred to resulted, not from the dissolution of an existing union, but from the voluntary assumption by communities formerly independent of one another of a closer bond. In other words, there was in each case a real foedus or treaty, not imposed by the Imperial power, but having a local origin and springing from the need of common action. The operative force was centripetal and as the force continues to operate, the tendency of the mass is towards a chemical in lieu of a mechanical fusion.40 But in the case of the United Kingdom a change from organic union to Federation would be the beginning of dissolution; and the centrifugal force, once set motion, might lead further in the same direction.
Again, there can be no true federation without (1) provincial
And if we treat the proposal for Federation as indicating a desire to adopt a constitution under which the relations of the United Kingdom to each of its constituent parts would be as the relation of some one of the three self-governing Dominions to the states or provinces of which it is composed, the question remains, which of those Dominions should be adopted as a model? For they differ not only in form but in essence.
Under the British North America Act, 1867, and the amending statutes, there is ‘one Parliament for Canada’ (sect. 17), while each province has its Legislature. Each provincial Legislature is empowered exclusively to make laws in relation to certain specified subjects (including property and civil rights and the administration of justice), and also in relation to ‘all matters of a merely local or private nature in the province’; while the Dominion Parliament may ‘make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada in relation to all matters not
The constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, as defined by the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, is of a different character. The Federal Parliament is entrusted with power to make laws with respect to a number of subjects divided into no less than 39 classes (sect. 51); the State Legislatures have concurrent powers of legislation, but in case of conflict the law of the Commonwealth is to prevail over the State law (sect. 109). The ‘residuary powers’ are in this case left to the States. There is power to alter the Constitution with the consent of a majority of the electors in a majority of the States and of a majority of the electors of the Commonwealth (sect. 123)—a power which has been freely used.
The case of South Africa is sometimes cited as a precedent for loosening the bonds in the United Kingdom. It is a strong precedent for closer union. The South Africa Act, 1909, created in fact as well as in name, not a Federation but a true Legislative Union. Under the Act, the South African colonies were ‘united in a legislative union under one government under the name of the Union of South Africa’ (sect. 4). The legislative power is vested in the Parliament of the Union (sect. 19), which has full power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Union (sect. 59). In each province (formerly a colony) there is an administrator appointed by the Governor-General of the Union in Council (sect. 68), and a Provincial Council (sect. 70); but the powers of the Provincial Councils are confined within narrow limits (sect. 85), and their ordinances (they are not called laws) have effect within the province as long as and so far as they are not repugnant to any Act of the Union
The South African precedent leads naturally to a few observations on the proposals for the extension of local self-government, usually classified under the head of Devolution. These proposals differ, not in degree only but in kind, from schemes for the granting of responsible government, or Gladstonian Home Rule. Under all devolutionary schemes, properly so-called, the central Parliament and executive remain the ultimate depositaries of power; and the powers entrusted to local bodies are administrative only, and can be resumed at will. The Acts by which County Councils were set up, first in Great Britain and afterwards in Ireland, were steps in this direction. The Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, was another. The establishment by the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act, 1899, of a Council of Agriculture, as Agricultural Board, and a Board of Technical Instruction, was a third. By these statutes wide powers are delegated to representative bodies directly or indirectly elected by popular vote; but in each case the delegated powers are strictly defined, their exercise is made subject to central control, and the right of Parliament to modify or withdraw any of them is absolute and unquestioned. The appointment by the House of Commons of a Grand Committee for Scottish Bills is another experiment of a similar character, though on different lines. Such delegations of power are consistent with the maintenance in its entirety of the
The financial problems connected with the grant of in 1912 are among the most complicated that call for solution, and differ fundamentally from those which faced the Governments of 1886 and 1893. And by common consent, the problems are not merely different; they are immensely more difficult. No clauses in the earlier Bills lent themselves more readily to destructive criticism; and though the provisions of the new scheme are still shrouded in mystery, it is inherent in the conditions under which it must be framed that the financial clauses will prove to be even less defensible on the grounds of logic or equity than those of either of its predecessors.
Since the first Bill was introduced the interests of Ireland— social, economic, industrial, and political—have become increasingly identified with those of the other parts of the United Kingdom. The commercial, banking, and railway systems of Ireland are intimately associated with those of the greater and more firmly established systems of Great Britain. Irish railways are so largely controlled at the present time by British concerns, and there exist so many agreements and understandings between them and British companies as to facilities and rates, that they might be regarded as part of the same network of communications. Hardly less close are the relations which now exist between British and Irish banks.
It is not, however, on the commercial side only that greater intimacy and more firmly established relations exist now than formerly. Irish industries are agricultural, dairying and manufacturing. In each of these branches the
It is, nevertheless, in respect of the political changes and the legislative measures passed in the last quarter of a century that the most serious obstacles will be found in the way of framing any satisfactory scheme for financing a measure of Home Rule. The Irish Local Government system, framed on the British model by the Act of 1898, the Congested Districts Board, and the Department of Agriculture, have hitherto depended financially, either wholly or in part, on Imperial grants in aid. Local taxation payments alone from the Imperial Exchequer amounted in 1910–11 to £1,478,000. The financial scheme under Home Rule must obviously contemplate and provide for the continuance of those grants. Land Purchase schemes have been enacted which have already had the effect of converting a quarter of a million tenants into owners under a contingent liability of 120 millions sterling guaranteed by the Imperial Exchequer. No financial scheme can ignore the fact that the earliest of the annuities created under the Wyndham Act will not expire before 1972, So that the Imperial liability for the payment of the bulk of the annuities already created will continue for at least seventy years more.
Finally, we are faced with the fact that in the last twenty-five years the relations of the State to its citizens
In addition to the new duties thus undertaken by the State, the cost of Defence and of the Civil Services has grown by leaps and bounds. We need not look too closely into the apportionment of these charges whilst we remain partners in a United Kingdom, but if the partnership is to be dissolved at the suit of Irish Nationalism, a new balance must be struck, and on any fair basis the contribution of Ireland under present-day conditions should far exceed the amount under either of the schemes for which Mr. Gladstone made himself responsible. Both schemes recognised the equity of some contribution for these services from Ireland, and it must be assumed that the same broad principles will be applied in any scheme which may be framed hereafter.
By way of introduction to any adequate discussion of the possible financial proposals of any measure, it is desirable to set out in some detail the existing financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain. The Treasury calculations on this subject are embodied in two White Papers which have been prepared and published annually during the last eighteen years. It is true that doubts have from time to time been cast on the accuracy of these calculations and of the methods by which the materials on which they are based have been collected. As to this, it is only necessary to say that the information in the possession of the Treasury officials is infinitely more voluminous and likely to be more accurate than any in the possession of private individuals; and there is no reason to suppose the succession of eminent public servants, who have been in turn responsible for the preparation of these returns have been moved in one direction or the other by prepossessions or bias. Their one attempt has been throughout to present a statement, as accurate as it is possible to make it, on the
See Parliamentary Debates.
So long as Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, such an investigation has mainly an academic interest. The State is a homogeneous entity; the taxes imposed on individuals similarly circumstanced are the same (with some trifling exceptions—all in favour of Ireland) in whatever quarter of the United Kingdom the individual resides. But the case is wholly different when a proposal is made to split up the State into its constituent parts. It then becomes necessary to inquire if there is any prospect that the constituent parts will have resources sufficient for the various services, commitments and liabilities—present and contingent—which do or will belong to them. And the beginning of any such inquiry is, as has been already said, the present Irish revenue and expenditure.
The essential figures for such an investigation are contained in the following statement. This shows separately the expenditure on the various items which have been the subject of discussion or special mention in the different financial schemes proposed in connection with Home Rule. On the revenue side the effect of the delayed collection of duties under the Budget of 1909–10 has been eliminated by taking the average revenue in the two years in certain items. The figures of expenditure relate to the year 1910–11. The corresponding figures for both collection and contribution are set out in this table in consequence of the suggestion made in some quarters that we should revert to the Gladstonian proposal of 1886 and credit Ireland with the
| Source of Rev. | Rev. as coll in £ | Rev. as contrib. in £ | Source of Exp. | Expenditure in £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Customs * | 2,922,000 | 2,866,000 | 1. Civil List and misc. charges | 118,500 |
| 2. Excise * | 4,872,200 | 2,952,000 | 2. Lord-Lieutentant's salary | 20,000 |
| 3. Licence Duties * | 284,000 | 284,000 | 3. Local Taxation Payments | 1,477,500 |
| 4. Estate, etc. * | 914,000 | 914,000 | 4. Public Works | 415,500 |
| 5. General Stamps * | 310,000 | 333,000 | 5. Civil Service Departments | 289,500 |
| 6. Income Tax * | 1,106,000 | 1,307,000 | 6. Department of Agriculture | 415,000 |
| 7. Postal Services | 1,155,000 | 1,155,000 | 7. Police | 1,464,500 |
| 8. Miscellaneous | 139,000 | 139,000 | 8. Judiciary, etc. | 924,000 |
| 9. Education, etc. | 1,805,000 | |||
| 10. Old Age Pensions | 2,408,000 | |||
| 11. Superannuation, etc. | 103,000 | |||
| 12. Ireland Development Grant | 191,500 | |||
| 13. Miscellaneous | 12,000 | |||
| 14. Revenue Departments | 298,000 | |||
| 15. Postal Services | 1,404,500 |
full revenue as collected. Though any such proposal is patently absurd it is mentioned here for the sake of completeness.
The first striking fact in the foregoing statement is the large difference between ‘contributions’ and ‘collections,’ i.e. between the ‘true’ revenue derived from Ireland and the sums merely collected there. During the last two financial years this difference amounted to an average of £1,752,000. The excise collections alone represent an excess of £1,920,000 over the actual contribution. This, of course, arises from the movements of duty-paid spirits and beer between different parts of the United Kingdom. The last Report of the Commissioners of Customs and Excise (Cd. 5827) gives the amount of home-made spirits on which duty has been paid in Ireland at 5,209,000 proof gallons, whereas the quantity retained for consumption was only 2,776,000 proof gallons. A similar but smaller difference exists in the case of beer. To credit Ireland with the full amounts of the duties collected in Ireland, as was done by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, and as is now proposed in some quarters, would, in effect, amount to a gift from the British Exchequer of £1,750,000 a year. And there is obviously no security that the Irish Exchequer could rely on this boon being continued for more than a short time. There would be nothing to prevent the British spirit merchant from removing his spirits to this country in bond and paying the duty here after arrival. It is obvious that the Treasury would be compelled to grant facilities for this course. The present system is merely one of book-keeping and administrative convenience, but as the withdrawal of this sum from the British Exchequer to which it properly belongs would have to be made good from other British sources, there would be every inducement for the British merchant to effect such slight changes of method as would transfer the whole of this sum from the Irish to the British Exchequer. Having regard to the fact that on the other sources of revenue the collections in Ireland are estimated to fall short of the actual contributions by nearly £200,000,
Turning next to the contributed revenue upon which alone an Irish Parliament could rely, we note first the large proportion of the revenue represented by Customs and Excise. Contrasted with the figures for Great Britain, it is seen by the following table that whereas in Ireland the revenue from Customs and Excise amounts to 60 per cent of the total, in Great Britain the proportion was not more than 36 per cent.
Percentage of Revenue from different sources contributed by Ireland and Great Britain respectively in two years ending March 31, 1911.41
| Source of Revenue | Ireland per cent | Britain per cent |
|---|---|---|
| Customs | 29 | 18.5 |
| Excise (ex. licences) | 30 | 17.5 |
| Estate, etc., duties | 9 | 14.5 |
| Income tax | 13 | 23.5 |
| Postal, etc. | 11 | 15 |
| Other sources | 8 | 11 |
| Total | 100 | 100 |
Exclusive of the licence duties the average yield (contribution) of Customs and Excise in Great Britain amounted in the last two years to £55,900,000, or at the rate of £1 7s. 5d. per head; in Ireland the average yield was £5,800,000, or at the rate of £1 7s. 10d. per head. The incidence of our consumption taxes is thus seen to be at the present time practically the same in Ireland as in Great Britain; and the much larger proportion of the Irish revenue obtained from them is due to the smaller relative
There are, of course, other reasons why there should be no delegation of the power to impose Customs and Excise. The constitutional objections to such a course are overwhelming. It would involve the abandonment of the plea that for Ireland was the prelude to all round; in other words, that separation was the condition precedent to federalism. In every federal system in the world the control of Customs and Excise has been retained by the central authority. This is true not only of the quasi-federations within the British Empire; it is
Another obvious objection to such a course is that it necessitates the erection of a Customs barrier between Ireland and Great Britain. Tariff Reformers are ready to admit that the present fiscal system is at least as injurious to Ireland as to other portions of the United Kingdom. The power to impose Customs duties on British goods—and the proportion of British total imports is so large that if this power were limited to foreign goods it would be financially valueless—would no doubt provide the Irish Exchequer with considerable funds and might be used to develop her prosperity. But the separation of the Customs systems for the purpose of enabling Ireland to impose tariffs in her own interests would necessarily be followed by a demand for treaty-making powers such as have been successfully claimed and are now enjoyed by British Dominions overseas. Under a general tariff for the United Kingdom the same advantages would accrue to Ireland without any corresponding damage to British or Imperial interests.
Thus, whether Customs and Excise are handed over to the Irish Parliament or retained by the Imperial Parliament, the consequences are equally embarrassing. In the one case Ireland would be deprived of the control of some 60 per cent of her present revenue, and of all power of expansion; in the other, British trade with Ireland might be gravely injured by hostile legislation, and the union of the three
There can, therefore, be no justification for taking the control of the Customs and Excise from the Imperial Parliament. The Irish Parliament would thus be left with some 40 per cent of present revenue under her own control. But the power to raise further revenue within the limits legally reserved to the Irish Parliament would be even less than this figure would imply. For of the £4,100,000 of revenue other than Customs and Excise, nearly £1,200,000 comes from the Postal Services; and even if these services were controlled by Ireland, it may be taken that the rates charged will be the same as in Great Britain. Of the remaining £2,900,000 nearly one-half comes from income tax. It has already been pointed out that its yield cannot be materially increased. There are only two ways by which an Irish Chancellor might attempt such a task. He might raise the rate of income tax or he might lower the exemption limit. The former course would almost certainly be followed by two equally undesirable results. So far as the tax continued to be paid in Ireland it would fall with crushing force on the already heavily-burdened agricultural industry. Still, from the point of view of the Exchequer, there might be some additional revenue on this account. On the other hand, there would be a check to the investment of capital in Ireland—and no country needs capital more—and a powerful temptation to transfer it where the tax would be lower. It may be seriously questioned, therefore, whether any increase in the income tax above the British rate is practicable. The other alternative, namely, the lowering of the exemption limit, would be so unpopular that no Irish Chancellor is ever likely to consider it seriously.
Passing from the consideration of revenue it is necessary to examine the relation of present revenue to present
It may be worth while here to refer to the amazing statement that Great Britain has made a large ‘profit out of the Union.’ At the last meeting of the British Association, Prof. Oldham affected to prove that Ireland ‘in the course of one hundred years ... had sent across the Channel as her contribution to the British Exchequer a clear net payment of about 330 millions sterling.’ The same contention has been urged by Lord MacDonnell. This calculation ignores the fact that even the Irish Parliament between 1782 and 1800 acknowledged its obligation to contribute to Imperial services, and voted contributions for Imperial purposes, besides raising and maintaining in Ireland a force of 12,000 to 15,000 men, some of whom were available for foreign service. It makes no allowance also for the debt
| Period | Ratio of British to Irish Populations | Ratio of British to Irish Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| 1819–20 | 2.1 | 12.7 |
| 1829–30 | 2.1 | 10.9 |
| 1839–40 | 2.3 | 11.5 |
| 1849–50 | 3.2 | 17.6 |
| 1859–60 | 4.0 | 9.8 |
| 1869–70 | 4.8 | 12.3 |
| 1879–80 | 5.7 | 16.3 |
| 1889–90 | 7.0 | 22.6 |
| 1899–1900 | 8.9 | 46.5 |
| 1909–10 | 9.3 | * |
*42
The truth is that from a financial point of view Ireland has no valid complaint to make on the score of her contributions for Imperial purposes. Between 1820 and 1840 the Irish population was a little less than one-half of the
As already stated we are still without any information as to the financial proposals to be included in the Bill of 1912. The Government have appointed a Committee to advise them upon this subject. Though the cost of the Committee has been met out of public funds, and sources of information were laid open to them which are not readily available to the public, the Prime Minister has steadily refused to supply to Parliament any information as to the results of their labours.43 The terms of reference to the Commission: the witnesses examined by them the information placed at their disposal; the character of the conclusions and recommendations, these have, all alike, been refused to the House of Commons. But while Parliament has been denied this information, there is every reason to believe that the leaders of the Nationalist Party have been taken fully into the confidence of the Government. We do not know whether, for example, the Customs or Excise or both will be imposed and collected by the future Irish Parliament. We do not know whether any contribution will be required for the Irish share of Imperial services. We are equally uncertain whether any and what purely Irish services will be retained by the Imperial Parliament, and charged on the Imperial Exchequer. And lastly, the intentions of the Government in regard to the payment of a subsidy from the Imperial Exchequer to the Irish Parliament, with which rumour is busy, are as yet unrevealed.
In spite of this lamentable paucity of information as to
The essential features of the 1886 scheme were as follows:
Broadly the scheme gave to the Irish Government credit for the Customs and Excise collected in Ireland and charged it with annual payments of £4,502,000 in addition to the cost of collection. It is clear that Mr. Gladstone, at the time when the Irish population was about one-eighth of the United Kingdom, assumed Ireland to have a taxable capacity of one-fifteenth. If such a scheme were introduced at the present moment it is obvious that, owing to the further decline in the population of Ireland, a smaller figure for taxable capacity must be taken. What that figure should be it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide satisfactorily. It is generally assumed that on the basis of the calculations made by the Financial Relations Commission in 1896, the present relative taxable capacity for Ireland would be about one-twenty-fifth that of the United Kingdom. In the last two financial years the Irish contribution to Income Tax has been one-twenty-eighth, and the contribution to Estate Duties one-twenty-sixth of the total collection in the United Kingdom. These proportions, taken as measures of taxable capacity must be exceptionally favourable to Ireland, where the proportion of Income Tax
The state of the Irish Exchequer under the foregoing scheme would be indeed a parlous one. It would start with a deficit of £3,200,000, and with a prospective immediate increase by about £450,000 on account of the Insurance Act. The actual budget deficit would thus be about £3,650,000. The Imperial Parliament would collect about £7,794,000, and after deducting £5,346,000 would hand back to the Irish Exchequer the difference of £2,458,000. The revenues upon which the Chancellor in the Irish Parliament could rely would be, therefore, £6,366,000. Out of this all expenditure of £9,562,000 would have to be met. The postal services would probably not stand any increased charges, there is left, therefore, only £5,211,000 of free revenue, and only £2,753,000 under the unrestricted control of the Irish Parliament. With such resources it would be obviously impossible to make good a deficit of £3,206,000 by any increase of taxation. It must not be overlooked, also, that the effect of crediting Ireland with Customs and Excise as ‘collected’ instead of as ‘contributed’ is practically to make the Irish Parliament a further free gift of nearly £2,000,000.
A totally different scheme accompanied the Bill of 1893 as introduced. The principal features of the new scheme were as follows:
Some of the provisions of this scheme are of exceptional interest. If it had ever been in operation the plan, for example, of adjusting the payments from one exchequer to the other in the event of changes being enacted by the Imperial Parliament in the Excise duties must have been fruitful of difficulties and created much friction. It the duties had been reduced there might have been an increased consumption. Who can say how much of the revenue lost to the Irish Exchequer in the event of a reduction of duties would have been due to the reduced rates of duty, and how much had been regained by increased consumption. Again, if the Excise duties had been increased, as in the Budget of 1909, to such a degree that the total revenue at the higher duty was less than the total revenue from the lower duty, who could have determined whether this was a case requiring a payment from the Irish to the British Exchequer, or from the British to the Irish Exchequer.
Perhaps the most striking novelty of the first scheme of 1893 was the retention of the Customs duties in lieu of Ireland's contribution to Imperial Services. At that time the estimated value of the Customs contributed by Ireland was £2,400,000, and seeing that in 1886 her reasonable share of liability on account of Imperial Services was put at £4,600,000, the very large gift to Ireland represented by this scheme may be readily imagined. Even with the full advantage of this gift the estimated Irish surplus was put
| Revenue | £ |
|---|---|
| 1. Excise (true revenue ex. licenses) | 2,952,000 |
| 2. Local Taxes: (a) Stamps | 333,000 |
| 2. Local Taxes: (b) Death Duties | 914,000 |
| 2. Local Taxes: (c) Income Tax | 1,307,000 |
| 2. Local Taxes: (d) Excise licenses | 284,000 |
| 3. Postal Revenue | 1,155,000 |
| 4. Miscellaneous | 150,000 |
| Sub-total | 7,095,000 |
| Deficit | 2,535,000 |
| Total | 9,630,000 |
| Expenditure | £ |
|---|---|
| 1. Civil Government charges (ex. Constabulary and Lord Lieutenant's salary) | 6,952,000 |
| 2. Collection of Ireland Revenue, etc. | 298,000 |
| 3. Postal Services | 1,404,000 |
| 4. Contribution to Constabulary (two thirds of £1,464,500) | 976,000 |
| Total | 9,630,000 |
The narrow surplus of £144,000 has disappeared, and instead there is on present-day figures the substantial deficit of £2,535,000. Here again it may be observed that the Excise duties are fixed by the Imperial Parliament, and the Postal charges are presumably also invariable. The first Budget deficit would, as before, be not less than £3,000,000. The taxes within the absolute control of the Irish Parliament would have been producing a revenue of £2,838,000. It is within this range of taxation, or by the imposition of new direct taxes, that the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been compelled to raise an additional £3,000,000 in order to make the two sides of his account balance. Owing to the mistake already referred to, Mr. Gladstone prepared and presented a third scheme, whose principal features were as follows:
| Revenue | £ |
|---|---|
| 1. Customs | 2,866,000 |
| 2. Excise (ex. license duties) | 2,952,000 |
| 3. Stamps | 333,000 |
| 4. Death duties | 914,000 |
| 5. Licence duties | 284,000 |
| 6. Income Tax | 1,307,000 |
| 7. Crown Lands, etc. | 25,000 |
| Sub-total | 8,681,000 |
| 8. Two thirds of £ 8,965,000 | 5,787,000 |
| 9. Miscellaneous Receipts | 115,000 |
| Sub-total | 5,902,000 |
| Deficit | 2,275,000 |
| Total | 8,177,000 |
| Expenditure | £ |
|---|---|
| 1. Civil Government Charges | 6,952,000 |
| 2. Constabulary (two thirds of £1,464,000) | 976,000 |
| 3. Estimated deficit on Postal Services | 249,000 |
| Total | 8,177,000 |
The main Irish objection to a scheme of this description is that, whatever tax be imposed, the amount taken from the Irish taxpayer would be 50 per cent greater than the amount going into the Irish Exchequer. It is easy to foresee that such an arrangement would have led to much friction and difficulty, and that it could not have lasted even the six years for which it was provisionally fixed. If applied to the present situation Ireland would have been contributing less than £3,000,000 for Imperial services, although a very moderate estimate of what her contribution should be would require her to pay at least £5,000,000. In spite of this modest payment, however, this scheme would have confronted the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer with a deficit of more than £2,250,000 rising at once to £2,700,000 in consequence of the Insurance Act.
In reviewing the three financial schemes which have previously seen the light, the following facts stand out clearly:
In view of these facts it is certain that any arrangement which pretended to give a Budget surplus to the Irish Parliament would involve, overtly or covertly, the payment of a large subsidy to Ireland out of the Imperial Exchequer. Such a contingency is not likely to make Home Rule more acceptable, or the path of any Bill, through Parliament more easy.
There is no argument in favour of Home Rule for Ireland which is more frequently used today than that which is based on the analogy of our Colonial experience. In the history of every one of our Colonies—so runs one variant of the argument—from Lord Durham's report on Canada down to the grant of responsible government to the Transvaal, ‘Home Rule’ has turned disaffection into loyalty, and has inaugurated a career of prosperity. Why should we then hesitate to apply to Irish discontent the ‘freedom’ which has proved so sovereign a remedy elsewhere? Again, if our Dominions have been able to combine local Home Rule with national unity—so runs another variant—why should a policy which works successfully in Canada or Australia not work in the United Kingdom? Another suggestion freely thrown out is that Home Rule is only the beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the goal of Imperial Federation. In one form or another the Colonial Analogy occupies the foreground of almost every speech or article in favour of Irish Home Rule. The ablest, as well as the most courageous, piece of Home Rule advocacy which has so far appeared, Mr. Erskine Childers's Framework of Home Rule, is based from first to last on this analogy and on little else.
That the argument is effective cannot be gainsaid. It is the argument which appeals most strongly to the great body of thoughtful Liberals who from every other point of view look upon the project with unconcealed misgiving. It is
But, as a matter of fact, there is no such analogy bearing on the question which, here and now, is at issue. On the contrary the whole trend of Colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the essential soundness of the position which Unionists have maintained throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of Ireland and of Great Britain, demand that they should remain members of one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation.
The whole argument, indeed, plausible as it is, is based on a series of confusions, due, in part, to deliberate obscuring of the issue, in part to the vagueness of the phrase ‘Home Rule,’ and to the general ignorance of the origin and real nature of the British Colonial system. There are, indeed, three main confusions of thought. There is, first of all, the confusion between ‘free’ or ‘self-governing’ institutions, as contrasted with unrepresentative or autocratic rule, and separate government, whether for all or for specified purposes, as contrasted with a common government. In the next place there is the confusion between the status of
The confusion of ideas between self-government and separate government pervades the whole argument that the granting of ‘Home Rule’ to Ireland would be analogous to the grant of responsible institutions to the Colonies. The essence of Home Rule is the creation of a separate government for Ireland. The essence of our Colonial policy has been the establishment of popular self-government in the Colonies. That this self-government has been effected through local parliaments and local executives, and not by representation in a common parliament, is a consequence of the immense distances and the profound differences in local conditions separating the Dominions from the Mother Country. It is an adaptation of the policy to peculiar conditions, and not an essential principle of the policy itself.
This is obvious from any consideration of the circumstances under which the policy of Colonial self-government originated. Under the old Colonial system which preceded it, the Governor not only controlled the executive government, whose members were simply his official subordinates, but also controlled legislation through a nominated Upper Chamber or Legislative Council. The object of this restrictive policy was not interference with local affairs, but the supposed necessity of safeguarding general Imperial interests. Local affairs were, in the main, left to the local government. But the peculiar constitution of that government rendered it almost inevitable that the practical control of those affairs should fall into the hands of a narrowly limited class, clustering round the Governor and his circle, and by its privileges and prejudices creating in those excluded from that class a spirit of opposition, which extended from its members to the whole Imperial system which they were supposed to personify. In each of the North American Colonies a small oligarchy, generally known as the ‘Family
From the foregoing brief summary, it is sufficiently clear that the really vital feature of the policy inaugurated by Lord Durham was the acceptance of responsible popular government in local affairs, and not the separation of Colonial government from Imperial control. The policy did not involve the setting up of new legislative machinery or a new definition of Imperial relations. For an existing system of separate government in local affairs, which created friction and discontent, it simply substituted a new system which has, in the main, worked smoothly up to the present. From the success of this policy, what possible direct inference can be drawn as to the effect of setting up in Ireland, not a similar system of government, for Ireland already enjoys political institutions as fully representative as those of any
At the same time the success of responsible government in the Colonies is, on closer examination, by no means without bearing on the problem of Ireland. That system of Colonial responsible government which seems to us so simple and obvious is, on the contrary, one of the most artificial systems the world has ever known, based as it is upon conditions which have never been present before in the world's history, and which are now rapidly disappearing, never, perhaps, to recur. That a popular assembly in complete control of the executive, should respect an unwritten convention limiting its powers and rights to purely local affairs, and submit to a purely external control of its wider interests and destinies, seemed to most of Lord Durham's contemporaries almost unthinkable. Not only those who opposed the policy, but many of those who advocated it, were convinced that it would lead to complete separation. Nor were their fears or hopes by any means ill-grounded. That they were not justified by the event was due to an altogether exceptional combination of factors. The first of these was the overwhelming supremacy of the United Kingdom in commerce and naval power, and its practical monopoly of political influence in the outer world. Sheltered by an invincible navy, far removed from the sound of international conflict, the Colonies had no practical motive for concerning themselves with foreign affairs, or with any but purely local measures of defence. Even when, as in 1854, they were technically involved by the United Kingdom in war with a great Power, they were not so much as inconvenienced. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, incurred no serious expenditure for their defence beyond what was in any case required for the defence of its sea-borne commerce, nor was its foreign policy at any time seriously deflected by regard for Colonial considerations. Even when the Colonies encroached on the original limits set them, and began to establish protectionist tariffs against the Mother Country, British manufacturers could afford to disregard a handicap
The British system of Colonial self-government has so far proved workable because of the exceptional circumstances in which it originated. But its success cannot be regarded as wholly unqualified. The failure to provide any direct representation of Colonial interests and aspirations in the Imperial Parliament may not have mattered as far as foreign policy and defence were concerned. But it did affect the colonies most seriously from the economic point of view, for it precluded them from pressing with any effect for the development of inter-Imperial communications, or from resisting the abolition of the system of preferential trade which meant so much to their prosperity. Under the influence of a narrowly selfish and short-sighted policy, inspired by English manufacturing interests, Canada saw the stream of commerce and population pass by her shores on its way to the United States. The relative progress of the British Colonies and of the United States since the abolition of preference is some measure of the economic weakness of a political system which has no common trade policy. In any case the British Colonial system, as we have known it, is inevitably moving towards its crisis. The conditions under which it originated are fast disappearing.
The conditions—geographical, economic, political— which, in the Colonies, made the grant of free institutions, unaccompanied by some form of political federation or union, even a temporary success, were, indeed, exceptional. None of them were present in the circumstances of Ireland before the Union. They are not present today. Geographically the United Kingdom is a single compact island group, of which Ireland is by no means the most outlying portion. No part of Ireland is today, or ever was, as inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter parts of the Highlands, not to speak of the Shetlands or Hebrides. Racially, no less than physically, Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, peopled as it is with the same mixture of racial elements as the main island of the group. The blend of Celt with Dane, with Normans and English of the Pale, with English citizens of the seaports and Cromwellian settlers, which constitutes Celtic Ireland, so-called, is less Celtic both in speech and in blood than either Wales or the Highlands. Religion alone has maintained a difference between a predominantly Celtic and a predominantly Teutonic Ireland which would otherwise have disappeared far more complete than the difference between Celtic and Teutonic Scotland. Economically,
On the other hand, politically, Ireland was for centuries treated as a colon— ‘the first and nearest of the Colonies,’ as Mr. Childers puts it. The difficulties and defects of early Colonial government were intensified by the great conflict of the Reformation, which made Ireland a centre of foreign intrigue, and by the long religious and constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century, which fell with terrible severity upon a population, which had throughout espoused the losing cause. Cromwell, realising that ‘if there is to be a prosperous, strong and United Kingdom there must be one Parliament and one Parliament only,’ freed Ireland from the Colonial status. Unfortunately, his policy was reversed in 1660, and for over a century Ireland endured the position of ‘least favoured Colony’—least favoured, partly because, with the possible exception of linen, all her industries were competitive with, and not complementary to English industries, and so were deliberately crushed in accordance with the common economic policy of the time, partly because the memories of past struggles kept England suspicious and jealous of Irish prosperity. Every evil under which the old colonial system laboured in Canada before the rebellion was intensified in Ireland by the religious and racial feud between the mass of the people and the ascendant caste. The same solvent of free government that Durham recommended was needed by Ireland. In view of the geographical and economic position of Ireland, and in the political circumstances of the time, it could only be applied through union with Great Britain. Union had been vainly prayed for by the Irish Parliament at the time of the Scottish Union. Most thoughtful students, not least among them Adam Smith,46 had seen in it the only cure for the evils which afflicted the hapless island.
Meanwhile, in I782, the dominant caste utilised the Ulster volunteer movement to wrest from Great Britain, then in the last throes of the war against France, Spain, and America, the independence of the Irish Parliament. Theoretically co-equal with the British Parliament, Grattan's Parliament was, in practice, kept by bribery in a position differing very little from that of Canada before the rebellion. Still the new system in Ireland might, under conditions resembling those of Canada in 1840, have gradually evolved into a workable scheme of self-government. But the conditions were too different. A temporary economic revival, indeed, followed the removal of the crippling restrictions upon Irish trade. But, politically, the new system began to break down almost from the start. Its entanglement in English party politics, which geography made inevitable, lead to deadlocks over trade and over the regency question, the latter practically involving the right to choose a separate sovereign. The same geographical conditions made it impossible for Ireland to escape the influence of the French Revolution. The factious spirit and the oppression of the ruling caste did the rest. There is no need to dwell here on the horrors of the rising of 1798, and of its repression, or on the political and financial chaos that marked the collapse of an ill-starred experiment. England, struggling for her existence, had had enough of French invasion, civil war, and general anarchy on her flank. The Irish Parliament died, as it had lived, by corruption, and Castlereagh and Pitt conferred upon Ireland the too long delayed boon of equal partnership in the United Kingdom.
The mistakes which, for a century, deprived the Union of much of its effect—the delay in granting Catholic emancipation, the folly of Free Trade, acquiesced in by Irish members, by which agrarian strife was intensified, and through which Ireland again lost the increase of population which she had gained in the first half century of Union—need not be discussed here. The fact remains that today Ireland is prosperous, and on the eve of far
In one aspect, then, the Union was the only feasible way of carrying out the principle which underlay the successful establishment of Colonial self-government. In another aspect it was the last step of a natural and, indeed, inevitable process for which the history of the British Colonies since the grant of self-government has furnished analogies in abundance. It has furnished none for the reversal of that process. It is only necessary to consider the reasons which, in various degrees, influenced the several groups of independent Colonies in North America, Australia, and South Africa to unite under a single government, whether federal or unitary, thus wholly or partially surrendering the ‘Home Rule’ previously enjoyed by them, in order to see how close is the parallel. The weak and scattered North American Colonies were at a serious disadvantage in all political and commercial negotiations with their powerful neighbour, the United States, a fact very clearly emphasised by the termination of Lord Elgin's reciprocity treaty in 1864. None of them was in a position to deal with the vast territories of the North-West, undeveloped by the Hudson's Bay Company,
All the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies, also characterised the relations of Great Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. But there was this difference: the immense disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised by
Now for the ‘exception which proves the rule’: there is one Colonial analogy for what would be the position of Ireland under Home Rule, namely, the position of Newfoundland outside the confederation of the other North American Colonies.47 The analogy is only partial, for this reason, that whereas Ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on Great Britain, Newfoundland has little direct trade with Canada, and moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely codfish, by which it manages to support its small population. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical position, and with its great natural resources, Newfoundland would have been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years it had been an integral part of the Dominion. Nor is the loss all on the side of Newfoundland, as the history of
So much for the first confusion, that which would base the case for a separate government in Ireland on the success of free institutions in the Colonies, entirely ignoring the whole movement for union, which has made every geographical group of Colonies follow the example of the Mother Country. We must now deal with the second confusion, that which is based on a hazy notion that Home Rule is only a preliminary step to endowing the United Kingdom as a whole with a working federal constitution like that of Canada or Australia. Ireland, in fact, so runs the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental Quebec, and the other provinces will follow suit shortly. Not all Home Rulers, indeed, are obsessed by this confusion. Mr. Childers, for instance, makes short work of what he calls the ‘federal chimera,’ dismissing the idea as ‘wholly impracticable,’ and pointing out that Home Rule must be ‘not merely non-federal, but anti-federal.’ But the great majority of Liberals today are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the Nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them. in that talk, with the idea of Home Rule for Ireland followed by ‘Home Rule all round.’
The new Home Rule Bill has not yet appeared, but certain main features of it can be taken for granted. It will be a Bill which, save possibly for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with Ireland only. It will set up in Ireland an Irish legislature and executive responsible for the ‘peace, order, and good government’ of Ireland, subject to certain restrictions and limitations. It will assign to Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish representatives at Westminster. So far from fixing any contribution to Imperial expenditure from Ireland, it will, apparently, include the provision of an Imperial grant in aid towards Land Purchase and Old Age Pensions. Any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest federal system. A federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly defined. The Home Rule Bill will certainly not set up any such division of government and its functions in Great Britain. Nor will it, in reality, set up any such effective double system of government in Ireland. What it will set up will be a national or Dominion government in Ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions and interferences which it will be the first business of the Irish representatives, in Dublin or Westminster, to get rid of. Long before Scotland or Wales, let alone England, get any consideration of their demand for Home Rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any quasi-federal element the Bill may contain will have been got rid of.
In a federation every citizen, in whatever state or province he resides, is as fully a citizen of the federation as every other citizen. He not only has the same federal vote, and pays the same federal taxes, but he has the same access to the federal courts, and the same right to the direct protection of the federal executive. In what sense are any
Mr. Asquith at St. Andrews, Dec. 7, 1910.
of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the United Kingdom the whole of itsThe truth is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and hesitating Home Rulers in line—a tactical manoeuvre of much the same character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state subject to certain restrictions which the Government have no serious intention of enforcing, and the Irish every intention of disregarding, or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. For this policy of pretence there is one admirable parallel in our Colonial history—the policy by which ‘Home Rule’ was ‘given’ to the Transvaal after Majuba. It was the same policy of avoiding expense and trouble, political or military—the policy, in fact, of ‘cutting the loss’—tricked out with the same humbug about ‘magnanimity’ and ‘conciliation,’ about trust in Boer (or Nationalist) moderation when in power, the same contemptuous passing over of the loyalists as persons of ‘too pronounced’ views, or as ‘interested contractors and stock-jobbers.’ 48 It was embodied in a Convention by which the ‘inhabitants of the Transvaal territory’ were ‘accorded complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of Her Majesty’ under a series of limitations which, if enforced, would have implied a measure of British control in many respects greater than that exercised over a self-governing Colony, and with a number of guarantees to protect the loyalists. The Government was able to ‘save its face,’ while its hesitating followers were able to quiet their consciences, by the reassuring phrases of the Convention. The Boer Volksraad frankly declared itself still dissatisfied, but ratified the Convention, ‘maintaining all objections to the Convention
[...]
and for the purpose of showing to everybody that the love of peace and unity
From the first the limitations of the Convention were disregarded. Short of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the Boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of an embarrassed Government to raise a hornet's nest by making the attempt. The British resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was a mere impotent laughing stock. The ruined loyalists left the country, or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the British Government. In three years a new Convention was drafted—an even greater masterpiece of make-believe than the first—which could be expounded to Parliament as a mere modification of certain unworkable provisions, but which the Boers took as a definite surrender of all claims to suzerainty, and as a definite recognition of their position as an ‘independent sovereign state,’ bound temporarily by the provisions of a treaty, which could have no permanent force in ‘fixing the boundary to the march of a nation.’ So far from being reconciled they were only emboldened to embark on a policy of aggression, which in 1881 involved the British Government in military measures costing nearly as much as would have been required to suppress the whole rising in 1881. For the time being the stagnation and chronic bankruptcy which followed the removal of British rule and the exodus of the loyalists limited Transvaal ambitions. The gold discoveries both increased that ambition by furnishing it with revenue, and at the same time brought about a close
The reservations and guarantees which this Home Rule Bill may contain cannot possibly constitute the framework of a federal constitution. All they can guarantee is a period of friction and agitation which will continue till Ireland has secured a position of complete separation from the United Kingdom. At the best the Home Rule experiment would then reduce Ireland to the position of another Newfoundland; at the worst it might repeat all the most disastrous features of the history of ‘Home Rule’ in the Transvaal. At the same time it may be worth inquiring how far there would really be any valid Colonial analogy for the introduction of a federal system of ‘Home Rule all round’ if such a scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close confederation of Canada in which all residuary powers are vested in the Dominion. There is the non-federal unitary government of South Africa with a system of provincial local governments with somewhat wide county council powers. There is, lastly, the purely unitary government of the two islands of New Zealand. Each of
This also was the view of the framers of the South African Union. The circumstances of South Africa enabled them to carry it into effect. For all its extent, South Africa is geographically a single, homogeneous country with no marked internal boundaries. It is peopled by two white races everywhere intermixed in varying proportions and nowhere separated into large compact blocks. The immense preponderance and central position of the Rand mining industry makes South Africa practically a single economic system. The very bitterness of the long political and racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really effective union.
If we compare the conditions in the United Kingdom with those of the Dominions it is obvious at once that there is no possible analogy with the conditions of Canada or Australia, but a considerable analogy with South Africa and New Zealand. The British Isles are but little larger than the New Zealand group, and much more compact and homogeneous. Their close economic intercourse, the presence of two races with a history of strife behind them, but compelled by their inextricable geographical blending to confront the necessity of union, are reproduced in the conditions of South Africa. In so far then as the Colonial analogy bears upon the question at all, it cannot be said to be in favour of Federal Home Rule any more than of Separatist Home Rule. The most it can fairly be said to warrant is the establishment of provincial councils with powers akin to those of the South African Councils. For such councils, built up by the federation of adjoining counties and county boroughs, carrying out more effectively some of the existing powers of those bodies, and adding to them such other powers, legislative or administrative, as it may be convenient to bestow on them, a very strong case may be made on the grounds of the congestion of
But if the congestion of Parliamentary business might be appreciably relieved by some such provincial bodies— larger ‘national’ bodies would only duplicate work, not relieve it—the true remedy for the confusion of principles and objectives which, rather than the mere waste of time, is the chief defect of our Parliamentary system, lies in a proper separation of the local affairs of the United Kingdom from the general work of the Empire, in other words, in some form of Imperial federation. What is needed is not the creation of separate parliaments within the United Kingdom, but the creation of a separate Parliament for the United Kingdom, a Parliament which should deal with the affairs of the United Kingdom considered as one of the Dominions, leaving the general problems of Imperial policy to a common Imperial Parliament or Council equally representative of the citizens of every Dominion. No form of Home Rule can in any sense advance that desirable solution of our Imperial problems. The creation of an additional Dominion in the shape of Ireland would merely add one to the number of units to be considered, and would be contrary to the spirit of the resolution passed at the 1897 Conference, that it was desirable ‘wherever and whenever practicable, to group together under a federal union those Colonies which are geographically united.’ The problem would be no more affected by the setting up of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom, than it would be if South Africa decided, after all, to give her provinces federal powers, or Australia carried unification by a referendum. The notion that the Dominions could simply come inside the United Kingdom federation, though it sometimes figures in Home Rule speeches, is merely a product of the third form of confusion of ideas previously referred to, and is a sheer absurdity. The terms and conditions of a United Kingdom federation would necessarily differ in almost every respect from those of an Imperial Federation, and a constitution framed for the one object would be unworkable
It should be sufficiently clear from the foregoing analysis that the vague and confused claim that the success of British colonial policy is an argument for the Home Rule Bill has no shadow of justification. It has been shown, first of all, that the factor of success in our Colonial policy was not the factor of separatism implied in Home Rule, but the factor of responsible government already secured for Ireland by the Union. It has been shown, secondly, that the experience of the Colonies since the establishment of responsible government has in every case forced union upon them, and union in the closest form which the facts of trade and geography permitted of. Colonial experience is thus no argument even for a federal scheme of ‘Home Rule all round,’ if such a scheme could possibly result from an Irish Home Rule Bill, which it cannot. The disadvantages and dangers of the contrary policy of disunion have been shown, in their least noxious form in the case of Newfoundland, which has simply remained outside the adjoining Dominion, and in their deadliest form in the case of the Transvaal, where ‘Home Rule’ was given in 1881, as it would be given to Ireland today, if the Government succeeded, not from conviction and wholeheartedly, but as a mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most disingenuous and least workable provisions. Lastly, it has been made clear that Home Rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true Imperial Union. Unionists and Imperialists can choose no better ground for their resistance to Home Rule than the wide and varied field of Colonial experience.
But Colonial experience can give us more than that. It can provide us not only with an immense mass of arguments and instances against disruption, but with invaluable instances of what can be done to strengthen and build up the Union against all possible future danger of disruptive tendencies. The confederation of Canada was accomplished in the teeth of all the geographical and economic conditions of the time. Canadian statesmanship thereupon set itself to transform geography, and to divert the course of trade in order to make the Union a reality. The Intercolonial Railway, the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific, the proposed Hudson Bay Railway, and the Georgian Bay Canal schemes, all these have been deliberate instruments of policy, aiming, first of all, at bridging the wilderness between practically isolated settlements scattered across a continent, and creating a continuous Canada, east and west; and, secondly, at giving that continuous strip depth as well as extension. Hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly. Australia, too, is waking, though somewhat hesitatingly, to the need of transcontinental railways, for the protection of new industries and for the even development and filling up of all her territories. In South Africa the economic process preceded the political. It was the dread of the breakdown of a temporary customs union already in existence that precipitated the discussion of union. And it was the development of the Rand as the great internal market of South Africa, and the competitive construction of railway lines from the coast, that really decided the question of legislative union against federation. All three instances lead to the same conclusion that union to be really effective and stable needs three things: firstly, a developed system of internal communications reducing all natural barriers to
In the United Kingdom all these instruments for making the Union real are still unutilised. The system of laisser faire in the matter of internal communications has allowed St. George's Channel still to remain a real barrier. A dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, but enabling the true west coast of the United Kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would obliterate that strip of sea which a British minister recently urged as an insuperable objection to a democratic union.50 To construct them would not be doing as much, relatively, as little Denmark has long since done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. The creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but agriculture and rural industries, is another essential step. In view of Ireland's undeveloped industrial condition the giving of bounties to the establishment in Ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry, would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the Unionist policy carried out through the Congested Districts Board and the Department of Agriculture. The diversion to Ireland of a larger part of the general national and Imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of contracts for Army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to Ireland and to the Union. Ireland suffers today economically and politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth. It is the business of Unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the Union, but to give it a vitality and fullness of content which it has never possessed.
The various forecasts, inspired and uninspired, of the new Home Rule Bill which have been given to us, have shed little light upon the future of the Irish Judiciary and Police. The two previous Bills contemplated the handing over of the control of the whole administration of justice in Ireland to the Irish Executive after an interval, in the first case of two years, and in the later Bill, of six years. We may assume that, whatever period of grace may be allowed to us under the coming measure, it will propose to vest this control in the Irish Government within six years. The interposition of any interval at all will probably be regarded by Ministers as a concession to Unionist fears and as one of the ‘safeguards’ in which the minority will be urged to place its trust. It must be realised at once that, so far from this interval making the transition from British justice to Irish intrigue easier and more safe, it may have precisely the contrary effect. Once the Irish police are convinced that they are about to be delivered into the hands of the secret organisations who have been the most successful and relentless enemies of public order in Ireland, a paralysis must fall upon the force. During the closing years of the transition, at all events, the Royal Irish Constabulary will be given nominal responsibility for the peace of the country without any opportunity effectually to preserve it. It would be fairer and better to cast upon puppet nominees of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood the responsibility and odium of controlling the passions that they have helped to
The first thing necessary for securing public and private liberty in a country like Ireland, where party feeling runs high and internal disputes have a bitterness from which more fortunate countries are free, is a strong independent and impartial administration of the law. This can only be secured by freeing the Courts from any kind of interference or control on the part of the Executive, and by ensuring that the whole armed forces of the Executive should be at the disposal of the Courts for executing and enforcing their decrees. Let us only assume a case to arise after the statutory period had elapsed, such as is now of frequent occurrence in the Irish Courts. The Land Judge, for instance, or the Judge of the Court of Bankruptcy, finds it necessary to order the arrest of the chairman and secretary of a local branch of the United Irish League for interfering by gross intimidation with a sale under the order of his Court. The case excites a good deal of local feeling and the arrests can only be effected by the employment of a large force of armed police. The question is raised on a motion for adjournment in the Irish House of Commons. The majority of the members owe their seats to the intervention of the United Irish League, many of them—perhaps most—have themselves been in similar conflicts with the
We must remember that the men who would have the control of the new Irish Government would be those who have spent the greater part of their lives in violent conflict with the attempts of the Irish Courts to secure respect for the elementary rights of property and of personal freedom in Ireland. Power which has been won by the open violation of every principle of English law, is not likely either to assert the authority it has lived by defying to maintaining the independence of the courts and institutions which have been its deadliest opponents. The corruption of judicial authority and prestige in Ireland will be accomplished by entrenching the Executive behind large and shadowy discretionary powers, and also by manipulating the personnel and jurisdiction of the judges and magistracy throughout the country. The most deplorable movement in modern Nationalism is the attempt to introduce into Irish politics the worst methods of American political corruption. There have recently sprung into prominence in Ireland two societies which are in some respects the most sinister, the most immoral, and the most destructive of those which have corrupted and infected public life in the country.
The situation has been strongly complicated by the promulgation of the Motu Proprio decree, and the refusal of the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church to say definitely whether it applies to Ireland or not. We may assume that, if Archbishop Walsh could have given a categorical denial to the statement that the decree must operate in Ireland under Home Rule, he would have done so. The decree Motu Proprio forbids any Roman Catholic to bring his priest or bishop into court under pain of excommunication. The Roman Catholic Church has made many similar efforts during history to oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and each attempt has had to be sharply and sternly resisted by the civil authorities of Roman Catholic countries. We need not discuss how much there may be said from a theological standpoint for the decree; we are only concerned to show that it raises pretensions which no State can possibly permit to be recognised. There have been too many attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to oust the jurisdiction of the King's Courts in Ireland, for this new attempt to be viewed with equanimity. The United Irish League has set up courts which try men for imaginary offences committed during the exercise of their ordinary civil rights, and pass illegal sentences and inflict illegal punishments. Under the reign of Liberal Governments the writ of these courts runs where the King's writ cannot run, and the law of the League has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. We have also an increasing force in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means of illegal intimidation and outrage. The people of Ireland have therefore been familiarised with the idea of courts competing in authority with those of the King's Government. Supposing under Home Rule the Judiciary proved less pliable than was expected or desired, the development of such competing authorities would be facilitated by a
We have proceeded on the assumption that the Irish Parliament would—formally, at least—confine itself within the limits prescribed by the law of its creation. But it is necessary at least to contemplate the possibility that it would prove less complaisant. The safeguards and limitations inserted in any Act of the kind must of necessity be couched in general terms. The constitutional history of the United States and other countries is full of cases showing how difficult it is to define in practice where the border line between intra and ultra vires comes. It is the custom of all Governments, if there is any possible room for debate as to their competence to take any particular line of action, to give themselves the fullest benefit of the doubt, and the Irish Government is unlikely to prove any exception to the rule. When the Judicature and all the forces of Executive Government, except the direct command of troops, is in their hands, the laws passed by the Irish Parliament could be put in force in Ireland. The British Government could not intervene except by acts which would amount to open war between the two countries. We must remember that this enforcement of Irish laws by Irish police in spite of the decisions of a ‘foreign’ Government at Westminster is openly advocated and contemplated by the large and active section of the Nationalists who have adopted as their watchword the motto ‘Ourselves alone’ (Sinn Fein). Nothing could be more futile than the idea that the judgements of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would ever be accepted as final by the Nationalist majority, or that the royal assent could ever be withheld from an Act constitutionally passed by the Irish Legislature, without precipitating a crisis. The result of applying the veto of the House of Lords in England to the measures of Liberal Ministers was the agitation for removing the veto. The Nationalists took part in that agitation and have learned its lesson. Directly the British Government asserts its
If anything could increase the danger of friction, it would be the scheme favoured by Mr. Erskine Childers and other Liberals of submitting constitutional questions to the decision of the British Privy Council reinforced by Irish judges. Either these judges would concur in verdicts given against the pretensions of the Irish Parliament or they would not. If they did concur, there would be a fierce outcry against the right of judges appointed under the Union Government to nullify Acts of the Irish Legislature. But if they did not concur, the patriotic indignation with which a decision over the heads of the Irish representatives would be received is easy to foresee. It would be a matter of the greatest difficulty to enforce any such decision when the Irish Government, supported by an agitation in the country, refused to be bound by it. The situation thus created has no parallel in the case of the colonies. In Canada or Australia, where the legislative power is divided between federal and provincial Parliaments, a decision that the one legislature is incompetent affirms the competence of the other. Both legislatures have on the spot proper means of enforcing, by judicial and executive authority, decisions which are within their powers. The case of Ireland is fundamentally different. There can be no half-way house between keeping Ireland a partner in all our legislative and judicial activities, or giving to her with a separate Executive uncontrolled and unchecked rights of internal sovereignty.
In the Home Rule controversy today Ulster occupies the place of public interest. Lord Rosebery upon one occasion committed himself to the opinion that, before Home Rule was conceded by the Imperial Parliament, England, as the predominant member of the partnership of the three kingdoms, would have to be convinced of its justice.51 He did not foresee that the party of which he was then the leader would, under duress, abandon even the pretence of consulting the ‘predominant partner,’ much less be guided by its wishes. But it has come to pass: and Ulster alone remains the stumbling-block to the successful issue of the plot against the Constitution. By Ulster we do not mean, as Mr. Sinclair points out, the geographical area, but the district which historical events have made so different in every respect from the rest of Ireland. In the Act of Union I have a personal interest from family connection. I am convinced that Lord Castlereagh was absolutely right on both Imperial and Irish grounds. I feel that so far as Ireland is concerned the conditions and position of Ulster today afford ample confirmation: and of Ulster I may claim to have some knowledge. I represented County Down in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster before it was divided into constituencies, and in my later days I have maintained my close interest in Ulster. At the least, then, I may say that the temperament, the political and religious convictions, and the character of Ulster Unionists are not unknown to me.
I often read of ‘the Ulster bogey;’ and I believe Mr. John Redmond once devoted an article in a Sunday paper to elaborate statistical calculations from which he drew the deduction that there was no Ulster question. Other Home Rulers, by an expert use of figures, show that there is a Home Rule majority in Ulster itself. To those who know Ulster their efforts fail to carry the slightest conviction. Figures, however skilfully chosen, articles in the press, however cleverly written, cannot destroy the facts of Ulster Unionist opposition to Home Rule, the intensity and seriousness of which is, I believe, only now beginning to be appreciated by His Majesty's Ministers.
I hear of ‘Ulster bigots,’ ‘Ulster deadheads,’ and assertions made that the opposition only proceeds from a few aristocratic Tory landlords. Hard words do us no harm; but abusive epithets will not lessen Ulster opposition. Indeed the more we are reviled by our opponents, the more we believe they recognize the futility of persuading us to accept Home Rule.
We read of the intense anxiety of Irish Nationalists on English platforms lest even the suspicion of intolerance should cloud their administration and legislation under Home Rule, with interest but without respect. We do not believe in these sudden repentances, and we have heard these professions time and again when the exigencies of the moment demanded them.
The spirit of change has even affected the Government. At first Ulster was to be ignored; now it is to be conciliated. There is no safeguard that they will not insert in the Bill at our request. The First Lord of the Admiralty has a list already prepared; and they will welcome additions. Mr. Redmond accepts them all; and the fact that he does it readily raises our suspicions of their worth. Has not Mr. John Dillon said that artificial guarantees in an Act of Parliament were no real protection,52 and for once it is possible to agree with him. Why should ‘bigots’ be conciliated; or ‘deadheads’
That our views receive so much attention is indeed the proof of the falsity of these hard names. Opposition to Home Rule in Ulster proceeds not from ‘bigots’ or ‘deadheads,’ not from ‘Tories,’ or ‘aristocrats,’ or ‘landlords’ exclusively. It is neither party question, nor class question. It has destroyed all differences between parties and classes. I doubt if there are any more democratic organizations than those of the Ulster Unionist Council, the Unionist Clubs, and the Orangemen. Nor are the religious bodies less popularly organized— the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians, and other Protestant denominations have no class restrictions in their government. And as for party distinctions, those of us who took part in the old political contests before Home Rule became an urgent danger are now side by side in this greater fight for our very existence.
What stronger evidence that opposition to Home Rule in Ulster is no party question is to be found than in the disappearance of the Liberal Party. I can remember when it was powerful; but it has vanished before the threat of Home Rule. All attempts to resuscitate the corpse have failed, and a Liberal Party, independent of the Nationalists, representing Ulster constituencies in the House of Commons, in spite of repeated efforts, does not exist.
Let me impress upon the people of Great Britain that Ulster opposition to Home Rule is no party matter. It is an uprising of a people against tyranny and coercion; against condemnation to servitude; against deprivation of the right of citizens to an effective voice in the government of the country. Mr. Birrell said recently at Bristol that Ulster would be right to fight if it were oppressed in its religion or despoiled of its property. We welcome his conversion. When he pleads for Ulster to wait until it is plain that oppression has come, we recall to mind the phrase so often on Liberal lips,
For our opposition to Home Rule we are condemned by the Irish Nationalists as the enemies of our country. We believe ourselves to be its best friends. We believe Home Rule to be the greatest obstacle to Irish progress and prosperity. Irish Nationalists have made Home Rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. Every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance Home Rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working through devious ways.
No one who reads the history of Ulster can doubt that its inhabitants have not as much love of Ireland and as much wish to see her prosperous as the Nationalists, They indeed attribute all Irish shortcomings to the Union. Ulstermen, bearing in mind their own progress since the Union, not unnaturally decline to accept so absurd an argument. The Union has been no obstacle to their development: why should it have been the barrier to the rest of Ireland? Ulstermen believe that the Union with Great Britain has assisted the development of their commerce and industry. They are proud of the progress of Belfast and of her position in the industrial and shipping world. Without great natural advantages it has been built up by energy, application, clearheadedness and hard work. The opposition to Home Rule is the revolt of a business and industrial community against the domination of men who have shown no aptitude for either. The United Irish League, the official organization of the Home Rule Party, is, as a Treasurer once confessed, remarkably lacking in the support of business men, merchants, manufacturers, leaders of industry, bankers, and men who compose a successful and progressive community.53 In the management of their party funds, their impending bankruptcy but
Ulster's opposition to Home Rule is no unreasoning hate. It proceeds not from the few; it is not the outcome of political prejudice; it is the hostility of a progressive and advancing people who have made their portion of the country prosperous and decline to hand it over to the control of representatives from the most backward and unprogressive counties.
They are actuated by love of their country. They yield to no one in their patriotism and their desire for Ireland's welfare. They have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform—and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and movements within Ireland herself.
Take the Irish Land Act of 1903, accepted by both political parties in Great Britain as affording the real solution of the Irish agrarian problem. What has been the Irish Nationalist attitude? Praise for it on platforms in the United States when it was essential to reach the pockets
What greater blow to the continuance of land purchase than the Birrell Act of 1909. Granted that some revision of the law was necessary in respect of finance; yet, the Act of 1909 went far beyond finance. Any one with a knowledge of land purchase law knows that the measure of 1909 contained innumerable provisions of a technical character calculated to make the free sale between landlord and tenant difficult, and in respect of a large portion of Ireland impossible. No wonder it was welcomed by the Irish
The same sad story of Nationalist opposition to Irish progress meets the student of the co-operative movement at every period of its existence. No one who knows Sir Horace Plunkett will believe for a moment that he was actuated by other than the sole desire to do something for Ireland's benefit. From the leaders of the Nationalist Party he has had no assistance, although they claim to be the only workers for Irish progress, and the co-operative, movement was intended to complete the agrarian revolution. In more recent times the hostility of the Nationalist leaders has become bolder as they found a ready instrument in Mr. T. W. Russell in his official capacity as Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture.
The co-operative movement is flourishing in spite of the opposition of the Nationalist leaders. From Ulster it has received considerable support for the reason that Ulstermen believed it to be for the benefit of Irish agriculture. Their support, unlike Nationalist hostility, has not arisen from political motives. They do not believe that Sir Horace Plunkett has given a moment's thought to politics in their relation to the co-operative movement, and they have appreciated his movement either as co-operators or as supporters and members of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society. Contrast the Ulster welcome with the Nationalist opposition, and ask why we should be denounced as bad Irishmen and the Nationalists receive praise as true lovers of Ireland.
The co-operative movement has brought into existence another movement which has for its object the prosperity of Irish industries. The Industrial Development movement which seeks to bring before the people of Ireland and the Irish public bodies the excellence of Irish manufactures
By Ulster, I mean the six counties, Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh, with the important adjacent Unionist sections of Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal, in all of which taken together the Unionist population is in an unmistakable majority, and in which the commercial and manufacturing prosperity of the province is maintained by Unionist energy, enterprise, and industry.
The relation of Ulster to a separate Irish Parliament with an Executive responsible to it, is a question which demands the most serious consideration on the part of English and Scotch electors. The Ulster Scot is not in Ireland today upon the conditions of an ordinary immigrant. His forefathers were ‘planted’ in Ulster in the troublous times of the seventeenth century. Although at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth peace had been secured all over Ireland, war was renewed in the Northern province early in the seventeenth century. The uprising was speedily crushed, and the lands of several of the rebellious nobles forfeited to the Crown. In order to prevent a repetition of lawlessness, the forfeited estates were entrusted to undertakers, on whom the obligation rested of peopling them with settlers from Great Britain. This scheme was devised in the hope that through the industry, character, and loyalty of the new population, the Northern province at all events should enjoy peace and prosperity, and become an attached portion of the King's dominions; and that eventually its influence would be usefully felt throughout the rest of Ireland. This policy was carried
These things being so, it seems to Ulster Unionists that a grave responsibility rests on their English and Scottish fellow-citizens, with regard to our position, should any constitutional changes be imposed upon our country. We are in Ireland as their trustees, having had committed to us, through their and our forefathers, the development of the material resources of Ulster, the preservation of its loyalty, and the discharge of its share of Imperial obligations.
It cannot be denied, on an examination of the history of the last three centuries, and especially of that of the one hundred and ten years since the establishment of the Legislative Union, that, through good report and ill report, and allowing for all our shortcomings, we have not unsuccessfully fulfilled our trust. Our forefathers found a province, the least favoured by nature of the four of which Ireland consists, and it is today the stronghold of Irish industry and commerce. Its capital, Belfast, stands abreast of the leading manufacturing centres in Great Britain; it contains the foremost establishments in Europe, in respect of such undertakings as linen manufacturing, ship-building, rope-making, etc. It is the fourth port in the United Kingdom in respect of revenue from Customs, its contributions thereto being £2,207,000 in 1910, as compared with £1,065,000 from the rest of Ireland. Ulster's loyalty to the British King and Constitution is unsurpassed anywhere in His Majesty's dominions.
The North of Ireland has contributed to Imperial service some of its greatest ornaments. England owes to Ulster Governors-General like Lord Dufferin and Lord Lawrence;
The Ulster plantation is the only one which has fulfilled the purpose for which Irish plantations were made. The famous colonisation on both sides of the Shannon by Cromwell entirely failed of its design, the great proportion of its families having, through inter-marriage, become absorbed in the surrounding population.
Ulster Unionists, therefore, having conspicuously succeeded in maintaining the trust committed to their forefathers, and constituting as they do a community intensely loyal to the British connection, believe that they present a case for the unimpaired maintenance of that connection which is impregnable on the grounds of racial sentiment, inherent justice, social well-being, and the continued security of the United Kingdom and of the Empire. They cannot believe that their British fellow-citizens will, at this crisis, turn a deaf ear to this claim. Three or four decades after the Ulster plantation, when, in the midst of the horrors of 1641, the Scotch colony in Ulster was threatened with extermination, it appealed for help to its motherland. It did not appeal in vain. A collection for its benefit was made in the Scottish churches, supplies of food and several regiments of Scottish soldiers were sent to its aid, and its position was saved. We are confident that the descendants of these generous helpers will be no less true to their Ulster kith and kin today.
The history and present condition of Ulster throw an important light on what is currently described as the national demand of Ireland for Home Rule. There is no national Irish demand for Home Rule, because there never has been and there is no homogeneous Irish nation. On the contrary,
But Mr. Birrell, for example, would tell us that the Nationalist unit in Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, ‘minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe.’ But a minority in the United Kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers; its place in the Constitution is to be estimated by its contribution to public well-being, by its relation to the industries and occupations of its members, by its association with the upbuilding of national character, by its fidelity to law and order, and by its sympathy with the world mission of the British Empire in the interests of civil and religious freedom. Tried by all these tests, Ulster is entitled to retain her full share in every privilege of the whole realm. Tried by the same tests the claim of 3,ooo,ooo Irish Nationalists to break up the constitution of the United Kingdom, of whose population they constitute perhaps one-fifteenth, is surely unthinkable.
Other writers in this volume have discussed Home Rule as it affects various vital interests in Ireland as a whole. It remains for me briefly to point out its special relation to the Northern province—
This would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing the representation of Ulster in that Parliament, and by removing the control of Ulster rights and liberties from Imperial Parliament and entrusting it to a hostile Parliament in Dublin. Ulstermen would thus stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their fellow-citizens in Great Britain. To place them in this undeserved inferiority, they hold to be unjust and cruel.
Ireland is pre-eminently a clerically controlled country, the number of Roman Catholic priests being per head greater than that of any country in Europe. Her staff of members of religious orders, male and female, is also enormous, their numbers having increased during the last fifty years 150 per cent, while the population has decreased 30 per cent. It is undeniable, therefore, that in a Dublin Parliament, the overwhelming majority of whose members would be adherents of the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman ecclesiastical authority, which claims the right to decide as to what questions come within the region of faith and morals would be supreme. Great stress has lately been laid in Nationalist speeches from British platforms on the tolerant spirit towards Protestants which animates Irish Roman Catholics. We gladly acknowledge that in most parts of Ireland Protestants and Roman Catholics as regards the ordinary affairs of life, live side by side on friendly neighbourly terms. Indeed, that spirit, as a consequence of the growing prosperity of Ireland, had been steadily increasing, till the recent revival of the Home Rule proposal, with its attendant fears of hierarchical ascendancy as illustrated by the promulgation of the Ne Temere decree, suddenly interrupted it. But the fundamental fact of the case is, that in the last resort, it is not with their Roman Catholic neighbours, or even with their hierarchy, that Irish Protestants have to reckon; it is rather with the Vatican,
Again, a most serious peril has just been disclosed in the publication of the Motu Proprio Papal Decree, under which the bringing by a Roman Catholic layman of a clergyman of his Church into any civil or criminal procedure in a court of law, whether as defendant or witness, without the sanction previously obtained of his bishop, involves to that layman the extreme penalty of excommunication. The same penalty appears to be incurred ipso facto by any Roman Catholic Member of Parliament who takes part in passing, and by every executive officer of the Government who takes part in promulgating, a law or decree which is held to invade the liberty or rights of the Church of Rome. This is a matter of supreme importance in our civil life. It was one of the questions which, in Reformation times, led to the breach between Henry VIII. and the Pope. In a Dublin Parliament no power could resist the provisions of this decree from becoming law. As a matter of fact, the liberty of speech and voting attaching to every member of the Roman Catholic majority in a Dublin Parliament would be under
To secure this result has long been the great educational aim of the Irish hierarchy. How they have succeeded as regards higher education Mr. Birrell's Irish Universities Act (1908) gives abundant evidence. The National University of Ireland, created by that Act, which on paper was represented to Nonconformists in England as having a constitution free from religious tests, is now, according to the recent boast of Cardinal Logue, thoroughly Roman Catholic, in spite of all paper safeguards to the contrary. Persistent attempts have been made to sectarianise the Irish primary National School system, founded seventy years ago, and which now receives an annual State endowment of £1,621,921, with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious instruction. That system worked so satisfactorily through many decades that Lord O'Hagan, the eminent first Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor of Ireland, declared that under it, up till his
The root of the evil will lie in the want of credit of an Irish Exchequer in the money markets of the world. The best financial authorities agree that if Ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair Irish contribution towards Imperial defence, an annual deficit in the Irish Exchequer of £3,000,000 to£4,000, 000. An Irish Government in such circumstances—consols themselves being now some £23 under par—could not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest. Even if the British taxpayer
Now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence. If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired. The magnates of Lombard Street and Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve. Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted business. Curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow. Already, since the present Home Rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading Irish stocks to the extent of 15 to 20 per cent. Every one in trade would suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink, income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements, would be dangerously increased.
All these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation which would certainly follow Home Rule. Unionist Ulster, from the Ulster Convention of 1892, to the Craigavon demonstration of 1911, has been consistent in her loyal determination that no Parliament but the Imperial Parliament shall control her destinies. It is an ignorant mistake to say that she is weakening in this
Under Home Rule, agricultural Ulster would also suffer. Very many Ulster farmers are now occupying owners. But a large number have not yet succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing so. Mr. Birrell's 1909 Act has already practically strangled further land purchase in Ireland, and if he intends that its completion should be the work of a Home Rule Parliament, the Ulster tenants ask where would the £75,000,000 to £100,000,000 necessary to accomplish the process, come from? 55 They know that the procuring of such a sum from an Irish Government would be hopeless, for they are aware that Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct Parliamentary authority, and whose Exchequer would be bankrupt. Home Rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not only of Ulster, but of Ireland generally, into two classes living side by side with each other—one consisting of occupying owners, the other of rent-payers without hope of ownership. The evil results in discontent, friction, deterioration of agricultural methods and lessened production would inflict serious injury on Ulster prosperity.
Again, Home Rule would involve Ulster industry and commerce in excessive taxation. No one who is aware of the passionate desire amongst Irish agitators and their
It is from having regard to considerations such as I have outlined, and of the validity of which she is profoundly convinced, that Ulster has registered the historic Convention declaration, ‘We will not have Home Rule.’ Her position is plain and intelligible. She demands no separation from her Nationalist countrymen. On the contrary, she wishes, under the protection of the Legislative Union, to live side by side with them in peaceful industry and neighbourly fellowship, with the desire that they and we may in common partake of the benefits conferred on Ireland by generous Imperial legislation and repay it by sympathetic and energetic contribution to the service of the Empire.
But if Home Rule legislation should be passed contrary to Ulster's earnest and patriotic pleading, then she claims— not a separate Parliament for herself, but that she may remain as she is in the unimpaired enjoyment of her position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom and with unaltered representation in Imperial Parliament. She wishes to continue as an Irish Lancashire, or an Irish Lanarkshire. In this relationship to Great Britain she is
But if this demand—based on loyalty to the King and Constitution, and founded on the elementary right of British citizens to the unimpaired protection of Imperial Parliament—be refused, then the only alternative is the Ulster Provincial Government, which will be organised to come into operation on the day that a Home Rule Bill should receive the Royal Assent; and under that Provisional Government we shall continue to support our king, and to render the same services to the United kingdom and to the Empire as have characterised the history of Ulster during the past three hundred years.
At the present moment no county or borough in the three southern provinces of Ireland returns a Unionist member. There are substantial minorities in many places, but very few in which there would be any chance of a successful contest. The University of Dublin sends two conspicuous Unionists to Parliament, who represent not only a constituency of graduates, but the vast majority of educated and thinking people. The bearing of the question on religious interests will be dealt with by others, but it may be said here that the Protestant community is Unionist. The exceptions are few, and are much more than counterbalanced by the Roman Catholic opponents of Home Rule, who for obvious reasons are less outspoken, but are quite as anxious to avert the threatened revolution.
The great bone of contention has always been the land, the cause of various wars and of ceaseless civil disputes. Parnell saw and said that purely political Nationalism was weak by itself, and he took up the land question to get leverage. For many years it has been evident that the only feasible solution was to convert occupiers into owners, and a very long step was made by the Purchase Act of 1903. Progress has now been arrested, for the Act of 1909 does not work. The vendors or expropriated owners, whichever is the more correct term, are expected to take a lower price and to be paid in depreciated paper. The minorities to be most immediately affected by legislation consist of landlords who are unable, though willing, to sell, and of tenants who are unable but very anxious to buy. The present
Irish Unionists laugh at the idea of a local Parliament being kept subordinate. It will have the power of making laws for everything Irish, that is, for everything that immediately concerns those that live in Ireland. There will be ceaseless efforts to enlarge its sphere of action, and if Irish members continue to sit at Westminster they will be as troublesome as ever there. If there are to be no Irish members Ireland will be a separate nation. Even candid Home Rulers confess that statutory safeguards would be of none effect. Hedged in by British bayonets the Lord Lieutenant may exercise his veto, built upon whose advice will he do it? If on that of an Irish Ministry the minority will have no protection at all, and does any one suppose it possible to go back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all Irish Bills were settled in the English Privy Council, and could not be altered in a Dublin
If a legislature is established it must be given the means of enforcing its laws. We do not know what the present Government propose to do with the Irish police, but whatever the law says in practice, they will be under the local executive. Unpopular people will not be protected, and many of them will be driven out of the country. Parliamentary Home Rulers draw rosy pictures of the future Arcadia; but they will not be able to fulfil their own prophecies. Apart from the agrarian question, there is the party of revolutionists in Ireland whose headquarters are in America. They have furnished the means for agitation, and will look for their reward. The Fenian party has less power in the United States than it used to have, but there will be congenial work to do in Ireland. A violent faction can be kept in order where there is a strong government, but in a Home Rule Ireland it would not be strong for any such purpose. Appeals to cupidity and envy would find hearers, and there could be no effective resistance. The French Jacobins were a minority but they swept all before them. In the end better counsels might prevail but the mischief done would be great, and much of it irreparable.
The justice dealt out by the superior courts in Ireland is as good as it is anywhere. A judge in the last resort has the whole force of the State behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. With an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive this would hardly be the case. The judges would
Home Rule politicians are talkative and pertinacious. As members of Parliament they are of course listened to, while Unionists outside Ulster make little noise; it is, therefore, constantly said that they acquiesce in the inevitable change. Unrepresented men cannot easily make themselves heard, but they have done what they could. An enormous meeting has been held in Dublin, and the building, which contains some 7000, was filled in a quarter of an hour. There has since been a large gathering of young men who wish to remain full citizens of the Empire in which they were born, and others are to follow. In rural districts it is almost impossible to collect people in winter. Days are short and distances are long. Unionist farmers cannot forget the outrages that prevailed some years ago, and are not yet unknown. In the native land of boycotting and cattle-driving it is not surprising that they do not wish to be conspicuous. The difficulty extends to the towns, in many of which it would be almost impossible to hire a room for Unionist purposes. Hotel keepers object to risking their business and their windows, for a mob is easily excited to riot on patriotic grounds. Shopkeepers also have to be cautious in a country which has been wittily described as a land of liberty where no one can do as he likes, but where every one must do exactly what everybody else likes. In the summer people can meet in the open air, and there will, no doubt, be abundant protests from Southern Unionists. There will then be something definite to talk about.
It is often said that the County Councils have done well, and that therefore there is no danger in an Irish Parliament, but the two things are different in kind. County or District Councils, or Boards of Guardians, are constituted by Acts of the Imperial Parliament to administer Acts of the same, and are subject to constant supervision by the Local Government Board, and to the peremptory action of the King's Bench. A Parliament is by nature supreme within its sphere of action, and its constant effort would be to enlarge that field. The men who aim at independence would have the easy part to play, for no one in or out of Ulster, former Unionist or confirmed Nationalist, would have any interest in opposing them. In the meantime local councils have taught us what is likely to happen. Minorities are virtually excluded from them and from paid places in their gift. Of Protestants holding local office the great majority are survivals from the old Grand Jury system. Political discussions are frequent, but they are all among Nationalists. Intolerance of independent opinion and impatience of criticism are everywhere noticeable, and the Corporation of Dublin does not show a good example. It is intolerance of this kind rather than any approach to religious persecution that Protestants suffer from in the present and fear for the future.
Men who have something to lose dread the idea of Home Rule, including farmers who have bought their holdings, but as yet this has not been allowed time to work. There is a long way between not caring to support a Nationalist and voting for a Unionist. The chief employers of labour are mostly for the Union, but few are in a position to help the Unionist cause effectively, for they have to deal with strike makers and possible boycotters. When Labour troubles come, Nationalist politicians try to make out that they are caused by English agitators, and that there would be none under Home Rule. The probability is all the other way. There could be nothing in the existence of an Irish Parliament to prevent English Socialists from crossing the Channel, and some Labour leaders in England are Irish.
Most Unionists, and many who call themselves Home Rulers, are satisfied with the form of government they now have. The country has prospered wonderfully, and it will continue to prosper if the land purchase system is carried out to the end in a liberal spirit. The worst danger comes from the check given to the process by the present Ministry. But the national feelings of Ireland must not be ignored. Her far-back history, bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. In a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. But over the past not Jove himself hath power, and it is for the future that we are responsible. From Wellington onwards Ireland has given many great soldiers to the British Army, and it is the classes from which they spring that it is now proposed to abandon. Under Home Rule the flag would be a foreign emblem, useless to protect the weak in Ireland, and perhaps available to oppress them. England would have cast off her friends and gained none in exchange. Nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in Ireland, and there is every reason to think that it would become the strongest.
Ireland under Home Rule must, in the event of war, be regarded as a potentially hostile country.
In this statement resides the dominant factor of the situation viewed from the naval and military point of view. It is not asserted that the government of Ireland would be disloyal; but it is asserted that the authorities charged with the defence of his Majesty's dominions cannot afford to take risks when the safety of the country is at stake. That such risks must exist under the circumstances indicated, is obvious to all those who have studied the speeches of the leaders of the Irish Nationalist party, in which they have unequivocally declared their intention to rid Ireland of English rule, and in which they extol as heroes such men as Theobald Wolfe Tone, who intrigued with France against England in order to achieve Irish independence, and who took his own life rather than receive the just reward of his deeds. That some among the Irish Nationalist leaders have recently professed their devotion to the British Empire cannot be regarded by serious persons as a relevant consideration. The demand for Home Rule is in fact a demand for separation from the United Kingdom or it is nothing. Naval officers are accustomed to deal with facts rather than with words.
In the great sea-wars of the past, Ireland has always been regarded by the enemy as providing the base for a flank attack upon England. Had King Louis XIV. rightly used his opportunities, the army of King William would have been cut off from its base in England, and would have been destroyed by reinforcements arriving from France to
There can be little doubt that an effective co-operation of the French fleet in the summer of 1689 would have broken down all opposition to James in Ireland, by isolating that country from England, with corresponding injury to William's power.’’
The battle of the Boyne, which from its peculiar religious colouring has obtained a somewhat factitious celebrity, may be taken as the date at which the English crown was firmly fixed on William's head. Yet it would be more accurate to say that the success of William, and with it the success of Europe, against Louis XIV. in the war of the League of Augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the French naval campaign in 1690; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous single success the French have ever gained at sea over the English.’’Every great naval power has gone to school to Admiral Mahan; and this country can hardly expect again to profit by those mistakes in strategy which the gifted American writer has so lucidly exposed.
Ireland, lying on the western flank of Great Britain, commands on the south the approaches to the Channel, on the west the North Atlantic, and on the east the Irish Sea, all sea-roads by which millions of pounds' worth of supplies are brought to England. On every coast Ireland has excellent harbours. There are Lough Swilly on the north, Blacksod Bay on the west, Bantry Bay, Cork Harbour and Waterford Harbour on the south, Kingstown Harbour and Belfast Lough on the east— to name but these—besides numerous lesser inlets which can serve as shelter for small craft and destroyers. It should here be noted that Belfast Harbour, owing to the enterprise of the Harbour Board, now possesses a channel and dock capable of accommodating a ship of the Dreadnought type.57
There is no necessity to presuppose an actively hostile Ireland; but an Ireland ruled by a disloyal faction would easily afford shelter to the warships of the enemy in her ports, whence they could draw supplies, where they could execute small repairs, and could coal from colliers despatched there for the purpose or captured. Thus lodged, a fleet or a squadron would command the main trade routes to England; and might inflict immense damage in a short time. Intelligence of its position could be prevented from reaching England by the simple method of destroying wireless stations and cutting cables.
These considerations would necessarily impose upon the Navy the task of detaching a squadron of watching cruisers charged with the duty of keeping guard about the whole of Ireland.
Is the Admiralty prepared to discharge this office in the event of war?
If not, there falls to be considered the further danger of the invasion of Ireland. That such a peril is not imaginary, is proved by the fact that Ireland has been invaded in the past.
The attempt of Hoche and Grouchy to land in Bantry Bay in 1796 failed ignominiously; and the next expedition
On August 27 Humbert defeated the British troops at Castlebar ‘Races.’ On September 8, his forces surrendered at Ballinamuck to Lord Cornwallis. General Humbert was carried to England; and it is worth noting that while he was on his way, Admiral Bompard set sail from Brest with a ship of the line and three frigates, carrying 2587 men and 172 officers, commanded by General Hardy and the notorious Wolfe Tone (called General Smith for the occasion). Bompard was turned back by an English fleet of forty-two sail. The obvious conclusion of the whole matter is that the fleet can stop an invasion, always provided that the ships thereof are the right number in the right place at the right time.
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 is often discussed as though it was wholly bred of the corruption of Ireland itself. The fact was, of course, that it was an offshoot of the French Revolution, and that the condition of Ireland at the time was no more than a contributory cause. My Lords Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare, in combating the forces of the Rebellion, were actually in conflict with the vast insurrections of the French nation. The design of the Irish rebels was to enlist the mighty destructive force of France to serve their own ends.
Wolfe Tone and his colleague Lewens, in 1796, had succeeded in persuading Carnot and the French Directory to embrace the cause of Ireland. When the Rebellion of 1798 broke out, Lewens wrote to the Directory reminding them that they had promised that France should postulate the conferring of independence upon Ireland as the condition of making peace with England, and specifying five thousand troops of all arms, and thirty thousand muskets
The attitude of the Directory is defined in the despatch addressed to General Hardy (upon whom the supreme command of the Humbert expedition at first devolved) by Bruix, Minister of Marine, dated July 30, 1798.
The executive Directory is busily engaged in arranging to send help to the Irish who have taken up arms to sever the yoke of British rule. It is for the French Government to second the efforts of a brave people who have too long suffered under oppression.’’
In other words, the Directory regarded the achievement of her independence by Ireland as an enterprise incidental to the greater scheme of the conquest of England and of Europe.
It was further laid down in the despatch that it is most important to take every possible means to arouse the public spirit of the country, and particularly to foster sedulously its hatred of the English name.
[...]
There has never been an expedition whose result might more powerfully affect the political situation in Europe, or could more advantageously assist the Republic.’’
Irish conspirators have never risen to play any part higher than the office of cat's-paw to a foreign nation. Today, they are content—at present—to bribe with votes a political party in England. But it is none the less essential to remember that, as in 1688 and as in 1798 a great and militant foreign Power used the weapon of Irish sedition against England, so in 1912 the same instrument lies ready to hand. For the Home Rule conspiracy of today is nothing but the lees of the evil heritage bequeathed by the French Revolution.
It is the business of the naval officer, who is not concerned with party politics, to estimate the posture of international affairs solely in relation to the security of the State. The condition of Ireland at this moment, when the Home Rule issue has been wantonly revived, would, in the event of a war occurring between Great Britain and a
These considerations must materially affect strategical dispositions in the event of war, involving the establishment and maintenance of a separate force of cruisers charged with the duty of patrolling the sea routes which converge upon Ireland, and of watching the harbours of her coasts. As matters stand at present, such a force does not exist.
It may, of course, be urged that a strategical plan designed for the double purpose of surveying the movements of a hostile battle-fleet and of guarding the trade-routes, must of necessity cover the coasts of Ireland, on the principle that the greater includes the less. The argument, however, omits the essential qualification that a part of the Irish population cannot be trusted. It is this additional difficulty which has been introduced into the problem of naval defence by the revival by politicians of the agitation of 1798, under another name.
The Problems of Imperial defence have become of late years extremely complex, owing to the rise of a great European naval power, and also to the predominance of Japan in the Pacific. These two factors, combined with the invention of the Dreadnought type of ship which is now being built by other powers whose navies we could formerly afford to ignore, have rendered our position in the world more precarious, more dependent upon foreign alliances and ententes, and have rendered combination for defence far more essential. No Home Rule scheme can be judged without taking into consideration what its effect will be on this situation. It is proposed to consider it first in the light of the more pressing European danger, and next to examine how it will affect the wider problem of the future, namely, the co-operation of all parts of the British Empire for defence.
But first it is of course necessary to find out what Home Rule means, and what the internal state of Ireland will be if it passes. On this point there is at present no certainty. We can dismiss at once Mr. Redmond's picture of a serenely contented and grateful Ireland, only desirous of helping her benefactor, and, under a strong and incorruptible government, engaged in setting its house in order. The presence of a strong Protestant community, the history of the Roman Catholic Church in all countries, and the deliberate fostering of separatist national ideals preclude the possibility of anything but a prolonged period of unrest, which, on the most favourable hypothesis, can only cease
It is conceivable, of course, though it is extremely improbable, that these aims and ideals may be abjured in course of time, but the gravity of these risks must be taken into account in examining Ireland's position in any scheme of national and Imperial defence both now and in the future. And in this connection it may be remarked that an almost exact analogy to the situation which will probably result from this measure may be seen in the events which preceded the Boer war, and it seems somewhat remarkable that those who endeavour to justify Home Rule by the supposed Colonial analogy should overlook a warning so evident and so recent in the history of our oversea dominions.
A Separatist party in Ireland would be enabled to work for ultimate independence as did President Kruger, and by the same methods, the same secret acquisition of arms and implements of war, the same building of fortresses with a view to a declaration of independence when a suitable opportunity arrived; and this would be all the more likely to occur if Ulster were exempted from a Home Rule Parliament. In this case Ulstermen would occupy exactly the
It is universally acknowledged that this country is at present faced with a more critical European situation than any we have experienced for a hundred years. It has tied our fleet to home waters, and has induced a very large and influential section of our people to advocate the necessity of compulsory military service. Our military organisation is on the face of it a makeshift, and the makeshift is not even complete, for in the Territorial Army and the Special Reserve alone there is a shortage of more than 80,000 men.
Now, our foreign policy of ententes and the needs of our oversea territories have necessitated a military organisation, the foundation of which is readiness to undertake an oversea expedition as well as to provide for home defence. The critical situation in Europe especially will demand the instant despatch of our Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of war, in which case there will be left in these islands the following forces after deducting 10 per cent for casualties:—
It must be obvious that in the precarious state of our national defence anything which renders either of these dangers more probable should be avoided at all costs. If, for instance, the condition of Ireland should demand the maintenance of a larger garrison in that country, the whole of our present organisation for defence falls to pieces. Looking only at the present foreign situation, and the evergrowing menace of increasing armaments, if the passing of Home Rule should require the retention of a single extra soldier in Ireland, it is perfectly certain that nothing could justify the adoption of such a measure. It is not intended to convey the impression that there is any fear of Ireland repeating the history of 1796 and welcoming a foreign invasion, although it is impossible to ignore the anti-English campaign of agitation, or to say to what length it will go; but the mere fact of internal dissension in that country will give an enemy exactly the chance he looks for. Many of
This is the more immediate danger, but, apart from this, the strategical value of Ireland will be profoundly affected by its separation from England, and this constitutes a grave source of weakness, even if internal trouble be avoided, and a comparatively loyal government be installed. Ireland lies directly across all the trade routes by which nearly all our supplies of food and raw material are brought, and it covers the principal trade centres of the Midlands and the South of Scotland. In any attack by an enemy on our commerce, Ireland will become of supreme importance. There are two stages in every naval war: first, the engagement between the two navies; second, the blockade or destruction of the ships of the beaten side. This was the method by which we fought Napoleon, but even then we could not prevent the enemy's ships escaping from time to time; and even after we had destroyed their navy at Trafalgar, the damage to our oversea commerce was enormous. Nowadays, torpedoes, submarines, and floating mines have rendered blockade infinitely more precarious, and consequently we have to take into account the extreme probability, and indeed, certainty, of hostile cruisers escaping and menacing our oversea supplies. This danger will be increased ten-fold if Germany has been able to defeat France, and use French, Dutch, and Belgian ports for privateering purposes. In the second, if not in the first, stage of European war, therefore, the closest co-operation between the governments of Ireland and England will be essential. In this case, Queenstown and Lough Swilly will be the bases for our own protecting cruisers, and on their success will depend the issues of life and death for our people. As the West of
But even if Ireland be less directly affected by war than in this case, and even if its internal condition should give little anxiety, the very nature of its resources should prevent us taking a step which may deprive us of them in emergency or, at least, render them less readily available. Not only do we draw a number of our soldiers from there, out of all proportion to the quotas provided by the populations of England and Scotland, but we are absolutely dependent for our mounted branches on Irish horses. For our supplies in time of stress, for our horses, and for a great and valuable recruiting area, we shall be forced to rely on a government whose future is wrapped in the deepest obscurity, and which at the best is hardly likely to give us enthusiastic support.
Our whole military organisation is becoming more decentralised and more dependent on voluntary effort; it is devolving more and more upon Territorial Associations and local bodies of all kinds. We do not possess the reserves of horses and transport which continental nations hold ready for use on mobilisation, and, as a substitute, we have had to fall back on a system of registration which demands care, zeal, and energy on the part of these civilian bodies. How will an Irish Government and its officials fulfil a duty which will be distorted by every Nationalist into an attempt to employ the national resources for the sole benefit of England?
War is a stern taskmaster, demanding long years of
The year 1912 has opened amid signs of unrest and change, the meaning or the end of which no man can know. In the Far East and the Near East political and religious systems are disappearing, and chaos is steadily increasing. In Europe the nations have set out on the march to Armageddon, and there is no staying the progress of their armaments. In Great Britain alone the question of preparation for war is shirked on the plea that it is one for experts, and even soldiers and sailors, drawn into the political vortex, make light of our necessities, believing in the hopelessness of ever convincing the people of the truth until ‘a white calamity of steel and iron, the bearing of burdens and the hot rage of insult,’ fall upon us. It is for this reason that we see the extraordinary phenomenon of men denying the
The future is very dark, and it is all important that we should face it with open eyes. War cannot long be delayed, and there is too little time left to put our house in order. Even if Home Rule could be shown to be an act of justice due to a wronged people who have proved themselves capable of self-government, even then it could not be justified in the present crisis abroad. But it is not so. Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only possess six divisions of regular troops to support our allies on the continent and to safeguard the interests of the whole British Empire.
It is for the British people to decide whether the thin
Admiral Mahan.
Irish Unionists are determined in their opposition to Home Rule by many considerations. But deepest of all is the conviction that, on the establishment of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, the religious difficulty, which is ever with us here, would be increased enormously. Occasionally, in English newspapers and in Irish political speeches, there occur phrases which imply that the Protestant ascendancy, as it was called, still exists in Ireland. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is not merely false: it is impossible. Even in Belfast, as a recent controversy proved, Roman Catholics get their full share of whatever is to be had. There are no Roman Catholic disabilities. The majority has every means of making its power felt. At the present moment, the most impossible of all things in Ireland is that Roman Catholics, as such, should be oppressed or unfairly treated.
It used to be imagined that when this happy condition was attained there would be no more religious disagreement in Ireland. But events have shown the exact opposite to be the case. There never was a time when there was in the minds of Irish Protestants so deep a dread of Roman aggression, and so firm a conviction that the object of that aggression is the complete subjection of this country to Roman domination. Recalling very distinctly the events and discussions of 1886 and 1893, when Home Rule for Ireland seemed so near accomplishment under Mr. Gladstone's
Approaching this subject as one whose duties give him the spiritual oversight of more than 200,000 of the Protestants of Ireland—members of the Church of Ireland, and who has had twenty-seven years of experience as a clergyman in Ireland, both in the north and in the south, the writer may venture to speak with some confidence as to the mind of the people among whom he has worked for so long. In doing so, he feels at liberty to say that he is one who has always avoided religious controversy, and who has ever made it his endeavour to be tolerant and considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. He has a deep regard for his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and recognises to the full their many excellent qualities and the sincerity of their religion.
It is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make Irish Unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under Home Rule. Their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the Roman Church. But they recognise, as people in England do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by
It is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the Roman Church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy. She has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration. But there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing. Such is the opinion of the average Englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of Romanism which is to be met with usually in England lends colour to the opinion. In Ireland we know better.
The recent Papal Decree, termed Ne Temere, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in Ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to Englishmen. According to this Decree, ‘No marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (Roman) parish priest of the place, or of the Ordinary, or of a priest deputed
It is easy to see what hardship and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages.
As a result, it is now the case that, in Ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the Church of Rome, and the children of them are pronounced illegitimate. Nor is this a mere academic opinion: such is the power of the Roman Church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the State.
The celebrated McCann case is the most notable illustration. Even in the Protestant city of Belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree. And we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because Rome had spoken and justified the outrage. Those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that Protestants married to Roman Catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion. Nor does such interference stop here. Only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband. In this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. Let none imagine the Ne Temere question is extinct in Ireland. It is at this moment a burning question. Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration. And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants. Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but
As if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the Roman See, there has issued from the Vatican, within the last few weeks, a Decree which sets the Roman clergy above the law of the land. This ordinance, which is issued motus proprio by the Pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law. It lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication. The excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially among a people like the Irish Roman Catholics. Great discussion has taken place as to the countries in which this Decree is in force. No one was surprised to hear that Germany was exempt. Archbishop Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in an elaborate discussion, gives the opinion that the Decree is abrogated under British law by the custom of the country, which has in the past rendered impossible the observance of the strict ecclesiastical rule in this matter, but is careful to add that this is only his opinion as a canonist, and is subject to the decision of the Holy See. When this plea is examined, it is found to mean simply this, that the law is not strictly observed in case of necessity. That this is the meaning of Archbishop Walsh's plea is proved by a quotation which he makes from Pope Benedict XIV. The principle laid down by Pope Benedict is that when it became impossible to resist the encroachment of adverse customs, the Popes shut their eyes to what was going on, and tolerated what they had no power to prevent. It is exactly the principle of toleration as a temporary expedient. The re-enactment of the law by the present Pope means surely, if it means anything, that such toleration
But what of the Church of Ireland under Home Rule? Formerly the Established Church of the country, and as such occupying a position of special privilege, she still enjoys something of the traditional consideration which belonged to that position, and is more than ever conscious of her unbroken ecclesiastical descent from the Ancient Church of Ireland. Her adherents number 575,000, of whom 366,000 are in Ulster. As part of her heritage she holds nearly all the ancient ecclesiastical sites and the more important of the ancient buildings which still survive. These possessions, thus inherited from an immemorial past, were secured to her by the Act of Disestablishment. For the rest, the endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since 1870 by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. Under British law, her position is secure. But would she be secure under Home Rule? Those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority are convinced that she would not. The Bishop of Ossory, in an able and very moderate statement made at the meeting of the Synod of that Diocese, last September, showed that both the principal churches and the endowments now held by the Church of Ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion
The Bishop of Ossory's statement excited much discussion, but, though many Roman Catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. The fact that, as he showed, the Church of Ireland holds her churches by exactly the same title as that by which the English Church holds Westminster Abbey, and that, for the Irish Church, there is the additional security of the Act of 1869, count for nothing in the eye of Roman Canon Law. In an Ireland ruled by a Parliament of which the vast majority would be Roman Catholics, devout and sincere, representing constituencies peopled by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the Vatican are the laws of God, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the operation of the recent Motu Proprio Decree, an Ireland in
Irish Churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved worthless in the Act of Union, and at the time of Catholic emancipation.
Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would be followed by an uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the Roman Church in Ireland. Let those who think this consider that the more independent spirits among the Irish Roman Catholics go to America, and let them further consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec in Canada. The immense strength of the bonds—religious, social, and educational—by which the mass of the people in the South and West of Ireland are held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system, and the power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament.
There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. They dread Home Rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors of civil and religious strife.
For obvious reasons, the Religious Difficulty under Home Rule does not receive much attention on the political platform in Great Britain. But in Ireland a religious problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy. This religious problem creates the cleavage in the Irish population, and is the real secret of the intense passion on both sides with which Home Rule is both prosecuted and resisted. Irishmen understand this very well; but as Home Rule, on its face value, is only a question of a mode of civil government, it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to British electors. They say, What has religion got to do with Home Rule? Home Rule is a pure question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively political lines. Even if this were so, might not Englishmen remember that the Nationalist Members of Parliament have been controlled by the Church of Rome in their votes on the English education question? I mention this to show that under the disguise of pure politics ecclesiastical authority may stalk in perfect freedom through the lobbies of the House of Commons. Is it, then, an absolutely incredible thing that what has been done in the English Parliament in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised in the name of politics in a Home Rule Parliament? That such will be the case I shall now attempt to show.
Let us begin with the most elementary facts. According
| Roman Catholics | 3,238,656 |
| Irish Church | 575,489 |
| Presbyterians | 439,876 |
| Methodists | 61,806 |
| All other Christian denominations | 57,718 |
| Jews | 5,101 |
| Information refused | 3,305 |
I beg the electors of Great Britain to look steadily into the above figures, and to ask themselves who are the Home Rulers and who are the Unionists in Ireland. Irish Home Rulers are almost all Roman Catholics, and the Protestants and others are almost all stout Unionists. Does this fact suggest nothing? How is it that the line of demarcation in Irish politics almost exactly coincides with the line of demarcation in religion? Quite true, there are a few Irish Roman Catholics who are Unionists, and a few Protestants who are Home Rulers. But they are so few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to prove the rule. These exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly exploited, and the very most has been made of them. But the great elementary fact remains, that one-fourth of the Irish people, mostly Protestant, are resolutely, and even passionately, opposed to Home Rule; and the remarkable thing is that the most militant Irish Unionists for the past twenty years have not been the members of the Irish Church who might be suspected of Protestant Ascendency prejudices, but they are the Presbyterians and Methodists who never belonged to the old Protestant Ascendency party. It is of Irish Presbyterians that I can speak with the most intimate knowledge. Their record in Ireland requires to be made perfectly clear. In 1829 they were the champions of Catholic Emancipation. In 1868 they supported Mr. Gladstone in his great Irish reforms. They have been at all times the advocates of perfect equality in religion, and of unsectarianism in education. They stand firm and staunch on these two principles still. But they are the sternest and
I ask on these grounds that English and Scottish electors should pause for a moment, and open their minds to the fact that there is a great religious problem at the heart of Home Rule. Irish Presbyterians claim that they know what they are doing, and that they are not the blind dupes of religious prejudice and political passion. It is for a great something that they have embarked in this conflict; they are determined to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion as the danger approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the Home Rule claim increase.
What, then, is the secret of this determination? It lies in a nutshell. A Parliament in Dublin would be under the control and domination of the Church of Rome. Two facts in Irish life render this not only likely and probable, but inevitable and certain. The first fact is that three-fourths of the members would be Roman Catholic, and the second fact is that the Irish people are the most devoted Roman Catholics at present in Christendom. No one disputes the first fact, but the second requires to be made clear to the electors of Great Britain. Let no one suppose that I am finding fault with Irishmen for being devoted Roman Catholics. What I wish to show is that the Church of Rome would be supreme in the new Parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of Protestant liberties and interests. Ireland has been for the last two generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of ultramontanism. When Italy asserted her nationality, and fought for it in 1870, Ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the Pope. When France, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of Ecclesiasticism, the streets of Dublin were filled Sunday after Sunday for weeks with crowds of Irishmen, headed by priests, shouting for the Pope against France. The Church first, nationality afterwards, is the creed of the ultramontane; and it is the
What Mr. Dillon says is perfectly true. The Irish Parliament would be constituted on the Roman model. If there were none but Roman Catholics in Ireland, Ireland would rapidly become a ‘State of the Church.’ But how would Protestants fare? Just as they fared in old Papal days in Italy under the temporal rule of the Vatican. But it may still be said that Irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. This is one of the delusions by which British electors conceal from themselves the peril of Home Rule to Irish Protestants. They forget that Irishmen are, if possible, more Roman than Rome herself. I take the following picture of the Romanised condition of Ireland from a Roman Catholic writer—
Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who ‘believes in the Papal Church in every point, who accepts her teaching from Nicaea to Trent, and from Trent to the Vatican,’ says, ‘While the general population of Ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the abyss, the clerical population has been mounting by cent per cent during the same period ...’ A short time ago, when an Austrian Cabinet was being heckled by some anti-clerical opponents upon its alleged encouragement of an excessive number of clerical persons in Austria, the Minister replied, ‘If you want to know what an excessive number of the clergy is like go to Ireland. In proportion to their population the Irish have got ten priests and nuns to the one who exists in Austria. I do not prejudge the question. They may be wanted in Ireland. But let not honourable members talk about over-clericalism in Austria until they have studied the clerical statistics of Ireland.’ A Jesuit visitor to Ireland, on returning to his English acquaintances, and being asked how did he find the priests
in Ireland, replied, ‘The priests in Ireland! There is nobody but priests in Ireland. Over there they are treading on one another's heels.’ While the population of Ireland has diminished one-half, the population of the Presbyteries and convents has multiplied threefold or more. Comparisons are then instituted between the Sacerdotal census of Ireland, and that of the European Papal countries. I shall state results only. Belgium has only one Archbishop and five Bishops; but if it were staffed with prelates on the Irish scale it would have nine or ten Archbishops and some sixty Bishops. I suppose the main army of ecclesiastics in the two countries is in the same grossly incongruous proportions—ten or twelve priests in Ireland for every one in Belgium! The German Empire, with its 21,000,000 Roman Catholics, has actually fewer mitred prelates than Ireland with its 3,000,000 of Roman Catholics. The figures of Austria-Hungary with its Roman Catholic population of 36,000,000 are equally impressive. It has eleven Archbishops, but if it were staffed on the Irish scale it would have forty-eight. It has forty Bishops, but if it were like Ireland it wouldhave 288. Mr. O'Donnell goes on: ‘This enormous population of Churchmen, far beyond the necessities and even the luxuries of religious worship and service, would be a heavy tax upon the resources of great and wealthy lands. That must it be for Ireland to have to supply the Episcopal villas, the new Cathedrals, and handsome Presbyteries, and handsome incomes of this enormous and increasing host of reverend gentlemen, who, as regards five-sixths of their number, contribute neither to the spiritual nor temporal felicity of the Island? They are the despotic managers of all primary schools, and can exact what homage they please from the poor serf-teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. They absolutely own and control all the secondary schools, with all their private profits and all their Government grants. In the University what they do not dominate they mutilate. Every appointment, from dispensary doctors to members of Parliament, must acknowledge their ownership, and pay toll to their despotism. The County Councils must contribute patronage according to their indications; the parish committees of the congested districts supplement their pocket-money. They have annexed the revenues of the industrial schools. They are engaged in transforming the universal proprietary of Ireland in order to add materials for their exactions from the living and the moribund. I am told that not less than £5,000,000 are lifted from the Irish people every year by the innumerable agencies of clerical suction which are at work upon all parts of the Irish body, politic
and social. Nor can it be forgotten that the material loss is only a portion of the injury. The brow-beaten and intimidated condition of the popular action and intelligence which is necessary to this state of things necessarily communicates its want of will and energy to every function of the community.’
Of course Mr. F. H. O'Donnell has been driven out of public life in Ireland for plain speaking like this; and so would every man be who ventured to cross swords with his Church. It aggravates the situation immensely when we take another fact in Irish life into account.
In quite recent months Mr. Devlin, M.P., has brought into prominence a society called the Ancient Order of Hibernians (sometimes called the Molly Maguires) which, according to the late Mr. Michael Davitt, is ‘the most wonderful pro-Celtic organisation in the world.’ This is a secret society which at one time was under the ban of the Church; but quite recently the ban has been removed, and priests are now allowed to join the order. The present Pope is said to be its most powerful friend. It has branches in many lands, and it is rapidly gathering into it all the great mass of the Irish Roman Catholic people. This is the most wonderful political machine in Ireland.
Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., has recently given an account of this society which has never been seriously questioned. The fundamental object of the Hibernian Society is to give preference to its own members first and Catholics afterwards as against Protestants on all occasions. Whether it is a question of custom, office, public contracts, or positions on Public Boards, Molly Maguires are pledged always to support a Catholic as against a Protestant. If Protestants are to be robbed of their business, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, if they are to be shut out of every office of honour or emolument, what is this but extermination? The domination of such a society would make this country a hell. It would light the flame of civil war in our midst, and blight every hope of its future prosperity.’’
And now we reach the core of the question. It is perfectly clear that Home Rule would create a Roman Catholic
The contention of the Irish Protestants is that neither their will nor their religious liberties would be safe in the custody of Rome. In an Irish Parliament civil allegiance to the Holy See would be the test of membership, and would make every Roman Catholic member a civil servant of the Vatican. That Parliament would be compelled to carry out the behests of the Church. The Church is hostile to the liberty of the Press, to liberty of public speech, to Modernism in science, in literature, in philosophy; is bound to exact obedience from her own members and to extirpate heresy and heretics; claims to be above Civil Law, and the right to enforce Canon Law whenever she is able, There are
Here is our difficulty under Home Rule. Irish Protestants see that they must either refuse to go into an Irish Parliament, or else go into it as a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of their most elementary rights; in which case the Irish Parliament would be simply a cockpit of religio-political strife. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy for Ireland. But for the creation of the Papal ascendancy in Ireland, the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on Great Britain herself. England and Scotland, the most favoured lands of the Reformation, by establishing Home Rule in Ireland, will do for Rome what no other country in the world would do for her. They would entrust her with a legislative machine which she could control without check, hand over to her tender mercies a million of the best Protestants of the Empire, and establish at the heart of the Empire a power altogether at variance with her own ideals of Government, fraught with danger, and a good base of operations for the conquest of England. Can this be done with impunity? Can Great Britain divest herself of a
In brief compass, I hope I have made it quite clear what the Religious Difficulty in Ireland under Home Rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. The Religious Difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism, Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal. It is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. It is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. Under Imperial Rule these ideals have discovered a decently working modus vivendi. Mr. Pitt's contention that the union with Great Britain would be an effectual barrier against Romanism has held good. But if you remove Imperial Rule then you create at a stroke the ascendancy of Rome, and under that ascendency the greatest injustice would be inflicted on the Protestant minority. Questions of public situations and of efficient patronage are of very subordinate importance indeed. Mr. Redmond demands that Irish Protestants must be included in his Home Rule scheme, and threatens that if they object they must be dealt with ‘by the strong hand,’ and his Home Rule Parliament would be subservient to the Church of Rome. Does any one suppose that a million of the most earnest Protestants in the world are going to submit to such an arrangement? Neither Englishmen nor Scotsmen would be willing themselves to enter under such a yoke, and why should they ask Irishmen to do so?
It is contended, indeed, that the power of the priest in Ireland is on the wane. This is partly true and partly not true. It is true that he is not quite the political and social autocrat that he once was. But it is not true that the Church of Rome is less powerful in Ireland than she was. On the contrary, as an ecclesiastical organisation Rome was